As globalization impacts Turkish culture the training and preparation of art teachers is increasingly important because these individuals will play a key role in teaching children how to become visually literate in a quickly changing world. This paper explores the concept of visual culture in Turkey as perceived by eight art teacher instructors teaching at various public universities' educational faculties in Turkey. A phenomenological human science approach was employed in order to develop a description of the perception of visual culture and to predict the possibility of including visual culture studies in pre-service art education in Turkish universities. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.