Literacy to see: the importance of learning to read, understand and analyze images

The present study emphasizes the importance of visual literacy understood as the ability to decode images, including the semantic depth of the iconic message, accompanied or not by text. To observe the performance of university students in terms of reading images and perception of implicit and subtle meanings, an experiment is conducted with students of the Degree in Early Childhood Education and Philosophy of Rey Juan Carlos University during the 2018-2019 academic year. The investigation consisted in the exposition of the experimental group (n = 209) and the control group (n = 51) to the reading of an illustrated album in the classroom, answering a questionnaire based on the meanings of the images that illustrate the book. The results detect a deficit visual reading level in both groups, which does not correspond to the profile of the competent reader. It is observed the need to develop specific skills of reading images, equipping future teachers with tools that allow them to encourage schoolchildren in the development of thinking and critical look.