Developing Visual Literacy through Drawing to Improve Students’ Concept Understanding of Science Material

  • Lakhaula Sahrotul Aulia Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia
  • Stephani Diah Pamelasari Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia


The selection of learning strategies in science learning process in the secondary school level will greatly affect students’ concept understanding. One of the strategies is drawing strategy. Drawing strategy emphasizes the process undertaken by student to be able to describe the material through image and create an illustration. This strategy is often applied in art subject but some researches have shown that drawing strategy will help students to learn science material as they develop their visual literacy. The main steps that should be done in this strategy consist of (1) providing information about the material using picture, (2) guiding students to visualize information in accordance with the understanding, imagination and skill of students, and (3) analyzing their drawing image. The advantages of using drawing strategy are to stimulate the students’ memory system of verbal and non-verbal to work at the same time. Verbal memory system represents the language, while non-verbal memory system represents non-verbal memories like pictures. Visual literacy is obtained from the optimization of both memory systems and it is needed to support students to have a good understanding of science material.  Furthermore, this strategy is expected to improve students’ motivation to learn, develop their motoric ability, and improve their creativity by using the imagination.