Mapping visual-based methods: an interdisciplinary approach

Abstract

Images are central to our understanding of and learning about our world. We argue that visual training needs to be improved in the higher education system to enhance the potential of visual thinking to mediate productively our relationship with the context we inhabit. Initiatives from the social sciences and humanities since the end of the twenty century have highlighted the importance of training in visual research methods and visual literacy, but they also expose the scarcity of tools for understanding and applying images in research processes. In this paper, we examine the way visual methods were organised and employed in earlier studies and propose a new taxonomy. This classification will map these methods in an interdisciplinary framework that allows practitioners to use images in the development of projects. This proposal also seeks to inform future methodological approaches where images are recognised as a language of knowledge, analogous to numbers or linguistic expressions.