Search

The "visual-semiotic transformation method" as a pedagogical tool: Pro et contra // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2026. Issue 1 (47). P. 24-45

This study continues work previously initiated and published in the first issue of this journal in 2025, and aims to advance "didactic visual semiotics." The social relevance of the research is determined by the conditions of a sociocultural environment permeated with visual symbolism. The article amis to discuss the "method of visual-semiotic transformation" and the results of its testing during a methodological experiment. The experiment was conducted among fifth-grade students at a school with Kazakh as the language of instruction and included diagnostic, formative, and control stages. A distinctive feature is that the formation of sociocultural competency when teaching and learning Russian as a non-native language occurs within a bilingual educational environment. The experiment was preceded by a content analysis of the standard curriculum and textbooks for the fifth grade in Russian language and literature. This analysis revealed that the current programs and textbooks do not provide systematic coverage of sociocultural learning components. The methodological foundation of the experiment was based on principles of cognitive linguistics and the paradigm of visual semiotics. The discussion of the method-focused experiment's results revealed arguments "contra" – namely, a lack of precision in accounting for the actual informational essence of the influences that formed the basis for justifying the social relevance of the discussed method. Furthermore, the success of the method, presented verbally (positive dynamics in the experimental group's indicators), is visually understated in its expression (see Fig. 5), if one notes that the maximum values on the histograms are capped at the 70 percent level. The arguments "pro" can be considered more significant. The first reason is addressing a different kind of deficit: the lack of application of semiotic methods in education, whose purpose is to serve as a means of adaptation to a sociocultural state of society filled with symbolism, symbolic systems, and forms of signs. The second reason is that the presented study is a rare case among Russian-language publications on pedagogical experiments, as the experiment's results have undergone methodological critique, which serves to refine the conceptual foundations of the "method of visual-semiotic transformation."

Keywords: method-focused experiment, sociocultural competency, bilingual education, Russian as a second language