Treemap Literacy: A Classroom-Based Investigation

The Information Visualization community has begun to pay attention to visualization literacy; however, researchers still lack instruments for measuring the visualization literacy of users. In order to address this gap, we systematically developed a visualization literacy assessment test (VLAT), especially for non-expert users in data visualization, by following the established procedure of test development in Psychological and Educational Measurement: (1) Test Blueprint Construction, (2) Test Item Generation, (3) Content Validity Evaluation, (4) Test Tryout and Item Analysis, (5) Test Item Selection, and (6) Reliability Evaluation. The VLAT consists of 12 data visualizations and 53 multiple-choice test items that cover eight data visualization tasks. The test items in the VLAT were evaluated with respect to their essentialness by five domain experts in Information Visualization and Visual Analytics (average content validity ratio = 0.66). The VLAT was also tried out on a sample of 191 test takers and showed high reliability (reliability coefficient omega = 0.76). In addition, we demonstrated the relationship between users' visualization literacy and aptitude for learning an unfamiliar visualization and showed that they had a fairly high positive relationship (correlation coefficient = 0.64). Finally, we discuss evidence for the validity of the VLAT and potential research areas that are related to the instrument.

User studies, evaluations, and comparisons of tree visualization systems have so far focused on questions that can readily be answered by simple, automated queries without needing visualization. Studies are lacking on the actual use of tree visualization in discovering intrinsic, hidden, non-trivial and potentially valuable knowledge. We have thus formulated a set of tree exploration tasks not previously considered and have performed user studies and analysis to determine how visualization helps users to perform these tasks. In our study, we evaluated three systems: RINGS (a node-link representation), Treemap (a containment representation), and Windows Explorer. Our findings suggest a few ways that tree visualization helps users to perceive different aspects of hierarchical structured information. We then explain how these visual representations are able to trigger human perception to make these discoveries.

Visual communication design and space design is discussed in this paper the complementary relationship between, it is worth mentioning that the visual communication design can be a good blend of collision and space design, so the analysis of the blend mode in the design of visual communication design elements in space, and space visual design elements of law, more reasonable and effective use of visual communication design elements in space design activities for better design services, become a carrier capacity and environmental design in visual communication design concept, therefore, in the design of the two classify, between the two cannot be away from each other, can only promote better design complement each other. As is known to all, the most direct contact between human beings in this world is vision, also known as sight and sight, followed by hearing, smelling and tasting. Therefore, the more intuitive feelings of human beings will be conveyed by vision. In 1960, the term ＂visual communication＂ popular in the world design congress held in Japan, including printed newspapers and magazines, posters and other promotional material design, and television, movies, electronic billboards and other media, through the eyes to convey to the brain for modelling of expressive design is widely referred to as visual communication design, there's a phrase can express: show people design, design. Moreover, in the design of contemporary exhibition space, visual communication design elements are often used. These design elements not only have the function of transmitting information, but also have unlimited commercial value and propaganda effect. Left the concept of positioning, space design is only the so-called functional platter; Ignore the visual communication of visual language, no matter how good the environment will be due to graphic design style gap and left a failure. As we know, one of the most important functions of visual communication design elements is to help present the most complete visual effect in the spatial display. The organic connection between visual communication design and display space design not only harmonizes the relationship between two-dimensional plane and three-dimensional space environment, but also expands the cooperation between subjects and strengthens the research space between the two design disciplines. Only in this way can designers solve complex and comprehensive problems and help designers make full use of their advantages to create better works.

This study used the Relevance of Science Education (ROSE) survey (Sjoberg & Schreiner, 2004) to examine topics of interest and perspectives of secondary science students in a large school district in the southwestern U.S. A situated learning perspective was used to frame the project. The research questions of this study focused on (a) perceptions students have about themselves and their science classroom and how these beliefs may influence their participation in the community of practice of science; (b) consideration of how a future science classroom where the curriculum is framed by the Next Generation Science Standards might foster students' beliefs and perceptions about science education and their legitimate peripheral participation in the community of practice of science; and (c) reflecting on their school science interests and perspectives, what can be inferred about students' identities as future scientists or STEM field professionals? Data were collected from 515 second year science students during a 4-week period in May of 2012 using a Web-based survey. Data were disaggregated by gender and ethnicity and analyzed descriptively and by statistical comparison between groups. Findings for Research Question 1 indicated that boys and girls showed statistically significant differences in scientific topics of interest. There were no statistical differences between ethnic groups although. For Research Question 2, it was determined that participants reported an increase in their interest when they deemed the context of the content to be personally relevant. Results for Research Question 3 showed that participants do not see themselves as youthful scientists or as becoming scientists. While participants value the importance of science in their lives and think all students should take science, they do not aspire to careers in science. Based on this study, a need for potential future work has been identified in three areas: (a) exploration of the perspectives and interests of non-mainstream students and urban students whose representation in this study was limited; (b) investigation of topics where students expressed low interests topics; and (c) development and design of authentic communities of practice in the science classroom.

(1989). Abandoning the basal: Some aspects of the change process. Theory Into Practice: Vol. 28, Perspectives On Basal Readers, pp. 288-294.

The idea of grand narratives has sustained Western thinking for centuries; postmodemity has challenged this idea. I take the challenge to two of these grand narratives, that of 'the self and that of 'literacy', to explore how adult literacy professional identity has been formed around struggles between contradictory discourses of the self and of literacy. The study's main focus is the discursive struggles that adult literacy professionals negotiate in the formation of professional identities. I argue that this formation takes place through on-going discursive dialogue. The adult literacy professional self is one site among many 'specific disciplinary institutional sites' (Lee 1996:184), where professional identity is formed. I use thirteen professional narratives, my own auto-ethnography and selected public documents to explore the discursive constitution of adult literacy professional identity, through struggles over self and literacy. The thesis builds on two main metaphors to explore the nature of professional identity. First is the metaphor of being 'in the middle' (after Grurnet 1988, Gurevitch 2001, Gutierrez et al. 1998, Hall 1997), a pedagogical space where professional subjectivity is played out between teacher and learner. The second metaphor is that of Bakhtin's 'dialogic struggle' (Holquist 1981), and the idea that the en/acting in the middle, the formation of one's professional identity, is always a struggle, dialogic and on-going. Discursive struggles make contradictory subject positions available for 'the I' of the professional self; at the same time these discursive struggles construct 'the other' of the adult literacy learner, in particular and contradictory ways. Constitution of self in relation to the other inserts the need for a theory of agency and an ethics of alterity . The thesis also works towards a theoretical position, with the notion of the dialogic self, which overcomes the personal/social binary. In the context of adult literacy education the self is constituted through struggle, as both personal and social, with words, symbols and spatial practices from other contexts and other eras, (after Soja's 1996 concept of 'the trialectics of historicality, sociality and spatiality').

This study assessed the contributions of Community Based Management Organizations in promoting Literacy in UBE schools in Kaduna State. The study was carried out with the objectives to assess the contributions of community based management organizations in promoting literacy in UBE schools in Kaduna State, and to find out the relevance of literacy towards community development. The study adopted survey research design with the target population of 4225 headmasters, 411 principals and 5301 teachers in UBE schools in Kaduna State. A sample size of 497 respondents was sampled from the entire population using random sampling technique which consisted of 211 headmasters, 21 principals and 265 teachers. A close ended questionnaire tagged “Contributions of Community Organizations in Promoting Literacy Questionnaire” was used for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts of the rank of senior lecturer in Measurement and Evaluation, English language and Curriculum. The reliability level of 0.85 was obtained using Cronbach alpha technique. The researcher with the help of three research assistants administered the questionnaire to the respondents. In answering the research questions, frequency counts, mean and standard deviation were used, while Kruskal-Wallis was used to test the formulated hypotheses at 0.5 level of significance. Finding revealed that community based management organizations contributed in promoting literacy in UBE schools in Kaduna State, and that literacy is relevant and play crucial role in community development. The study concluded that community based management organizations contributed in areas such as advocacy on enrolment, provision of textbooks, notebooks, biros, charts, maps, pictures, flashcards and so on, in promoting literacy in UBE schools in Kaduna State. Recommendations were put forward among others that community based management organizations should contribute more to the production and distribution of literacy and other instructional materials for UBE schools in Kaduna State. This will help equip pupils with functional literacy skills. Article visualizations:

Poor literacy skills are seen as a major contributor to poverty and disadvantage (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation [UNESCO], 2011), and to the social and health problems faced by many Aboriginal people today (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare [AIHW], 2013; Boughton, 2009; Dockery, 2013; Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision [SCRGSP], 2011). Literacy education is therefore a social justice issue that needs to be addressed in order to improve the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal people. There is a lack of current research on adult literacy levels and perceptions about literacy skills in Indigenous communities and with those who may have been marginalised by their poor literacy skills. While there is extensive testing of Indigenous school children through the National Assessment Program in Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), there have been no thorough surveys on adult literacy and no standardised assessing of literacy levels in Indigenous communities across Australia (Boughton, 2009; Kral & Schwab, 2012). Furthermore, research on Indigenous adult literacy learning is predominantly from the perspectives of literacy practitioners and program developers and little has been done to explore the perceptions of literacy issues by Indigenous youth and adults...

<p>The research article under discussion proves that in the late 19<sup>th</sup> and early 20<sup>Th</sup>  century a prominent role in solving the problem of improving health of children and adolescents  of the Slobidskyi region belonged to the private initiative of the  progressive intelligentsia, including teachers, doctors, university professors and other public figures who united to form various associations, such as Kharkiv Society for the Promotion of Literacy,  Pedagogical Department of the Historical and Philological Society of Kharkiv University,  Society of Pediatric Doctors, Kharkiv Society for the Promotion of Child Physical Development and Child Care. The study reveals that the members of the mentioned associations took an active part both in developing the theoretical basis for tackling the problem of improving health, and in organizing numerous institutions and activities aimed at maintaining and strengthening children’s and adolescents’ health.The research findings show that meetings of various societies and congresses held in the Slobidskyi region at different times became the place for discussing topical issues related to the problem of maintaining and strengthening the health ofchildren and  adolescents, for example, and in particular, the meetings of the Congress on the organization of intelligent entertainment  (1815), which was initiated by the Kharkiv Society for the Promotion of Literacy (with reports made by V. Horynevskyi, A. Rabynovych, M. Stanilovska and others).In the late 19Th –early 20Th century the problem of improving the health of children  and adolescents came into focus and attracted considerable attention of private educational institutions functioning in the region. Some of them, for example a private gymnasium owned by D. Obolenska,  were highly praised at the hygienic exhibition  of the Society for the Protection of Public Health,  hosted in St. Petersburg in the spring of 1893.The progressive local intelligentsia of the second half of the 19th– early 20<sup>th</sup> century also had a leading role in creating a network of educational institutions for children with special needs.The study describes the work of summer school colonies organized by the Kharkiv Literacy Society which founded the sanitary committee in 1898.The members of the committee, who were responsible for providing conditions for improving children’s health in the summertime, put forward the suggestion to create summer colonies in the Slobidskyi region whose main objectives were supposed to include enabling the weakest children from poor families to gain strength in healthy rural environment for further more successful and unimpeded studying;  developing useful and good habits such as taking care of oneself and one’s friends, mutual help, mutual concessions; and, in general, assisting children’s moral development. It is highly important to highlight that the overall organization of those summer colonies was subject to the accomplishment of the sanitary and educational objectives listed above.</p>

By studying the contents, culture, characteristics, functions, information, definition and visual design methods of the visual interface of the infographic, the thinking construction of the visualization of the infographic is constructed. The visual design of infographic is to express certain culture, things, states, data and phenomena through content interpretation, visual illustration, table analysis and thinking cognition, and then highlight visual features with abstract or concrete thinking cognition and concept elaboration. The visual interface design of infographic has the advantage of visual expression for some abstract thinking such as time, culture and space, which is easier to be interpreted by the public than text and language. As an interdisciplinary subject, information graphic visual interface design reflects the diversified development of data information, science and technology, information blending and thinking evolution.KeywordsInfographicVisualizationThinkingInteractive

This work focuses on an aspect which has been neglected, but which is decisive: the transfer of knowledge to different stakeholders; especially the transfer of insights derived from information visualization tools. In knowledge management, the transfer of knowledge is a core process, which can be improved by using our innate abilities to process visual representations. The potential of visualizations are manifold. But business managers miss a holistic framework on the use of visualization methods for information exploration and communication tasks. This paper analyzes how architects use visualizations to amplify cognition and to transfer knowledge. It introduces a mediating framework that brings together isolated research directions and defines the new research focus knowledge visualization. Knowledge visualization examines the use of visualizations for the transfer of knowledge between at least two people. We found that the new focus is decisive and has implications for researchers in information visualization and knowledge management.

This chapter outlines some meanings of ‘social responsibility’ in the area of literacy education. It suggests that the term be taken to lead educators toward reconsidering their students, their own practices, and their educational materials and assessments in two ways: across place (the variety of lived social conditions that they and their students inhabit) and through time (the role of literacy education in connecting their own and their students’ past, present and future). This chapter turns first to the past to examine social responsibility as a key to the connection between literacy and schooling, and then to some available scenarios of futures for schooling, to draw out their differing implications for literacy educators, and the role of knowledge in learning and schooling. A particular focus is the role of literacy education in the acculturation of youngsters into the powerful curricular forms of knowledge and discourse around which secondary education is built. The argument is that students come to engage the specific literacy demands of the various curriculum areas from the middle primary years onward. Their participation in their own secondary schooling and in their further education and training depends crucially on how well they can engage these high-stakes literacy demands. Further, however, their efficacy as citizens who belong when and where they are, and who act effectively with an understanding of that sense of belonging, also relates strongly to their literacy capabilities.

P-Lite: A study of parallel coordinate plot literacy

The subject of this thesis is a perception that the visual arts is declining in value in Australian culture. The rationale for this perception is drawn in the immediate sense from repeated debate in favour of abolition of the Australia Council (the premier source of grant funding to artistic producers). The method selected to investigate this perception is a comparison of rational and social epistemologies for curriculum, based respectively on the work of Arthur Efland and Theodor Adorno. By making this comparison, the thesis argues that the perceived shrinkage in the value and status of visual art is based on a fundamental conflict between the meanings of “art” and “culture”. The context of the debate is in fact perceptions of curriculum and their function vis-à-vis “cultural production” and is taken here to signal a change in the way Australia regards and values artistic activity. <br> <br> The thesis argues that culture needs to be defined appropriate to the Australian experience of “cultural production”. A lack of appropriate definition has resulted in terms like “creativity” becoming so broad in meaning that they are losing theoretical impact. I am inquiring as to what this loss of meaningfulness indicates about art education: some of the questions I ask in order to conduct the inquiry address whether the switch from visual art to visual culture signals a decline in the value of artistic culture; or does it owe itself to changing conditions between art education and artistic employment or commerce? <br> <br> The study examines visual art in particular as it might fall within the realm of Australian cultural production, providing one instance of artistic employment (i.e., in the visual arts). The focus of the study will be on addressing the stand-off between visual arts and visual culture in the field of curriculum studies: my method entails the application of Theodor Adorno’s aesthetic theory so as to place visual art and visual culture within a framework by which both rational and social epistemologies of art education can be used to define change in the realm of cultural production. <br> <br> Such change will include a re-evaluation of the role of visual art within higher education. At Monash University in Melbourne, the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture has progressively eroded the value of different studio practices by shutting down programs in disciplines that cannot attract sufficient enrolments. The institution appears to displace artistic practice, and to favour visual culture as a more reliable, rational form of investment, leading to more secure forms of employment, and offering less risk in terms of the returns to public education and the economy more generally. <br> <br> Visual culture, or visual culture studies, purports to be a postmodern approach to the study of art and replaces fine art and visual art studies, which represent a more rational epistemology within the field of art education. Visual culture studies aims to work with the current corporate and technocratic reality rather than deny its existence. It permits interdisciplinarity and the removal of a metanarrative about the artist as hero, offering in its place a semblance of plurality, multiplicity, indeterminacy and fragmentation. <br> <br> Visual culture embraces forms of symbolic analysis to construct meaning or rather, to analyse artworks (Lankshear, 1997); addresses digital and social media more readily, and turns to visual literacy to justify the artfulness of artworks (de Duve, 1994; Brown, 2003). This process may suggest a value-free art is being practised: it erodes the significance of traditional aesthetic skills, making aesthetic judgment less essential to the creation of an artwork. <br> <br> One implication of this change is to free fine art in general from its supposedly elitist origins, and to enable the art world to encompass both “high” and “low” art forms with equal value. This new value, which is implicitly more value-free than the high art it seeks to overturn, destabilizes art to the point that it has so few boundaries its continued existence (in its traditional form) becomes questionable.

Background: There is scanty report on the cognitive impairment and health status of the elderly in the sub-saharan African community. Objective: This study is to investigate the pattern of cognitive impairment and health morbidities among the elderly in a sub-Saharan African community. Methods: A household survey was conducted among 350 elders. They were interviewed with a questionnaire to ascertain their socio-demographic and health status information. Subsequently, the modified Mini-Mental State Examination [MMSE] was administered to elicit cognitive impairment based on cut-off score ≥13. Results: The mean MMSE score among participants was 20.7(±5.3) and about one-tenth of them 38(10.9%) had cognitive impairment. Of the study sample, 44% reported physical health morbidities; hypertension (23.2%), diabetes mellitus (10%) and visual impairment (5.4%) were the most frequently occurring morbidities. Cognitive impairment was associated with increasing age and most prevalent among the middle olds [70-79 years] ( p <0.001), while formal education seems protective ( p =0.022). Likewise, those with formal education were more likely to report medical illnesses ( p =0.004). Following logistic regression to control for effects of confounders, absence of formal education (Odd Ratio [OR] =0.465; 95% Confidence Interval [95%CI] =0.207-1.046) and increasing age ([OR] =6.617; 95%CI= 3.129- 13.993) were independent predictors of impairment in cognitive function. Conclusion: A high burden of cognitive impairment along with health morbidities was prevalent among the elderly; while increasing age and formal education were the identifiable determinants. Evolvement of public policies, health resource planning and service design to address geriatric health issues using age-related prioritization model are advocated. Similarly, the promotion of population literacy is indicated as it seems to have positive, long-lasting socioeconomic as well as health effects into old age. Further research is also justified. Keywords: Africa; Cognitive impairment; Health service; Morbidity; Public policy