Graphic Print in Selected Elementary Social Studies Textbooks

Graphics appear on every page of an elementary textbook. One wonders if graphic print can help students comprehend text and if some graphics are cognitively better than others are. To determine if graphic print is or is not beneficial, a mixed method analysis was conducted. The following three questions guided the study: What types of graphic print, iconic or noniconic, as described by Levie and Lentz (1982), are most prevalent in three different publishers series of social studies textbooks for second, fourth, and sixth grades? What functional categories, decorational, representational, organizational, interpretational, and transformational, as described by Levin, Anglin, and Carney (1987), of graphic print are most prevalent in the examined textbooks? What changes are present in illustrations and graphics from second to fourth and to sixth grades? The results suggest the type of graphic print is not independent of grade level; the most prevalent iconic function is representational; the most prevalent noniconic function is organizational, and in some cases as grade levels advanced more cognitively demanding iconic and noniconic functional types of graphic print were employed.