BKKB – Visual Literacy in Cultural Education

Project Description

The cooperative project “Visual Literacy within Cultural Education” is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and separated into two interconnected sub-projects, i.e. the sub-project „BKKB-Assessment” led by Prof. Dr. Ulrich Frick at the HSD University of Applied Sciences in Cologne and the sub-project „BKKB-Instruction” led by Prof. Dr. Katrin Rakoczy at the DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education in Frankfurt am Main. The cooperative project aims to gain new insights into the process of how visual literacy can be empirically measured („BKKB-Assessment”) and how art instruction can foster visual literacy („BKKBInstruction”).

The sub-project “BKKB-Instruction” (DIPF) builds up on the sub-project „BKKB-Assessment“ (HSD) in which an assessment instrument will be developed and tested for one of the core competencies in the field of cultural education, namely visual literacy. The assessment instrument is based on the European Framework for Visual Literacy (ENViL) (cf. Wagner & Schönau, 2016) and aims to empirically test the latent structure of visual literacy. Therefore the instrument constitutes an essential condition for further empirical research. „BKKB-Instruction” targets the theoretical and methodological development of classroom research in the field of cultural education. The basic dimensions of classroom quality – efficient classroom management, supportive student-oriented classroom climate and cognitive activation (cf. Klieme, 2006; cf. Rakoczy & Klieme, 2016) – will be transferred to teaching-learning-processes in art instruction, pursuant to current theories and methods of quantitative empirical research. These basic dimensions will be assessed within art instruction and their impact on students’ motivation as well as visual literacy will be analysed. Thus, visual literacy is not only considered a qualification for further cultural education but rather as the result of a cultural education process. To include visual literacy in the quantitative empirical classroom research fills a division-specific gap (cf. Orth, 2013; cf. Schmidt, 2014).

The sub-project „BKKB-Instruction” especially focuses on students subjective perceptions of instructional quality and motivational support during art lessons. The intra- and inter-individual variation of students’ perception and motivation will be analysed by applying innovative empirical classroom research methods (ambulant assessment). Additionally, the project will query how the students’ social background, especially the primary background effects of cultural capital and cultural-aesthetic practices in the family, are related to students' motivation and visual literacy as well as to their perception of instruction.

The aim is to gain well-founded insights on how art instruction should be shaped to foster students’ motivation and visual literacy. This knowledge will be fed back to the participating art teachers and will be implemented in art instruction after the project term.

Funding

German Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the Research Focus "Supporting Cultural Education“

Cooperations

• Prof. Dr. Ulrich Frick (Hochschule Döpfer)
• Miles Tallon, M.Sc. (Hochschule Döpfer)

Alliance Partners

Dr. Ernst Wagner (European Network for Visual Literacy/ENViL, Erlangen)

Project Details