The episteme of “visuality” in cognitive and educational practices

author: Alla Kravchenko

Urgency of the research. The increasing use of visual content in everyday life, educational, and scientific activities requires a more detailed scientific understanding of the issues of visual epistemology. The relevance of ways of knowing the new, information-digital reality is due to the emergence of visuality or the sphere of vision. Video, photos, graphics, and other visual elements are used as the primary mode of communication and learning. Understanding and analysing visual information is becoming a key skill for intellectual and social development. As a result, a scientific analysis of the problems of visual culture formation is becoming increasingly important.

Target setting. Cognitive activity expands the toolkit of its own practices and along with analytical, hermeneutic, and phenomenological, cognitive practices of productive cognition of the world poses the task of including the visual paradigm. There is a need for scholarly reflection on the inclusion and application of visual practices in the teaching and learning process.

Actual scientific researches and issues analysis. Visual culture is studied by N. Brighton, A. Boylen, K. Jenks, M. Sturken, and L. Cartwright. The theoretical theory of "visual studies" is represented by the research of T. Mitchell, N. Mirzoyev, M. Dykovitska, and D. Elkins. Social visualism is studied by K.V. Bataieva. The culture of visual thinking is analysed by G.V. Ilyina.

The research objective. To analyse the epistemological content of visual culture and visual practices and their influence on the formation of modern man's perception and understanding of the world.

The statement of basic materials. A modern person is an active consumer of visual images, through which he/she forms his/her worldview and discourses. This leads to the search for new approaches to the presentation and assimilation of knowledge. As a result of involving visualisation in cognition, this or that problem situation was solved more productively. The formation of visual perception is directly influenced by the social environment, which determines the appropriate conditions of existence, influences the effect of cultural and linguistic traditions, and takes into account intellectual, emotional, and mental characteristics. The information boom caused by the development of technology and the availability of the internet is overloading humans with the sheer volume of information they must process. The cognitive sphere is inseparable from technological progress and is subject to all the innovations of the age, both in the use of these innovations and in their creation. Therefore, we are moving to a new epistemological interpretation of science, education, and the learning process. Consequently, it is necessary to focus on the issues of the formation of digital humanities, mosaic, and iconicity in the presentation of visual information, analysing the perception and processing of visual information, formation of visual literacy, visual thinking, and visual culture.

Conclusions. In the context of the "visual turn" in culture, there is an expansion of the ways of knowledge transmission - from the language of texts to the screen, media-visual language. In the study of the problem of visuality a set of scientific researches concerning the processing of visual information, ways of using conscious visual perception in communication processes, application of various techniques of argumentation on the basis of visual information, etc. is gaining development. The epistemological turn of the digitalised society implies the search for new methods of presenting, processing, and assimilating information. The basis of the new education is multimedia screen communication, which forms visual literacy and visual thinking, requiring the assimilation of visual culture.

Keywords: visual culture, visual literacy, visual thinking, epistemology, education, science, perception, information, knowledge.

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