Image and education: a study on the educative potential of images through the comprehension of imago and its influence on exercise of thinking

Abstract

The aim of the text is to reflect on the use of images as an educative element having as parameter the medieval concept of imago and its importance for the construction of the thought. Our reflection arises from the consideration that images, since the 20th century, are leading the communication among people and therefore becoming interlocutors of ideas and information. However, their relevance in the educational field is still minor. In general, the image is used to make learning more gentle. In view of this, we raised as a hypothesis: the modus as the images were used as a pedagogical resource in other social periods would be related to the human formation and, consequently, different from the way we usually use today, in other words, limiting them to a visual resource. Our reflections consider the image on its three fields as in the medieval concept of imago: material image, image with imagination and image with the divine likeness. With these prepositions established, we emphasize that our approach will have as theoretical principle the Aristotelian fundamentals which lead us to see the image as a mental process, essential to the thinking process and social history, presenting us the man as the epicenter of social construction. We consider that these two principles will enable us to think of the image as an educative resource under the perspective of imago, once the Aristotelian formulations were this concept’s base of construction in the Middle Ages and history is the basis for understanding men’s action in time.