Resources

A review of literacy materials in Nepal concludes that materials have "unnecessary elaboration with little visual content". The findings of Unicef's 1988 study are summarised as guidelines for producing more effective materials. The twelve points include: motion, movement line, crosses and arrows are not understood by the audience and full figure three tone with single message are widely understood even by people with low visual literacy. The process of developing visual materials is briefly outlined, as the basis for a planned workshop on literacy illustrations.

Various kinds of pictures (abstract, realistic, photographs) were shown to literate and non-literate people in rural and urban Nepal to test their understanding. The research aimed to see to what extent perception of drawings etc was influenced by experience. Results showed that all groups were able to interpret cartoons as easily as photos, but not pictures involving perspective and proportion. Lack of "sufficient stimulation in the area of spatial understanding" in the village context is related to this inability to understand projective relationships (eg that a tree in the distance is not actually smaller than the near tree in a picture). Visual literacy could be improved however by "picturial cues (such as perspective) being consciously and systematically introduced" to people. As well as a detailed account of the field work and implications for development workers using visual aids, this book (which is based on a thesis) gives a comprehensive overview of the theoretical concepts around visual literacy.

Ideas about communication have mostly come from the industrialised West, meaning people in developing countries have to learn "an alien visual language" in order to understand development illustrations. The first question for an illustrator to ask is "for whom am I designing this picture?" From experience in India, most designers seem to be producing for their own kind, rather than for those in the villages and are "blind to the visual language of their own culture". This practical manual suggests how to go about producing appropriate visual aids by first collecting an "inventory of visual language" in the local area (traditional designs, clothing styles, meaning of certain colours etc). Illustrators should "build on a society's achievements, not what it lacks". The design process is described step by step, with checklists on the advantages of various visual styles and ideas about layout and assessing the "audience's" response to the finished product. The author warns that the process is not easy, "using traditional visual forms to express modern ideas can be like discussing nuclear physics in Sanskrit.."

"Investing in education for girls is the single most important thing a country can do...it leads to faster economic growth, higher family incomes, lower infant deaths and in many, many ways a better life for this generation and the next." Yet in most parts of the developing world girls receive much less education than boys. The film shows a PRA exercise which was carried out in a village in Gambia to investigate the constraints to female education and what might be done to improve access to education for girls. The methods used during the PRA included village mapping to establish which households had children attending or not attending school (06); pi-charts to show village income and expenditure (08.30); matrix ranking of problems and solutions (09); and card sorting to identify rich and poor households (12). Information from the ranking and the map were then compared and checked for discrepancies (13). However, it was only discovered by accident that 25% of girls did not appear on the map. These were girls who had never been to school or were about to get married (15). It was found that two of the major constraints to educating girls were the expense and demands for their labour at home. Cost was an important deterrent, particularly as the largest school expenses occurred just before harvest when people had no money. In addition, the demand for girls' labour in the fields was heaviest at the busiest time of the school year, while the demand for boys labour at that time was light (16). All the problems the villagers had identified were then ranked in pairs by different age-groups of women and men (18). An inventory of village associations was also made using venn diagrams to show the relationship between them (20). Having identified the problems and the resources available within the village, in the last phase of the PRA the villagers met to decide what action to take (23). The video concludes by discussing some of the wider applications of PRA (25) as well as some of the dangers (26).

The pilot PRA and literacy project in Usulutan, El Salvador, has faced difficulty mobilising active participation : many people now say they 'no longer want to talk about their problems but would rather have some concrete solutions!' Methodologically one of the biggest problems faced has been 'the separation of the PRA methods from the practice of reading and writing'. To counter this tendency, 'generative' words have now been abolished so that the emphasis is on whole words that appear on the maps, 'not routinely broken into syllables'.

This comprehensive review of materials on visual literacy is useful not only for the references to key articles, but for the essays introducing each section. The first looks at the different ways people use pictures - for religion, propaganda, teaching. Although many pictures and diagrams are universally understood, others depend on the cultural context: 'images are as culture-bound as words and ideas'. PRA maps are discussed as examples of 'pictures and participation'. The point is made that 'pictures can deceive' as people sometimes decide to conceal certain aspects of their communities. Other sections of the review cover: visual literacy in the context of local and national information systems, the relationship between visual and verbal literacy, pictures as codes for reality, communicating ideas with pictures. A section on 'how to' books includes manuals on making visual aids and audio visuals. The review ends with a list by country of places where visual resources might be found.

This short article discusses the gender implications of the REFLECT adult literacy methodology. In REFLECT literacy circles provide a space where a topic of interest to both women and men is analyzed in an open-ended but well focused discussion, rooted in their own experiences. An evaluation of the three pilots of the REFLECT methodology which are being carried out in Uganda, Bangladesh and El Salvador found encouraging first results. Women reported being treated with more respect by men because they are attending literacy circles. In some cases this led to greater involvement in discussion and decision-making, increased mobility and more sharing of domestic work between women and men.