Roberto Farné is Full Professor in Education at the University of Bologna where he teaches “Pedagogy of play and sport” in the degree course in Physical Education and Sport Sciences, and “Body cultures” in the international Master degree in Wellness Culture: Sport, Health and Tourism, of which he is coordinator. His fields of study and research, both empirical and theoretical, documented by over 80 publications, including international ones, mainly concern the relationships between education and the media, the childhood culture with a special focus on educational iconography, play and sport education and the outdoor education. From 2007 to 2012 he chaired the Sciences of Education Department “Giovanni Maria Bertin” of the University of Bologna. He subsequently contributed to the birth of the new Department of Life Quality Studies on the Rimini Campus, to which he belongs and directs the “Center for Research and Training on Outdoor Education”. He is co-editor of scientific journals and monograph series. In 2003 he won the Raffaele Laporta award for the Didactic section with the book Iconologia didattica. Le immagini per l’educazione dall’ Orbis Pictus a Sesame Street (Zanichelli, Bologna).
Education Iconology: A Filed of Research
Keynote speech for the conference panel
Visual Literacy As a Tool for Creative Thinking
By “Educational Iconology” we mean the study and interpretation of figurative repertoires in different media dedicated to education, not just scholastic. These are repertories of images aimed at communicating information and cultural contents, or in wanting to facilitate the learning of certain knowledge, make interesting a historical topic and scientific concepts or, more simply, show and recognize something to name it and describe it. Last but non least, represent the theme of a board game. Some historical points of reference define the profile of this topic. The first refers to the progressive legitimation on the use of images in early Christianity; only after the Council of Nicaea in 787, the images are officially accepted as instrument of catechesis addressed to the illiterate people. “Bibliae pauperum”, the great iconographic flowering with the paintings and bas-reliefs in the cathedrals, bear witness to this.
The second aspect is that, by the development of printing techniques, the circulation of iconographic repertoires increases, aimed at the dissemination of scientific knowledge (non-fiction) and the illustration of stories and tales (fiction). Modern pedagogical theories promoted the birth of a “market” dedicated to children: images for play, abecedaries, illustrated books, stickers etc.
The third historical point of reference concerns the school; starting from the seventeenth century, with Comenius publishing Orbis Sensualium Pictus (1658) the first illustrated schoolbook for children, we can speak of educational synergy word-image. The images will become formidable didactic catalysts, for those disciplinary fields predisposed by visual repertoires. From the invention of printing onwards, every new communication technology will be pedagogically stressed to express its educational potentiality.
Educational Iconology aims to study on the one hand the different repertoires of images that activate a direct relationship with children in their leisure time; on the other, the visual repertoires whose didactic dimension is also characterized by the mediations with which they are managed. It is a huge production, with a future full of technological expectations even if, being “didactic” images, they have always undergone a cultural devaluation, like everything related to the “educational” character (cinema, children literature, illustrations…), by an “aesthetic prejudice”. The words of Roberto Rossellini come to mind: in 1962 during an interview with the Cahiers du Cinéma he said: “We must have the courage to be didactic. But when one is at the cinema, one is immediately accused of imbecility. And yet, the need for education is an absolute requirement.”