Ethical decision-making and visual literacy instruction in architecture

When visual literacy ethics instruction in higher education focuses only on teaching academic citation styles and fair use, students are unprepared for professional environments with less-defined ethical rules and harsher consequences. Instructors should look to visual literacy, metaliteracy, and disciplinary information literacy to identify needed skills and competencies that can be mapped into the curriculum. Utilizing behavioral ethics theories and ethical decisionmaking practices, instructors can help students recognize moral contexts and find appropriate strategies for using and creating visual materials. This article presents a five-step process for planning, implementing, and assessing visual literacy ethics instruction with examples from the author’s sessions for architecture students. After these sessions, students had the tools to interpret and apply disciplinary practices and guidelines for the use and creation of visual communications in both academic and professional contexts.