Bilden och texten: En studie av ljusets och seendets pedagogik

Abstract in English

The thesis deals with a reading tradition that can be traced to medieval times, a tradition in which images and text, intertwined, convey the message to the reader. The strength of the coupling between image and text has varied over time. Initially closely interconnected, the connections between image and text were later separated. If text and image represent two diverse ways of organizing human memory, one serial and the other structural, we could say that the first focuses on reproduction and the other on detection. The relation between them is essential for pedagogical action as well as for pedagogical reflection. The aim of this work is to illustrate how this variation in strength changed the pedagogy and prevailing understanding of how images and texts are read. During the emergence of the Swedish elementary school, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a form of education referred to as visual experience-based teaching methods (åskådningsundervisning, Anschauungs-Unterricht) was introduced, a philosophy of education that revitalized traditions from the Middle Ages, with a strong coupling between image and text. The idea of using the image as a tool for education developed into the tradition of school posters (skolplanscher), which were used in Swedish education up the implementation of the comprehensive school system in 1962. The development of visual argumentation expressed through the use of school posters is analyzed by tracing the development of the school posters in parallel with normative texts, such as curricula documents and protocols from the school inspectors and the Swedish parliament (Riksdag). The introduction of visual experience-based instruction in the Swedish elementary school in the curriculum (normalplan) of 1878 gave rise to a tension between the new method and the earlier tradition of how texts and even letters should be read. The new teaching method related to the senses, especially the visual faculty and the visual memory, and served as a tool to break up a strong literacy tradition. This had repercussions for the entire school system. The consequence of an altered basic content of the concept of reading also involved a transfer of the right of examination from the church to the community.With the implementation of the curriculum of 1919 the content of the visual experienced-based teaching methods was moved to a new subject called local history (hembygdskunskap) which strongly reduced the linkage to the teaching of reading. The visual lines of this argumentation after the curriculum of 1919 are primarily structural in nature, expressed by using the perspectives in the image.