Speaker
Description
Data visualizations shape how TESOL research is understood, yet educators rarely receive training in reading or producing them critically. This workshop develops two complementary forms of visual literacy: perceptual literacy, which builds skills for designing clearer, more accurate research visuals, and critical literacy, which equips participants to interrogate the assumptions embedded in dominant visual conventions and explore decolonial alternatives. Participants leave with practical tools to expand whose voices are visible in global research communication.
Abstract section 1: Relevance
Data visualizations are ubiquitous in TESOL, from published research and conference presentations to classroom materials. Despite their centrality, visualization is often treated as a procedural endpoint rather than a methodological intervention, and educators rarely receive formal training in reading or producing them. Cognitive research demonstrates that people systematically misinterpret area, color, and visual hierarchy (Cleveland & McGill, 1984), introducing bias into how findings are understood. Compounding this, dominant Western visual conventions privilege aggregation and hierarchy in ways that compress heterogeneity and obscure contextual nuance. Decolonial approaches (O'Connor et al., 2023) invite an expanded repertoire for communicating research visually.
Abstract section 2: Contribution/research questions
This workshop introduces a structured approach to visual literacy for TESOL educators and researchers, integrating two complementary strands: perceptual literacy, which builds practical skills for designing clearer and more accurate research visuals, and critical literacy, which equips participants to examine the ontological assumptions embedded in dominant visual conventions and consider whose knowledge systems they center or marginalize.
Abstract section 3: Content/method
Participants will engage in guided comparisons of alternative visualizations of the same dataset, including conventional statistical charts alongside journalistic and culturally embedded designs. Interactive activities will foreground perceptual principles such as length-versus-area encoding and visual hierarchy alongside critical examination of compression effects and representational trade-offs in common TESOL research visuals (e.g., PRISMA diagrams). Alternative visual traditions will be explored as ways of expanding the communicative possibilities available to TESOL researchers and practitioners.
Abstract section 4: Outcomes/results
Through the perceptual literacy strand, participants will be able to identify common distortions in published and self-produced visuals and apply design principles that support honest, accessible communication of findings. Through the critical literacy strand, they will be equipped to evaluate how visual conventions encode authority, compress heterogeneity, and marginalise alternative epistemologies, and to consider decolonial design traditions as viable alternatives. In doing so, participants contribute to a broader shift in how TESOL knowledge is represented and whose voices are made visible in global research communication. A redesign checklist will support independent application across research, teaching, and dissemination contexts.
Abstract section 5: References
Cleveland, W. S., & McGill, R. (1984). Graphical perception: Theory, experimentation, and application to the development of graphical methods. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 79(387), 531-554.
O'Connor, J., Parman, M., Bowman, N., & Evergreen, S. (2023). Decolonizing data visualization: A history and future of Indigenous data visualization. Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation, 19(44), 62-79.
| Title | Beyond the Bar Chart: Critical Visual Literacy in TESOL |
|---|---|
| Teaching Context | General |