Not my area but I do follow this guy on Academia.edu

https://syr.academia.edu/DavidRufo

He was an art teacher working in a generalist classroom and this informed his practice.

I teach theory of art at a university. But I guess that the following work might be used at least on the secondary school level:

Diana Newall: Appreciating art, A&C Black Publishers, 2008.

It presents the different genres in painting, including nude, portrait, religious, mythical, historical painting, still ife, landscape, genre, and has a whole chapter on modern art.

Best,

Ferenc

I use to start my lessons in the first year of architecture the book "Principles of Art History" by Heinrich Wolfflin, who explains to see certain fundamental ideas and their readings in different types of artistic productions.

Dear Claudio, Wölfflin is defintiely a thoughtful and highly relevant author,, and this book was first meant for children, indeed. In archtiecture, I myself used this book, for example: Carol Davidson Cragoe: How to read buildings? (2008)

Best,

Ferenc

Have a look at the work of Gunther Kress. His research  is all about semiotics - reading images.

Grateful for the contributions expensive colleagues.

Best Regards.

Dear Ferenc. Thanks for the reference. My regards.

I curated a touring exhibition of photographs with corresponding 'captions' drawn from extracts from fiction writings as a means of eliciting the kind of audience response which you raise. See Phiction; Lies, Illusion and the Phantasm in Autralian Photography.

Hi Gustavo,

here are some of my articles about "reading" images.

marjo

Räsänen, M. 2012. Cultural identity and visual multiliteracy. In Arts education at the crossroad of cultures. Congress Proceedings for the 11th European InSEA Regional Congress in Lemesos, Cyprus June 2012, 92–104. http://www.insea.org/events/regional-congress.

See also Synnyt/ Origins 2/2012, 1–17.

https://wiki.aalto.fi/download/attachments/72901592/Rasanen.pdf

Räsänen, M. 2003. Interpreting art through visual narratives. In M. Xanthoudaki & L. Tickle & V. Sekules (Eds.) Researching visual arts education in museums and galleries. An international reader. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 183–195.

Räsänen, M. 1999. Building bridges: Experiential art understanding. Journal of Art and Design Education 18(2), 195–205.

Here is one of my articles that might help.

Alisha M. White & Michelle Zoss (2015) “It's a Sad, Sad Story”: TeachingEmotional Connections and Tone in Literature, The Educational Forum, 79:3, 213-229, DOI:

10.1080/00131725.2015.1037513

And, here are some sources I used in writing my dissertation lit review.

Albers, P. & Sanders, J. (2010). Literacies, the arts, and multimodality. Urbana, IL: NCTE.

Connery, M. C., John-Steiner, V. P., & Marjanovic-Shane, A. (Ed.). (2010). Vygotsky and creativity: A cultural-historical approach to play, meaning making, and the arts. New York: Peter Lang.

Piro, J. M. (2002). The picture of reading: Deriving meaning in literacy through image. The Reading Teacher, 56(2), 126-134.

Smagorinsky, P., Cameron, T., & O’Donnell-Allen, C. (2007). Achtung maybe: A case study of the role of personal connection and art in the literacy engagements of students with attentional difficulties. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 23, 333–358.

Whitin, P. (1996). Sketching stories, stretching minds: Responding visually to literature. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Walling, D. (2005). Visual knowing: Connecting art and ideas across the curriculum. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Walling, D. (2006). Teaching writing to visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Wilhelm, J. D. (2004). Reading is seeing: Learning to visualize scenes, characters, ideas, and text worlds to improve comprehension and reflective reading. New York, NY: Scholastic.

Ernst, K. (1994). Writing pictures, painting words: Writing in an artists' workshop. Language Arts, 71(1), 44-52.

Zoss, M., Smagorinsky, P., & O'Donnell-Allen, C. (2007). Mask-making as representational process: The situated composition of an identity project in a senior English class. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 8(10), 1-41.

Not entirely on-topic since it specifically addresses literacy not 'visual literacy', but helpful: Flood, J., Heath, S. B., & Lapp, D. (2015). Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy Through the Communicative and Visual Arts, Volume II: A Project of the International Reading Association. Routledge. 

Also: Rhoades, M., Dallacqua, A., Kersten, S., Merry, J., & Miller, M. C. (2015). The Pen (cil) Is Mightier than the (S) Word? Telling Sophisticated Silent Stories Using Shaun Tan’s Wordless Graphic Novel, the Arrival. Studies in Art Education, 56(4), 307-326.

and: Sipe, L. R. (2015). Young children’s visual meaning making in response to picturebooks. Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy Through the Communicative and Visual Arts, Volume II: A Project of the International Reading Association, 381.

Berk, S. (2015). Using Literature to Activate Critical Intention in Secondary Student Art. Art Education, 68(5), 6-13.

Dear White and McArdle ,

Thank you for contributions!

Best Regards

Gustavo

A pleasure...a thought-provoking question! 

Pantaleo, S. (2015). Primary students’ understanding and appreciation of the artwork in picturebooks. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 1468798415569816.

Unsworth, L., & Macken‐Horarik, M. (2015). Interpretive responses to images in picture books by primary and secondary school students: Exploring curriculum expectations of a ‘visual grammatics’. English in Education, 49(1), 56-79.

and any articles in this journal are relevant to your inquiry...an example: Moss, B. (2015). Getting the picture: Visual dimensions of informational texts. Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy Through the Communicative and Visual Arts, Volume II: A Project of the International Reading Association, 393.

Beyond the classroom, getting to grips with visual methodologies would be helpful in formulating your own theories and methods in education. In particular, I recommend:

Rose, G. (2012). Visual methodologies: An introduction to researching with visual materials. Sage.

Pink, S. (2007). Applied visual anthropology: social intervention, visual methodologies and anthropological theory.

and for an even more broad overview, the comprehensive Margolis, E., & Pauwels, L. (Eds.). (2011). The Sage handbook of visual research methods. Sage.