Visuals of climate change in school textbooks

Abstract

With the “pictorial turn”, the picture has gained a new significance as a medium. It is impossible to imagine a digitalized world affected by mass media without pictures. While there are several studies on the impact of pictures in the discourse on climate change in the media, there has been no analysis of the visual representation of climate change in textbooks, which remain an important teaching medium. The aim of this study is to identify the visual representations in textbooks in terms of form, image theme and motif related to the topic of climate change. The procedure is based on the method of qualitative content analysis. The results show that mainly photos, graphics and diagrams are used, whose contents differ from those of the media coverage. Besides diagrams and models, the impacts of climate change and the topic of nature are most frequently depicted. Representations of mitigation measures that would promote perceived self-efficacy are underrepresented in the textbooks studied.