Inheriting the Count: How Visualization Literacy Got Its Measure

2026-09-13

AI Summary

本文探讨了可视化素养测量框架的起源，区分了基于评估和个人熟练度的第一波与关注情境实践的第二波，并提出未来研究方向。

Abstract

Foundational frameworks in visualization have operationalized literacy as an individual competency, measured through chart-comprehension tasks. This focus raises a question: why has measurement become the dominant frame for understanding literacy? Rather than asking whether literacy should be measured, we ask how measurement became the field's way of understanding it. We trace visualization literacy back through the history of textual literacy and argue that in adopting the term, the field imported three values rooted in early government statistics: quantification, individualization, and binary classification. To mark the shift this history makes possible, we distinguish two waves: a first centered on assessment and individual proficiency, and a second that treats literacy as a situated practice, attentive to how people use visualizations in context and to the purposes they serve. Examining the construct this way suggests that refining assessment instruments does not, by itself, settle what literacy is, and points to directions for second-wave research: formative studies of literacy in context, culturally grounded instruments, and critical reading. This paper shows that visualization literacy inherited its measurement frame rather than discovering it, offers a two-wave vocabulary distinguishing assessment-based literacy from situated practice, and connects the field to a critical-literacy tradition with concrete alternatives to measurement. These contributions allow us to treat measurement and meaning as two parts of a single question, shifting attention from who counts as literate to what literacy is meant to do.

Problem

• visualization literacy
• measurement
• historical values
• situated practice
• critical literacy

Innovation

• Visualization Literacy
• Measurement Frame
• Situated Practice
• Critical-Literacy