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This paper identifies visual communication design as a form of public pedagogy. Communication design practices aim to achieve the successful transmission of a message to a recipient in a visual mode. Understanding the theories and practices of visual communication design can assist in enhancing the reception of the communication, as these practices become a tool to increase the effectiveness of learning in a public space. To demonstrate this, I will use the example of museums as an informal place of public learning, and argue design, and in particular visual communication design strategies, are extremely important in the creation of successful learning. If participants are not engaged or entertained, their capacity for learning will diminish. Engagement depends on the representation of the information and the successful interpretation of that information by the visitor. Further, this paper will emphasise the vital role communication design plays in all forms of public pedagogy, not just within the museum context. However, non-designers create many public learning environments and although this paper argues the benefits of communication design to increasing the effectiveness of learning, it recognises the narrow opportunities of applying this knowledge.

Both enthymemes and visual pedagogy speak to the capacity--and the need--of humans to make a coherent story out of the scraps of information they possess. Three possibilities exist for building on the connection between enthymemes and pictures when teaching argumentative writing--using visual aids to help students: generate material, suggest a structure, and symbolize the finished project. One image of a completed argumentative essay is a "Y Bridge": the claim is a bridge, a crossbar sitting on top of the capital Y. John Gage, in his textbook "The Shape of Reason," presents the enthymeme as a device which helps writers generate arguments by remaining conscious of their audiences. Students then need to decide how to arrange their arguments. To help students recall that they have considerable flexibility in this task, composition teachers can use the analogy of a simple toy--a spindle onto which are dropped a series of brightly colored shapes. In constructing an argument, an arranger must consider the attitudes and knowledge of the onlooker as well as the arranger's own preferences. A device used in creative writing, the mask of the detail monster, can be used with students generating arguments. Students make paper masks with eyeholes and work in pairs; writers read their arguments, listeners raise the mask to ask a question when statements need further elaboration. Visual pedagogy can help students and teachers to design "webs of meaning" as successful as E. B. White's fictional spider Charlotte. (Ten illustrations are included.) (RS)

Both enthymemes and visual pedagogy speak to the capacity--and the need--of humans to make a coherent story out of the scraps of information they possess. Three possibilities exist for building on the connection between enthymemes and pictures when teaching argumentative writing--using visual aids to help students: generate material, suggest a structure, and symbolize the finished project. One image of a completed argumentative essay is a "Y Bridge": the claim is a bridge, a crossbar sitting on top of the capital Y. John Gage, in his textbook "The Shape of Reason," presents the enthymeme as a device which helps writers generate arguments by remaining conscious of their audiences. Students then need to decide how to arrange their arguments. To help students recall that they have considerable flexibility in this task, composition teachers can use the analogy of a simple toy--a spindle onto which are dropped a series of brightly colored shapes. In constructing an argument, an arranger must consider the attitudes and knowledge of the onlooker as well as the arranger's own preferences. A device used in creative writing, the mask of the detail monster, can be used with students generating arguments. Students make paper masks with eyeholes and work in pairs; writers read their arguments, listeners raise the mask to ask a question when statements need further elaboration. Visual pedagogy can help students and teachers to design "webs of meaning" as successful as E. B. White's fictional spider Charlotte. (Ten illustrations are included.) (RS)

The themed presentation at the Sydney Writers' Festival on May 25, 2013 entitled "Creative Writing as Freedom, Education as Exploration" brought together three key players in a discussion about imaginative freedom, and the evidence suggesting that the impact of creativity and creative writing on young minds held long lasting, ongoing implications. This is a particularly crucial conversation given the factors stifling creative writing pedagogies in contemporary classrooms. In contributing to the ongoing dialogue about literary creativity, this theorized classroom-based discussion explores the integration of creative writing as literary and visual arts pedagogy among first year preservice-teachers developing an autoethnographic project. By modifying traditional autoethnographic methodology to include literary and Arts-based approaches to creative writing, the examination argues that, while "Creative writing is more than just words on a page; it's freedom", developing confidence and competencies among first year teacher-education students may prove important to the educational futurity of that philosophy.

The themed presentation at the Sydney Writers' Festival on May 25, 2013 entitled "Creative Writing as Freedom, Education as Exploration" brought together three key players in a discussion about imaginative freedom, and the evidence suggesting that the impact of creativity and creative writing on young minds held long lasting, ongoing implications. This is a particularly crucial conversation given the factors stifling creative writing pedagogies in contemporary classrooms. In contributing to the ongoing dialogue about literary creativity, this theorized classroom-based discussion explores the integration of creative writing as literary and visual arts pedagogy among first year preservice-teachers developing an autoethnographic project. By modifying traditional autoethnographic methodology to include literary and Arts-based approaches to creative writing, the examination argues that, while "Creative writing is more than just words on a page; it's freedom", developing confidence and competencies among first year teacher-education students may prove important to the educational futurity of that philosophy.

The themed presentation at the Sydney Writers' Festival on May 25, 2013 entitled "Creative Writing as Freedom, Education as Exploration" brought together three key players in a discussion about imaginative freedom, and the evidence suggesting that the impact of creativity and creative writing on young minds held long lasting, ongoing implications. This is a particularly crucial conversation given the factors stifling creative writing pedagogies in contemporary classrooms. In contributing to the ongoing dialogue about literary creativity, this theorized classroom-based discussion explores the integration of creative writing as literary and visual arts pedagogy among first year preservice-teachers developing an autoethnographic project. By modifying traditional autoethnographic methodology to include literary and Arts-based approaches to creative writing, the examination argues that, while "Creative writing is more than just words on a page; it's freedom", developing confidence and competencies among first year teacher-education students may prove important to the educational futurity of that philosophy.