Strategies for teaching critical visual literacy in PDHPE
Visual critical literacy helps students to develop an informal and critical understanding of the nature of how meaning is shaped in words and/or images. In this activity, students are encouraged to decode, interpret, question, challenge and evaluate the Simple Plan video clip as a text that communicates messages through both visual images and words or lyrics.
A simple plan gone wrong
A simple plan gone wrong is best aligned with Stage 5 outcomes and content. The activity outlined in this article utilises critical visual literacy as a strategy to identify how messages are constructed in visual texts and how they influence our values, beliefs and behaviours.
The activity involves students examining a video clip to explore risk-taking in the road environment, however, other visual texts such as advertisements and commercials could also be used as stimulus material. Students view the music video clip to analyse the messages contained in the video and then explore some of the factors that contribute to risk-taking in the road environment and some of the possible consequences.
The music video Untitled (How could this happen to me?) by Simple Plan can be found at http://www.simpleplan.com/
After watching the video, students deconstruct the background information and the meaning from the text. For example, they can explore the following.
Background information
- Who has created the video? Why?
- Who is the intended audience?
Creating meaning from the text
- What is the video about?
- Do the lyrics complement the visual images? If yes, provide examples.
- What actions, behaviours and emotions are portrayed? How are images and sounds used to portray these emotions? Is this realistic? Why? Why not?
- What images are used to convey the consequences of road accidents? Why are they included and what are their meanings?
As a class, discuss the intent and key messages implicit and explicit in the video clip.
In small groups, students predict and record what human, vehicle and environmental factors may have contributed to the crash portrayed in the video. The Predicting contributing factors table from the Shifting Gears road safety resource on page 24 may be adapted for this purpose. Students may also develop a list of possible consequences of the accident. Groups share their responses with the rest of the class.
Ask the class, which group of factors appear to be most influential in this accident - human, vehicular or environmental factors? Ask students to justify their responses. It should be noted that approximately 67% of road crashes involve human factors as the major contributor.
As a class, reflect on the key themes of “Untitled (How could this happen to me?)” by Simple Plan and ask students to identify proposals currently identified in the media which potentially may be introduced to increase the safety of young drivers.
Allocate one of the following proposals to each group:
- Apply a night driving restriction to young drivers.
- Increase enforcement by police at times and places where young drivers drive.
- Increase demerit points for high-risk behaviours.
- Limit young drivers to small cars with low power engines.
- Increase the age for P plate eligibility.
- Limit the number of passengers P plate drivers can have.
Ask each of the groups to develop a response to their proposal outlining clearly why this proposal may or may not work. Responses could be in the format of:
- points for a debate (positive and negative arguments)
- brochure representing government reasons for the proposals
- a letter to the government challenging the proposal
- a presentation to a consultation meeting with government
- speech notes to a consultation meeting
- an electronic presentation supporting or rejecting the proposal
- a newspaper editorial about the proposal.
This activity has incorporated learning experiences that required students to process, question, challenge and evaluate information from a visual text. With a significant amount of time invested in television, computers and other small screen technologies, it is important for young people to have the ability to look carefully at visual texts such as the media and think critically about them, understand exactly what the medium is and how it affects them.
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