A Study On Figures In Science Textbooks Of Grades From Three To Six

As the carrier of knowledge and one of the major tools, textbook plays a key role in the teaching and learning system. During the new round of elementary education reform in our country, major changes has taken place in the situation for textbook editing, one of which is the ascending usage of illustration figures whose education values has been paid more and more attentions by editors. Illustration, a major part for textbooks, are able to trigger the interest of readers, concretize knowledge and science concept, thus have un-replicable values compared to text. The quality of illustration has become an important criteria when evaluate the quality of a textbook. Hence, how to effectively choose and design figures in textbooks is becoming a central concern from textbook editors and teachers.Taking the functionality as criteria, Professor Richard E. Mayer, the famous American education psychologist, categorized illustration figures into four classes:Decorative illustration, Representational illustration, Organizational illustration and Explanative illustration. He had researched on the textbooks in American schools, finding out most of the illustrations do not serve well for the text content around them. The results of Mayer's research and how learners develop their knowledge from the illustrations in textbook, have given us insights and guidance for the textbook editing.The purpose of this paper is to survey the situation of illustration in science textbooks from grade 3 to 6 and to learn some lessons from them. Chapter 1 introduces the intuition and significance of this research, and how it is conducted. Chapter 2 briefs basic theory concepts and related works. In Chapter 3, detailed statistics for illustration figures from science textbooks in our country has been laid out and comparisons are made in different perspectives. Analyses are given in Chapter 4, and conclusions are drawn as well, hoping to building up references and suggestions for future editing of science textbooks. Our research shows:1) Science textbooks from grade 3 to 6 attach importance to the usage of illustrations, in terms of abundance and scope.2) The kinds of illustrations vary appropriately according to different knowledge types.3) Decorative and representational illustrations are heavily used while organizational and explanative ones are less used, most of which does not serve well for the text content.4) The amount of illustration is reverse proportional to the grade level.5) The amount of organizational and explanative illustrations increase proportionally to the grade level, conforming to the developing characteristic of students'cognition.