DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS OF NCERT SCIENCE TEXTBOOKS
Abstract
National Education Policy (2022) emphasized on developing 21st-century skills. Textbooks are a means to develop 21st-century skills among students. Due to this fact, it is necessary to analyze the content of textbooks for improving science education, this research study presents a descriptive analysis of visual representations of NCERT science textbooks. The sample consisted of all 507 visual images in NCERT Science Textbooks for classes IXth and Xth. The major findings of the study revealed that most of the visual images were conventional and iconic in nature. Augmented reality was rarely used for depicting scientific concepts in textbooks. The study also found that the visual images were properly indexed and captioned. The static pictures were used in spite of the dynamic ones for elaborating the scientific concepts. The research suggests that the visual representations were less in class Xth science textbook as compared to the class IXth science textbook, as complexity increases in concepts more visual representations should be there to increase understanding.
