Content area
[...]arguably more importantly, COMA lumps all of the analysis into one letter. Furthermore, the quality of extended responses also drastically increased as the students could reference more information from the image and connect it to historical knowledge from the topic. In our Year 12 cohort there was a huge increase in the number of students who could link multiple points of analysis to one visual element of a visual source and then connect these analyses to create more detailed and accurate responses. [...]it was only obvious if you knew absolutely everything about the topic portrayed in the source... ... the quality of extended responses also drastically increased as the students could reference more information from the image and connect it to historical knowledge from the topic. ... there was a huge increase in the number of students who could link multiple points of analysis to one visual element of a visual source and then connect these analyses to create more detailed and accurate responses.
Annotation empowers students to respond to visual source questions with more confidence, detail, and accuracy.
Last year, two of my colleagues and I were creating exemplary responses to a source analysis question and kept returning to the word 'significance'. Comparing our students' work, we found less than five of our cohort of just over sixty students had conveyed all of the key elements of the visual source. The three of us sat for a moment and pondered why so few had captured the essence of the visual source.
Even more frustratingly for us trained professionals, there was a lot of 'obvious' information that the majority of students missed. But it was only obvious if you knew absolutely everything about the topic portrayed in the source, so the conclusion was that the students had to know everything.
But what if they didn't?
The Student's Perspective
I felt even more of the students' pain when one of my colleagues, James (our faculty leader), showed me a source from the French Revolution. I have never taught the French Revolution, nor did my secondary school pick it for VCE Revolutions. James had asked myself and Emily (a teacher and refiner of my half-baked ideas) to identify the significant aspects of the text.
This is where it hit me. It wasn't that I didn't understand the question, or that I didn't understand the words of the text, or that I didn't understand the historical concept of significance. It was simply that I didn't know enough about the history to identify what was significant.
I picked the most striking sentence of the text that I could find. James and Emily, both Year 12 teachers and very good at what they do, found another two quotes each. It was then I realised I belonged to the fiftyfive students from the topic of the earlier discussion, while my colleagues were part of the other five.
I realised we needed a tool for students to use to ensure they could identify every piece of valuable information in a visual source, just as I had needed in this professional discussion.
The Drawbacks of COMA
Most, if not all, Humanities and History teachers ought to be familiar with COMA: Content, Origin, Motive, Analysis. It's the bread and butter of visual source analysis.
One disadvantage of COMA is that the students already know to identify content from the source, but they do not know how to make sure they have all of it. COMA seems to be an acronym trying to do two things at once: describe the source and analyse it. COMA works as long as you already have all of the answers.
Second, and arguably more importantly, COMA lumps all of the analysis into one letter. Again, we were acting on the assumption of a certain level of historical knowledge and the ability to connect the visual source with the history being investigated.
The main issue with using COMA is that it assumes that students understand what is significant in the visual source provided. I wanted to have a tool that allowed students to take all the information and put it together regardless of their level of understanding of the historical knowledge. I also wanted a tool that could translate the visual information from the source into words and phrases they could insert into their responses.
I like to think of a visual source as a crime scene in a true crime documentary. If you are just told to say what you see, the detective would simply say, T see a kitchen'. But the detective only gets the full picture when looking for details, more specifically: 'What is the evidence present, and what does it all mean when it is put together?'
My Alternative: PARASITE
As we teachers love acronyms like the classic TEEL and BODMAS, I thought it best to create a snappy acronym as a checklist for the students to annotate visual sources. I came up with PARASITE, which stands for People, Appearance, Relationships, Actions, Symbols, Items, Time and Environment. Below is a breakdown of what each element entails, as well as guiding questions where applicable.
P: People/Protagonists
The figures in the image. This can include people, spirits and even animals. The focus is the 'who' of the visual.
A: Appearance
The clothing, mood and any exaggerated features of the figures in the image. This is particularly useful for political cartoons.
R: Relationships
For visuals with more than one person, the positioning of these people becomes important information that likely conveys an idea or a perspective. Using prepositions (above, under, opposite, beside, etc.) is encouraged here.
A: Actions
The movements or gestures being made by the people or objects.
S: Symbols
Depictions of ideological symbols or representations of ideas. While the students might understand how the people in the image are representations of ideas, this aspect focuses on when the symbol is a shape, such as the Hakenkreuz or the hammer and sickle.
I: Items
Hand-held objects such as weaponry, tools and trinkets. Adornments on clothing would also count in this section.
T: Time
An indication of when this event happened or when the source was created.
E: Environment
The background setting of a source. This one is the most overlooked by students as they focus on the subject of the image and ignore the background environment as unimportant information or devoid of information at all.
A Worked Example
I knew PARASITE worked when I took a political cartoon from my Year 11 VCE History class and presented it to my select-entry Year 7 Humanities class. The 1960s cartoon depicts then-United States President John F. Kennedy arm-wrestling with Nikita Khrushchev, who was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at the time.1 While they arm-wrestle on a tabletop, they sit on huge bombs marked with the letter 'H', and on the table are two buttons. The two buttons are at either end of the table next to the left hand of each actor, and are connected by a wire to the bomb his opponent is sitting on. This means that if either won the arm-wrestle, the opponent's bomb would go off. Both actors have their left hand over the button, threatening to push it.
Amazingly, by going through the process of PARASITE (Table 1), the majority of students could provide an accurate summary of the true meaning of the source, and the remainder could do the same with some prompting, such as asking if any science-loving students in the room knows what the chemical symbol H means on the periodic table.
Using this information, the average response from the class of Year 7 students was that the two men were facing off and engaged in a struggle, and if one of them was to win the struggle, or choose to press a button, it would set off an explosion that would kill them both. This preliminary analysis created the space to outline the Cold War and the concept of mutually assured destruction-a topic beyond their level of schooling, yet knowledge they were able to access after using PARASITE.
Our Observations and Data
Immediately, we noticed a huge increase in our students' general understanding of an image. They were able to make annotations of much more information, and appeared to be much more engaged in source analysis tasks.
Furthermore, the quality of extended responses also drastically increased as the students could reference more information from the image and connect it to historical knowledge from the topic. Students also showed in a survey that they felt more confident in approaching source analysis questions.
In our Year 12 cohort there was a huge increase in the number of students who could link multiple points of analysis to one visual element of a visual source and then connect these analyses to create more detailed and accurate responses.
Going Forward
My school is now promoting this process across all year levels, including the use of colourful posters in all the classrooms. In Years 11 and 12, our next step is developing student understanding of how to build analysis using the identified elements of PARASITE.
Most importantly, however, implementing this tool has had a positive impact on students in VCE History classrooms at the school, and we hope that this continues into all History classrooms across all year levels so that every student can feel more empowered and confident when analysing visual sources.
1 Cartoon by Leslie Gilbert Illingworth published in The Daily Mail, 29 October 1962, HistoryNet, https://www. folly-review-when-the- superpowers-nearlyarm-wrestle/
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