Concept Imagery for the Classroom

Have you ever found yourself so immersed in a book that the rest of the world seems to melt away? Or, have you had to draw a picture in order to understand a complex concept? In both of these situations concept imagery is at work. Concept imagery is what creates movies in our minds when we are especially enrapt in a vivid text. It is also what is missing when we find ourselves confused by complex, multi-step word problems or strange and exigent concepts. Concept imagery is what we provide for ourselves when we draw, diagram or outline those challenging ideas. Once we create these concrete illustrations our questions are answered and we can grasp and hold-on to the concept with assured understanding. We can visualize it as the product of its interdependent parts just by accessing the imagery now imbedded in our minds. In this case, concept imagery is working in reverse, going from pencil to paper to comprehension and then finally, critical mental manipulation.

To paraphrase the great visionary, Albert Einstein, if we can’t picture it, we can’t understand it. Therefore, through picturing comes understanding. Without imagery, one cannot manipulate nor draw logical connections and conclusions from the information one has received. This is why concept imagery is essential to learning and understanding. With the recent education reform, schools are beginning to measure student success based primarily on their understanding of important concepts in all disciplines. Because students are being asked to demonstrate their concept mastery by referencing the key people, places, objects and ideas involved in important lessons, concept imagery is going to be increasingly important for student’s to keep-up with their accumulative lessons and to strengthen their understanding of each subject. Unfortunately, educators rarely acknowledge the fact that visual cognition plays an enormous role in learning. However, by stimulating concept imagery in their classroom, using visually focused methods, teachers can greatly enhance students’ academic experiences and strengthen their reading, comprehension and language skills.

Science

Visual cognition is part and parcel to concept imagery. Author, James T. Enns, describes how in his book, The Thinking Eye, The Seeing Brain, stating that:

Thinking seems to occur in an abstract medium, not limited in any obvious way by what we are seeing or have seen. . . . [T]hese common understandings of vision and thought are based on inaccurate and outmoded concepts . . . [M]uch of what we call thinking relies heavily on the same parts of the brain that are used when we see the world around us” (3).

Thoughtful optometrist or ophthalmologist will agree that the power for understanding our world lies not exclusively in our eyes, nor in our minds but in both working together. Thinkers about vision have discovered and dispelled several significant myths about human perception pervasive in mainstream understanding. Enns describes one of these myths as “the myth that seeing occurs automatically and without any thoughtful activity on our part” (4). This “passive vision process” does not exist according to Enns (7). And can be dispelled by the ideas of an impartial witnesses or visual illusions. When recalling visual imagery even the most unbiased witness cannot separate their mind’s influence from their visual information. Emotional, motivational and a cause/effect analysis’ are inherent to any observation. Our thoughts influence our visual experiences; thus when we look at an M. C. Escher drawing, our mental analysis of the illustration on the page allows for a playful exchange between our eyes and brain, where seemingly stagnant ladders begin to bend, landscapes become skylines and swimming fish begin to fly.

Insofar as vision happens passively is a myth, so is the idea that “we can think without using our senses” (Enns, 4). Enns’ illustrates this further, stating:

Even though it may be impossible to separate seeing and understanding, sensation and perception, surely higher levels of cognition – such as long-term memory retrieval and problem solving – can be separated from the processes of vision. Thinking, after all, should not be dependent on vision, as many people with poor sight will attest. But this, too, is a myth. (12)

Every mode of thought, be it memory or analysis happens in conjunction with the areas in our brain where we manage the visual intake, retention and processing of sensory information. In this way, thought is contingent upon having a foundation of visual information supporting our ideas. Without this visual component we could not recall information accurately through memory nor could we analyze information critically, weighing new visual information against the related concepts we have stored within our banks of visual cognition. Enns further scrutinizes the myth of imageless thought by stating that, “much of cognition is inherently perceptual (and often visual) and involves the same neural machinery as the senses, although sometimes the shared neural machinery operates in different ways for seeing and thinking” (12). He illustrates this idea by asking his reader to recall the placement of the windows in their previous residence. He writes, “how many windows were visible to you when you approached the front door or the main entrance? What were the shapes of these windows?” (12). How do we answer these types of long-term memory questions? Why, visually of course. Enns goes on to explain:

[S]uch questions require the formation of mental simulations that can be “seen” in ways similar to seeing the immediate world. Our brains re-create the conditions in our mind’s eyes as best they can. Furthermore, these simulations rely on the same brain regions and the same neurons that would be required to see the solution if you were actually standing in front of your former residence. (12)

This is a perfect example of concept imagery in action. To gain the information we need to answer Enns’ question we must access our visual memory and reenact entering our past residence. We replay the mental “tape” we recorded every day while exiting and entering that home to see where and what shape the windows. This is the basic principal behind concept imagery. If we can recreate the information found in our students’ textbooks visually, we can assist them in establishing a vast bank of knowledge supported by visual cognition.

History

Despite the fact that few educators promote visual exercises in their classrooms today in order to enhance their student’s working memories, cognition and conceptual analysis, prominent educators and pedagogical theorists throughout history have written on and emphasized the benefits of utilizing imagery to strengthen cognition. Nanci Bell creates a timeline for us in her handbook, Visualizing and Verbalizing: for Language Comprehension and Thinking, to note the “historical perspectives on the relationship between imagery and cognition,” beginning as early as 556-468 B.C. when “Simonides taught people to use imagery to improve their memories. His system was taught to many Greek and Roman orators who, without notes or cue cards, sometimes spoke for several hours” (12). By thinking back to Enns’ description of visual cognition and visual memory, one can imagine how Simonides may have trained his orator students to recite for long hours by utilizing concept imagery. By anchoring ones ideas or narrative within a series of imagery-based “cue cards” any stage actor, politician, teacher or general speechmaker can retain language and deliver a constant stream of logically connected ideas by accessing their visual “cue cards” sequentially. Without connecting language to imagery, even the most experienced orator can lose their place in a speech or slip-up on their words.

After Simonides came Aristotle around 348 B.C. In his work, On Memory and Recollection, he wrote, “It is impossible even to think without a mental picture. . . . [M]emory or remembering is a state induced by mental images related as a likeness to that of which it is an image” (Aristotle, cited by Bell, 12). But what has happened with visual cognition since? Have all theories uniting image and cognition died by way of the Greek tragedy? Thankfully, no, they have not. Several prominent psychologists have studied their connection in recent years. One who is most remarked upon and referenced to by modern educators is, Jean Piaget, who in “1936, wrote in favor of a perceptual base to memory. According to Piaget, knowledge structures, or schemata, are acquired when the infant actively manipulates, touches and interacts with the environment. As objects are manipulated, sensory-motor schemata are developed and changed to accommodate new information” (Bell, 13). He writes, “Over time, schemata become internalized in the form of imaged thought. It is clear that imaginal representations are not formed with the same facility in each case, and that there is therefore a hierarchy of image levels, which may correspond to stages of development . . . the evolution of images is a kind of intermediate between that of the perceptions and that of the intelligence” (Piaget, cited by Bell, 13). A wide-range pedagogical theorist have since embraced Piaget’s concept of visual schemata although often the visual component is underemphasized and a strict information-based schemata is left. With no visual component to anchor new information into one’s visual memory, Piaget’s idea of schemata breaks down; for, imagery is what provides strength to the schemata’s structure.

Since these early minds in education wrote about imagery and cognition, modern educators and psychologists have taken-up the torch. Howard Gardner for example, writes about the “cognitive revolution” in his book, The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand, stating:

The key notion of the cognitive revolution is “mental representation.” Cognitive psychologists believe that individuals have ideas, images, and various “languages” in their mind-brain; these representations are real and important, and are susceptible to study by scientists and to change by educators. Now, laypersons––not to mention an impressive array of philosophers including Plato and Aristotle, Descartes and Kant­­­­––have long believed that individuals traffic in such mental representations. (67)

What is most intriguing in this passage is the concept of these “mental representations” being changed by educators. This is instrumental to the idea that concept imagery can be implemented in the classroom. Many of the earliest believers in concept imagery likely worked with their students one on one to strengthen their visual representations and thus their memorization and critical thinking powers, however, Gardner infers that these methods can and should be used in the classroom. And although the classroom setting presents unique challenges for the implementation of this teaching strategy, it is invaluable for reinforcing new and difficult concepts with concrete, methodically built imagery.

Need

The truth is, literacy rates in the United States are low and over the past ten years, they have not significantly improved. According to a study published by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy on April 28^th 2013, thirty two million adults in the United States cannot read. Fifty percentage of adults in the United States cannot read beyond an 8^th grade level, and fifteen percent of all school age youth in the U. S. have specific reading disorders (statisticsbrain.com). Children’s Trend Database also recorded that three million thirty thousand high school students dropout annually, most of them during the ninth grade. Albeit education comes with its own Pandora’s box of challenges, however, we can do better. With his theories on Cultural Literacy and his widely integrated Common Core State Standards, E. D. Hirsch Jr. has set new goals for the nation’s education system. Notably, these new standards for English Language Arts & Literacy are built upon the belief that “building knowledge systematically in English language arts is like giving children various pieces of a puzzle in each grade that, over time, will form one big picture” (Coreknowledge.com). The Core Knowledge website explains that the standards emphasize “the importance of students reading texts across disciplines and building a foundation of knowledge that will give them the background to be better readers in all content areas.” It also gives this example of language from the state and district curriculum: “Students will demonstrate knowledge of people, events, idea and movements that contributed to the development of the United States” (Coreknowledge.com). Hirsch’s standards are not perfect, however, nor are they going away any time soon. In order to most effectively implement the Common Core’s “content rich” curriculum, educators will have to learn new strategies for helping students grasp and retain the heavy load of important people, events and ideas presented to them in every classroom.

An individual’s foundational and ever expanding cultural knowledge helps support the development of strong literacy skills. Yet, this knowledge is attained in different ways for different students. This foundational knowledge and the strong literacy skills that correspond are essential for their academic success. However, many students struggle to retain information presented to them orally or textually in the classroom and are resistant to the rote memorization methodology employed ad nauseam in mainstream schools. Thus, reinforcing lessons with concept imagery can help students grapple with difficult concepts more easily and enable them to be more successful in school. Gardner comments on the necessity for more personalized and creative methods of teaching, recalling that, “In times past, schools have been uniform, in the sense that they taught the same materials in the same way to all students . . . . If one seeks an education for all human beings, one that helps each achieve his or her potential then, the educational process needs to be conceived quite differently” (72). These alternative methods that Gardner refers to are methods rooted in our modern, psychological, biological and development understanding. By which students are given two important opportunities, one, to “encounter materials in ways that allow them access to their content, and two, to . . . show what they have learned, in ways that are comfortable for them yet also interpretable by the surrounding society” (73). Both of which can effectively be accomplished for a wide-range of students through imagery-based instruction and application. More successful students make for more successful teachers; therefore presenting lessons in a way that stimulates students’ concept imagery is highly beneficial for both educators and students.

Method

Concept imagery can occur automatically for some students and not at all for others. For the students who are imaging automatically, teachers will notice certain signs that indicate the student is accessing mental imagery. One clear indication is if the student’s eyes roll upwards, looking towards their forehead as if accessing imagery that exists tangibly or at least, observably in the front portion of their mind. A second, revealing sign that demonstrates a student is picturing, is if they describe color, movement and size when explaining a concept or telling a story. Gesturing is another strong indicator of picturing.  Students who do not employ these motions and behaviors may not be creating imagery automatically and may need much guidance and heavy prompting from their teachers to engage visually with the classroom material.

Over the summer of 2013, I worked with seventeen year old, young man, who I will refer to as Samuel for the purpose of this case study. He and his family are members of the somewhat reclusive Orthodox Jewish community, living in Brooklyn, New York. Samuel’s came to me with extremely weak concept imagery skills. He was notorious for answering questions with another question and for describing specific characters or objects with an adjective-version of the same term. For example if I asked him what shape I should picture for the dolphin in the story we were reading together, he would reply, “you know, dolphin-shaped.” His descriptive vocabulary was very limited and his working memory was extremely short. Samuel had been living without concept imagery for his entire seventeen years, and coming from such a sheltered background made him incredulous towards the Visualizing and Verbalizing© process. However, he indignantly answered my questions and feigned picturing just to humor me for the first four to five weeks of his instruction. He came for intensive concept imagery instruction four hours per day, five days per week for eight weeks. Towards the end of his fifth week, Samuel and I reached a mutual point of exhaustion and frustration. His work was only gradually improving and I could not convince him of the importance of visualization for comprehension.

We reached a point of catharsis when I asked Samuel to read a story of my own choosing, usually he insisted upon selecting the readings thus avoiding particularly challenging concepts. The story I chose was a short one about Narwhals. Upon reviewing the stories vocabulary, always the first step with students like Samuel, I came to realize that Samuel was missing concept imagery for almost every important, active element in the story. Of course narwhals were unknown to him, but to my surprise so were unicorns and Vikings. These are the types of cultural archetypes that are pictorially seared into most individuals’ minds by the time they finish elementary school. However, for students like Samuel who have weak concept imagery and are culturally isolated, terms like these are empty and meaningless. To hear myself describe a Viking to Samuel would have been humorous if it was not so obviously painful for him and seemingly impossible for him to grasp. After modeling all of the challenging vocabulary with pictures from the computer and then asking him to describe the pictures to me as he looked at them, we went back to try and read the short story. Despite my preliminary efforts to concretize the important imagery for him, the language obstructed his access to the imagery. Samuel struggled through the first two sentences and then we stopped.

Because Samuel was uniquely involved in all phases of his instruction, I verbalized to him why I chose to stop that story and move onto something else, “because there are too many common-knowledge vocabulary words that you have no imagery for,” I said, and he was noticeably stunned. It was then, that Samuel began to understand what I was trying to do for him. “Is that true?” he asked, and I nodded. It was as if he had just realized he was living in a dark world. From that point on, he worked harder and actively engaged in our sessions. He earnestly strove to access the world of color, shapes and mysterious characters like narwhals and Vikings. And slowly, he began to activate the pictures in his mind independently. Upon reading a story, Samuel no longer needed me to question him about every pertinent visual detail to ensure that he had a complete picture matching the story; he was doing it by himself.

The fundamentals for stimulating concept imagery within students who perhaps have weak concept imagery like Samuel, or just need help to create complete and detail-rich imagery, are: intense repetition, visually stimulating questioning to reinforce the idea that nothing is assumed, picture recall for concretizing imagery and verbal summaries using imagery for support. Repetition is key because for students like Samuel who have been operating without concept imagery for so long, it will take intensive, immersion-like work to train their minds to generate visuals while reading. By questioning students using visual language, for example, “what do you picture for a narwhal?” teachers reinforce the imagistic quality of concepts and remind the students to describe based on their visual knowledge. That nothing is assumed in this exercise is extremely important. Students often have to be reminded to picture each story detail or else important albeit subtle details may be left-out damaging the student’s comprehension of the story’s main idea or key purpose. Finally, the student must repeat their pictures without verbal cues to reinforce those images and anchor them sequentially in order to turn around and deliver a seamless word summary, utilizing the pictures only to recall story details in order to give a smooth, sequential summary in expository form. If all of these steps are administered the student will retain these stories for indefinitely and can think critically, drawing logical conclusions based on their complete, visually dynamic understanding of the story.

Classroom Application

            Although, this type of intensive visualization cannot be implemented one on one in a classroom setting, there are adaptations teachers can utilize in order to give students the benefit of visually stimulating concept imagery instruction. The first key to having a visually engaged class is to use visual language in lectures and questioning. Instead of asking students what they understand or know about a concept, ask them what they picture or imagine. This line of questioning, if used consistently, will reinforce educators’ visually dynamic lectures and remind student that they do not have to rack their brains for specific names and dates, but that their clearly imagined pictures can often convey far greater understanding than to simply know the name and date of a significant event.  Along with this visual language, educators should utilize concrete visual-aides when introducing new topics, places, people, events, and significant relationships. Encouraging students to find or draw their own visual-aides can help to reinforce these new lessons, while also creating a concrete schema of student work for the classroom to draw from later when discussing how different concepts relate.

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These and more pictorially vivid assignments can help activate concept imagery for students, thus giving them a stronger grasp on challenging and accumulative academic material. With their sharply honed imaginations, students can then make great gains in school. Their cognition becomes stronger, reading comprehension more astute, writing more gestalt-driven and sequentially organized, and their confidence blossoms with this newfound academic stability. Without pictures one cannot understand, and without understanding one cannot imagine. Both are necessary for the other therefore the two must be taught in conjunction with one another. The most successful classrooms of the future will be the classrooms where educators present information to their students in ways that are visually active and where students are expected to present their own knowledge with the same emphasis on imagery.

Works Cited

 Bell, Nanci. Visualizing and Verbalizing: for Language Comprehension and Thinking, San

            Luis Obispo, CA: Gander Publishing, 2007. Print.

“Core Knowledge – Learn About Us.” Core Knowledge. The Core Knowledge Foundation,

            n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2013. http://www.coreknowledge.org/learn-about-us

Enns, James T. The Thinking Eye, The Seeing Brain: Explorations in Visual Cognition, New

            York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2004. Print.

Gardner, Howard. The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand, New York:

            Simon & Schuster, 1999. Print.

Hirsch, E. D. Jr. Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs To Know, Boston: Houghton

            Mifflin Company, 1987. Print.

“Reading Statistics.” Statistic Brain. Statistic Brain Research Institute, n. d.  Web. 19 Jan.

            2013. http://www.statisticbrain.com/reading-statistics/