Abstracts History

Η εικονογράφηση των σχολικών εγχειριδίων της ιστορίας του δημοτικού σχολείου ως ατραπός διαμόρφωσης εθνοπολιτισμικής και κοινωνικής συνείδησης: η περίπτωση του σχολικού εγχειριδίου της Ε' δημοτικού

by Eleni Kominia

The important role of the school textbook has been established in the general consciousnesses in shaping worldviews that reflect the dominant ideology openly or covertly. In a schoolbook apart from the written language, through which is reflected the sociocultural and historical views of the author, a key point is the illustration. In the same way that the author's narrative reflects his ideology in the text, so does the narrative illustration carry ideological messages of the illustrator. According to Barthes, “the image involves a “denotation” that is related to the referential function of the image and a “connotation” with ideological and aesthetic meanings referring to a certain culture of the society that the message is addressed”. This leads to the creation of a figurative language that is both representational and symbolic. For its decryption, the rules and the conventions governing its operation must be the subject of an image-centric/visual approach. However, despite the fact that the “reading” of the images contributes to the unfolding of their hidden meaning, their approach within the school is either completely ignored or remains logo-centric.Since very few studies have been caried out in this field, the subject of this dissertation is the critical visual analysis part of the pictorial material contained in the history school textbook of the Fifth Grade of Greek Primary school. In this way, highlighted the configuration of specific perception of ethnocultural and social particularity and consciousness in order to be projected and reproduced as “natural” and granted.The theoretical part of this study presents the theoretical orientations that this dissertation is based on. Since basic concepts related to the subject under consideration have been clarified, the new Interdisciplinary Integrated Curriculum Framework (DEPPS), the history school textbook, with emphasis on the structure, content, and objectives of history teaching in the context of formation of ethnocultural consciousness as well as the basic principles of 'visual grammar' are presented. The research part of this dissertation includes (a) the idiological categorization of the iconographic material and its functional use, (b) the qualitative analysis of specific images contained in the school textbook, "History of Elementary School - In the Byzantine years", based on the meta-functional realization of meaning with emphasis on the emergence of the ideology they reflect.The qualitative analysis of the iconographic material emphasizes the importance of the use of images as carriers of ideology and as pathway of shaping a framework of 'micro-social' identities of cultural and national consciousness. This makes it necessary to underline the importance of configuring students as critically thinking citizens, in order to be able to question the ideology that is displayed and not to accept it indiscriminately as natural and granted. Στη γενική συνείδηση έχει καθιερωθεί ο βαρύνων ρόλος του σχολικού εγχειριδίου στη διαμόρφωση κοσμοαντιλήψεων που…