Journal articles on the topic 'Australian Secondary Schools Sports Federation'

Context California is currently the only state that does not regulate who can and cannot call themselves athletic trainers (ATs). Therefore, previous national or state-specific investigations may not have provided an accurate representation of AT availability at the secondary school level in California. Similarly, it is unknown whether the factors that influence AT availability in California, such as socioeconomic status, are similar to or different from those identified in previous studies. Objective To describe the availability of ATs certified by the Board of Certification in California secondary schools and to examine potential factors influencing access to AT services in California secondary schools. Design Cross-sectional study. Setting Online survey. Patients or Other Participants Representatives of 1270 California high schools. Main Outcome Measure(s) Officials from member schools completed the 2017–2018 California Interscholastic Federation Participation Census. Respondents provided information regarding school type, student and student-athlete enrollment, whether the school had ATs on staff, and whether the ATs were certified by the Board of Certification. The socioeconomic status of public and charter schools was determined using the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. Results More than half (54.6%) of schools reported that they either did not employ ATs (47.6%) or employed unqualified health personnel (UHP) in the role of AT (7.0%). Nearly 30% of student-athletes in California participated in athletics at a school that did not employ ATs (n = 191 626, 28.9%) and 8% of student-athletes participated at a school that employed UHP in the role of AT (n = 54 361, 8.2%). Schools that reported employing ATs had a lower proportion of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch than schools that did not employ ATs and schools that employed UHP (both P values < .001). Conclusions With ongoing legislative efforts to obtain regulation of ATs in California, secondary school administrators are encouraged to hire ATs with the proper certification to enhance the patient care provided to student-athletes and improve health outcomes.

Introduction. The trend of teaching staff aging in secondary schools is evident in many countries. A negative consequence of this is the growing gap between the personal resources of teachers and the requirements of the profession. Solving the problem of maintaining an optimal age structure involves studying its dynamics and forecasting its development in order to develop measures for personnel planning. The present paper presents the results of the analysis of the current age structure of teachers in the regional context (in the subjects of the Russian Federation) and develops a forecast for its development.The aim of the current research was to present the results of the development of a medium-term (until 2024) forecast of the age structure of teachers in the subjects of the Russian Federation.Methodology and research methods. The research was based on a general scientific methodology applying a systematic approach and the methods of statistical analysis, comparison, generalisation, systematisation, structuring, interpretation, extrapolation, forecasting, and graphical representation of data. The authors analysed the data in official statistics of the Russian Federation and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The provisions of normative and legislative documents in the field of strategic regulation of education in the Russian Federation, scientific publications of Russian and foreign researchers in the Scopus, Web of Science, and Science Index databases were investigated as well.Results. The authors identify and highlight the factors, which have the most significant impact on the current state of personnel support for educational activities in the world. The analysis of age-specific teacher characteristics in cross-country comparison is performed. The assessment of age structure of general education teaching personnel in Russia as a whole and at the regional level is carried out. The forecast for its development for the period up to 2024 is developed. Scientific novelty. The conceptual feature of the present study lies in the view of the trends in the development of age cohorts in homogeneous groups. The approach employed allows for increasing the accuracy of forecasting of teacher demand, taking into account the specifics of regional demand.Practical significance. Taking the specifics of the regions into consideration, it will be possible to improve the quality of education. The results of the research can be used by specialists in the course of conducting international research, planning teacher training, and developing measures to enhance the prestige of teaching profession and to stimulate the influx of young personnel to schools at the Federal level and in the regions of the Russian Federation.

This article documents the history of sport in independent girls’ schools in Sydney, Australia, from the introduction of compulsory education in 1880 until the formation of the Girls Secondary School Sports Union in 1922 to organize interschool sporting connections. While there have been many vigorous studies that have followed the history of sport in Australian independent boys’ schools, this has not been replicated in the role of sport in Australian independent girls’ schools. The Australian independent girls’ school sector, however, accounts for a significant portion of the total student population. This article demonstrates that sport was significant in Australian independent girls’ schools and became dominant to the education of middle class girls. Modeled after the English Public Schools that had embraced the educational ideology of ‘athleticism’, Australian girls’ independent schools also reinforced the ideology that sport was a part of a well-rounded education. By the early 1920s sport was part of the independent girls’ schools extracurricular accomplishments and the sporting landscape became a ‘public space’ where middle-class femininity was constructed.

Background:There is more demand than ever for schools to equip children with the necessary skills to be physically active. The purpose of the Environmental Perceptions Investigation of Children’s Physical Activity (EPIC-PA) study was to investigate elementary and secondary school children’s perceptions to enhance the school physical activity environment.Methods:Four Australian government schools (2 elementary and 2 secondary) were recruited for the EPIC-PA study. During the study, 78 children were recruited aged 10 to 13 years. The focus group discussions consisted of 54 children (32 elementary and 22 secondary) and the map drawing sessions included 24 children (17 elementary and 7 secondary).Results:The findings from the EPIC-PA study revealed insight into uniquely desired features to encourage physical activity such as adventure physical activity facilities (eg, rock climbing walls), recreational physical activity facilities (eg, jumping pillows), physical activity excursions, animal activity programs and teacher-directed activities. In addition to specific features, childrens revealed a host of policies for equipment borrowing, access to sports equipment/areas, music during physical activity time and external physical education lessons.Conclusions:Understanding the multiple suggestions from children of features to enhance physical activity can be used by schools and researchers to create environments conducive to physical activity participation.

AbstractThe study investigated student involvement in sports as part of co-curricular activities in the school and outside, and the effect of parental support upon their child’s participation in sport. The purpose of the study was to investigate in-depth the views of year 11 students from six Australian schools about their parents’ influence on their participation in sport. The schools agreed to allow their students to participate on a voluntary basis. The primary data were gathered from 111 students in the form of written personal statements in response to the researcher’s open-ended guideline questions, based on the humanistic sociological approach of studying respondents’ personal perspectives on a particular phenomenon. The 80% of respondents who claimed to play sport were involved in a total of 23 different sports, with soccer being the most frequently mentioned (29%). The 20% of respondents who did not play sport all attended schools where participation in sport was not compulsory. Parental support for sports participation was evident in 89% of their comments, but only 11% of parents played an active role. The negative family constraints identified by 15% of respondents referred to issues such as lack of parental interest in sport, concerns about safety, maintaining a balance between sport and other areas of life, and the cost involved

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number four seeks an equitable and widespread education that enables an outcome of sustainable development by 2030. Intersecting the studies of society and earth processes, a geographical education is well placed to make cohesive sense of all the individual knowledge silos that contribute to achieving sustainability. Geography education is compulsory for the first three years of the secondary education curriculum in Australia; however, research has shown that many geography teachers are underprepared and report limitations in their teaching of sustainability. This article engages with this research problem to provide a critical reflection, using experiential knowledge as an analytical lens, on how tertiary level geography training at one Australian regional university can equip undergraduate teacher education students with the values, knowledge, and skills needed to develop their future students’ understanding and appreciation of the principles of sustainability. The authors unpacked a geography minor for a Bachelor of Secondary Education degree at Central Queensland University and, deploying content analysis, explain how three units in that minor can develop these students’ values, knowledge, and skills through fostering initiatives and activities. The analysis was framed by elements of pedagogy that offer learners a context for developing active, global citizenship and participation to understand the interdependencies of ecological, societal, and economic systems including a multisided view of sustainability and sustainable development. The study concluded that the three geography units engage student teachers in sustainable thinking in a variety of ways, which can have a wider application in the geography curricula in other teacher education courses. More importantly, however, the study found that there is a critical need for collaboration between university teachers of sustainability content and university teachers of school-based pedagogy in order to maximise the efficacy of sustainability education in schools.

In modern student sports of the Russian Federation, a prominent place is occupied by a team of students and specialists in physical education and sports of Penza State University. The main efforts in the sport development in the higher education system of the Penza Region were carried out by a team of a specialized faculty of physical education, and later the Institute of Physical Culture and Sports of Penza State University. We analyze the prerequisites developed in the Penza Region and other regions for the opening of a higher educational institution for the physical education specialists training. In the period of 1940-1950, mid-level personnel for schools and physical education groups were trained by technical schools of physical education, which were secondary special educational institutions. Since the faculty opening, sports work at the institute has significantly revived. As throughout the country, in Penza Pedagogical University, the foundation of a sports society, its primary organization was a sports club, which was created at the university, most commonly, by student and local labour union committees. The core of the sports club was students of physical education faculty, although the leadership of the club was based on the first decades at the department of physical education. The core of the sports club was students of physical education, although the leadership of the club in the first decades was based at the physical education department. Sports achievements of students and graduates of the Faculty of Physical Education are presented. We note multiple victories at the championships of the voluntary sports society “Burevestnik”, the championships of the RSFSR, the USSR, the Russian Federation, the Universiades, the World and Europe Championships, Olympic Games in swimming, athletics, volleyball, basketball, rhythmic gymnastics, sambo, speed skating, gymnastics, hockey throughout the entire period of the faculty.

Introduction. Physical activity is already well established in all Member States of the EU in the form of physical education as well as various programmes to enable young people to be physically active before, during and after the school day. Nevertheless, active school breaks and inclusion of physical activity into school lessons could be extended at national level. The number of hours of physical education is often defined subnationally and in some instances by schools. Increasing the number of mandatory hours and setting standards to ensure quality could further help students to reach the WHO recommendations and ensure the potential of schools for promoting physical activity among young people. The study aimed to find out the best practices of the International Federation of Physical Education to monitoring of quality physical education. Material and methods: theoretical analysis and generalization of literary sources. Results. Physical activity of youth can be increased in several ways. The most broadly used practice is physical education, which is part of the school curriculum in all EU Member States; however, the number of hours of physical education provided, whether compulsory or optional, and the quality vary widely among countries. In order to provide good quality, regular physical education and promote safe physical activity to all young people in schools, physical education teachers must be adequately trained in promoting health-enhancing physical activity, in addition to traditional sports. Conclusions. It needs to be viewed in the context of inter-related strategies to embrace the formulation and development of inclusive and equitable curricula, which provide personally meaningful and socially and culturally relevant experiences and which attract young people to the joy and pleasure of physical activity so as to foster an active healthy lifestyle over the full life-span. Quality physical education curricula need to be based on the vision that the knowledge, skills and understanding acquired facilitate attainment of physical literacy and be part of a well-structured physical education programme spanning from early childhood education to the upper secondary level.

Background: To determine Australian primary school principals’, teachers’, and parents’ attitudes to changing school uniform policies to allow students to wear sports uniforms every day and to assess associations between participant characteristics and their attitudes. A secondary aim was to identify principals’ and teachers’ perceived barriers to uniform changes. Methods: Cross-sectional surveys of principals, teachers, and parents of children in grades 2 to 3 (age 7–10 y) from 62 Australian primary schools (Oct 2017–Mar 2018) were undertaken. Mixed logistic regression analyses assessed the associations between participant characteristics and attitudes toward uniform changes. Results: In total, 73% of the principals (38/52) who responded reported that their school only allowed children to wear a sports uniform on sports days. Overall, 38% of the principals (18/47), 63% of the teachers (334/579), and 78% of the parents (965/1231) reported they would support a policy that allowed children to wear daily sports uniforms. The most commonly reported barrier was the perception that sports uniforms were not appropriate for formal occasions. Conclusions: Although the majority of the principals were not supportive of a change to a daily sports uniform, the majority of the teachers and parents were. Strategies to improve principal support may be required if broader adoption of physical activity–supporting uniforms is to be achieved.

The tendency of physical activity decrease of different categories of the population as a world problem is considered. The main attention is paid to the reduction of physical activity of students in secondary schools. The main materials for the study were collected as a result of the study of 280 printed and electronic sources in 2015–2018 at the University of Baghdad (Iraq) and the Belgorod National Research University (Russian Federation, Belgorod). The data on the reduction of physical activity in several economically developed countries, which proves the need to study and solve the problem, regardless of the standard of living of the population. It is shown that the presented data of the international scientific researches come into conflict with development and implementation of the strategic documents, program developments concerning development of physical culture and sports in separate countries. Some examples from the international experience of increasing physical activity of the population, especially of young students, are discussed. It is noted that they can be effective in some countries and ineffective in other countries. The main reasons that determine the gradual decrease in the level of physical activity of the population and students in secondary schools. In response to the established reasons of decrease in physical activity of the population and students the complex of ways and ways of counteraction to decrease in physical activity are offered. The presented data are new and can be applied in the development of the theory of physical activity of the population in different countries and can be practically used in the development of strategic, program and regulatory documents in the field of physical culture and sports.

We consider current problems of scientific and theoretical representations development about competitive infrastructure of Sports and ballroom dancing which are not provided with sufficient scientific comprehension. The purpose is to determine the basis of division used in the world practice of international organizations for sports and ballroom dancing for the classification of competitions, performers, their skills, etc. Interest in sports and ballroom dancing, as a form of social, cultural and leisure activities, increases every year not only abroad but also in Russia. Sports and ballroom dancing in its structure have two programs: Latin American, which includes dances – Cha-cha-cha, Rumba, Samba, Jive, Pasodoble and European, dance – slow waltz, Viennese (fast) waltz, Slow Foxtrot, Quickstep, Tango. Dance and sports clubs cover in their work all age categories from children of three years to people of retirement age. Dance associations are based in cultural institutions, cultural and leisure type, in secondary schools, and in higher educa-tion institutions in the framework of additional education or the organization of cultural and leisure activities. Each dance and sports club, as an element of the structure, is registered in any Russian official organization for ballroom dancing, which, in turn, is a regional and part of the international organization for ballroom dancing. Now, there are actively there are four: 1) WDSF – World DanceSport Federation; 2) WDC – World Dance Council; 3) IDSU – International Dance Sport Union; 4) IDSCA – International Dance Studios and Clubs Association. Each of the organizations provides, contests, competitions, tournaments, Championships of Europe, Asia, world, etc. To analyze the material, we use a comparative typological method. We discover the similarities features and differences in the international organizations activities in sports and ballroom dancing, this information is scientifically investigated for the first time. We define the importance of sports and ballroom dancing competitive and amateur infrastructure for the development of culture and strengthening of a population healthy lifestyle. Also, for the first time in scientific circulation we introduce a systematic material on the activities of international organizations in sports and ballroom dancing.

Introduction. The article examines the potential of school-university partnership programmes for gifted and talented children. The purpose of this study is to determine the mechanisms for identifying and supporting gifted children by means school-university networks. Materials and Methods. To achieve this goal, the authors have reviewed a considerable amount of literature on giftedness, identification and support of gifted children with a focus on establishing school-university networks. A sample of leadership and teaching staff (n = 149) representing 44 municipalities of the Krasnodar Krai (Russian Federation) was surveyed in order to evaluate the effectiveness of identification, support and guidance of gifted students. The analysis of university websites was carried out in order to reveal the existing practices of partnerships with secondary and supplementary education settings aimed at identification and support of gifted children. To solve the revealed problems of gifted education, a model of school-university network encompassing the flagship university and secondary and supplementary education settings has been developed. Results. The study has revealed the following problems of provision for gifted and talented students: unrecognized special giftedness; underestimation of career guidance for gifted students; insufficient attention to social and emotional issues in the development of gifted children; lack of continuity in provision for gifted and talented individuals at different levels of education. The authors propose a model of the network between the flagship university and secondary education settings aimed at solving the above mentioned problems. The research findings include procedures of identifying and supporting gifted children by means of school-university partnership programmes for 9 domains of giftedness (academic (intellectual), technical, entrepreneurial, communicative, leadership, emotional, sports, artistic and vocational) in corresponding types of career-oriented activities (educational, research, scientific; technical design, business design, business communication, management, volunteering, sports, artistic creativity, production) using the facilities and human resources of the flagship university. Conclusions. The conclusion can be drawn that identification and support of gifted children and adolescents must be carried out in close connection with career guidance, taking into account the needs of the regional labor market. Building partnerships of the university, comprehensive secondary schools and supplementary education settings contribute to solving this problem.

The article analyzes the main stages of the origin and formation of gymnastics events in France since the beginning of the XIX century to 1942 on the basis of the works of leading French scientists. The development of gymnastics in France does not attract much attention of Ukrainian specialists whose scientific interests are related to the study of physical education and sports in European countries, so the practical issues of our research will complement and expand the relevant courses on the history of physical education for students in Ukraine. The purpose of the article is to study the main historical aspects of the development of gymnastics events in France. To achieve it, the following tasks should be performed: to analyze the literature on research issues; to identify key dates in the history of gymnastics in France; to describe the role of personalities who have contributed most to the evolution of the field in this country. According to the results of the study, we conclude that the greatest influence on the development of gymnastics in France since the beginning of the XIX century to 1942 was made by Francisco Amorós, Napoléon Laisné, Eugène Paz, Charles Cazalet, Joseph Sansbœuf, Georges Demenÿ, Philippe Auguste Tissié. In the middle of the XIX century the institutionalization of gymnastics took place at the level of hospitals (1847), military services (1852) and school (1854). In the last quarter of the XIX century, physical education became a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schools for boys and girls. The Union of Gymnastics Societies of France was founded September 28, 1873 by Eugène Paz. In 1942, it was merged with the French Womenʼs Gymnastics and Physical Education Federation, which formed French Gymnastics Federation. French gymnasts since the beginning of Olympic Games in Paris (1900) have always shown consistently high results at competitions and tournaments of various scales, but since the 1930s it has begun to decline. Our further research will focus on a thorough study of the history of womenʼs gymnastics in France as well as the evolution of this sport in the period since 1942 to 2022.

Esta revisión teórica pretende explicar y reflexionar sobre lo que es la Educación Física de calidad y las competencias profesionales de los docentes de la materia para no confundirlo con el deporte escolar. Actualmente, son varias las instituciones que recomiendan una Educación Física de Calidad, y entre otros aspectos destacan que esta debe aumentar hasta las 3h lectivas a la semana tanto en la etapa de educación primaria obligatoria como en la secundaria. En la Comunidad Valenciana, el programa de “Esport a l’Escola+1h EF” propone que las federaciones deportivas se encarguen de desarrollar dicho proyecto dirigido a todo el alumnado de 3º y 4º de primaria en la hora de libre disposición y lectiva de los centros escolares anteriormente mencionados. Sin embargo, el docente de Educación Física (maestro/a y profesor/a) tiene unas competencias y formación específicas para poder acometer las funciones que le son propias y que, por lo tanto, difieren mucho de la de los técnicos o monitores deportivos, que, sin ser mejores ni peores, se desarrollan en otro contexto, con otros recursos, y con otro tipo de objetivos. La Educación Física y el deporte escolar son distintos pero complementarios. Existen otros cauces, como pueda ser el Proyecto Deportivo de Centro para fomentar la cohesión entre estos dos ámbitos, el educativo y el federativo.Abstract. This theoretical review aims at explaining and reflecting on what quality Physical Education and teachers’ professional competencies are, so as not to confuse it with school sports. Currently, there are several institutions that recommend a Quality Physical Education, and among other aspects they emphasize that this should increase up to 3 hours per week both in the stage of compulsory primary and secondary education. In the Valencian Community, the “Esport a l'Escola + 1h EF” program proposes that sports federations be responsible for developing said project aimed at all students in grades 3 and 4 during free time and based on the choice of the mentioned schools. However, Physical Education teachers (teachers and professors) have specific skills and training to be able to undertake the functions that are proper to their job, therefore, differ greatly from that of sports technicians or instructors, who are not better or worse, but work in another context, with other resources, and with other types of objectives. Physical Education and school sports are different but complementary. There are other channels, such as the Sports Center Project, to promote cohesion between these two areas, education and federation.

Abstract Background Mental health problems are a significant social issue that have multiple consequences, including broad social and economic impacts. However, many individuals do not seek assistance for mental health problems. Limited research suggests martial arts training may be an efficacious sports-based mental health intervention that potentially provides an inexpensive alternative to psychological therapy. Unfortunately, the small number of relevant studies and other methodological problems lead to uncertainty regarding the validity and reliability of existing research. This study aims to examine the efficacy of a martial arts based therapeutic intervention to improve mental health outcomes. Methods/design The study is a 10-week secondary school-based intervention and will be evaluated using a randomised controlled trial. Data will be collected at baseline, post-intervention, and 12-week follow-up. Power calculations indicate a maximum sample size of n = 293 is required. The target age range of participants is 11–14 years, who will be recruited from government and catholic secondary schools in New South Wales, Australia. The intervention will be delivered in a face-to-face group format onsite at participating schools and consists of 10 × 50–60 min sessions, once per week for 10 weeks. Quantitative outcomes will be measured using standardised psychometric instruments. Discussion The current study utilises a robust design and rigorous evaluation process to explore the intervention’s potential efficacy. As previous research examining the training effects of martial arts participation on mental health outcomes has not exhibited comparable scale or rigour, the findings of the study will provide valuable evidence regarding the efficacy of martial arts training to improve mental health outcomes. Trial registration Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Register ACTRN12618001405202. Registered 21st August 2018.

Abstract Background There has been increasing interest in using wearable activity trackers to promote physical activity in youth. This study examined the short- and longer-term effects of a wearable activity tracker combined with digital behaviour change resources on the physical activity of adolescents attending schools in socio-economically disadvantaged areas. Methods The Raising Awareness of Physical Activity (RAW-PA) Study was a 12-week, multicomponent intervention that combined a Fitbit Flex (and accompanying app), and online digital behaviour change resources and weekly challenges delivered via Facebook. RAW-PA was evaluated using a cluster-randomised controlled trial with 275 adolescents (50.2% female; 13.7 ± 0.4 years) from 18 Melbourne secondary schools (intervention n = 9; wait-list control group n = 9). The primary outcome was moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity (MVPA), measured using hip-worn ActiGraph accelerometers. The secondary outcome was self-reported physical activity. Data were collected at baseline, 12-weeks (immediately post-intervention), and 6-months post-intervention (follow-up). Multilevel models were used to determine the effects of the intervention on daily MVPA over time, adjusting for covariates. Results No significant differences were observed between intervention and wait-list control adolescents’ device-assessed MVPA immediately post-intervention. At 6-months post-intervention, adolescents in the intervention group engaged in 5 min (95% CI: − 9.1 to − 1.0) less MVPA per day than those in the wait-list control group. Males in the intervention group engaged in 11 min (95% CI: − 17.6 to − 4.5) less MVPA than males in the wait-list control group at 6-months post-intervention. No significant differences were observed for females at either time point. For self-reported physical activity, no significant effects were found at 12-weeks and 6-months post-intervention. Conclusions Combining a wearable activity tracker with digital behaviour change resources and weekly challenges did not increase inactive adolescents’ accelerometer-derived and self-reported physical activity levels immediately post-intervention. This contrasts previous research that has suggested wearable activity tracker may increase youth physical activity levels in the short-term. Lower engagement in MVPA 6-months post-intervention was observed for males but not for females, though it is unclear why this finding was observed. The results suggest wearable activity trackers, in combination with supporting materials, may not be effective for increasing physical activity levels in adolescents. Trial registration ACTRN12616000899448. Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry. Registered 7 July 2016.

While the term “visual literacy” has grown in popularity in the last 50 years, its meaning remains nebulous. It is described variously as: a vehicle for aesthetic appreciation, a means of defence against visual manipulation, a sorting mechanism for an increasingly data-saturated age, and a prerequisite to civic inclusion (Fransecky 23; Messaris 181; McTigue and Flowers 580). Scholars have written extensively about the first three subjects but there has been less research on how visual literacy frames civic life and how it might help the public as a tool to address disadvantage and assist in removing social and cultural barriers. This article examines a forerunner to visual literacy in the push to create an international symbol language born out of popular education movements, a project that fell short of its goals but still left a considerable impression on graphic media. This article, then, presents an analysis of visual literacy campaigns in the early postwar era. These campaigns did not attempt to invent a symbolic language but posited that images themselves served as a universal language in which students could receive training. Of particular interest is how the concept of visual literacy has been mobilised as a pedagogical tool in design, digital humanities and in broader civic education initiatives promoted by Third Space institutions. Behind the creation of new visual literacy curricula is the idea that images can help anchor a world community, supplementing textual communication. Figure 1: Visual Literacy Yearbook. Montebello Unified School District, USA, 1973. Shedding Light: Origins of the Visual Literacy Frame The term “visual literacy” came to the fore in the early 1970s on the heels of mass literacy campaigns. The educators, creatives and media theorists who first advocated for visual learning linked this aim to literacy, an unassailable goal, to promote a more radical curricular overhaul. They challenged a system that had hitherto only acknowledged a very limited pathway towards academic success; pushing “language and mathematics”, courses “referred to as solids (something substantial) as contrasted with liquids or gases (courses with little or no substance)” (Eisner 92). This was deemed “a parochial view of both human ability and the possibilities of education” that did not acknowledge multiple forms of intelligence (Gardner). This change not only integrated elements of mass culture that had been rejected in education, notably film and graphic arts, but also encouraged the critique of images as a form of good citizenship, assuming that visually literate arbiters could call out media misrepresentations and manipulative political advertising (Messaris, “Visual Test”). This movement was, in many ways, reactive to new forms of mass media that began to replace newspapers as key forms of civic participation. Unlike simple literacy (being able to decipher letters as a mnemonic system), visual literacy involves imputing meanings to images where meanings are less fixed, yet still with embedded cultural signifiers. Visual literacy promised to extend enlightenment metaphors of sight (as in the German Aufklärung) and illumination (as in the French Lumières) to help citizens understand an increasingly complex marketplace of images. The move towards visual literacy was not so much a shift towards images (and away from books and oration) but an affirmation of the need to critically investigate the visual sphere. It introduced doubt to previously upheld hierarchies of perception. Sight, to Kant the “noblest of the senses” (158), was no longer the sense “least affected” by the surrounding world but an input centre that was equally manipulable. In Kant’s view of societal development, the “cosmopolitan” held the key to pacifying bellicose states and ensuring global prosperity and tranquillity. The process of developing a cosmopolitan ideology rests, according to Kant, on the gradual elimination of war and “the education of young people in intellectual and moral culture” (188-89). Transforming disparate societies into “a universal cosmopolitan existence” that would “at last be realised as the matrix within which all the original capacities of the human race may develop” and would take well-funded educational institutions and, potentially, a new framework for imparting knowledge (Kant 51). To some, the world of the visual presented a baseline for shared experience. Figure 2: Exhibition by the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Vienna, photograph c. 1927. An International Picture Language The quest to find a mutually intelligible language that could “bridge worlds” and solder together all of humankind goes back to the late nineteenth century and the Esperanto movement of Ludwig Zamenhof (Schor 59). The expression of this ideal in the world of the visual picked up steam in the interwar years with designers and editors like Fritz Kahn, Gerd Arntz, and Otto and Marie Neurath. Their work transposing complex ideas into graphic form has been rediscovered as an antecedent to modern infographics, but the symbols they deployed were not to merely explain, but also help education and build international fellowship unbounded by spoken language. The Neuraths in particular are celebrated for their international picture language or Isotypes. These pictograms (sometimes viewed as proto-emojis) can be used to represent data without text. Taken together they are an “intemporal, hieroglyphic language” that Neutrath hoped would unite working-class people the world over (Lee 159). The Neuraths’ work was done in the explicit service of visual education with a popular socialist agenda and incubated in the social sphere of Red Vienna at the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum (Social and Economic Museum) where Otto served as Director. The Wirtschaftsmuseum was an experiment in popular education, with multiple branches and late opening hours to accommodate the “the working man [who] has time to see a museum only at night” (Neurath 72-73). The Isotype contained universalist aspirations for the “making of a world language, or a helping picture language—[that] will give support to international developments generally” and “educate by the eye” (Neurath 13). Figure 3: Gerd Arntz Isotype Images. (Source: University of Reading.) The Isotype was widely adopted in the postwar era in pre-packaged sets of symbols used in graphic design and wayfinding systems for buildings and transportation networks, but with the socialism of the Neuraths’ peeled away, leaving only the system of logos that we are familiar with from airport washrooms, charts, and public transport maps. Much of the uptake in this symbol language could be traced to increased mobility and tourism, particularly in countries that did not make use of a Roman alphabet. The 1964 Olympics in Tokyo helped pave the way when organisers, fearful of jumbling too many scripts together, opted instead for black and white icons to represent the program of sports that summer. The new focus on the visual was both technologically mediated—cheaper printing and broadcast technologies made the diffusion of image increasingly possible—but also ideologically supported by a growing emphasis on projects that transcended linguistic, ethnic, and national borders. The Olympic symbols gradually morphed into Letraset icons, and, later, symbols in the Unicode Standard, which are the basis for today’s emojis. Wordless signs helped facilitate interconnectedness, but only in the most literal sense; their application was limited primarily to sports mega-events, highway maps, and “brand building”, and they never fulfilled their role as an educational language “to give the different nations a common outlook” (Neurath 18). Universally understood icons, particularly in the form of emojis, point to a rise in visual communication but they have fallen short as a cosmopolitan project, supporting neither the globalisation of Kantian ethics nor the transnational socialism of the Neuraths. Figure 4: Symbols in use. Women's bathroom. 1964 Tokyo Olympics. (Source: The official report of the Organizing Committee.) Counter Education By mid-century, the optimism of a universal symbol language seemed dated, and focus shifted from distillation to discernment. New educational programs presented ways to study images, increasingly reproducible with new technologies, as a language in and of themselves. These methods had their roots in the fin-de-siècle educational reforms of John Dewey, Helen Parkhurst, and Maria Montessori. As early as the 1920s, progressive educators were using highly visual magazines, like National Geographic, as the basis for lesson planning, with the hopes that they would “expose students to edifying and culturally enriching reading” and “develop a more catholic taste or sensibility, representing an important cosmopolitan value” (Hawkins 45). The rise in imagery from previously inaccessible regions helped pupils to see themselves in relation to the larger world (although this connection always came with the presumed superiority of the reader). “Pictorial education in public schools” taught readers—through images—to accept a broader world but, too often, they saw photographs as a “straightforward transcription of the real world” (Hawkins 57). The images of cultures and events presented in Life and National Geographic for the purposes of education and enrichment were now the subject of greater analysis in the classroom, not just as “windows into new worlds” but as cultural products in and of themselves. The emerging visual curriculum aimed to do more than just teach with previously excluded modes (photography, film and comics); it would investigate how images presented and mediated the world. This gained wider appeal with new analytical writing on film, like Raymond Spottiswoode's Grammar of the Film (1950) which sought to formulate the grammatical rules of visual communication (Messaris 181), influenced by semiotics and structural linguistics; the emphasis on grammar can also be seen in far earlier writings on design systems such as Owen Jones’s 1856 The Grammar of Ornament, which also advocated for new, universalising methods in design education (Sloboda 228). The inventorying impulse is on display in books like Donis A. Dondis’s A Primer of Visual Literacy (1973), a text that meditates on visual perception but also functions as an introduction to line and form in the applied arts, picking up where the Bauhaus left off. Dondis enumerates the “syntactical guidelines” of the applied arts with illustrations that are in keeping with 1920s books by Kandinsky and Klee and analyse pictorial elements. However, at the end of the book she shifts focus with two chapters that examine “messaging” and visual literacy explicitly. Dondis predicts that “an intellectual, trained ability to make and understand visual messages is becoming a vital necessity to involvement with communication. It is quite likely that visual literacy will be one of the fundamental measures of education in the last third of our century” (33) and she presses for more programs that incorporate the exploration and analysis of images in tertiary education. Figure 5: Ideal spatial environment for the Blueprint charts, 1970. (Image: Inventory Press.) Visual literacy in education arrived in earnest with a wave of publications in the mid-1970s. They offered ways for students to understand media processes and for teachers to use visual culture as an entry point into complex social and scientific subject matter, tapping into the “visual consciousness of the ‘television generation’” (Fransecky 5). Visual culture was often seen as inherently democratising, a break from stuffiness, the “artificialities of civilisation”, and the “archaic structures” that set sensorial perception apart from scholarship (Dworkin 131-132). Many radical university projects and community education initiatives of the 1960s made use of new media in novel ways: from Maurice Stein and Larry Miller’s fold-out posters accompanying Blueprint for Counter Education (1970) to Emory Douglas’s graphics for The Black Panther newspaper. Blueprint’s text- and image-dense wall charts were made via assemblage and they were imagined less as charts and more as a “matrix of resources” that could be used—and added to—by youth to undertake their own counter education (Cronin 53). These experiments in visual learning helped to break down old hierarchies in education, but their aim was influenced more by countercultural notions of disruption than the universal ideals of cosmopolitanism. From Image as Text to City as Text For a brief period in the 1970s, thinkers like Marshall McLuhan (McLuhan et al., Massage) and artists like Bruno Munari (Tanchis and Munari) collaborated fruitfully with graphic designers to create books that mixed text and image in novel ways. Using new compositional methods, they broke apart traditional printing lock-ups to superimpose photographs, twist text, and bend narrative frames. The most famous work from this era is, undoubtedly, The Medium Is the Massage (1967), McLuhan’s team-up with graphic designer Quentin Fiore, but it was followed by dozens of other books intended to communicate theory and scientific ideas with popularising graphics. Following in the footsteps of McLuhan, many of these texts sought not just to explain an issue but to self-consciously reference their own method of information delivery. These works set the precedent for visual aids (and, to a lesser extent, audio) that launched a diverse, non-hierarchical discourse that was nonetheless bound to tactile artefacts. In 1977, McLuhan helped develop a media textbook for secondary school students called City as Classroom: Understanding Language and Media. It is notable for its direct address style and its focus on investigating spaces outside of the classroom (provocatively, a section on the third page begins with “Should all schools be closed?”). The book follows with a fine-grained analysis of advertising forms in which students are asked to first bring advertisements into class for analysis and later to go out into the city to explore “a man-made environment, a huge warehouse of information, a vast resource to be mined free of charge” (McLuhan et al., City 149). As a document City as Classroom is critical of existing teaching methods, in line with the radical “in the streets” pedagogy of its day. McLuhan’s theories proved particularly salient for the counter education movement, in part because they tapped into a healthy scepticism of advertisers and other image-makers. They also dovetailed with growing discontent with the ad-strew visual environment of cities in the 1970s. Budgets for advertising had mushroomed in the1960s and outdoor advertising “cluttered” cities with billboards and neon, generating “fierce intensities and new hybrid energies” that threatened to throw off the visual equilibrium (McLuhan 74). Visual literacy curricula brought in experiential learning focussed on the legibility of the cities, mapping, and the visualisation of urban issues with social justice implications. The Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute (DGEI), a “collective endeavour of community research and education” that arose in the aftermath of the 1967 uprisings, is the most storied of the groups that suffused the collection of spatial data with community engagement and organising (Warren et al. 61). The following decades would see a tamed approach to visual literacy that, while still pressing for critical reading, did not upend traditional methods of educational delivery. Figure 6: Beginning a College Program-Assisting Teachers to Develop Visual Literacy Approaches in Public School Classrooms. 1977. ERIC. Searching for Civic Education The visual literacy initiatives formed in the early 1970s both affirmed existing civil society institutions while also asserting the need to better inform the public. Most of the campaigns were sponsored by universities, major libraries, and international groups such as UNESCO, which published its “Declaration on Media Education” in 1982. They noted that “participation” was “essential to the working of a pluralistic and representative democracy” and the “public—users, citizens, individuals, groups ... were too systematically overlooked”. Here, the public is conceived as both “targets of the information and communication process” and users who “should have the last word”. To that end their “continuing education” should be ensured (Study 18). Programs consisted primarily of cognitive “see-scan-analyse” techniques (Little et al.) for younger students but some also sought to bring visual analysis to adult learners via continuing education (often through museums eager to engage more diverse audiences) and more radical popular education programs sponsored by community groups. By the mid-80s, scores of modules had been built around the comprehension of visual media and had become standard educational fare across North America, Australasia, and to a lesser extent, Europe. There was an increasing awareness of the role of data and image presentation in decision-making, as evidenced by the surprising commercial success of Edward Tufte’s 1982 book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Visual literacy—or at least image analysis—was now enmeshed in teaching practice and needed little active advocacy. Scholarly interest in the subject went into a brief period of hibernation in the 1980s and early 1990s, only to be reborn with the arrival of new media distribution technologies (CD-ROMs and then the internet) in classrooms and the widespread availability of digital imaging technology starting in the late 1990s; companies like Adobe distributed free and reduced-fee licences to schools and launched extensive teacher training programs. Visual literacy was reanimated but primarily within a circumscribed academic field of education and data visualisation. Figure 7: Visual Literacy; What Research Says to the Teacher, 1975. National Education Association. USA. Part of the shifting frame of visual literacy has to do with institutional imperatives, particularly in places where austerity measures forced strange alliances between disciplines. What had been a project in alternative education morphed into an uncontested part of the curriculum and a dependable budget line. This shift was already forecasted in 1972 by Harun Farocki who, writing in Filmkritik, noted that funding for new film schools would be difficult to obtain but money might be found for “training in media education … a discipline that could persuade ministers of education, that would at the same time turn the budget restrictions into an advantage, and that would match the functions of art schools” (98). Nearly 50 years later educators are still using media education (rebranded as visual or media literacy) to make the case for fine arts and humanities education. While earlier iterations of visual literacy education were often too reliant on the idea of cracking the “code” of images, they did promote ways of learning that were a deep departure from the rote methods of previous generations. Next-gen curricula frame visual literacy as largely supplemental—a resource, but not a program. By the end of the 20th century, visual literacy had changed from a scholarly interest to a standard resource in the “teacher’s toolkit”, entering into school programs and influencing museum education, corporate training, and the development of public-oriented media (Literacy). An appreciation of image culture was seen as key to creating empathetic global citizens, but its scope was increasingly limited. With rising austerity in the education sector (a shift that preceded the 2008 recession by decades in some countries), art educators, museum enrichment staff, and design researchers need to make a case for why their disciplines were relevant in pedagogical models that are increasingly aimed at “skills-based” and “job ready” teaching. Arts educators worked hard to insert their fields into learning goals for secondary students as visual literacy, with the hope that “literacy” would carry the weight of an educational imperative and not a supplementary field of study. Conclusion For nearly a century, educational initiatives have sought to inculcate a cosmopolitan perspective with a variety of teaching materials and pedagogical reference points. Symbolic languages, like the Isotype, looked to unite disparate people with shared visual forms; while educational initiatives aimed to train the eyes of students to make them more discerning citizens. The term ‘visual literacy’ emerged in the 1960s and has since been deployed in programs with a wide variety of goals. Countercultural initiatives saw it as a prerequisite for popular education from the ground up, but, in the years since, it has been formalised and brought into more staid curricula, often as a sort of shorthand for learning from media and pictures. The grand cosmopolitan vision of a complete ‘visual language’ has been scaled back considerably, but still exists in trace amounts. Processes of globalisation require images to universalise experiences, commodities, and more for people without shared languages. Emoji alphabets and globalese (brands and consumer messaging that are “visual-linguistic” amalgams “increasingly detached from any specific ethnolinguistic group or locality”) are a testament to a mediatised banal cosmopolitanism (Jaworski 231). In this sense, becoming “fluent” in global design vernacular means familiarity with firms and products, an understanding that is aesthetic, not critical. It is very much the beneficiaries of globalisation—both state and commercial actors—who have been able to harness increasingly image-based technologies for their benefit. To take a humorous but nonetheless consequential example, Spanish culinary boosters were able to successfully lobby for a paella emoji (Miller) rather than having a food symbol from a less wealthy country such as a Senegalese jollof or a Morrocan tagine. This trend has gone even further as new forms of visual communication are increasingly streamlined and managed by for-profit media platforms. The ubiquity of these forms of communication and their global reach has made visual literacy more important than ever but it has also fundamentally shifted the endeavour from a graphic sorting practice to a critical piece of social infrastructure that has tremendous political ramifications. Visual literacy campaigns hold out the promise of educating students in an image-based system with the potential to transcend linguistic and cultural boundaries. This cosmopolitan political project has not yet been realised, as the visual literacy frame has drifted into specialised silos of art, design, and digital humanities education. It can help bridge the “incomplete connections” of an increasingly globalised world (Calhoun 112), but it does not have a program in and of itself. Rather, an evolving visual literacy curriculum might be seen as a litmus test for how we imagine the role of images in the world. 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