Difference between the Types of Visual Materials Preferred by Students and Those Presented in the Science Textbooks

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the visual materials presented in the science textbooks coincide with those visual materials that are preferred the most by students. After analyzing the visual materials presented in the unit “Molecular Motion and Change of State” of science textbooks for the first grade of middle school, questionnaires by teaching-learning process were made. Thereafter, students were requested to select those types of visual materials that were preferred by them by process and describe their reasons for the selection. According to the results of the survey of students’ perception, students at the high science achievement level preferred those visual materials that were presented conceptually and implicatively, while students at the low science achievement level preferred concrete and detailed visual materials. Except for the learning motivation process, the proportion of non-preferred visual materials was higher in the remaining processes and those visual materials that were presented in the science textbooks were much different from those visual materials that were preferred by students.