Analysis of human body images in Spanish primary school textbooks

The images used in teaching, considered as external systems of representation, suppose an educational challenging because of the many difficulties students have when they faced with this type of learning material. The aim of this work is to determine to what extent the treatment that is made from the images in the selected textbooks facilitates student learning. We analyzed the images on the human body that appear in textbooks 3rd, 4th and 6th year of primary school in three Spanish publishers. We examined whether there are differences between publishers and if there is any sequencing approach using images through the school years. We analyzed number, size, and type of image, presence or absence of visual and verbal components and if there are references of the text to the image. Results show that the treatment given to the images does not help especially to overcome the usual difficulties faced by students as they do not include specific resources that could guide their interpretation. The comparison among publishers indicates that one of them provides significantly more resources for learning from images. Although rare, there are some sequencing criteria of images along the courses.