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Several global and local policy documents stress the importance of social innovation and visual literacy for young people. United Nations Youth Strategy “Youth 2030 Working With and For Young People” point up that young people are the masters of future social innovations and the creators of change where they can contribute to the resilience of their communities, proposing innovative solutions, driving social progress, and inspiring political change, in urban and rural contexts (UN Youth Strategy, 2030). That is why it is crucial to foster young people's awareness about social innovations and involve them in social innovation processes because young people will shape our future.
Due to the digitalization in the contemporary routine, it is essential to equip and cultivate young people with appropriate skills like digital and data literacy, which are considered to be core foundations, and being literate in this context requires the ability to apply textual and visual information in various formats, contexts and use it for diverse purposes which highlights the necessity of visual literacy (OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030; Oļesika, Lama, Rubene, 2021).
The significance of visual media in the digital environment is changing the perception of being literate in the 21st century. Being exposed daily to visual media and interacting with digital imagery does not mean that individuals can critically evaluate, interpret, use and produce visual content (Avgerinou, 2009, Brumberger, 2011, Kedra, 2018; Matusiak, 2020). According to Avreginou, Pettersson (2019), visual literacy skills are learnable, teachable, capable of development and improvement. Educational institutions should incorporate visual literacy instruction into everyday curriculum.
In local relevance, there is a need to mention Education Development Guidelines 2021-2027 developed by the Latvian Ministry of Education and Science. This document aims to provide quality education opportunities to all Latvians to promote the development and realization of their potential throughout their lives and build their ability to adapt and responsibly manage constant changes in society and the economy. To implement this overarching goal of educational development, four interrelated educational development goals have been set. One of them is strengthening vocational education institutions as centers of sectoral excellence and innovation to promote the faster implementation of vocational education innovations in Latvia (Education Development Guidelines 2021-2027).
As we can see from the above documents, much attention is paid to social innovation and digital visual literacy. Still, various issues would need to be addressed. For example, Vocational Educational Law in the Republic of Latvia determines the acquisition of qualifications and professional skills development. However, a lack of attention is paid to the sustainability aspects of skills developed by young people based on the social innovation paradigm (Vocational Education Law, Republic of Latvia, 2001).
Another issue addressed in this research paper is that from a visual literacy perspective, associating photographs only with mass thinking and media news illustrations, as equal to some primitive way of thinking, is highly problematic as it has contributed to undermining visual media in education (Lackovic, 2020). This means that photographs can act as thinking and communication tools, as semiotic links between abstract concepts and the physical world in everyday communication, especially in an education setting promoting visual literacy as a new frontier for social innovations.