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Articles

Vol. 2 No. 1 (2022): Visual literacies and visual technologies for teaching, learning and inclusion

Thinking with semiotic-dialogism: Re-orientating augmented reality and visual literacy

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.4e1f8d49
Submitted
8 August 2026
Published
15-08-2026

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) apps, like Adobe’s Aero, enable users to turn Photoshop layers into interactive AR experiences and are considered promising for higher education. But what we see or do not see are mediated via histories, cultural values, ideologies, social practices and technologies. Simultaneously, the ways we receive knowledge, communicate and learn are more than ever being communicated via visual technologies. Yet, theories of visuality within educational research represent a longstanding gap within scholarship and theorising of visual technologies, including AR, is lacking. This study re-orientates conceptions of AR visual literacy through ‘thinking with’ semiotics, which is the study of signs, images, sounds or any phenomena communicating meaning (Peirce, 1908). Semiotics is synthesised with dialogism, defined as the exchange of texts, perspectives and voices (Bakhtin, 1986). The semiotic-dialogic framework is applied to a series of AR exhibits at Adobe’s (2020) Festival of the Impossible. The analysis re-orientates commercialised conceptions of AR pedagogy to reveal that, while AR experiences can be developed without coding knowledge, they still require visual literacies.

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