Study On The Evolution Of Visual Representation Of Junior Middle School Chemistry Textbooks Since Reform And Opening-up

As an important auxiliary tool for teaching and learning,the construction and development of textbook s have been widely concerned.Since the reform and opening-up,China’s educational cause has made rapid progress,during this period,the construction of textbooks has also made outstanding achievements,and formed a diversified,threedimensional construction pattern.As for chemistry,it has the characteristics of understanding matter from the micro level,describing matter in symbolic form and creating matter at different levels.Such abstractness and invisibility make chemistry learning need the assistance of visual representation.The so-called visual representation refers to the visual objects that present concepts or phenomena,such as photos,pictures,images,etc.This study is based on the analysis framework of visual representation in chemistry textbooks compiled by Gkitzta et al.,using educational experiments,questionnaires,interviews,and adjusting the framework according to the arrangement characteristics of visual representation of chemistry textbooks in Chinese.Finally,an analytical framework consisting of 5 dimensions(17 subcategories in total)including representation type,representation annotation,representation title,physical connection between representation and text,and correlation between representation and text was formed.Based on the revised analytical framework,we analyzed junior high school chemistry textbooks published in 1978,1982,1987,1995,2001,2006 and 2012,and coded the selected visual representations one by one.Finally,the possible reasons for the evolution of visual representation in textbooks are analyzed from five perspectives:the change of curriculum guiding ideology,the change of learning content requirements,the change of knowledge presentation,the development of representation technology and the change of reading habits.The analysis results show that there are various representational types in junior middle school chemistry textbooks in China.Among them,the use of macroscopic representation is dominant,followed using symbolic representation,and the use of micro representation and multiple representation is less,and the proportion of micro representation and symbolic representation is decreasing,while the use of multiple representation is increasing,and mixed representation only began to appear in textbooks in the 21st century.In the dimension of representational annotation,the proportion of clear annotation increased and the proportion of missing annotation decreased,while the fuzzy representation still existed.In terms of the physical connection between representation and text,since the 1990s,there have been many representations that are not connected with the text in chemistry textbooks of junior middle schools in China.In the 21st century,nearly half of the representations are not explicitly connected with the text.In terms of the design of representational title and the correlation between representational title and text,textbooks in all periods deal with it properly.For this result,it is speculated that the change of representation type is mainly influenced by the change of curriculum guiding ideology,learning content requirements and knowledge presentation.The change of representational annotation is mainly caused by the change of curriculum guiding ideology and learning content requirement.The change of physical connection between representation and text is mainly influenced by the development of representation technology.The change of reading habits also affects the choice of visual representation in textbooks.In view of this conclusion,some suggestions on the arrangement of visual representation in textbooks are put forward in order to provide reference for the selection of visual representation in junior middle school chemistry textbooks in China.