Visual Turn in the Development of Digital Pedagogical Competencies

Abstract

The series of EDEN conferences offered a specific framework of thinking and scientific consultation to the word and interpret this problem. In fact, the starting point is an idea that is old but provides the base for didactical thinking. How should the learning material appear, and how should it be transmitted to the students? Visuality is a topic closely related to the modernization of education, and in the process of the evolution of mass education since the 17th century, by today it has become the essential didactical element of demonstration and has an impact on everyday practice as that. This lecture consists of three parts; first, it looks back upon the historical characteristics of the interrelations between visuality and pedagogy. The core of the Comenius turn is indicated by the fact that the paradigm of digital pedagogy, which has appeared during the latest decades, has placed the then very original idea (Orbis Pictus) amongst new and very practical frameworks. After the millenary, the topic of visual learning gained a new dimension: it became furnished with an environment richer than ever before by mobile communication. Finally, we point to the new experiments examining the interrelations between visuality and education explicitly in the evolution of the world of learning, wording conclusions that may urge many of us to think about this problem further and conduct constructive debates.