Visual Literacy and Biochemistry Learning: The role of external representations

Abstract

Visual Literacy can bedefined as people’s ability to understand, use, think, learn and express themselves through external representations (ER) in a given subject. This research aims to investigate the development of abilities of ERs reading and interpretation by students from a Biochemistry graduate course of theFederal University of Sao Joao Del-Rei. In this way, Visual Literacy level was assessed using a questionnaire validatedin a previous educational research. This diagnosis questionnaire was elaborated according to six visual abilitiesidentified as essential for the study of the metabolic pathways. The initial statistical analysis of data collectedin this study was carried out using ANOVA method. Results obtained showed that the questionnaire used is adequate for the research and indicated that the level of Visual Literacy related to the metabolic processes increased significantly with the progress of the students in the graduation course. There was also an indication of a possible interference in the student’s performancedetermined by the cutoff punctuation in the university selection process.