Photographs as mediating tools between science knowledge and the real world: the case of ‘Resources Sustainable Management’ in Portuguese school textbooks

Due to the educational importance of visual devices, textbooks should have good equilibrium between text and image. Photographs are one of those devices. When included in school textbooks they may act as mediators between science knowledge and the real world. This research focused on investigating to what extent those photographs may promote the integration between science knowledge and the real world. Photographs included in the theme “Resources Sustainable Management” as it is approached in three selected 8th grade Natural Sciences Portuguese textbooks were content analysed. The analysis was supported by a checklist including the following dimensions: number of photographs; types of photographs; location of the photographs; role of the photographs; caption of the photographs; contextualization of the entities photographed; nature of the entities photographed; relationship of the photographs integrated along the text with the text itself. Findings reveal that the textbooks analysed include a high mean of photographs per page. Besides, they show photographs that, in most cases: are integrated along the text; aim at illustrating contents being presented; focus on entities and situations familiar to students. In some cases, a considerable amount of photographs: do not have a caption; are not mentioned in the text; are not related to the content presented. This way of using photographs may impair their role of mediators between science knowledge and students’ everyday world and may have a reduced or even null added educational value: These results have implications for textbook illustrators and authors, as well as for teachers.(undefined