Read the Room: Seepage Through Visuals in Social Studies Classrooms

Using critical analysis, this interpretive case study explores how two established social studies teachers communicated diverse ideological stances through their displays of posters, artifacts, and student work inside their classrooms. Guided by Hess and McAvoy’s concept of “seepage,” which focuses on the ways that teachers’ personal beliefs subtly manifest through educational practices, this study expands considerations of seepage to classroom visuals using critical visual analysis. The author suggests that the teachers acted as curators and risk-assessors, and that classroom visuals may function as ideological texts which represent the complexity of teaching toward neutrality and representation.