Use (and abuse) of image in science education

Abstract

Science and its teaching have traditionally used graphic representations with different purposes and with different degrees of intensity, although what has prevailed is verbal representation (writing or oral), consisting of concepts, relationships among them and their representations (symbols and logic-mathematic language). On the other hand, present society is living a quick substitution of knowledge transmission classic media (books, reviews…) by other essentially visual (tv, internet…), which also influences on the role of educational institutions as monopolies of popular knowledge. Science Education has not been outside this situation. In this paper we intend to show the influence and didactic possibilities of image and its different formats on Formal and Informal Science Education. For it, after a theoretical revision, we will show some examples of such incidence, justifying the need of the critical integration of image in Formal Education.