Learning and teaching are faced with radically new challenges in today s rapidly changing world and its deeply transformed communicational environment. We are living in an era of images. Contemporary visual technology film, video, interactive digital media is promoting but also demanding a new approach to education: the age of visual learning has begun. This is especially true for tertiary-level education, for it is here that, on the one hand, teachers for the entire school system are trained, and on the other hand, education and research meet. Visual learning is not merely an option, it is a...

Some twenty years after the term iconic turn has been coined, and with a deluge of digital images, videos and animations surrounding, indeed invading, the learning environment, it appears that educational science, and the everyday practice of education, still very much labour under the impact of the past dominance of alphabetic literacy. But while educators clearly need to retain a measure of conservatism, maintain an acute sense for the logic of the written text and preserve the ability to handle extended hardcopy documents, they have to rise to the task, also, of exploiting the...