Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The objectives of this study were: to analyse and document the variety of roles of visual communication in school science texts, and in visual images in use In science classrooms, and their influences on science education, taking account of the context of the school within the larger social context and its increasing orientation to visual communication; to provide a typology of kinds and functions of visual images, in text books and in classroom practice, based both on an analysis of the images and on empirical investigation of ways in which they are used and the meanings pupils construct from them, taking account of how these interact with pupils' current conceptual understandings; to identify rules which form the grammar of visual images used in science, so as to describe their principal resources for making and combining meanings, by constructing systemic grammars analogous to those which account for the working of verbal text; to investigate methods of accessing knowledge and understanding in which visual imagery plays an essential role, thus providing better means than currently exist for assessing knowledge expressed visually.

Main Topics:

The dataset is in two parts: Part A Science lesson transcripts: 23 secondary level science lessons were video-recorded and transcribed. They cover a wide range of subjects in secondary level science. Lessons were selected which made substantial use of visual materials in the teaching. Part B Interviews with students: 11 interviews with pairs or groups were recorded and transcribed. The interviews concerned students' responses to images in textbooks, and students' responses to video-tapes of lessons in which they had taken part.

Volunteer sample

Face-to-face interview

Observation

Transcripts of verbal part of interviews and videotapes of lessons. Complete except where inaudible