The aim of the paper is to question the significance of images and objects and spatial arrangements and examine their contribution to teaching and learning. The paper will focus on the influence of the visual with particular reference to the built environment, classrooms and non- teaching teaching spaces. The term 'visual culture' is used to reflect our intention to explore the cumulative and specific effects of the visual foci. The paper has two principle aims: first to establish a theoretical framework for the visual culture of schools with a view to identifying how visual factors impact on teaching and learning and consequently what constitutes good practice; and to devise a model of visual culture to enable different user groups (architects, managers and teachers) to reflect on current practice and facilitate comparison between schools to be made. Over the last thirty years the study of imagery and space has come to play a more meaningful role in educational research reflecting a trend that is common across a wide range of disciplines. An investigation into the impact of visual factors on teaching and learning and insights into good practice will be welcomed by policy makers and practitioners. However, two additional features make the proposed study of the visual culture of primary schools particularly timely and beneficial both to education and social science. First, past visual studies in the social sciences, although perceptive, have tended to be narrowly focused, demonstrate limited consistency and are explicitly visual-centric. This led to a combination of fragmentation and significant gaps in the knowledge base. In addition present-day studies have a propensity to an overtly theoretical in orientation and detached from everyday practice which means that current visual studies in education are mostly inadequate as a basis for improving teaching and learning. The study will reflect on ways of collating, synthesizing and building on existing methodologically rigorous visual research to provide a substantive knowledge base of good practice that policy makers, managers and practitioners can apply in different contexts. Second, despite a plethora of visually orientated data collection and analysis techniques available currently visual researchers mostly they adopt a single-researcher, single-discipline, single-method approach. This limited strategy undermines the contribution visual research makes to social science research. The paper will suggest the adoption of an inter-disciplinary, multi-method approach combining imagery with word and numbers and imagery-based strategies providing a powerful methodological tool. Hence the study of the visual culture of primary schools will, in addition to producing an extensive body of knowledge, provide an innovatory methodological approach to resolving substantive problems.