Descriptive Analysis of Diagrammatic Representations of Turkish Middle School Science Textbooks

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine diagrammatic representations in middle school science textbooks based on diagrammatic typology to find out a general picture of how diagrammatic representations used in science textbooks over fifteen years. Textbooks are an important role in education as primary teaching and learning source. The sample consist of total number of twelve 6th, 7th and 8th grade science textbooks from 2002 to 2017 in Turkey. Textbooks analyzed based on content analysis method. Systematic coding and categorizing of diagrams, photos, charts, graphs, drawings and tables analyzed based on Hegarty, Carpenter and Just’s  (1991) typology and Khine and Liu’s coding scheme. Diagrams coded as Graphical Types including iconic, schematic, charts and graphs, and augmented reality; Gender Representation, Indexing, Captioning and Quality. Finding of the study showed that schematic representations is preferred compared to iconic and charts and graphs.  Male representation is highly dominant in all grades of middle school science textbooks.