Fani Stylianidou, Fiona Ormerod and Jon Ogborn
 

Abstract

In the first part, the report discusses the possible difficulties the pupils have when ‘reading’ science textbook pictures about ‘energy’. The second part looks at whether teachers are aware of these difficulties and at how they respond to them. Six documents were selected on the basis that they had some of the textual/graphical features previously identified by the project as potentially presenting difficulties to pupils. The pupils’ readings of these were investigated using a questionnaire and a follow-up interview. The teachers’ reactions were then examined using also questionnaires. The results confirm the hypothesis that the ‘reading’ of science textbook pictures is not at all trivial for pupils and conclude that teachers are in need for training which would help them both to identify and cope better with these difficulties. The analysis also suggests that the list of textual/graphical features used in this research is a good starting point for this kind of critical examination.

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