Visual Literacy in Education: Why Reading Images Matters for Storytelling and Learning
- Kate Costello
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
Storytelling is one of the oldest ways humans share knowledge.
Long before written language became widespread, communities passed down knowledge through oral storytelling. Stories were shared through voice, memory, and performance. This tradition allowed communities to preserve culture, history, and identity across generations.
At Telling Our Stories, storytelling remains central to our work. But storytelling does not only happen through written language. It also happens through images.
Every day we read images without realising it.
A dark sky suggests night.
A smiling face suggests joy.
A hunched posture might suggest sadness or exhaustion.
Humans are natural interpreters of visual information. From early childhood, we learn to recognize symbols, facial expressions, body language, and environmental cues. This instinctive skill forms the foundation of visual literacy.
What Is Visual Literacy?
Visual literacy refers to the ability to interpret, analyze, and create meaning from images.
According to April Lundy and Alice Stephens, visual literacy is a set of abilities that allows individuals to “find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media.”
In simple terms, visual literacy means learning to read and write visual language.
A visually literate person can:
Interpret images and symbols
Understand visual composition and perspective
Recognize cultural or historical context in images
Create images that communicate ideas clearly
Lundy and Stephens also explain that visual literacy requires learners to understand the “contextual, cultural, ethical, aesthetic, intellectual, and technical components” involved in visual communication.
This skill is increasingly important in modern classrooms.
As Lundy and Stephens point out, today's students are exposed to an enormous amount of visual media but often lack the skills to move beyond being “passive receivers of visual media messages.” Teaching visual literacy helps students become active interpreters of visual information.
Writing Images: How Illustration Tells a Story
My name is Kate Costello, and I am an illustrator trained in what I often describe as the art of writing images.
Writing an image means constructing a picture that communicates a story.
Just as writers choose words carefully, illustrators choose visual elements that shape meaning. These elements include:
Composition
Perspective
Facial expressions
Body language
Layout
Spatial relationships
Researchers often refer to this system as visual grammar.
Lundy and Stephens describe visual grammar as the way visual elements work together to shape meaning and interpretation within an image.
A photograph captures a moment from one perspective. Illustration allows more deliberate storytelling. Through composition and detail, illustrators can highlight the parts of a story that matter most.
How Visually Literate are you?
There's a lot of ways an illustrator can tell a story. Remember, a drawing, objectively, is just a line in a shape on a page and you, the viewer, assign meaning to it. So looking at this set of lines I've drawn - what meaning can you assign to them, and can you figure out who in the image biked to school that day? Was it Georgia, Mrs Stuart or Logan?
Let's walk through what your brain might be doing (all in a couple of seconds) -
Initially it's recognising that this image is of three people. Even without the names of them, you probably recognise who the teacher is - why? Well her drawing is taller, her figure more mature, she's wearing high heels and lipstick and has a very 1990s haircut. The other two figures look younger - we make a context clue that "biking to school" means that they are students. Now back to the question - who biked?
We can see Georgia is wearing a skirt, and has long clean socks on. Hard to bike in. We see she also has a large one-shoulder duffel bag. Georgia has done her hair in a fun half-up half down look, something that would be very uncomfortable under a helmet. So we're thinking "possible, but she's looking very put together for someone that's biked with a skirt, a duffle bag and an uncomfortable helmet." Next we look at Mrs Stuart. Teachers do bike to school, but Mrs Stuart is wearing a long cardigan and a pencil skirt (very chic but not practical) and most telling is she has what looks like keys in her pocket and high heels on. Lets take note, but there are no positive clues here.
Now Logan. Logan looks hot and a little dishevelled, he's got a major case of helmet hair, a backpack, grubby socks and a water bottle. Looks like he might even be in his PE gear! Logan is the obvious pick.
All of that thinking probably happened in less than a second.
Your brain interpreted a black and white sketch as posture, clothing, hairstyles, objects, and social cues. You used prior knowledge, context clues, and visual symbols to construct a story.
This process is called visual literacy.
Visual literacy is the ability to interpret meaning from images and visual symbols. Researchers April Lundy and Alice Stephens describe it as the ability to “find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media.”
When you looked at the drawing, you were not just seeing lines. You were reading visual language.
From Story to Illustration in the Telling Your Stories Project
In the Telling Our Stories project, images are created after the narrative has been written.
Each illustration grows directly from a specific moment in the story.
The process usually follows four stages:
Research and write the narrative
Identify key moments in the story
Extract meaningful visual details
Compose illustrations that communicate the scene clearly
Illustrations are not decorative additions. They function as visual interpretations of research, memory, and storytelling.
Facial expressions, gestures, and environmental details help communicate the emotional and historical context of each scene. They also often convey subtext, nuance and details that are unable to be written in the text of a story.
Why Visual Literacy Matters for Students
Visual storytelling plays an important role in education.
Children engage with images naturally and often before they learn to read written text. Because of this, images can make stories and information accessible across a wide range of ages and learning levels.
Research also shows that visual learning can strengthen understanding.
According to Joanna Kędra and Rasa Žakevičiūtė, visual literacy supports knowledge acquisition because images help learners better understand complex ideas and enhance memory.
They also note that visual literacy encourages creativity and opens new possibilities for learning and communication. Visual literacy also strengthens critical thinking.
Students learn to ask important questions such as:
Who created this image?
What message does it communicate?
What details shape its meaning?
Through this process, learners develop the skills needed to analyze visual media critically.
Visual Literacy and 21st Century Communication
Today we live in a highly visual culture.
Images play a dominant role in how people communicate online. Photos, videos, emojis, and graphics have become everyday tools of communication.
Kędra and Žakevičiūtė explain that modern communication practices are increasingly visual, especially among younger generations growing up with digital technology.
However, being surrounded by images does not automatically make someone visually literate.
As the authors emphasise, visual literacy skills must be explicitly taught and practiced.
Without these skills, students may struggle to interpret visual messages critically.
Reading the World Through Images
At its core, visual literacy helps people understand how meaning is constructed.
When we read images, we interpret symbols, emotions, relationships, and context.
When we create images, we intentionally design those meanings.
In the Telling Our Stories project, illustrations help bridge storytelling, research, and education. They make stories accessible to readers of different ages while preserving the knowledge shared by communities. Images allow readers to see the story.
And when learners read images carefully, they become more than viewers. They become interpreters, storytellers, and critical thinkers.
Ask an Illustrator
What is visual literacy in education?
Visual literacy in education refers to the ability to interpret, analyze, and create meaning from images and visual media. It helps students understand visual communication and use images to express ideas.
Why is visual literacy important for students?
Visual literacy improves comprehension, strengthens critical thinking, and helps students communicate ideas in a world where visual media is everywhere.
What does it mean to read images?
Reading images means analyzing visual elements such as symbols, composition, body language, and context to understand the meaning of a picture.
How do illustrations support storytelling?
Illustrations communicate narrative moments visually. Details such as expression, posture, and composition help readers understand the story.
How can teachers use visual literacy in the classroom?
Teachers can incorporate visual literacy by analysing images, discussing visual symbols, creating visual stories, and helping students interpret visual media.
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