visual representation journal

Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation

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Volume 102, Issue C

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Pilenet : a high-and-low pass complementary filter with multi-level feature refinement for salient object detection.

Multi-head self-attentions (MSAs) in Transformer are low-pass filters, which will tend to reduce high-frequency signals. Convolutional layers (Convs) in Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) are high-pass filters, which will tend to capture high-...

• A high-and-low pass complementary filter is used to generate encoders.
• We design an effective multi-level feature refinement unit.
• We design a multi-level feature aggregation unit with shared parameters.
• A multi-point ...

BSNet : A bilateral real-time semantic segmentation network based on multi-scale receptive fields

The rise of autonomous driving and mobile robots has drawn attention to real-time road scene segmentation. However, category confusion, incomplete segmentation and inaccurate detail contours are common issues encountered in road traffic scene ...

Learning degradation priors for reliable no-reference image quality assessment

The goal of No-Reference Image Quality Assessment (NR-IQA) is to endow computers with a human-like ability to evaluate an image’s quality without comparison to a reference. Current deep learning-based methods mainly work in the spatial domain to ...

• We propose a novel architecture involving degradation priors and semantic features for NR-IQA.
• A multi-task learning framework is proposed for NR-IQA, intergating semantic features and frequency domain degradation features.

P-NOC : Adversarial training of CAM generating networks for robust weakly supervised semantic segmentation priors

Weakly Supervised Semantic Segmentation (WSSS) techniques explore individual regularization strategies to refine Class Activation Maps (CAMs). In this work, we first analyze complementary WSSS techniques in the literature, their segmentation ...

• Complementary techniques improve segmentation effectiveness in WSSS tasks.
• GAN-style training can improve Class-Specific Adversarial Erasing (CSE) methods.
• Foreground hints devised from CAMs regularize contrastive WSSS methods.

A dual-branch residual network for inhomogeneous dehazing

Image dehazing has now gained the dominant popularity in the field of image processing, particularly in inhomogeneous scene. Recent years have witnessed great progress in handling homogeneous dehazing problems. Due to the unknown haze ...

• Our method explores a dual-branch dehazing network consisting of HFS and AFFS.
• Our method proposes RCAM to enhance the discriminative capacity.
• Our method outperforms other methods on three public datasets.

Distance-based feature repack algorithm for video coding for machines

Nowadays, the use of video data for machine (VCM) tasks has become increasingly prevalent, with deep learning and computer vision requiring large volumes of video data for object detection, object tracking, and other tasks. However, the features ...

Display Omitted

• Video data accounts for most internet traffic, video consumed by machines outnumbers video consumed by human.
• Feature compression is an effective solution for coding for Machines with advantages of high compression ratio, computational ...

A dual-branch infrared and visible image fusion network using progressive image-wise feature transfer

To achieve a fused image that contains rich texture details and prominent targets, we present a progressive dual-branch infrared and visible image fusion network called PDFusion, which incorporates the Transformer module. Initially, the proposed ...

Unknown Sample Selection and Discriminative Classifier Learning for Generalized Category Discovery

Traditional supervised techniques rely on labeled data, which are not available for unknown classes. Generalized Category Discovery (GCD) aims to categorize data into both known and unknown classes. We proposed a method, Unknown Sample Selection ...

Efficient 2D transform hardware architecture for the versatile video coding standard

As the latest generation of video coding standards, versatile video coding (VVC) introduces several new coding tools in transform coding to concentrate the energy of residual blocks. In this work, we propose a regular multiplier (RM) based ...

Efficient random-access GPU video decoding for light-field rendering

Compression method for GPU streaming of discrete light fields is proposed in this paper. Views on the scene are encoded with video codec to enable streaming in real time. Instead of using a classic scheme, all frames are encoded according to one ...

• Real-time streaming method for light field rendering.
• Solves light field issues such as excessive memory usage and slow streaming.
• GPU-accelerated approach using nowadays actively developed HW decoders.
• Ready to be used with ...

Offline writer identification approach using moment features and high-order correlation functions

For text-independent writer identification(WI) tasks, this paper proposes a novel method based on semantic codebooks and two effective feature descriptors. This method requires constructing semantic codebooks consisting of various subimages and ...

Unsupervised video summarization with adversarial graph-based attention network

Video summarization aims to select a subset of video segments that best capture the video storyline. Our study seeks to train an encoder to transform the raw frame features extracted from pre-trained CNN models into representations that embody ...

• Proposed an adversarial encoder using graph modeling and attention mechanisms.
• Introduced graph-refining to reduce model complexity while capturing video relations.
• Achieved state-of-the-art results on TVSum and SumMe datasets.

Transformer-Based adversarial network for semi-supervised face sketch synthesis

Face sketch synthesis is a technique utilized to convert real face images into artistic sketches, which holds vast potential within criminal investigation and entertainment. The existing methods usually train the generation models on the paired ...

• A semi-supervised Transformer-based face sketch synthesis method is proposed.
• An improved Transformer-based encoder module is designed to extract face features.
• A Laplacian-based detail extractor is proposed to preserve face ...

Medical image classification : Knowledge transfer via residual U-Net and vision transformer-based teacher-student model with knowledge distillation

• Proposed a knowledge distillation method that combines features and soft labels.
• Proposed a multi-layer residual and perceptual attention teacher model.
• Proposed a student model for optimizing residual skip connections.

With the widespread integration of deep learning techniques in the domain of medical image analysis, there is a prevailing consensus regarding their efficacy in handling high-dimensional and intricate medical image data. However, it is imperative ...

Pixel-wise low-light image enhancement based on metropolis theorem

Images taken in low-light conditions frequently encounter visibility problems, such as severe noise, reduced brightness, and low contrast. This paper introduces an approach to enhance low-light images using the Metropolis Theorem (MT). The method ...

AFINet : Camouflaged object detection via Attention Fusion and Interaction Network

Since the camouflaged objects share very similar colors and textures with the surroundings, there is still a great challenge in accurately locating and segmenting target objects with the varying sizes and shapes in different scenes. In this paper,...

• We propose a Attention Fusion and Interaction Network (AFINet) for COD.
• We design a MAI module to fully utilize the multi-level attention maps.
• We design a LBG module to directly fuse the global context and global details cues.

Transferable adversarial attack on image tampering localization

• A unified adversarial attack framework is designed to reveal the security of the state-of-the-art image tampering localization algorithms.
• Two effective attack methods are proposed by relying on the optimization-based and gradient-...

It is significant to evaluate the security of existing digital image tampering localization algorithms in real-world applications. In this paper, we propose an adversarial attack scheme to reveal the reliability of such deep learning-based ...

MSTG : Multi-Scale Transformer with Gradient for joint spatio-temporal enhancement

Despite the widespread availability of HDR (High Dynamic Range) display devices, the majority of video sources are still stored in SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) format, leading to an urgent need for UHD (Ultra High Definition) video ...

X-CDNet : A real-time crosswalk detector based on YOLOX

As urban traffic safety becomes increasingly important, real-time crosswalk detection is playing a critical role in the transportation field. However, existing crosswalk detection algorithms must be improved in terms of accuracy and speed. This ...

• Proposed a new basic module, RepSLK, for constructing backbone and neck networks.
• Constructed a new real-time crosswalk detection model, X-CDNet.
• Established a new crosswalk detection dataset, CD9K.

Shift-insensitive perceptual feature of quadratic sum of gradient magnitude and LoG signals for image quality assessment and image classification

• Proposing a shift-insensitive perceptual feature based on GM and LoG signals, and theoretically selecting a ratio parameter to balance them.
• Building FR-IQA models based on the proposed QGL feature maps that achieve good performance on ...

Most existing full-reference (FR) Image quality assessment (IQA) models work in the premise of that the two images should be well registered. Shifting an image would lead to an inaccurate evaluation of image quality, because small spatial shifts ...

Dual-stream mutually adaptive quality assessment for authentic distortion image

To address semantic misperception caused by distortion and accurately simulate human perceptual processes, this study proposed a method that utilised dual-stream mutually adaptive feature mapping. To extract complementary features, a dual-stream ...

Corrigendum to “Dense-sparse representation matters : A point-based method for volumetric medical image segmentation” [J. Visual Commun. Image Represent. 100 (2024) 104115]

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• Open access
• Published: 19 July 2015

The role of visual representations in scientific practices: from conceptual understanding and knowledge generation to ‘seeing’ how science works

• Maria Evagorou 1 ,
• Sibel Erduran 2 &
• Terhi Mäntylä 3  

International Journal of STEM Education volume  2 , Article number:  11 ( 2015 ) Cite this article

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The use of visual representations (i.e., photographs, diagrams, models) has been part of science, and their use makes it possible for scientists to interact with and represent complex phenomena, not observable in other ways. Despite a wealth of research in science education on visual representations, the emphasis of such research has mainly been on the conceptual understanding when using visual representations and less on visual representations as epistemic objects. In this paper, we argue that by positioning visual representations as epistemic objects of scientific practices, science education can bring a renewed focus on how visualization contributes to knowledge formation in science from the learners’ perspective.

This is a theoretical paper, and in order to argue about the role of visualization, we first present a case study, that of the discovery of the structure of DNA that highlights the epistemic components of visual information in science. The second case study focuses on Faraday’s use of the lines of magnetic force. Faraday is known of his exploratory, creative, and yet systemic way of experimenting, and the visual reasoning leading to theoretical development was an inherent part of the experimentation. Third, we trace a contemporary account from science focusing on the experimental practices and how reproducibility of experimental procedures can be reinforced through video data.

Conclusions

Our conclusions suggest that in teaching science, the emphasis in visualization should shift from cognitive understanding—using the products of science to understand the content—to engaging in the processes of visualization. Furthermore, we suggest that is it essential to design curriculum materials and learning environments that create a social and epistemic context and invite students to engage in the practice of visualization as evidence, reasoning, experimental procedure, or a means of communication and reflect on these practices. Implications for teacher education include the need for teacher professional development programs to problematize the use of visual representations as epistemic objects that are part of scientific practices.

During the last decades, research and reform documents in science education across the world have been calling for an emphasis not only on the content but also on the processes of science (Bybee 2014 ; Eurydice 2012 ; Duschl and Bybee 2014 ; Osborne 2014 ; Schwartz et al. 2012 ), in order to make science accessible to the students and enable them to understand the epistemic foundation of science. Scientific practices, part of the process of science, are the cognitive and discursive activities that are targeted in science education to develop epistemic understanding and appreciation of the nature of science (Duschl et al. 2008 ) and have been the emphasis of recent reform documents in science education across the world (Achieve 2013 ; Eurydice 2012 ). With the term scientific practices, we refer to the processes that take place during scientific discoveries and include among others: asking questions, developing and using models, engaging in arguments, and constructing and communicating explanations (National Research Council 2012 ). The emphasis on scientific practices aims to move the teaching of science from knowledge to the understanding of the processes and the epistemic aspects of science. Additionally, by placing an emphasis on engaging students in scientific practices, we aim to help students acquire scientific knowledge in meaningful contexts that resemble the reality of scientific discoveries.

Despite a wealth of research in science education on visual representations, the emphasis of such research has mainly been on the conceptual understanding when using visual representations and less on visual representations as epistemic objects. In this paper, we argue that by positioning visual representations as epistemic objects, science education can bring a renewed focus on how visualization contributes to knowledge formation in science from the learners’ perspective. Specifically, the use of visual representations (i.e., photographs, diagrams, tables, charts) has been part of science and over the years has evolved with the new technologies (i.e., from drawings to advanced digital images and three dimensional models). Visualization makes it possible for scientists to interact with complex phenomena (Richards 2003 ), and they might convey important evidence not observable in other ways. Visual representations as a tool to support cognitive understanding in science have been studied extensively (i.e., Gilbert 2010 ; Wu and Shah 2004 ). Studies in science education have explored the use of images in science textbooks (i.e., Dimopoulos et al. 2003 ; Bungum 2008 ), students’ representations or models when doing science (i.e., Gilbert et al. 2008 ; Dori et al. 2003 ; Lehrer and Schauble 2012 ; Schwarz et al. 2009 ), and students’ images of science and scientists (i.e., Chambers 1983 ). Therefore, studies in the field of science education have been using the term visualization as “the formation of an internal representation from an external representation” (Gilbert et al. 2008 , p. 4) or as a tool for conceptual understanding for students.

In this paper, we do not refer to visualization as mental image, model, or presentation only (Gilbert et al. 2008 ; Philips et al. 2010 ) but instead focus on visual representations or visualization as epistemic objects. Specifically, we refer to visualization as a process for knowledge production and growth in science. In this respect, modeling is an aspect of visualization, but what we are focusing on with visualization is not on the use of model as a tool for cognitive understanding (Gilbert 2010 ; Wu and Shah 2004 ) but the on the process of modeling as a scientific practice which includes the construction and use of models, the use of other representations, the communication in the groups with the use of the visual representation, and the appreciation of the difficulties that the science phase in this process. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to present through the history of science how visualization can be considered not only as a cognitive tool in science education but also as an epistemic object that can potentially support students to understand aspects of the nature of science.

Scientific practices and science education

According to the New Generation Science Standards (Achieve 2013 ), scientific practices refer to: asking questions and defining problems; developing and using models; planning and carrying out investigations; analyzing and interpreting data; using mathematical and computational thinking; constructing explanations and designing solutions; engaging in argument from evidence; and obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information. A significant aspect of scientific practices is that science learning is more than just about learning facts, concepts, theories, and laws. A fuller appreciation of science necessitates the understanding of the science relative to its epistemological grounding and the process that are involved in the production of knowledge (Hogan and Maglienti 2001 ; Wickman 2004 ).

The New Generation Science Standards is, among other changes, shifting away from science inquiry and towards the inclusion of scientific practices (Duschl and Bybee 2014 ; Osborne 2014 ). By comparing the abilities to do scientific inquiry (National Research Council 2000 ) with the set of scientific practices, it is evident that the latter is about engaging in the processes of doing science and experiencing in that way science in a more authentic way. Engaging in scientific practices according to Osborne ( 2014 ) “presents a more authentic picture of the endeavor that is science” (p.183) and also helps the students to develop a deeper understanding of the epistemic aspects of science. Furthermore, as Bybee ( 2014 ) argues, by engaging students in scientific practices, we involve them in an understanding of the nature of science and an understanding on the nature of scientific knowledge.

Science as a practice and scientific practices as a term emerged by the philosopher of science, Kuhn (Osborne 2014 ), refers to the processes in which the scientists engage during knowledge production and communication. The work that is followed by historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science (Latour 2011 ; Longino 2002 ; Nersessian 2008 ) revealed the scientific practices in which the scientists engage in and include among others theory development and specific ways of talking, modeling, and communicating the outcomes of science.

Visualization as an epistemic object

Schematic, pictorial symbols in the design of scientific instruments and analysis of the perceptual and functional information that is being stored in those images have been areas of investigation in philosophy of scientific experimentation (Gooding et al. 1993 ). The nature of visual perception, the relationship between thought and vision, and the role of reproducibility as a norm for experimental research form a central aspect of this domain of research in philosophy of science. For instance, Rothbart ( 1997 ) has argued that visualizations are commonplace in the theoretical sciences even if every scientific theory may not be defined by visualized models.

Visual representations (i.e., photographs, diagrams, tables, charts, models) have been used in science over the years to enable scientists to interact with complex phenomena (Richards 2003 ) and might convey important evidence not observable in other ways (Barber et al. 2006 ). Some authors (e.g., Ruivenkamp and Rip 2010 ) have argued that visualization is as a core activity of some scientific communities of practice (e.g., nanotechnology) while others (e.g., Lynch and Edgerton 1988 ) have differentiated the role of particular visualization techniques (e.g., of digital image processing in astronomy). Visualization in science includes the complex process through which scientists develop or produce imagery, schemes, and graphical representation, and therefore, what is of importance in this process is not only the result but also the methodology employed by the scientists, namely, how this result was produced. Visual representations in science may refer to objects that are believed to have some kind of material or physical existence but equally might refer to purely mental, conceptual, and abstract constructs (Pauwels 2006 ). More specifically, visual representations can be found for: (a) phenomena that are not observable with the eye (i.e., microscopic or macroscopic); (b) phenomena that do not exist as visual representations but can be translated as such (i.e., sound); and (c) in experimental settings to provide visual data representations (i.e., graphs presenting velocity of moving objects). Additionally, since science is not only about replicating reality but also about making it more understandable to people (either to the public or other scientists), visual representations are not only about reproducing the nature but also about: (a) functioning in helping solving a problem, (b) filling gaps in our knowledge, and (c) facilitating knowledge building or transfer (Lynch 2006 ).

Using or developing visual representations in the scientific practice can range from a straightforward to a complicated situation. More specifically, scientists can observe a phenomenon (i.e., mitosis) and represent it visually using a picture or diagram, which is quite straightforward. But they can also use a variety of complicated techniques (i.e., crystallography in the case of DNA studies) that are either available or need to be developed or refined in order to acquire the visual information that can be used in the process of theory development (i.e., Latour and Woolgar 1979 ). Furthermore, some visual representations need decoding, and the scientists need to learn how to read these images (i.e., radiologists); therefore, using visual representations in the process of science requires learning a new language that is specific to the medium/methods that is used (i.e., understanding an X-ray picture is different from understanding an MRI scan) and then communicating that language to other scientists and the public.

There are much intent and purposes of visual representations in scientific practices, as for example to make a diagnosis, compare, describe, and preserve for future study, verify and explore new territory, generate new data (Pauwels 2006 ), or present new methodologies. According to Latour and Woolgar ( 1979 ) and Knorr Cetina ( 1999 ), visual representations can be used either as primary data (i.e., image from a microscope). or can be used to help in concept development (i.e., models of DNA used by Watson and Crick), to uncover relationships and to make the abstract more concrete (graphs of sound waves). Therefore, visual representations and visual practices, in all forms, are an important aspect of the scientific practices in developing, clarifying, and transmitting scientific knowledge (Pauwels 2006 ).

Methods and Results: Merging Visualization and scientific practices in science

In this paper, we present three case studies that embody the working practices of scientists in an effort to present visualization as a scientific practice and present our argument about how visualization is a complex process that could include among others modeling and use of representation but is not only limited to that. The first case study explores the role of visualization in the construction of knowledge about the structure of DNA, using visuals as evidence. The second case study focuses on Faraday’s use of the lines of magnetic force and the visual reasoning leading to the theoretical development that was an inherent part of the experimentation. The third case study focuses on the current practices of scientists in the context of a peer-reviewed journal called the Journal of Visualized Experiments where the methodology is communicated through videotaped procedures. The three case studies represent the research interests of the three authors of this paper and were chosen to present how visualization as a practice can be involved in all stages of doing science, from hypothesizing and evaluating evidence (case study 1) to experimenting and reasoning (case study 2) to communicating the findings and methodology with the research community (case study 3), and represent in this way the three functions of visualization as presented by Lynch ( 2006 ). Furthermore, the last case study showcases how the development of visualization technologies has contributed to the communication of findings and methodologies in science and present in that way an aspect of current scientific practices. In all three cases, our approach is guided by the observation that the visual information is an integral part of scientific practices at the least and furthermore that they are particularly central in the scientific practices of science.

Case study 1: use visual representations as evidence in the discovery of DNA

The focus of the first case study is the discovery of the structure of DNA. The DNA was first isolated in 1869 by Friedrich Miescher, and by the late 1940s, it was known that it contained phosphate, sugar, and four nitrogen-containing chemical bases. However, no one had figured the structure of the DNA until Watson and Crick presented their model of DNA in 1953. Other than the social aspects of the discovery of the DNA, another important aspect was the role of visual evidence that led to knowledge development in the area. More specifically, by studying the personal accounts of Watson ( 1968 ) and Crick ( 1988 ) about the discovery of the structure of the DNA, the following main ideas regarding the role of visual representations in the production of knowledge can be identified: (a) The use of visual representations was an important part of knowledge growth and was often dependent upon the discovery of new technologies (i.e., better microscopes or better techniques in crystallography that would provide better visual representations as evidence of the helical structure of the DNA); and (b) Models (three-dimensional) were used as a way to represent the visual images (X-ray images) and connect them to the evidence provided by other sources to see whether the theory can be supported. Therefore, the model of DNA was built based on the combination of visual evidence and experimental data.

An example showcasing the importance of visual representations in the process of knowledge production in this case is provided by Watson, in his book The Double Helix (1968):

…since the middle of the summer Rosy [Rosalind Franklin] had had evidence for a new three-dimensional form of DNA. It occurred when the DNA 2molecules were surrounded by a large amount of water. When I asked what the pattern was like, Maurice went into the adjacent room to pick up a print of the new form they called the “B” structure. The instant I saw the picture, my mouth fell open and my pulse began to race. The pattern was unbelievably simpler than those previously obtained (A form). Moreover, the black cross of reflections which dominated the picture could arise only from a helical structure. With the A form the argument for the helix was never straightforward, and considerable ambiguity existed as to exactly which type of helical symmetry was present. With the B form however, mere inspection of its X-ray picture gave several of the vital helical parameters. (p. 167-169)

As suggested by Watson’s personal account of the discovery of the DNA, the photo taken by Rosalind Franklin (Fig.  1 ) convinced him that the DNA molecule must consist of two chains arranged in a paired helix, which resembles a spiral staircase or ladder, and on March 7, 1953, Watson and Crick finished and presented their model of the structure of DNA (Watson and Berry 2004 ; Watson 1968 ) which was based on the visual information provided by the X-ray image and their knowledge of chemistry.

X-ray chrystallography of DNA

In analyzing the visualization practice in this case study, we observe the following instances that highlight how the visual information played a role:

Asking questions and defining problems: The real world in the model of science can at some points only be observed through visual representations or representations, i.e., if we are using DNA as an example, the structure of DNA was only observable through the crystallography images produced by Rosalind Franklin in the laboratory. There was no other way to observe the structure of DNA, therefore the real world.

Analyzing and interpreting data: The images that resulted from crystallography as well as their interpretations served as the data for the scientists studying the structure of DNA.

Experimenting: The data in the form of visual information were used to predict the possible structure of the DNA.

Modeling: Based on the prediction, an actual three-dimensional model was prepared by Watson and Crick. The first model did not fit with the real world (refuted by Rosalind Franklin and her research group from King’s College) and Watson and Crick had to go through the same process again to find better visual evidence (better crystallography images) and create an improved visual model.

Example excerpts from Watson’s biography provide further evidence for how visualization practices were applied in the context of the discovery of DNA (Table  1 ).

In summary, by examining the history of the discovery of DNA, we showcased how visual data is used as scientific evidence in science, identifying in that way an aspect of the nature of science that is still unexplored in the history of science and an aspect that has been ignored in the teaching of science. Visual representations are used in many ways: as images, as models, as evidence to support or rebut a model, and as interpretations of reality.

Case study 2: applying visual reasoning in knowledge production, the example of the lines of magnetic force

The focus of this case study is on Faraday’s use of the lines of magnetic force. Faraday is known of his exploratory, creative, and yet systemic way of experimenting, and the visual reasoning leading to theoretical development was an inherent part of this experimentation (Gooding 2006 ). Faraday’s articles or notebooks do not include mathematical formulations; instead, they include images and illustrations from experimental devices and setups to the recapping of his theoretical ideas (Nersessian 2008 ). According to Gooding ( 2006 ), “Faraday’s visual method was designed not to copy apparent features of the world, but to analyse and replicate them” (2006, p. 46).

The lines of force played a central role in Faraday’s research on electricity and magnetism and in the development of his “field theory” (Faraday 1852a ; Nersessian 1984 ). Before Faraday, the experiments with iron filings around magnets were known and the term “magnetic curves” was used for the iron filing patterns and also for the geometrical constructs derived from the mathematical theory of magnetism (Gooding et al. 1993 ). However, Faraday used the lines of force for explaining his experimental observations and in constructing the theory of forces in magnetism and electricity. Examples of Faraday’s different illustrations of lines of magnetic force are given in Fig.  2 . Faraday gave the following experiment-based definition for the lines of magnetic forces:

a Iron filing pattern in case of bar magnet drawn by Faraday (Faraday 1852b , Plate IX, p. 158, Fig. 1), b Faraday’s drawing of lines of magnetic force in case of cylinder magnet, where the experimental procedure, knife blade showing the direction of lines, is combined into drawing (Faraday, 1855, vol. 1, plate 1)

A line of magnetic force may be defined as that line which is described by a very small magnetic needle, when it is so moved in either direction correspondent to its length, that the needle is constantly a tangent to the line of motion; or it is that line along which, if a transverse wire be moved in either direction, there is no tendency to the formation of any current in the wire, whilst if moved in any other direction there is such a tendency; or it is that line which coincides with the direction of the magnecrystallic axis of a crystal of bismuth, which is carried in either direction along it. The direction of these lines about and amongst magnets and electric currents, is easily represented and understood, in a general manner, by the ordinary use of iron filings. (Faraday 1852a , p. 25 (3071))

The definition describes the connection between the experiments and the visual representation of the results. Initially, the lines of force were just geometric representations, but later, Faraday treated them as physical objects (Nersessian 1984 ; Pocovi and Finlay 2002 ):

I have sometimes used the term lines of force so vaguely, as to leave the reader doubtful whether I intended it as a merely representative idea of the forces, or as the description of the path along which the power was continuously exerted. … wherever the expression line of force is taken simply to represent the disposition of forces, it shall have the fullness of that meaning; but that wherever it may seem to represent the idea of the physical mode of transmission of the force, it expresses in that respect the opinion to which I incline at present. The opinion may be erroneous, and yet all that relates or refers to the disposition of the force will remain the same. (Faraday, 1852a , p. 55-56 (3075))

He also felt that the lines of force had greater explanatory power than the dominant theory of action-at-a-distance:

Now it appears to me that these lines may be employed with great advantage to represent nature, condition, direction and comparative amount of the magnetic forces; and that in many cases they have, to the physical reasoned at least, a superiority over that method which represents the forces as concentrated in centres of action… (Faraday, 1852a , p. 26 (3074))

For giving some insight to Faraday’s visual reasoning as an epistemic practice, the following examples of Faraday’s studies of the lines of magnetic force (Faraday 1852a , 1852b ) are presented:

(a) Asking questions and defining problems: The iron filing patterns formed the empirical basis for the visual model: 2D visualization of lines of magnetic force as presented in Fig.  2 . According to Faraday, these iron filing patterns were suitable for illustrating the direction and form of the magnetic lines of force (emphasis added):

It must be well understood that these forms give no indication by their appearance of the relative strength of the magnetic force at different places, inasmuch as the appearance of the lines depends greatly upon the quantity of filings and the amount of tapping; but the direction and forms of these lines are well given, and these indicate, in a considerable degree, the direction in which the forces increase and diminish . (Faraday 1852b , p.158 (3237))

Despite being static and two dimensional on paper, the lines of magnetic force were dynamical (Nersessian 1992 , 2008 ) and three dimensional for Faraday (see Fig.  2 b). For instance, Faraday described the lines of force “expanding”, “bending,” and “being cut” (Nersessian 1992 ). In Fig.  2 b, Faraday has summarized his experiment (bar magnet and knife blade) and its results (lines of force) in one picture.

(b) Analyzing and interpreting data: The model was so powerful for Faraday that he ended up thinking them as physical objects (e.g., Nersessian 1984 ), i.e., making interpretations of the way forces act. Of course, he made a lot of experiments for showing the physical existence of the lines of force, but he did not succeed in it (Nersessian 1984 ). The following quote illuminates Faraday’s use of the lines of force in different situations:

The study of these lines has, at different times, been greatly influential in leading me to various results, which I think prove their utility as well as fertility. Thus, the law of magneto-electric induction; the earth’s inductive action; the relation of magnetism and light; diamagnetic action and its law, and magnetocrystallic action, are the cases of this kind… (Faraday 1852a , p. 55 (3174))

(c) Experimenting: In Faraday's case, he used a lot of exploratory experiments; in case of lines of magnetic force, he used, e.g., iron filings, magnetic needles, or current carrying wires (see the quote above). The magnetic field is not directly observable and the representation of lines of force was a visual model, which includes the direction, form, and magnitude of field.

(d) Modeling: There is no denying that the lines of magnetic force are visual by nature. Faraday’s views of lines of force developed gradually during the years, and he applied and developed them in different contexts such as electromagnetic, electrostatic, and magnetic induction (Nersessian 1984 ). An example of Faraday’s explanation of the effect of the wire b’s position to experiment is given in Fig.  3 . In Fig.  3 , few magnetic lines of force are drawn, and in the quote below, Faraday is explaining the effect using these magnetic lines of force (emphasis added):

Picture of an experiment with different arrangements of wires ( a , b’ , b” ), magnet, and galvanometer. Note the lines of force drawn around the magnet. (Faraday 1852a , p. 34)

It will be evident by inspection of Fig. 3 , that, however the wires are carried away, the general result will, according to the assumed principles of action, be the same; for if a be the axial wire, and b’, b”, b”’ the equatorial wire, represented in three different positions, whatever magnetic lines of force pass across the latter wire in one position, will also pass it in the other, or in any other position which can be given to it. The distance of the wire at the place of intersection with the lines of force, has been shown, by the experiments (3093.), to be unimportant. (Faraday 1852a , p. 34 (3099))

In summary, by examining the history of Faraday’s use of lines of force, we showed how visual imagery and reasoning played an important part in Faraday’s construction and representation of his “field theory”. As Gooding has stated, “many of Faraday’s sketches are far more that depictions of observation, they are tools for reasoning with and about phenomena” (2006, p. 59).

Case study 3: visualizing scientific methods, the case of a journal

The focus of the third case study is the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) , a peer-reviewed publication indexed in PubMed. The journal devoted to the publication of biological, medical, chemical, and physical research in a video format. The journal describes its history as follows:

JoVE was established as a new tool in life science publication and communication, with participation of scientists from leading research institutions. JoVE takes advantage of video technology to capture and transmit the multiple facets and intricacies of life science research. Visualization greatly facilitates the understanding and efficient reproduction of both basic and complex experimental techniques, thereby addressing two of the biggest challenges faced by today's life science research community: i) low transparency and poor reproducibility of biological experiments and ii) time and labor-intensive nature of learning new experimental techniques. ( http://www.jove.com/ )

By examining the journal content, we generate a set of categories that can be considered as indicators of relevance and significance in terms of epistemic practices of science that have relevance for science education. For example, the quote above illustrates how scientists view some norms of scientific practice including the norms of “transparency” and “reproducibility” of experimental methods and results, and how the visual format of the journal facilitates the implementation of these norms. “Reproducibility” can be considered as an epistemic criterion that sits at the heart of what counts as an experimental procedure in science:

Investigating what should be reproducible and by whom leads to different types of experimental reproducibility, which can be observed to play different roles in experimental practice. A successful application of the strategy of reproducing an experiment is an achievement that may depend on certain isiosyncratic aspects of a local situation. Yet a purely local experiment that cannot be carried out by other experimenters and in other experimental contexts will, in the end be unproductive in science. (Sarkar and Pfeifer 2006 , p.270)

We now turn to an article on “Elevated Plus Maze for Mice” that is available for free on the journal website ( http://www.jove.com/video/1088/elevated-plus-maze-for-mice ). The purpose of this experiment was to investigate anxiety levels in mice through behavioral analysis. The journal article consists of a 9-min video accompanied by text. The video illustrates the handling of the mice in soundproof location with less light, worksheets with characteristics of mice, computer software, apparatus, resources, setting up the computer software, and the video recording of mouse behavior on the computer. The authors describe the apparatus that is used in the experiment and state how procedural differences exist between research groups that lead to difficulties in the interpretation of results:

The apparatus consists of open arms and closed arms, crossed in the middle perpendicularly to each other, and a center area. Mice are given access to all of the arms and are allowed to move freely between them. The number of entries into the open arms and the time spent in the open arms are used as indices of open space-induced anxiety in mice. Unfortunately, the procedural differences that exist between laboratories make it difficult to duplicate and compare results among laboratories.

The authors’ emphasis on the particularity of procedural context echoes in the observations of some philosophers of science:

It is not just the knowledge of experimental objects and phenomena but also their actual existence and occurrence that prove to be dependent on specific, productive interventions by the experimenters” (Sarkar and Pfeifer 2006 , pp. 270-271)

The inclusion of a video of the experimental procedure specifies what the apparatus looks like (Fig.  4 ) and how the behavior of the mice is captured through video recording that feeds into a computer (Fig.  5 ). Subsequently, a computer software which captures different variables such as the distance traveled, the number of entries, and the time spent on each arm of the apparatus. Here, there is visual information at different levels of representation ranging from reconfiguration of raw video data to representations that analyze the data around the variables in question (Fig.  6 ). The practice of levels of visual representations is not particular to the biological sciences. For instance, they are commonplace in nanotechnological practices:

Visual illustration of apparatus

Video processing of experimental set-up

Computer software for video input and variable recording

In the visualization processes, instruments are needed that can register the nanoscale and provide raw data, which needs to be transformed into images. Some Imaging Techniques have software incorporated already where this transformation automatically takes place, providing raw images. Raw data must be translated through the use of Graphic Software and software is also used for the further manipulation of images to highlight what is of interest to capture the (inferred) phenomena -- and to capture the reader. There are two levels of choice: Scientists have to choose which imaging technique and embedded software to use for the job at hand, and they will then have to follow the structure of the software. Within such software, there are explicit choices for the scientists, e.g. about colour coding, and ways of sharpening images. (Ruivenkamp and Rip 2010 , pp.14–15)

On the text that accompanies the video, the authors highlight the role of visualization in their experiment:

Visualization of the protocol will promote better understanding of the details of the entire experimental procedure, allowing for standardization of the protocols used in different laboratories and comparisons of the behavioral phenotypes of various strains of mutant mice assessed using this test.

The software that takes the video data and transforms it into various representations allows the researchers to collect data on mouse behavior more reliably. For instance, the distance traveled across the arms of the apparatus or the time spent on each arm would have been difficult to observe and record precisely. A further aspect to note is how the visualization of the experiment facilitates control of bias. The authors illustrate how the olfactory bias between experimental procedures carried on mice in sequence is avoided by cleaning the equipment.

Our discussion highlights the role of visualization in science, particularly with respect to presenting visualization as part of the scientific practices. We have used case studies from the history of science highlighting a scientist’s account of how visualization played a role in the discovery of DNA and the magnetic field and from a contemporary illustration of a science journal’s practices in incorporating visualization as a way to communicate new findings and methodologies. Our implicit aim in drawing from these case studies was the need to align science education with scientific practices, particularly in terms of how visual representations, stable or dynamic, can engage students in the processes of science and not only to be used as tools for cognitive development in science. Our approach was guided by the notion of “knowledge-as-practice” as advanced by Knorr Cetina ( 1999 ) who studied scientists and characterized their knowledge as practice, a characterization which shifts focus away from ideas inside scientists’ minds to practices that are cultural and deeply contextualized within fields of science. She suggests that people working together can be examined as epistemic cultures whose collective knowledge exists as practice.

It is important to stress, however, that visual representations are not used in isolation, but are supported by other types of evidence as well, or other theories (i.e., in order to understand the helical form of DNA, or the structure, chemistry knowledge was needed). More importantly, this finding can also have implications when teaching science as argument (e.g., Erduran and Jimenez-Aleixandre 2008 ), since the verbal evidence used in the science classroom to maintain an argument could be supported by visual evidence (either a model, representation, image, graph, etc.). For example, in a group of students discussing the outcomes of an introduced species in an ecosystem, pictures of the species and the ecosystem over time, and videos showing the changes in the ecosystem, and the special characteristics of the different species could serve as visual evidence to help the students support their arguments (Evagorou et al. 2012 ). Therefore, an important implication for the teaching of science is the use of visual representations as evidence in the science curriculum as part of knowledge production. Even though studies in the area of science education have focused on the use of models and modeling as a way to support students in the learning of science (Dori et al. 2003 ; Lehrer and Schauble 2012 ; Mendonça and Justi 2013 ; Papaevripidou et al. 2007 ) or on the use of images (i.e., Korfiatis et al. 2003 ), with the term using visuals as evidence, we refer to the collection of all forms of visuals and the processes involved.

Another aspect that was identified through the case studies is that of the visual reasoning (an integral part of Faraday’s investigations). Both the verbalization and visualization were part of the process of generating new knowledge (Gooding 2006 ). Even today, most of the textbooks use the lines of force (or just field lines) as a geometrical representation of field, and the number of field lines is connected to the quantity of flux. Often, the textbooks use the same kind of visual imagery than in what is used by scientists. However, when using images, only certain aspects or features of the phenomena or data are captured or highlighted, and often in tacit ways. Especially in textbooks, the process of producing the image is not presented and instead only the product—image—is left. This could easily lead to an idea of images (i.e., photos, graphs, visual model) being just representations of knowledge and, in the worse case, misinterpreted representations of knowledge as the results of Pocovi and Finlay ( 2002 ) in case of electric field lines show. In order to avoid this, the teachers should be able to explain how the images are produced (what features of phenomena or data the images captures, on what ground the features are chosen to that image, and what features are omitted); in this way, the role of visualization in knowledge production can be made “visible” to students by engaging them in the process of visualization.

The implication of these norms for science teaching and learning is numerous. The classroom contexts can model the generation, sharing and evaluation of evidence, and experimental procedures carried out by students, thereby promoting not only some contemporary cultural norms in scientific practice but also enabling the learning of criteria, standards, and heuristics that scientists use in making decisions on scientific methods. As we have demonstrated with the three case studies, visual representations are part of the process of knowledge growth and communication in science, as demonstrated with two examples from the history of science and an example from current scientific practices. Additionally, visual information, especially with the use of technology is a part of students’ everyday lives. Therefore, we suggest making use of students’ knowledge and technological skills (i.e., how to produce their own videos showing their experimental method or how to identify or provide appropriate visual evidence for a given topic), in order to teach them the aspects of the nature of science that are often neglected both in the history of science and the design of curriculum. Specifically, what we suggest in this paper is that students should actively engage in visualization processes in order to appreciate the diverse nature of doing science and engage in authentic scientific practices.

However, as a word of caution, we need to distinguish the products and processes involved in visualization practices in science:

If one considers scientific representations and the ways in which they can foster or thwart our understanding, it is clear that a mere object approach, which would devote all attention to the representation as a free-standing product of scientific labor, is inadequate. What is needed is a process approach: each visual representation should be linked with its context of production (Pauwels 2006 , p.21).

The aforementioned suggests that the emphasis in visualization should shift from cognitive understanding—using the products of science to understand the content—to engaging in the processes of visualization. Therefore, an implication for the teaching of science includes designing curriculum materials and learning environments that create a social and epistemic context and invite students to engage in the practice of visualization as evidence, reasoning, experimental procedure, or a means of communication (as presented in the three case studies) and reflect on these practices (Ryu et al. 2015 ).

Finally, a question that arises from including visualization in science education, as well as from including scientific practices in science education is whether teachers themselves are prepared to include them as part of their teaching (Bybee 2014 ). Teacher preparation programs and teacher education have been critiqued, studied, and rethought since the time they emerged (Cochran-Smith 2004 ). Despite the years of history in teacher training and teacher education, the debate about initial teacher training and its content still pertains in our community and in policy circles (Cochran-Smith 2004 ; Conway et al. 2009 ). In the last decades, the debate has shifted from a behavioral view of learning and teaching to a learning problem—focusing on that way not only on teachers’ knowledge, skills, and beliefs but also on making the connection of the aforementioned with how and if pupils learn (Cochran-Smith 2004 ). The Science Education in Europe report recommended that “Good quality teachers, with up-to-date knowledge and skills, are the foundation of any system of formal science education” (Osborne and Dillon 2008 , p.9).

However, questions such as what should be the emphasis on pre-service and in-service science teacher training, especially with the new emphasis on scientific practices, still remain unanswered. As Bybee ( 2014 ) argues, starting from the new emphasis on scientific practices in the NGSS, we should consider teacher preparation programs “that would provide undergraduates opportunities to learn the science content and practices in contexts that would be aligned with their future work as teachers” (p.218). Therefore, engaging pre- and in-service teachers in visualization as a scientific practice should be one of the purposes of teacher preparation programs.

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ME carried out the introductory literature review, the analysis of the first case study, and drafted the manuscript. SE carried out the analysis of the third case study and contributed towards the “Conclusions” section of the manuscript. TM carried out the second case study. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Evagorou, M., Erduran, S. & Mäntylä, T. The role of visual representations in scientific practices: from conceptual understanding and knowledge generation to ‘seeing’ how science works. IJ STEM Ed 2 , 11 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-015-0024-x

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Volume 9, 2023, review article, open access, visual representations: insights from neural decoding.

• Amanda K. Robinson 1 , Genevieve L. Quek 2 , and Thomas A. Carlson 3
• View Affiliations Hide Affiliations Affiliations: 1 Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia; email: [email protected] 2 The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia; email: [email protected] 3 School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia; email: [email protected]
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Patterns of brain activity contain meaningful information about the perceived world. Recent decades have welcomed a new era in neural analyses, with computational techniques from machine learning applied to neural data to decode information represented in the brain. In this article, we review how decoding approaches have advanced our understanding of visual representations and discuss efforts to characterize both the complexity and the behavioral relevance of these representations. We outline the current consensus regarding the spatiotemporal structure of visual representations and review recent findings that suggest that visual representations are at once robust to perturbations, yet sensitive to different mental states. Beyond representations of the physical world, recent decoding work has shone a light on how the brain instantiates internally generated states, for example, during imagery and prediction. Going forward, decoding has remarkable potential to assess the functional relevance of visual representations for human behavior, reveal how representations change across development and during aging, and uncover their presentation in various mental disorders.

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Effective Use of Visual Representation in Research and Teaching within Higher Education

By charles buckley 1 and chrissi nerantzi 2.

1 University of Liverpool 2 Manchester Metropolitan University

Cite as: Buckley, C, A. and Nerantzi, C. (2020), "Effective Use of Visual Representation in Research and Teaching within Higher Education", International Journal of Management and Applied Research , Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 196-214. https://doi.org/10.18646/2056.73.20-014 | Download PDF | Cited by

There are now increasing opportunities for educators to use creative forms of visual representation in their professional practice. Despite the potential for increasing researcher and teacher understanding and student engagement and learning through the proliferation of visual material, the rationale and deliberate planning of using images remains relatively unexplored. The potential benefits to learners through the incorporation of visual representation on its own or with text are well-documented although the ways in which it can be used effectively is less well-established. This paper provides an introduction to some of the research into using visual representation within researching and teaching and learning within higher education. It draws on examples from the authors’ own practice to provide insights into a selection of ways in which visual representation might be used in various ways such as generative/analytical techniques and communicative tools. The authors provide two examples of visualised frameworks and models that have been developed and used in the context of academic development; the use of simple relationship diagrams in learning and teaching and dissemination of practice; the use of diagrams to explain complex phenomenon and an example of using images juxtaposed with diagrams and text to present a case for professional teaching recognition.

1. Introduction

Visual communication has become an integral part of everyday life yet this is not mirrored in higher education practices within learning and teaching settings as many classrooms still heavily focus on traditional oral and written instruction (Daniels, 2018). The use of various types of images has been increasing, especially since the incorporation of digital technology, social media and open practices in Higher Education in the UK and more widely. However, the benefits, challenges and opportunities for incorporating such images need clarification. Staffs with teaching responsibilities are increasingly interested in incorporating visual representation into their practices to create stimulating learning experiences for learners in face-to-face, blended and online settings. Presentational software such as PowerPoint, which is a commonly used slideware, allows for the incorporation of images although critics argue that such these are sometimes only used for decoration (Gabriel, 2008) rather than being used in creative ways to enhance learning. Hallewell and Lackovic (2017) for example, explored the ways in which 145 photographs used in PowerPoint presentations were used in 16 UK universities for undergraduate Psychology lectures and found that only 33% were referred to explicitly with the majority representing a case of ‘unprobed representations’, that is, the photograph and its meaning were not explicitly referenced. Furthermore, Carpenter, Witherby and Tauber (2020) argue that students have a tendency to over-endorse the effectiveness of images even when they are only used for decorative purposes leading to them thinking they have learned more than they actually have. Visual aids can enhance learning when they provide additional explanatory information that is relevant to the text (Carney and Levin, 2002).

There has been a growing interest in using visual representation in teaching and work such as that of Mayer (2014) on Multimedia learning offers some guiding principles such as the various ways in which words and pictures can be used to enhance learning as does Jewitt, Bezemer and O’ Halloran (2012) approach to multimedia model of learning using digital technologies. Mayer (2014) proposed the following principles for good practice in the use of multimodal approaches:

• Multimedia principle -- It is better to use both words and pictures rather than just words;
• Contiguity principle -- Words and pictures should be presented at the same time, rather than successively;
• Modality principle -- When associated with an animation, words should be presented orally rather than in print form on the screen;
• Redundancy principle -- The simultaneous verbal and visual presentation of words is to be avoided;
• Personalisation principle -- Words are better presented in a conversational style rather than a formal, didactic, style;
• Interactivity principle -- Learners should be able to control the rate at which the presentation is made;
• Signalling principle -- Key steps in a narrative should be verbally signalled.

The influential theory of Clark and Pavio (1991), the dual-coding theory, has also gained wide acceptance and suggests that it is easier to understand something when we combine verbal and non-verbal elements. The value of the dual-coding approach is that, by providing a description of what happens during learning, it enables us to explain, to some extent causally, what happens in the brain. The activity in the brain is ‘visualisation’ and it operates on models. The implications of this are obvious for teaching in most educational settings including university, especially with an ever- growing interest in enhancing learner experiences.

The presence of visual elements in learning and teaching is increasing as the integration of images and visual presentations with text in textbooks, instructional manuals, classroom presentations, and computer interfaces broadens (Kleinman and Dwyer, 1999). Visual information plays a fundamental role in our understanding, more than any other form of information (Colin, 2012). Colin (2012: 2) defines visualisation as “a graphical representation of data or concepts.” Presenting data, concepts and outputs through a visualisation helps us communicate more effectively complex and often large amounts of information or concepts and identify patterns. It can make information more accessible and visual metaphors can evolve familiar text into something more extraordinary and engaging. Visualisation helps make sense of data that may have seemed previously unintelligible (Stokes, 2001). In addition to this, images evoke an emotional dimension. Harper (2002) argues that, as a species, we began with pictures and progressed to the word, therefore, images can evoke deeper elements of human consciousness. This reflective article explores the authors’ experiences of using various forms of visual representation in their research, academic practice and learning and teaching.

2. Visual representation in the process of learning and teaching

Visual representation has great potential to enhance learning and teaching throughout the many stages involved from researching pedagogical practice, scholarship, linking research and teaching, planning and curriculum development through to presentation and evaluation amongst many others. Curricula should draw on research to stay fresh and can involve the teacher’s own disciplinary and pedagogical research. Growing numbers of academics across disciplines are conducting research in their teaching (Cousin, 2009). The UK Professional Standards Framework (2011) emphasises the importance of using evidence-based approaches and the outcomes from research, scholarship and continuing professional development. Whilst images can arguably provide a visual enhancement to text heavy forms of communication, they can also convey meanings and impact emotions. In addition, images can enhance the learning experience and provide for a more inclusive approach to learning and teaching. The creation of suitable visual materials helps the author to structure and make sense of their own thinking. The process helps “embed representations, using graphical and textual semiotic conventions of their creator’s understanding of a given issue” (diSessa, 2002: 1).

3. Examples

3.1. visualisation of concepts and models.

In the context of learning and teaching in higher education and education more generally, conceptual and empirical pedagogical frameworks and models are evidence-based outputs that are often not just described using written language but also visual. The visualisation of such frameworks and models, often in the form of diagrams, can play an important role in explaining and illuminating key features, connections and patterns that have been identified through research. They can aid the design, implementation and evaluation of specific learning and teaching strategies and become valuable tools during curriculum design processes, including conversation and professional discussions. Other frameworks and models are directly used during the learning process to support specific teaching methods.

In the following sections two examples of visualised frameworks and models that have been developed and used in the context of academic development are reported together with further supporting visualisations related to these:

In 2012, the openly licensed course Flexible, Distance and Online Learning (FDOL) was developed out of a PGCert in Academic Practice module at the University of Salford by Chrissi Nerantzi in collaboration with Lars Uhlin, a colleague academic developer from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden to bring together colleagues from different institutions to develop their practice around the themes of the course in a supportive and collaborative learning environment. It was offered for the first time in 2013 and then again twice in 2014 as an informal cross-institutional collaboration among colleagues in these institutions with facilitators and participants from different parts of the world and between 80 and 100 registered participants in each iteration (Nerantzi, 2014).

Problem-Based Learning (PBL), developed in the 1960s at McMaster University in Canada, first for Medical Education (Barrows and Tamblyn, 1980) was selected by the course designers as the underpinning learning and teaching approach to foster inquiry within small groups (8-9 individuals initially) for those who expressed an interest to engage in this way (Figure 1).

The majority of all registered learners participated in groups (Nerantzi, 2014). PBL is a structured approach to inquiry which normally utilises a PBL model. Existing models that were reviewed by the course designers felt too complicated (Nerantzi, 2014). As they felt that something simpler would work better in an online and open environment, they decided to create their own based on the fundamentals of PBL and Mills’ (2006) 5-step model. This is how FISh was born (Nerantzi and Uhlin, 2012).

FISh, is a three-step PBL model that aided PBL group members and their facilitators in FDOL to engage in inquiry in a systematic way based on specific learning scenarios that where either provided or contributed by the groups. This PBL model and its three steps were accompanied by a set of questions that guided PBL group members and facilitators during the learning process. These are:

Step 1: Focus

• What do I/we see?
• How do I/we understand what we see?
• What do I/we need to find out more about?
• Specify learning issues/intended learning outcomes!

Step 2: Investigate

• How and where am I/are we going to find answers?
• What will I do/Who will do what and by when?
• What main findings and solutions do I/we propose?

Step 3: Share

• How am I/are we going to present my/our findings?
• What do I/we want to share with the community?
• How can I/we provide feedback to others?
• What reflections do I have about my learning (and working with others)?

The FISh model is simple and memorable. What makes it memorable is perhaps the name itself. That was intentional. The acronym FISh consists of letters representing the 3 stages of the PBL model: Focus – Investigate – Share. Using FISh as the name of the model, the visualisation happens almost automatically as we think about the word “fish” (Figure 2 depicts the original design). Therefore, one could claim that the FISh model may be a metaphor. FISh has become the model (Geary, 2012). The use of FISh helps us perhaps remember the concept and pattern behind it, the pattern of the PBL process, in a way that perhaps just worlds would not be able to if the designers had selected other words and phrases to characterise the three steps of the model that didn’t create that mental image in our minds.

Later, the hand drawn FISh image was replaced with the following (Figure 3).

The idea behind it was not just to use it as a visual metaphor of the PBL model itself and the three steps but also to provide a worksheet that could be used to capture ideas by members of the group linked to a specific PBL activity, in digital format or as a print-out that could then inform their discussions and help them take decisions and move forward. Participant F5 noted for example,

“I love the COOL FISh illustration. I think that's great. But then I know that I'm a very visual person. My background's graphic design, I like visual metaphor. So I really buy into that. You don't need to be persuaded to buy into that, you know. But it did get me thinking about things in a slightly different way. And it's something that I tried as well, you know, using the visual metaphor idea that you were using.” (Nerantzi, 2017: 173)

The FISh model helped the FDOL course designers provide a simple and memorable PBL model that would be easy to use for the PBL activities and also helped learners who were academics and other professionals teaching in higher education to reflect on their own practice and potentially adopt similar more visual approaches in their own practice with their students.

A phenomenographic study into collaborative open learning in two open cross-institutional courses (FDOL and #creativeHE) let to the development of the cross-boundary collaborative open learning framework which has been developed to help practitioners in curriculum development, planning and evaluation activities especially linked to collaborative learning (Nerantzi, 2017; Nerantzi, 2018). The FDOL course mentioned in the previous section was one of the two cases of this study in which the collective lived collaborative learning experience and its qualitatively different variations was explored (Marton, 1981). The analysis led to the construction of specific categories of description their variations as well as the outcome space, the final output of a phenomenographic study, which depicts the logical relationships among the categories of descriptions in a visual way (Marton, 1981). See Figure 4.

The discussion of the phenomenographic findings led to the development of the cross-boundary collaborative open learning framework. It consists of the following three dimensions. It is presented below (Figure 5) as it was reported for the first time in the doctoral thesis.

While in Figure 5, the dimensions of the framework have been captured and the key characteristics are communicated, I felt that there was a need to further work on its visualisation to show the relationships among the dimensions with greater clarity. The above separation of the dimensions could perhaps be interpreted as a disconnect, if seen in isolation without the accompanying text. Therefore, in a subsequent publication about the framework (Figure 6), I decided to design and share a more integrated visualisation of the framework. The aim was to illuminate with greater clarity the relationships between the three dimensions and how they influence each other. Moving away from a table format towards a circular representation and using colour to highlight the inter-relationship between the two identified learning engagement patterns and learning needs makes, I feel, the framework more useful a standalone resource and guide during curriculum design and course evaluation activities.

3.2. The use of diagrams to make sense of complex situations and concepts

Diagrams are sense making representations of complex situations although their use in teaching and learning should bear some relation to use within related professional practice. Effective learning and teaching draws on relevant research and scholarship. The range of sub-forms of diagrams is extensive and only a few examples are given in this paper. Through ongoing research experimentation and evaluation of teaching practice, lecturers can evolve and adapt their approaches to enhance the student experience. Visual representation can provide an invaluable tool at all stages of research into teaching. Diagrams, pictures, images, photographs, conceptual maps, matrices, tables and charts not only serve as visual representations of what is being discovered through analysis but also as generative/analytical techniques and communicative tools. Banks and Zeitlan (2015) explain that the distinction between text and image which can be found in textbooks using illustrations is not absolute. There are times, they argue, when the strict linearity of language is insufficient to convey information and visual arrangements of the language need to be considered. Tables and lists are a midway point between the linear flow of language and open-endedness of photographs or picture whereas various types of diagrams and infographics lie nearer to the pure image where text acts as labels although the frame that holds these elements together is less predictable than scientific graphs.

Simple relationship diagrams using Microsoft SmartArt graphics is an easy way of demonstrating the relationships between complex and overlapping concepts. In this instance, as simple relationship diagram (Figure 7) used in a webinar presentation captures the interrelatedness of key criteria, that of evidencing Reach, Value and Impact, in developing an Advance HE National Teaching Fellowship claim. Where Reach is the scale of influence (department, faculty, institution, national, global). Value is the benefit derived for students and staff and Impact is the difference that has been made to policy, practice and/or student outcomes. To give coherence to the claim, it is recommended that the writer identifies a ‘golden thread’ which permeates the narrative across the whole claim.

The authors have also used relationship diagrams in other publications, e.g., in a book chapter on using technology to enhance learning and teaching (Buckley, Nerantzi and Spiers, 2017), the diagram was used to demonstrate clearly to the reader the three dimensions of technology-supported practice as defined by the authors of this chapter (see Figure 8).

The construction of diagrams requires that the creator has a certain level of understanding. Generating diagrams from thoughts or text has many potential benefits and the linking of concepts through the creation of a map requires higher levels of thinking and processing. The amalgamation of text and drawings can act as a powerful tool for the dissemination of complex ideas to critical audiences, but that the use of diagrams still seems to be an area of under-explored potential for the development of theory (Buckley and Waring, 2013).

The important links between research and teaching have received increasing attention in higher education. Healey’s (2004) representation of the research-teaching nexus is used widely and acts as a powerful reflective tool for teachers to think about their own practice. A curriculum which draws on the lecturer’s own discipline or pedagogic research can give the student a connection with the research process and connect with the tutor. The following example draws on the author’s own experience of using diagrams and drawings in research leading to a research-informed approach with students. In the second example the author shows how, following mind-mapping, images and text can be juxtaposed with diagrams and text to present a case for professional recognition through fellowship with Advance HE. The examples are supported with visual representations from the author.

Teaching modules on children’s health and physical activity within Sports Science as an academic discipline effectively requires encouraging students to gain insights into the importance of recognising the complexities associated with investigating children’s social worlds. Incorporating diagrams from longitudinal studies the author was able to provide a visual map of the ways in which children perceive sport and physical education (Buckley and Waring, 2013). The diagram below (Figure 9), although rich in text, acts as a powerful reflective tool to show the relationships between codes, themes and emergent categories. This also acts as a useful discussion for emphasising some of the processes associated with different stages of the process of collecting, analysing and interpreting qualitative data. In addition, it can act as a structured stimulus for discussions with co-researchers or critical friends. In research, diagrams helps to show the ways in which categories relate to each other and the rela¬tionship with theoretical codes.

The researcher used the Draw and Write technique (Wetton and McWhirter, 1998) with children interviewed as part of the research. Young Children are more used to visual and written techniques at school, and there should be more attempts to tap into their interests. The advantage of using drawing with children is that it can be creative and fun, and can encourage children to be more actively involved in the research. In addition, the drawings can provide a stimulus for discussion to encourage a more interactive atmosphere in focus group interview situations. In this way, drawings can provide a powerful tool when researching with young children where text or comprehension might be a challenge. The use of drawing gives children time to think about what they wish to portray and can provide a break for younger children who typically have limited concentration spans compared with adults.

Diagrams can be used at various stages of the research process as effective instruments of thought, for organising thinking, looking for relationships in emergent themes and illustrating the ways in which the researcher thinks about the data. Diagrams facilitate both the development and presentation of the researcher’s emerging interpretations or theories and are able to convey meaning in a variety of ways, which is not possible using text alone (Crilly et al., 2006). These diagrams provide an indication of ways in which graphic representation can be used to create a visual map that enables readers to digest key aspects of a sophisticated analysis. They represent emergent theories and can be structured as types of layered diagrams and provide multiple windows illuminating various stages of the research. During the final stages of the study, the Core category diagram (Figure 10) was created to provide a visual representation of the main findings within the Identity Profile continuum. This strategy of generating a diagram is useful for encapsulating the main findings from the research and being able to share these through dissemination at conferences as well as sharing the process with students whilst teaching modules on children’s health in university.

There has been a proliferation of software tools to allow for digital visual representation of thoughts and ideas during the process of constructing and collating complex idea. Mind maps, also referred to as concept maps or spider diagrams can assist in helping the creator to see connections and provide an overview of key points. They can also be a useful tool for revision: for example, MindMeister ; miro ; Stormboard ; InVision , and Cmap mind maps. These creative planning devices are not new to education and whilst the end product as a material artefact can be useful in communication of ideas, there is pedagogical value in their use as uncovering and organising thoughts, improving creativity and providing an alternative to linear thought processing. As Kinchin (2017: 9) states:

The externalisation of ideas as a concept map allows the developing understanding to be manipulated by the learner without placing impossible demands on short-term memory, and also allows the developing understanding to be shared for peer review and evaluation.

The UK Professional Standards Framework (2011) is now used in many countries as a mechanism for universities to accredit courses which provide a route to professional recognition to achieve a relevant category of fellowship with Advance HE. There has been little scope for colleagues who wish to incorporate various forms of visual representation into their claims and this remains the case for people who apply directly to Advance HE. There is institutional variation in the scope for applicants to incorporate pictures, diagrams, drawings and other forms of visual representation.

In the author’s application to a university for Principal Fellowship claimants were encouraged to think about more flexible approaches to representing their practice and mapping their experience to the PSF. The author began by generating hand-drawn sketches to map experience against the required criteria from the Descriptors in the UKPSF. This then provided a useful artefact for discussion and further development with a mentor. My own application included a PowerPoint slide which was reproduced as an A0 (84.1 x 118.9 cms).

Figure 11 included images and photographs (some of which have been altered for Copyright purposes. The advantage of this type of visual representation lies in that it allows the reviewers to see the clear relationships between the various Descriptors which embody the criteria for Principal Fellowship and the projects and experience covered by the person making the claim.

4. Concluding thoughts

Relationships between concepts, and their contexts, can be more easily and quickly understood using diagrams rather than in textual form (Lowe, 2004). It is claimed people with normal perceptual abilities are predominantly visual (Few, 2015). Lecturers have a responsibility to carefully consider lecture design, to harness visual tools throughout their professional practice. This can lead to a more effective use of increasing volumes of data and visual resources for learning and teaching, as well as support enhanced understanding amongst students and colleagues.

As the examples illustrate, the authors of this paper incorporate visual representation as an integral aspect of their practice. There are a plethora of ways that visual representation can be used in the process in making sense of data and theoretical frameworks; providing prompts for discussion with interviewees, allowing for alternative forms of expression amongst respondents in focus group interviews and visual dissemination of complex findings from projects.

Being competent in the analysis and interpretation of words and numbers is not sufficient in a society dominated by visual images and must be supplemented. Eilam (2012) has argued that information presented to students, including visual representations, needs to be accompanied with suitable teacher critique and guidance for students to develop their visual literacy. The exponential growth of available software and images for use in research, researching teaching and learning and teaching practices has not been paralleled with research into their effective and critical use. As Stokes (2001) suggests, the use of visuals in education, although consistently shown to aid in learning, must be carefully planned. There is a need for more research to gain insights into the ways in which lecturers’ and students’ attitudes, opinions and knowledge can be enhanced through various forms of visual representation to guide future practice.

5. References

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Creating visual explanations improves learning

Eliza bobek.

1 University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA USA

Barbara Tversky

2 Stanford University, Columbia University Teachers College, New York, NY USA

Associated Data

Many topics in science are notoriously difficult for students to learn. Mechanisms and processes outside student experience present particular challenges. While instruction typically involves visualizations, students usually explain in words. Because visual explanations can show parts and processes of complex systems directly, creating them should have benefits beyond creating verbal explanations. We compared learning from creating visual or verbal explanations for two STEM domains, a mechanical system (bicycle pump) and a chemical system (bonding). Both kinds of explanations were analyzed for content and learning assess by a post-test. For the mechanical system, creating a visual explanation increased understanding particularly for participants of low spatial ability. For the chemical system, creating both visual and verbal explanations improved learning without new teaching. Creating a visual explanation was superior and benefitted participants of both high and low spatial ability. Visual explanations often included crucial yet invisible features. The greater effectiveness of visual explanations appears attributable to the checks they provide for completeness and coherence as well as to their roles as platforms for inference. The benefits should generalize to other domains like the social sciences, history, and archeology where important information can be visualized. Together, the findings provide support for the use of learner-generated visual explanations as a powerful learning tool.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s41235-016-0031-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Significance

Uncovering cognitive principles for effective teaching and learning is a central application of cognitive psychology. Here we show: (1) creating explanations of STEM phenomena improves learning without additional teaching; and (2) creating visual explanations is superior to creating verbal ones. There are several notable differences between visual and verbal explanations; visual explanations map thought more directly than words and provide checks for completeness and coherence as well as a platform for inference, notably from structure to process. Extensions of the technique to other domains should be possible. Creating visual explanations is likely to enhance students’ spatial thinking skills, skills that are increasingly needed in the contemporary and future world.

Dynamic systems such as those in science and engineering, but also in history, politics, and other domains, are notoriously difficult to learn (e.g. Chi, DeLeeuw, Chiu, & Lavancher, 1994 ; Hmelo-Silver & Pfeffer, 2004 ; Johnstone, 1991 ; Perkins & Grotzer, 2005 ). Mechanisms, processes, and behavior of complex systems present particular challenges. Learners must master not only the individual components of the system or process (structure) but also the interactions and mechanisms (function), which may be complex and frequently invisible. If the phenomena are macroscopic, sub-microscopic, or abstract, there is an additional level of difficulty. Although the teaching of STEM phenomena typically relies on visualizations, such as pictures, graphs, and diagrams, learning is typically revealed in words, both spoken and written. Visualizations have many advantages over verbal explanations for teaching; can creating visual explanations promote learning?

Learning from visual representations in STEM

Given the inherent challenges in teaching and learning complex or invisible processes in science, educators have developed ways of representing these processes to enable and enhance student understanding. External visual representations, including diagrams, photographs, illustrations, flow charts, and graphs, are often used in science to both illustrate and explain concepts (e.g., Hegarty, Carpenter, & Just, 1990 ; Mayer, 1989 ). Visualizations can directly represent many structural and behavioral properties. They also help to draw inferences (Larkin & Simon, 1987 ), find routes in maps (Levine, 1982 ), spot trends in graphs (Kessell & Tversky, 2011 ; Zacks & Tversky, 1999 ), imagine traffic flow or seasonal changes in light from architectural sketches (e.g. Tversky & Suwa, 2009 ), and determine the consequences of movements of gears and pulleys in mechanical systems (e.g. Hegarty & Just, 1993 ; Hegarty, Kriz, & Cate, 2003 ). The use of visual elements such as arrows is another benefit to learning with visualizations. Arrows are widely produced and comprehended as representing a range of kinds of forces as well as changes over time (e.g. Heiser & Tversky, 2002 ; Tversky, Heiser, MacKenzie, Lozano, & Morrison, 2007 ). Visualizations are thus readily able to depict the parts and configurations of systems; presenting the same content via language may be more difficult. Although words can describe spatial properties, because the correspondences of meaning to language are purely symbolic, comprehension and construction of mental representations from descriptions is far more effortful and error prone (e.g. Glenberg & Langston, 1992 ; Hegarty & Just, 1993 ; Larkin & Simon, 1987 ; Mayer, 1989 ). Given the differences in how visual and verbal information is processed, how learners draw inferences and construct understanding in these two modes warrants further investigation.

Benefits of generating explanations

Learner-generated explanations of scientific phenomena may be an important learning strategy to consider beyond the utility of learning from a provided external visualization. Explanations convey information about concepts or processes with the goal of making clear and comprehensible an idea or set of ideas. Explanations may involve a variety of elements, such as the use of examples and analogies (Roscoe & Chi, 2007 ). When explaining something new, learners may have to think carefully about the relationships between elements in the process and prioritize the multitude of information available to them. Generating explanations may require learners to reorganize their mental models by allowing them to make and refine connections between and among elements and concepts. Explaining may also help learners metacognitively address their own knowledge gaps and misconceptions.

Many studies have shown that learning is enhanced when students are actively engaged in creative, generative activities (e.g. Chi, 2009 ; Hall, Bailey, & Tillman, 1997 ). Generative activities have been shown to benefit comprehension of domains involving invisible components, including electric circuits (Johnson & Mayer, 2010 ) and the chemistry of detergents (Schwamborn, Mayer, Thillmann, Leopold, & Leutner, 2010 ). Wittrock’s ( 1990 ) generative theory stresses the importance of learners actively constructing and developing relationships. Generative activities require learners to select information and choose how to integrate and represent the information in a unified way. When learners make connections between pieces of information, knowledge, and experience, by generating headings, summaries, pictures, and analogies, deeper understanding develops.

The information learners draw upon to construct their explanations is likely important. For example, Ainsworth and Loizou ( 2003 ) found that asking participants to self-explain with a diagram resulted in greater learning than self-explaining from text. How might learners explain with physical mechanisms or materials with multi-modal information?

Generating visual explanations

Learner-generated visualizations have been explored in several domains. Gobert and Clement ( 1999 ) investigated the effectiveness of student-generated diagrams versus student-generated summaries on understanding plate tectonics after reading an expository text. Students who generated diagrams scored significantly higher on a post-test measuring spatial and causal/dynamic content, even though the diagrams contained less domain-related information. Hall et al. ( 1997 ) showed that learners who generated their own illustrations from text performed equally as well as learners provided with text and illustrations. Both groups outperformed learners only provided with text. In a study concerning the law of conservation of energy, participants who generated drawings scored higher on a post-test than participants who wrote their own narrative of the process (Edens & Potter, 2003 ). In addition, the quality and number of concept units present in the drawing/science log correlated with performance on the post-test. Van Meter ( 2001 ) found that drawing while reading a text about Newton’s Laws was more effective than answering prompts in writing.

One aspect to explore is whether visual and verbal productions contain different types of information. Learning advantages for the generation of visualizations could be attributed to learners’ translating across modalities, from a verbal format into a visual format. Translating verbal information from the text into a visual explanation may promote deeper processing of the material and more complete and comprehensive mental models (Craik & Lockhart, 1972 ). Ainsworth and Iacovides ( 2005 ) addressed this issue by asking two groups of learners to self-explain while learning about the circulatory system of the human body. Learners given diagrams were asked to self-explain in writing and learners given text were asked to explain using a diagram. The results showed no overall differences in learning outcomes, however the learners provided text included significantly more information in their diagrams than the other group. Aleven and Koedinger ( 2002 ) argue that explanations are most helpful if they can integrate visual and verbal information. Translating across modalities may serve this purpose, although translating is not necessarily an easy task (Ainsworth, Bibby, & Wood, 2002 ).

It is important to remember that not all studies have found advantages to generating explanations. Wilkin ( 1997 ) found that directions to self-explain using a diagram hindered understanding in examples in physical motion when students were presented with text and instructed to draw a diagram. She argues that the diagrams encouraged learners to connect familiar but unrelated knowledge. In particular, “low benefit learners” in her study inappropriately used spatial adjacency and location to connect parts of diagrams, instead of the particular properties of those parts. Wilkin argues that these learners are novices and that experts may not make the same mistake since they have the skills to analyze features of a diagram according to their relevant properties. She also argues that the benefits of self-explaining are highest when the learning activity is constrained so that learners are limited in their possible interpretations. Other studies that have not found a learning advantage from generating drawings have in common an absence of support for the learner (Alesandrini, 1981 ; Leutner, Leopold, & Sumfleth, 2009 ). Another mediating factor may be the learner’s spatial ability.

The role of spatial ability

Spatial thinking involves objects, their size, location, shape, their relation to one another, and how and where they move through space. How then, might learners with different levels of spatial ability gain structural and functional understanding in science and how might this ability affect the utility of learner-generated visual explanations? Several lines of research have sought to explore the role of spatial ability in learning science. Kozhevnikov, Hegarty, and Mayer ( 2002 ) found that low spatial ability participants interpreted graphs as pictures, whereas high spatial ability participants were able to construct more schematic images and manipulate them spatially. Hegarty and Just ( 1993 ) found that the ability to mentally animate mechanical systems correlated with spatial ability, but not verbal ability. In their study, low spatial ability participants made more errors in movement verification tasks. Leutner et al. ( 2009 ) found no effect of spatial ability on the effectiveness of drawing compared to mentally imagining text content. Mayer and Sims ( 1994 ) found that spatial ability played a role in participants’ ability to integrate visual and verbal information presented in an animation. The authors argue that their results can be interpreted within the context of dual-coding theory. They suggest that low spatial ability participants must devote large amounts of cognitive effort into building a visual representation of the system. High spatial ability participants, on the other hand, are more able to allocate sufficient cognitive resources to building referential connections between visual and verbal information.

Benefits of testing

Although not presented that way, creating an explanation could be regarded as a form of testing. Considerable research has documented positive effects of testing on learning. Presumably taking a test requires retrieving and sometimes integrating the learned material and those processes can augment learning without additional teaching or study (e.g. Roediger & Karpicke, 2006 ; Roediger, Putnam, & Smith, 2011 ; Wheeler & Roediger, 1992 ). Hausmann and Vanlehn ( 2007 ) addressed the possibility that generating explanations is beneficial because learners merely spend more time with the content material than learners who are not required to generate an explanation. In their study, they compared the effects of using instructions to self-explain with instructions to merely paraphrase physics (electrodynamics) material. Attending to provided explanations by paraphrasing was not as effective as generating explanations as evidenced by retention scores on an exam 29 days after the experiment and transfer scores within and across domains. Their study concludes, “the important variable for learning was the process of producing an explanation” (p. 423). Thus, we expect benefits from creating either kind of explanation but for the reasons outlined previously, we expect larger benefits from creating visual explanations.

Present experiments

This study set out to answer a number of related questions about the role of learner-generated explanations in learning and understanding of invisible processes. (1) Do students learn more when they generate visual or verbal explanations? We anticipate that learning will be greater with the creation of visual explanations, as they encourage completeness and the integration of structure and function. (2) Does the inclusion of structural and functional information correlate with learning as measured by a post-test? We predict that including greater counts of information, particularly invisible and functional information, will positively correlate with higher post-test scores. (3) Does spatial ability predict the inclusion of structural and functional information in explanations, and does spatial ability predict post-test scores? We predict that high spatial ability participants will include more information in their explanations, and will score higher on post-tests.

Experiment 1

The first experiment examines the effects of creating visual or verbal explanations on the comprehension of a bicycle tire pump’s operation in participants with low and high spatial ability. Although the pump itself is not invisible, the components crucial to its function, notably the inlet and outlet valves, and the movement of air, are located inside the pump. It was predicted that visual explanations would include more information than verbal explanations, particularly structural information, since their construction encourages completeness and the production of a whole mechanical system. It was also predicted that functional information would be biased towards a verbal format, since much of the function of the pump is hidden and difficult to express in pictures. Finally, it was predicted that high spatial ability participants would be able to produce more complete explanations and would thus also demonstrate better performance on the post-test. Explanations were coded for structural and functional content, essential features, invisible features, arrows, and multiple steps.

Participants

Participants were 127 (59 female) seventh and eighth grade students, aged 12–14 years, enrolled in an independent school in New York City. The school’s student body is 70% white, 30% other ethnicities. Approximately 25% of the student body receives financial aid. The sample consisted of three class sections of seventh grade students and three class sections of eighth grade students. Both seventh and eighth grade classes were integrated science (earth, life, and physical sciences) and students were not grouped according to ability in any section. Written parental consent was obtained by means of signed informed consent forms. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of two conditions within each class. There were 64 participants in the visual condition explained the bicycle pump’s function by drawing and 63 participants explained the pump’s function by writing.

The materials consisted of a 12-inch Spalding bicycle pump, a blank 8.5 × 11 in. sheet of paper, and a post-test (Additional file 1 ). The pump’s chamber and hose were made of clear plastic; the handle and piston were black plastic. The parts of the pump (e.g. inlet valve, piston) were labeled.

Spatial ability was assessed using the Vandenberg and Kuse ( 1978 ) mental rotation test (MRT). The MRT is a 20-item test in which two-dimensional drawings of three-dimensional objects are compared. Each item consists of one “target” drawing and four drawings that are to be compared to the target. Two of the four drawings are rotated versions of the target drawing and the other two are not. The task is to identify the two rotated versions of the target. A score was determined by assigning one point to each question if both of the correct rotated versions were chosen. The maximum score was 20 points.

The post-test consisted of 16 true/false questions printed on a single sheet of paper measuring 8.5 × 11 in. Half of the questions related to the structure of the pump and the other half related to its function. The questions were adapted from Heiser and Tversky ( 2002 ) in order to be clear and comprehensible for this age group.

The experiment was conducted over the course of two non-consecutive days during the normal school day and during regularly scheduled class time. On the first day, participants completed the MRT as a whole-class activity. After completing an untimed practice test, they were given 3 min for each of the two parts of the MRT. On the second day, occurring between two and four days after completing the MRT, participants were individually asked to study an actual bicycle tire pump and were then asked to generate explanations of its function. The participants were tested individually in a quiet room away from the rest of the class. In addition to the pump, each participant was one instruction sheet and one blank sheet of paper for their explanations. The post-test was given upon completion of the explanation. The instruction sheet was read aloud to participants and they were instructed to read along. The first set of instructions was as follows: “A bicycle pump is a mechanical device that pumps air into bicycle tires. First, take this bicycle pump and try to understand how it works. Spend as much time as you need to understand the pump.” The next set of instructions differed for participants in each condition. The instructions for the visual condition were as follows: “Then, we would like you to draw your own diagram or set of diagrams that explain how the bike pump works. Draw your explanation so that someone else who has not seen the pump could understand the bike pump from your explanation. Don’t worry about the artistic quality of the diagrams; in fact, if something is hard for you to draw, you can explain what you would draw. What’s important is that the explanation should be primarily visual, in a diagram or diagrams.” The instructions for the verbal condition were as follows: “Then, we would like you to write an explanation of how the bike pump works. Write your explanation so that someone else who has not seen the pump could understand the bike pump from your explanation.” All participants then received these instructions: “You may not use the pump while you create your explanations. Please return it to me when you are ready to begin your explanation. When you are finished with the explanation, you will hand in your explanation to me and I will then give you 16 true/false questions about the bike pump. You will not be able to look at your explanation while you complete the questions.” Study and test were untimed. All students finished within the 45-min class period.

Spatial ability

The mean score on the MRT was 10.56, with a median of 11. Boys scored significantly higher (M = 13.5, SD = 4.4) than girls (M = 8.8, SD = 4.5), F(1, 126) = 19.07, p  < 0.01, a typical finding (Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995 ). Participants were split into high or low spatial ability by the median. Low and high spatial ability participants were equally distributed in the visual and verbal groups.

Learning outcomes

It was predicted that high spatial ability participants would be better able to mentally animate the bicycle pump system and therefore score higher on the post-test and that post-test scores would be higher for those who created visual explanations. Table  1 shows the scores on the post-test by condition and spatial ability. A two-way factorial ANOVA revealed marginally significant main effect of spatial ability F(1, 124) = 3.680, p  = 0.06, with high spatial ability participants scoring higher on the post-test. There was also a significant interaction between spatial ability and explanation type F(1, 124) = 4.094, p  < 0.01, see Fig.  1 . Creating a visual explanation of the bicycle pump selectively helped low spatial participants.

Post-test scores, by explanation type and spatial ability

Scores on the post-test by condition and spatial ability

Coding explanations

Explanations (see Fig.  2 ) were coded for structural and functional content, essential features, invisible features, arrows, and multiple steps. A subset of the explanations (20%) was coded by the first author and another researcher using the same coding system as a guide. The agreement between scores was above 90% for all measures. Disagreements were resolved through discussion. The first author then scored the remaining explanations.

Examples of visual and verbal explanations of the bicycle pump

Coding for structure and function

A maximum score of 12 points was awarded for the inclusion and labeling of six structural components: chamber, piston, inlet valve, outlet valve, handle, and hose. For the visual explanations, 1 point was given for a component drawn correctly and 1 additional point if the component was labeled correctly. For verbal explanations, sentences were divided into propositions, the smallest unit of meaning in a sentence. Descriptions of structural location e.g. “at the end of the piston is the inlet valve,” or of features of the components, e.g. the shape of a part, counted as structural components. Information was coded as functional if it depicted (typically with an arrow) or described the function/movement of an individual part, or the way multiple parts interact. No explanation contained more than ten functional units.

Visual explanations contained significantly more structural components (M = 6.05, SD = 2.76) than verbal explanations (M = 4.27, SD = 1.54), F(1, 126) = 20.53, p  < 0.05. The number of functional components did not differ between visual and verbal explanations as displayed in Figs.  3 and ​ and4. 4 . Many visual explanations (67%) contained verbal components; the structural and functional information in explanations was coded as depictive or descriptive. Structural and functional information were equally likely to be expressed in words or pictures in visual explanations. It was predicted that explanations created by high spatial participants would include more functional information. However, there were no significant differences found between low spatial (M = 5.15, SD = 2.21) and high spatial (M = 4.62, SD = 2.16) participants in the number of structural units or between low spatial (M = 3.83, SD = 2.51) and high spatial (M = 4.10, SD = 2.13) participants in the number of functional units.

Average number of structural and functional components in visual and verbal explanations

Visual and verbal explanations of chemical bonding

Coding of essential features

To further establish a relationship between the explanations generated and outcomes on the post-test, explanations were also coded for the inclusion of information essential to its function according to a 4-point scale (adapted from Hall et al., 1997 ). One point was given if both the inlet and the outlet valve were clearly present in the drawing or described in writing, 1 point was given if the piston inserted into the chamber was shown or described to be airtight, and 1 point was given for each of the two valves if they were shown or described to be opening/closing in the correct direction.

Visual explanations contained significantly more essential information (M = 1.78, SD = 1.0) than verbal explanations (M = 1.20, SD = 1.21), F(1, 126) = 7.63, p  < 0.05. Inclusion of essential features correlated positively with post-test scores, r = 0.197, p  < 0.05).

Coding arrows and multiple steps

For the visual explanations, three uses of arrows were coded and tallied: labeling a part or action, showing motion, or indicating sequence. Analysis of visual explanations revealed that 87% contained arrows. No significant differences were found between low and high spatial participants’ use of arrows to label and no signification correlations were found between the use of arrows and learning outcomes measured on the post-test.

The explanations were coded for the number of discrete steps used to explain the process of using the bike pump. The number of steps used by participants ranged from one to six. Participants whose explanations, whether verbal or visual, contained multiple steps scored significantly higher (M = 0.76, SD = 0.18) on the post-test than participants whose explanations consisted of a single step (M = 0.67, SD = 0.19), F(1, 126) = 5.02, p  < 0.05.

Coding invisible features

The bicycle tire pump, like many mechanical devices, contains several structural features that are hidden or invisible and must be inferred from the function of the pump. For the bicycle pump the invisible features are the inlet and outlet valves and the three phases of movement of air, entering the pump, moving through the pump, exiting the pump. Each feature received 1 point for a total of 5 possible points.

The mean score for the inclusion of invisible features was 3.26, SD = 1.25. The data were analyzed using linear regression and revealed that the total score for invisible parts significantly predicted scores on the post-test, F(1, 118) = 3.80, p  = 0.05.

In the first experiment, students learned the workings of a bicycle pump from interacting with an actual pump and creating a visual or verbal explanation of its function. Understanding the functionality of a bike pump depends on the actions and consequences of parts that are not visible. Overall, the results provide support for the use of learner-generated visual explanations in developing understanding of a new scientific system. The results show that low spatial ability participants were able to learn as successfully as high spatial ability participants when they first generated an explanation in a visual format.

Visual explanations may have led to greater understanding for a number of reasons. As discussed previously, visual explanations encourage completeness. They force learners to decide on the size, shape, and location of parts/objects. Understanding the “hidden” function of the invisible parts is key to understanding the function of the entire system and requires an understanding of how both the visible and invisible parts interact. The visual format may have been able to elicit components and concepts that are invisible and difficult to integrate into the formation of a mental model. The results show that including more of the essential features and showing multiple steps correlated with superior test performance. Understanding the bicycle pump requires understanding how all of these components are connected through movement, force, and function. Many (67%) of the visual explanations also contained written components to accompany their explanation. Arguably, some types of information may be difficult to depict visually and verbal language has many possibilities that allow for specificity. The inclusion of text as a complement to visual explanations may be key to the success of learner-generated explanations and the development of understanding.

A limitation of this experiment is that participants were not provided with detailed instructions for completing their explanations. In addition, this experiment does not fully clarify the role of spatial ability, since high spatial participants in the visual and verbal groups demonstrated equivalent knowledge of the pump on the post-test. One possibility is that the interaction with the bicycle pump prior to generating explanations was a sufficient learning experience for the high spatial participants. Other researchers (e.g. Flick, 1993 ) have shown that hands-on interactive experiences can be effective learning situations. High spatial ability participants may be better able to imagine the movement and function of a system (e.g. Hegarty, 1992 ).

Experiment 1 examined learning a mechanical system with invisible (hidden) parts. Participants were introduced to the system by being able to interact with an actual bicycle pump. While we did not assess participants’ prior knowledge of the pump with a pre-test, participants were randomly assigned to each condition. The findings have promising implications for teaching. Creating visual explanations should be an effective way to improve performance, especially in low spatial students. Instructors can guide the creation of visual explanations toward the features that augment learning. For example, students can be encouraged to show every step and action and to focus on the essential parts, even if invisible. The coding system shows that visual explanations can be objectively evaluated to provide feedback on students’ understanding. The utility of visual explanations may differ for scientific phenomena that are more abstract, or contain elements that are invisible due to their scale. Experiment 2 addresses this possibility by examining a sub-microscopic area of science: chemical bonding.

Experiment 2

In this experiment, we examine visual and verbal explanations in an area of chemistry: ionic and covalent bonding. Chemistry is often regarded as a difficult subject; one of the essential or inherent features of chemistry which presents difficulty is the interplay between the macroscopic, sub-microscopic, and representational levels (e.g. Bradley & Brand, 1985 ; Johnstone, 1991 ; Taber, 1997 ). In chemical bonding, invisible components engage in complex processes whose scale makes them impossible to observe. Chemists routinely use visual representations to investigate relationships and move between the observable, physical level and the invisible particulate level (Kozma, Chin, Russell, & Marx, 2002 ). Generating explanations in a visual format may be a particularly useful learning tool for this domain.

For this topic, we expect that creating a visual rather than verbal explanation will aid students of both high and low spatial abilities. Visual explanations demand completeness; they were predicted to include more information than verbal explanations, particularly structural information. The inclusion of functional information should lead to better performance on the post-test since understanding how and why atoms bond is crucial to understanding the process. Participants with high spatial ability may be better able to explain function since the sub-microscopic nature of bonding requires mentally imagining invisible particles and how they interact. This experiment also asks whether creating an explanation per se can increase learning in the absence of additional teaching by administering two post-tests of knowledge, one immediately following instruction but before creating an explanation and one after creating an explanation. The scores on this immediate post-test were used to confirm that the visual and verbal groups were equivalent prior to the generation of explanations. Explanations were coded for structural and functional information, arrows, specific examples, and multiple representations. Do the acts of selecting, integrating, and explaining knowledge serve learning even in the absence of further study or teaching?

Participants were 126 (58 female) eighth grade students, aged 13–14 years, with written parental consent and enrolled in the same independent school described in Experiment 1. None of the students previously participated in Experiment 1. As in Experiment 1, randomization occurred within-class, with participants assigned to either the visual or verbal explanation condition.

The materials consisted of the MRT (same as Experiment 1), a video lesson on chemical bonding, two versions of the instructions, the immediate post-test, the delayed post-test, and a blank page for the explanations. All paper materials were typed on 8.5 × 11 in. sheets of paper. Both immediate and delayed post-tests consisted of seven multiple-choice items and three free-response items. The video lesson on chemical bonding consisted of a video that was 13 min 22 s. The video began with a brief review of atoms and their structure and introduced the idea that atoms combine to form molecules. Next, the lesson showed that location in the periodic table reveals the behavior and reactivity of atoms, in particular the gain, loss, or sharing of electrons. Examples of atoms, their valence shell structure, stability, charges, transfer and sharing of electrons, and the formation of ionic, covalent, and polar covalent bonds were discussed. The example of NaCl (table salt) was used to illustrate ionic bonding and the examples of O 2 and H 2 O (water) were used to illustrate covalent bonding. Information was presented verbally, accompanied by drawings, written notes of keywords and terms, and a color-coded periodic table.

On the first of three non-consecutive school days, participants completed the MRT as a whole-class activity. On the second day (occurring between two and three days after completing the MRT), participants viewed the recorded lesson on chemical bonding. They were instructed to pay close attention to the material but were not allowed to take notes. Immediately following the video, participants had 20 min to complete the immediate post-test; all finished within this time frame. On the third day (occurring on the next school day after viewing the video and completing the immediate post-test), the participants were randomly assigned to either the visual or verbal explanation condition. The typed instructions were given to participants along with a blank 8.5 × 11 in. sheet of paper for their explanations. The instructions differed for each condition. For the visual condition, the instructions were as follows: “You have just finished learning about chemical bonding. On the next piece of paper, draw an explanation of how atoms bond and how ionic and covalent bonds differ. Draw your explanation so that another student your age who has never studied this topic will be able to understand it. Be as clear and complete as possible, and remember to use pictures/diagrams only. After you complete your explanation, you will be asked to answer a series of questions about bonding.”

For the verbal condition the instructions were: “You have just finished learning about chemical bonding. On the next piece of paper, write an explanation of how atoms bond and how ionic and covalent bonds differ. Write your explanation so that another student your age who has never studied this topic will be able to understand it. Be as clear and complete as possible. After you complete your explanation, you will be asked to answer a series of questions about bonding.”

Participants were instructed to read the instructions carefully before beginning the task. The participants completed their explanations as a whole-class activity. Participants were given unlimited time to complete their explanations. Upon completion of their explanations, participants were asked to complete the ten-question delayed post-test (comparable to but different from the first) and were given a maximum of 20 min to do so. All participants completed their explanations as well as the post-test during the 45-min class period.

The mean score on the MRT was 10.39, with a median of 11. Boys (M = 12.5, SD = 4.8) scored significantly higher than girls (M = 8.0, SD = 4.0), F(1, 125) = 24.49, p  < 0.01. Participants were split into low and high spatial ability based on the median.

The maximum score for both the immediate and delayed post-test was 10 points. A repeated measures ANOVA showed that the difference between the immediate post-test scores (M = 4.63, SD = 0.469) and delayed post-test scores (M = 7.04, SD = 0.299) was statistically significant F(1, 125) = 18.501, p  < 0.05). Without any further instruction, scores increased following the generation of a visual or verbal explanation. Both groups improved significantly; those who created visual explanations (M = 8.22, SD = 0.208), F(1, 125) = 51.24, p  < 0.01, Cohen’s d  = 1.27 as well as those who created verbal explanations (M = 6.31, SD = 0.273), F(1,125) = 15.796, p  < 0.05, Cohen’s d  = 0.71. As seen in Fig.  5 , participants who generated visual explanations (M = 0.822, SD = 0.208) scored considerably higher on the delayed post-test than participants who generated verbal explanations (M = 0.631, SD = 0.273), F(1, 125) = 19.707, p  < 0.01, Cohen’s d  = 0.88. In addition, high spatial participants (M = 0.824, SD = 0.273) scored significantly higher than low spatial participants (M = 0.636, SD = 0.207), F(1, 125) = 19.94, p  < 0.01, Cohen’s d  = 0.87. The results of the test of the interaction between group and spatial ability was not significant.

Scores on the post-tests by explanation type and spatial ability

Explanations were coded for structural and functional content, arrows, specific examples, and multiple representations. A subset of the explanations (20%) was coded by both the first author and a middle school science teacher with expertise in Chemistry. Both scorers used the same coding system as a guide. The percentage of agreement between scores was above 90 for all measures. The first author then scored the remainder of the explanations. As evident from Fig.  4 , the visual explanations were individual inventions; they neither resembled each other nor those used in teaching. Most contained language, especially labels and symbolic language such as NaCl.

Structure, function, and modality

Visual and verbal explanations were coded for depicting or describing structural and functional components. The structural components included the following: the correct number of valence electrons, the correct charges of atoms, the bonds between non-metals for covalent molecules and between a metal and non-metal for ionic molecules, the crystalline structure of ionic molecules, and that covalent bonds were individual molecules. The functional components included the following: transfer of electrons in ionic bonds, sharing of electrons in covalent bonds, attraction between ions of opposite charge, bonding resulting in atoms with neutral charge and stable electron shell configurations, and outcome of bonding shows molecules with overall neutral charge. The presence of each component was awarded 1 point; the maximum possible points was 5 for structural and 5 for functional information. The modality, visual or verbal, of each component was also coded; if the information was given in both formats, both were coded.

As displayed in Fig.  6 , visual explanations contained a significantly greater number of structural components (M = 2.81, SD = 1.56) than verbal explanations (M = 1.30, SD = 1.54), F(1, 125) = 13.69, p  < 0.05. There were no differences between verbal and visual explanations in the number of functional components. Structural information was more likely to be depicted (M = 3.38, SD = 1.49) than described (M = 0.429, SD = 1.03), F(1, 62) = 21.49, p  < 0.05, but functional information was equally likely to be depicted (M = 1.86, SD = 1.10) or described (M = 1.71, SD = 1.87).

Functional information expressed verbally in the visual explanations significantly predicted scores on the post-test, F(1, 62) = 21.603, p  < 0.01, while functional information in verbal explanations did not. The inclusion of structural information did not significantly predict test scores. As seen Fig.  7 , explanations created by high spatial participants contained significantly more functional components, F(1, 125) = 7.13, p  < 0.05, but there were no ability differences in the amount of structural information created by high spatial participants in either visual or verbal explanations.

Average number of structural and functional components created by low and high spatial ability learners

Ninety-two percent of visual explanations contained arrows. Arrows were used to indicate motion as well as to label. The use of arrows was positively correlated with scores on the post-test, r = 0.293, p  < 0.05. There were no significant differences in the use of arrows between low and high spatial participants.

Specific examples

Explanations were coded for the use of specific examples, such as NaCl, to illustrate ionic bonding and CO 2 and O 2 to illustrate covalent bonding. High spatial participants (M = 1.6, SD = 0.69) used specific examples in their verbal and visual explanations more often than low spatial participants (M = 1.07, SD = 0.79), a marginally significant effect F(1, 125) = 3.65, p  = 0.06. Visual and verbal explanations did not differ in the presence of specific examples. The inclusion of a specific example was positively correlated with delayed test scores, r = 0.555, p  < 0.05.

Use of multiple representations

Many of the explanations (65%) contained multiple representations of bonding. For example, ionic bonding and its properties can be represented at the level of individual atoms or at the level of many atoms bonded together in a crystalline compound. The representations that were coded were as follows: symbolic (e.g. NaCl), atomic (showing structure of atom(s), and macroscopic (visible). Participants who created visual explanations generated significantly more (M =1.79, SD = 1.20) than those who created verbal explanations (M = 1.33, SD = 0.48), F (125) = 6.03, p  < 0.05. However, the use of multiple representations did not significantly correlate with delayed post-test scores on the delayed post-test.

Metaphoric explanations

Although there were too few examples to be included in the statistical analyses, some participants in the visual group created explanations that used metaphors and/or analogies to illustrate the differences between the types of bonding. Figure  4 shows examples of metaphoric explanations. In one example, two stick figures are used to show “transfer” and “sharing” of an object between people. In another, two sharks are used to represent sodium and chlorine, and the transfer of fish instead of electrons.

In the second experiment, students were introduced to chemical bonding, a more abstract and complex set of phenomena than the bicycle pump used in the first experiment. Students were tested immediately after instruction. The following day, half the students created visual explanations and half created verbal explanations. Following creation of the explanations, students were tested again, with different questions. Performance was considerably higher as a consequence of creating either explanation despite the absence of new teaching. Generating an explanation in this way could be regarded as a test of learning. Seen this way, the results echo and amplify previous research showing the advantages of testing over study (e.g. Roediger et al., 2011 ; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006 ; Wheeler & Roediger, 1992 ). Specifically, creating an explanation requires selecting the crucial information, integrating it temporally and causally, and expressing it clearly, processes that seem to augment learning and understanding without additional teaching. Importantly, creating a visual explanation gave an extra boost to learning outcomes over and above the gains provided by creating a verbal explanation. This is most likely due to the directness of mapping complex systems to a visual-spatial format, a format that can also provide a natural check for completeness and coherence as well as a platform for inference. In the case of this more abstract and complex material, generating a visual explanation benefited both low spatial and high spatial participants even if it did not bring low spatial participants up to the level of high spatial participants as for the bicycle pump.

Participants high in spatial ability not only scored better, they also generated better explanations, including more of the information that predicted learning. Their explanations contained more functional information and more specific examples. Their visual explanations also contained more functional information.

As in Experiment 1, qualities of the explanations predicted learning outcomes. Including more arrows, typically used to indicate function, predicted delayed test scores as did articulating more functional information in words in visual explanations. Including more specific examples in both types of explanation also improved learning outcomes. These are all indications of deeper understanding of the processes, primarily expressed in the visual explanations. As before, these findings provide ways that educators can guide students to craft better visual explanations and augment learning.

General discussion

Two experiments examined how learner-generated explanations, particularly visual explanations, can be used to increase understanding in scientific domains, notably those that contain “invisible” components. It was proposed that visual explanations would be more effective than verbal explanations because they encourage completeness and coherence, are more explicit, and are typically multimodal. These two experiments differ meaningfully from previous studies in that the information selected for drawing was not taken from a written text, but from a physical object (bicycle pump) and a class lesson with multiple representations (chemical bonding).

The results show that creating an explanation of a STEM phenomenon benefits learning, even when the explanations are created after learning and in the absence of new instruction. These gains in performance in the absence of teaching bear similarities to recent research showing gains in learning from testing in the absence of new instruction (e.g. Roediger et al., 2011 ; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006 ; Wheeler & Roediger, 1992 ). Many researchers have argued that the retrieval of information required during testing strengthens or enhances the retrieval process itself. Formulating explanations may be an especially effective form of testing for post-instruction learning. Creating an explanation of a complex system requires the retrieval of critical information and then the integration of that information into a coherent and plausible account. Other factors, such as the timing of the creation of the explanations, and whether feedback is provided to students, should help clarify the benefits of generating explanations and how they may be seen as a form of testing. There may even be additional benefits to learners, including increasing their engagement and motivation in school, and increasing their communication and reasoning skills (Ainsworth, Prain, & Tytler, 2011 ). Formulating a visual explanation draws upon students’ creativity and imagination as they actively create their own product.

As in previous research, students with high spatial ability both produced better explanations and performed better on tests of learning (e.g. Uttal et al., 2013 ). The visual explanations of high spatial students contained more information and more of the information that predicts learning outcomes. For the workings of a bicycle pump, creating a visual as opposed to verbal explanation had little impact on students of high spatial ability but brought students of lower spatial ability up to the level of students with high spatial abilities. For the more difficult set of concepts, chemical bonding, creating a visual explanation led to much larger gains than creating a verbal one for students both high and low in spatial ability. It is likely a mistake to assume that how and high spatial learners will remain that way; there is evidence that spatial ability develops with experience (Baenninger & Newcombe, 1989 ). It is possible that low spatial learners need more support in constructing explanations that require imagining the movement and manipulation of objects in space. Students learned the function of the bike pump by examining an actual pump and learned bonding through a video presentation. Future work to investigate methods of presenting material to students may also help to clarify the utility of generating explanations.

Creating visual explanations had greater benefits than those accruing from creating verbal ones. Surely some of the effectiveness of visual explanations is because they represent and communicate more directly than language. Elements of a complex system can be depicted and arrayed spatially to reflect actual or metaphoric spatial configurations of the system parts. They also allow, indeed, encourage, the use of well-honed spatial inferences to substitute for and support abstract inferences (e.g. Larkin & Simon, 1987 ; Tversky, 2011 ). As noted, visual explanations provide checks for completeness and coherence, that is, verification that all the necessary elements of the system are represented and that they work together properly to produce the outcomes of the processes. Visual explanations also provide a concrete reference for making and checking inferences about the behavior, causality, and function of the system. Thus, creating a visual explanation facilitates the selection and integration of information underlying learning even more than creating a verbal explanation.

Creating visual explanations appears to be an underused method of supporting and evaluating students’ understanding of dynamic processes. Two obstacles to using visual explanations in classrooms seem to be developing guidelines for creating visual explanations and developing objective scoring systems for evaluating them. The present findings give insights into both. Creating a complete and coherent visual explanation entails selecting the essential components and linking them by behavior, process, or causality. This structure and organization is familiar from recipes or construction sets: first the ingredients or parts, then the sequence of actions. It is also the ingredients of theater or stories: the players and their actions. In fact, the creation of visual explanations can be practiced on these more familiar cases and then applied to new ones in other domains. Deconstructing and reconstructing knowledge and information in these ways has more generality than visual explanations: these techniques of analysis serve thought and provide skills and tools that underlie creative thought. Next, we have shown that objective scoring systems can be devised, beginning with separating the information into structure and function, then further decomposing the structure into the central parts or actors and the function into the qualities of the sequence of actions and their consequences. Assessing students’ prior knowledge and misconceptions can also easily be accomplished by having students create explanations at different times in a unit of study. Teachers can see how their students’ ideas change and if students can apply their understanding by analyzing visual explanations as a culminating activity.

Creating visual explanations of a range of phenomena should be an effective way to augment students’ spatial thinking skills, thereby increasing the effectiveness of these explanations as spatial ability increases. The proverbial reading, writing, and arithmetic are routinely regarded as the basic curriculum of school learning and teaching. Spatial skills are not typically taught in schools, but should be: these skills can be learned and are essential to functioning in the contemporary and future world (see Uttal et al., 2013 ). In our lives, both daily and professional, we need to understand the maps, charts, diagrams, and graphs that appear in the media and public places, with our apps and appliances, in forms we complete, in equipment we operate. In particular, spatial thinking underlies the skills needed for professional and amateur understanding in STEM fields and knowledge and understanding STEM concepts is increasingly required in what have not been regarded as STEM fields, notably the largest employers, business, and service.

This research has shown that creating visual explanations has clear benefits to students, both specific and potentially general. There are also benefits to teachers, specifically, revealing misunderstandings and gaps in knowledge. Visualizations could be used by teachers as a formative assessment tool to guide further instructional activities and scoring rubrics could allow for the identification of specific misconceptions. The bottom line is clear. Creating a visual explanation is an excellent way to learn and master complex systems.

Additional file

Post-tests. (DOC 44 kb)

Acknowledgments

The authors are indebted to the Varieties of Understanding Project at Fordham University and The John Templeton Foundation and to the following National Science Foundation grants for facilitating the research and/or preparing the manuscript: National Science Foundation NSF CHS-1513841, HHC 0905417, IIS-0725223, IIS-0855995, and REC 0440103. We are grateful to James E. Corter for his helpful suggestions and to Felice Frankel for her inspiration. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders. Please address correspondence to Barbara Tversky at the Columbia Teachers College, 525 W. 120th St., New York, NY 10025, USA. Email: [email protected].

Authors’ contributions

This research was part of EB’s doctoral dissertation under the advisement of BT. Both authors contributed to the design, analysis, and drafting of the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Competing interests

The author declares that they have no competing interests.

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Visual Recognition Memory of Scenes Is Driven by Categorical, Not Sensory, Visual Representations

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When we perceive a scene, our brain processes various types of visual information simultaneously, ranging from sensory features, such as line orientations and colors, to categorical features, such as objects and their arrangements. Whereas the role of sensory and categorical visual representations in predicting subsequent memory has been studied using isolated objects, their impact on memory for complex scenes remains largely unknown. To address this gap, we conducted an fMRI study in which female and male participants encoded pictures of familiar scenes (e.g., an airport picture) and later recalled them, while rating the vividness of their visual recall. Outside the scanner, participants had to distinguish each seen scene from three similar lures (e.g., three airport pictures). We modeled the sensory and categorical visual features of multiple scenes using both early and late layers of a deep convolutional neural network. Then, we applied representational similarity analysis to determine which brain regions represented stimuli in accordance with the sensory and categorical models. We found that categorical, but not sensory, representations predicted subsequent memory. In line with the previous result, only for the categorical model, the average recognition performance of each scene exhibited a positive correlation with the average visual dissimilarity between the item in question and its respective lures. These results strongly suggest that even in memory tests that ostensibly rely solely on visual cues (such as forced-choice visual recognition with similar distractors), memory decisions for scenes may be primarily influenced by categorical rather than sensory representations.

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Visuals in History Textbooks

War memorials in soviet and post-soviet school education from 1945 to 2021.

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This article is based on a bibliographical data set of over 2,600 history textbooks from the post-1945 Soviet Union and eleven out of its fifteen successor states, including books on international, national, and regional or local history. Among these, it analyzes the illustrations used in 450 books that cover the period of the Second World War. Arguing against a reduction of history-related visuals to a “narrative,” this article seeks to contribute to analyzing the visual grammar of history textbooks. It does so by drawing on notions of familiarity developed in French pragmatic sociology and identifies visual techniques used to make pupils approach war memorials in a mode of familiarity rather than critical analysis. Decontextualized presentations of monuments located outside the former Soviet Union turn them into timeless icons experienced via familiarity-as-recognition; monuments shown with surrounding landscapes or on maps turn them into intimately known markers of a Sovietized local identity.

This article analyzes the use of visuals in school history textbooks and focuses on pictures of Second World War memorials 1 in Soviet and post-Soviet publications. Building on developments in visual studies, it seeks to contribute to understanding the visual grammar of a medium that is still most often analyzed only as text. 2 In particular, the article follows a small number of pioneering studies 3 by seeking to analyze the visual component of history textbooks in its own right rather than merely as a form of representation or narrative. It does so by drawing on sociological interpretations of the notion of familiarity and analyzing pictures of war memorials as instruments of familiarization. Empirically, it draws on a large bibliometric database of history textbooks from the Soviet Union and eleven of the fifteen successor states. This article, which is based on a longer unpublished manuscript, presents the theoretical background to the study and some of its findings.

• War Memorials, School Education, and the Regime of Familiarity

This article grew out of two observations made in the course of ethnographic research on post-Soviet commemorative practices. 4 First, encounters with war memorials today are often structured in the form of pedagogical projects that aim to secure the intergenerational transmission not only of a certain narrative about history but, perhaps just as importantly, of a strong emotional connection to monuments as commemorative sites. This can be observed in post-Soviet countries such as Belarus and Russia as well as among Russian speakers in countries such as Latvia, Germany, or Israel. Second, visual representations of war memorials structure direct physical interaction with them. The best-known example is the giant Treptower Park war memorial in Berlin. The silhouette of its central statue—a soldier holding a rescued child—became ubiquitous in Soviet textbooks and other print media. One of the main reactions I have observed during a decade of fieldwork at the memorial during commemorative events attended by people with Soviet roots was a highly emotional recognition effect based on the idea, expressed numerous times in interviews conducted at the memorial, that they are intimately familiar with the figure of the soldier and are happy they finally get to be near the statue. Depictions of war memorials abound in Soviet and post-Soviet educational media. Indeed, such uses were sometimes explicitly anticipated during the monuments’ design phase, when architects debated how to design a monument in such a way that it would look impressive when depicted in a textbook. 5

These observations can serve as a useful corrective to a tendency in memory studies, public history, and textbook research that reduces our relationship with the past to a “narrative.” 6 From this perspective, pictures become “visual narratives,” and commemorative practices are examined primarily as pillars of certain narratives. 7 This narrative-centered approach has informed the vast majority of the numerous studies of Soviet and post-Soviet history textbooks that have appeared in recent years, which almost invariably offer close textual readings of a small number of textbooks. 8

By contrast, I develop an approach derived from French pragmatic sociology and specifically from the study of regimes of engagement initiated by Laurent Thévenot. 9 One contribution of this approach is to have identified a “regime of familiarity” as one of the modes in which people engage with the world. 10 It is a mode in which we feel so much at home with our surroundings and specifically with certain material objects or cultural artifacts that no narrative contextualization is necessary—unless that familiarity is questioned or challenged by outsiders who do not share it.

Like every regime of engagement, the regime of familiarity is learned through a lengthy socialization process. School education obviously plays an important role in this along with other factors. Russia has been a particularly rich source of empirical studies of constructions of commonality rooted in the regime of familiarity (rather than, for example, social contract or compromise between different individual interests). Reflecting on the reasons why these types of commonality are so well developed there, Thévenot noted one of the peculiar features of school education in the Russian (and before that the Soviet) system. US education teaches pupils to produce well crafted expressions of their own opinions on various matters; French education encourages pupils to write essays laying out the pros and cons of a matter regardless of their own personal concerns. “By contrast,” Thévenot observes, “Russian pupils are asked to carefully relate their own personal life to the novel's character.” 11 Making pupils establish a personal connection with what is being taught is one of the cornerstones of the Soviet and post-Soviet educational systems.

This has clear implications for understanding the use of visuals in history textbooks. The very nature of the educational settings in which they are used seems to encourage pupils to see them not as illustrations of an argument, as sources to be subjected to critical analysis, or even primarily as elements of an interpretive narrative, but as objects of familiar attachment. This is obviously connected with, though it cannot be reduced to, the role of Soviet school education in political mobilization. Unlike other visuals that, in Soviet propaganda, were often accompanied by discursive and performative slogans (“Lenin lives!”; “Forward, to communism!”), pictures of war memorials were—and are—almost invariably shown uncommented. 12 They are not themselves subject to discursive exercises; the very few Soviet and post-Soviet exceptions to this rule that I have found are noted in this article. Their function is thus to be contemplated or simply absorbed, rather than to act as objects of a body of positive knowledge that is instilled in pupils. The role of pictures, then, is to familiarize pupils with a certain visual canon and make sure that everyone develops a strong emotional connection with those pictures.

The emotions in question may range from sublime feelings of awe and pride to those associated with habitual background familiarity, a feeling of being at home in the presence of a memorial. Even though the starting point and content of the connection will thus vary—sometimes considerably—this does ensure a recognition effect that can serve as a basis for communication beyond an exchange of arguments or a battle of interpretations. In doing so, (pictures of) memorials serve as intermediary objects of communication, or what Thévenot calls common-places . One of the effects is that any attempt to question or simply contextualize a picture—even on seemingly valid grounds of historiographical critique—can be perceived as a personal attack by a person with a profound attachment to that picture, or a community structured by shared personal affinities to it. (This holds even if, as often happens, pupils’ responses to pedagogical content, including content related to war memorials, are ironic. For, as Alexei Yurchak has shown in detail in his study of young people in late Soviet society, ironic appropriation also generates familiar attachments. 13 )

This, I would argue, is the basis for many sensitive responses to real or perceived threats to monuments: those who oppose their destruction or removal often do so not primarily on the grounds of disagreement over an historical interpretation or a set of values but because they sense a threat to something they are—for a variety of reasons—profoundly attached to. Conversely, those proposing or engaging in iconoclasm usually lack this familiarity altogether or else have a negative personal attachment, experiencing a memorial as a threat.

This explanation of the root causes of sensitive responses to monument removal is relevant in many different settings, including the recent conflict over Confederate memorials in the southern states of the USA. The Soviet and post-Soviet context is, however, a particularly fertile ground for studying some aspects of the familiarization process I have referred to, both because the production of familiarity is such a central feature of education in this region and because visual representations of war memorials have been very prominent there, albeit with considerable variation between the post-Soviet republics. As will be shown in this article, pictures of war memorials featuring in textbooks during the postwar period gradually became customary illustrations accompanying narratives about the war itself—echoing a common West European practice that faded after the Second World War. 14

Beyond this regional and thematic focus, however, the study of visuals in school textbooks and of their familiarity-producing effects has obvious universal importance in the post-pictorial turn age, 15 when digital natives are socialized into predominantly visual forms of learning and communication; and there is some indication that textbooks have followed the visual turn even more enthusiastically than other print media. 16 What may appear as clichéd to those educated in more text-centered times may in fact harbor a rich variety of personal attachments, and this study might help to sharpen our understanding of such attachments.

• Research Design

The analysis of visuals in this article is product-oriented, focuses on the textbooks themselves, and examines a large number of cases to uncover cross-country and historical variation. 17

The world's largest collection of school history textbooks is held in the research library of the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media / Georg Eckert Institute (GEI) in Braunschweig in Germany. Among the 2,609 textbooks held in the library that were published after 1945 in the Soviet Union or its fifteen successor states, I identified those that cover the period of the Second World War and recorded relevant bibliographical data and the proportion of each book devoted to the Second World War and/or what is known in Soviet and post-Soviet usage as the Great Patriotic War, including the number of pictures (if any) included in the relevant chapter as well as the share of pictures that represent war memorials.

Several limitations of this approach should be noted. The most important of these concerns the comprehensiveness of the data. Firstly, the GEI library collection is far from complete. Most importantly for my purposes, it does not hold any history textbooks for the Soviet Union's union republics published before 1970. Having realized the importance of these textbooks for my topic, I therefore supplemented my collection and database with the relevant chapters from thirty-three textbooks from eight Soviet republics published between 1957 and 1967, which are held at the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg.

Secondly, given pandemic-related closures of the GEI library, I had to be selective. I completed data collection for all Soviet textbooks, including those produced specifically for one of the Soviet republics or autonomous republics, as well as eleven of the fifteen post-Soviet states. My data, which includes 450 relevant books in eighteen languages ranging from Estonian to Uyghur, so far excludes post-Soviet Georgia, Latvia, and Lithuania and, most importantly, does not systematically cover national-level textbooks from Russia (although it includes Soviet-era books for all of these republics and, for post-Soviet Russia, all available textbooks dealing with the history of individual regions or cities as well as a few national-level ones). The latter omission is due, on the one hand, to the sheer number of history textbooks produced in post-Soviet Russia, 18 which merits a detailed analysis in its own right that would hardly fit the scope of this article. On the other hand, national-level Russian textbooks have featured disproportionately in scholarship dealing with post-Soviet history education, and it was important to me to correct that bias by focusing on regional history textbooks from that country. In order to avoid privileging post-Soviet countries where Soviet-era war memorials play a lesser role than in present-day Russia, I included Belarus, where their significance is even larger, and where pictures of such memorials are ubiquitous in textbooks across all school years.

Thirdly, while this pilot study touches upon questions such as image quality and genre, for reasons of space it does not systematically address aspects such as page layout, overall visual design, and perspective or camera angle that have been rightly identified as crucial to a complete understanding of visual grammars. 19

Finally, data gathered from the textbooks themselves is inevitably incomplete. While this study is rooted in observations made during field work and qualitative interviews, classroom visits as well as interviews with authors, publishers, illustrators, and pupils would be needed to round out the insights garnered from printed materials and understand the variety of ways in which pupils interact with the pictures discussed here, and textbook production in the Soviet period cannot be understood without archival research.

With these limitations in mind, I now proceed to the analysis, starting with the Soviet period.

• War Memorials in Unionwide and Regional Textbooks in the Postwar Soviet Union

In the postwar Soviet Union, pictures of war memorials started appearing in textbooks in the mid-1950s and became more frequent in the early 1960s. As will be seen later, the prominence and place of these pictures differed markedly in four different categories of textbooks: (a) year four history primers; final year secondary school textbooks on (b) Soviet and (c) international history; and (d) textbooks on the history of individual Soviet republics or regions. I argue in this section that pictures of war memorials were used for two different types of familiarization, one based on a recognition effect, and the other premised on intimate knowledge and acting as a vehicle for a Sovietized local identity.

From the Stalin era until the demise of the Soviet Union, history education in Soviet schools relied primarily on single, standardized, and universal textbooks that were regularly updated and were supposed to be used across the entire country, either in Russian or in translation. After 1945 the Great Patriotic War was discussed in introductory manuals for the fourth year and again in the textbook on recent Soviet history for the final year of secondary school (usually year ten) and was supplemented from the late 1950s with a separate textbook on international history that covered the Second World War.

The books’ visual component remained limited at first. Illustrations in final year textbooks changed little across the late Stalinist and Khrushchev periods. Maps of attack routes were the primary type of visual, reflecting a top-down view of the war that privileged the Kremlin's perspective and left no place for the experiences of common soldiers. 20 Under Khrushchev the maps were supplemented with photos of tanks and occasional reproductions of paintings showing battle scenes and other defining moments of the war.

The transition from the Khrushchev to the Brezhnev eras was accompanied by a significant increase in the visual component of textbooks. Between 1963 and 1965, the number of illustrations in the Great Patriotic War chapter of year four history manuals jumped from four to eighteen. In year ten textbooks it went from seven in 1962 to twenty-three in 1964. This increase also coincided with much more centralized programs of war commemoration in the anniversary year of 1965, expanding a set of practices that had been particularly widespread in the western regions of the Soviet Union into a nationwide cult. 21 Taken together, this led to the appearance of pictures of Great Patriotic War memorials in history textbooks published in Moscow from 1965. Their share of the overall number of illustrations always remained limited. Thus the editions of the final year Soviet history textbook published between 1983 and 1986 featured three to four photographs of monuments (8 to 13 percent of total illustrations), evenly distributed between those located in the two largest Russian cities and abroad. 22 However, they were prominently placed, often featuring on the book covers. The Treptow soldier, in particular, was shown on the cover of the 1967 Atlas of the Contemporary History of Foreign Countries . 23 It was also the central visual of various editions of the 1980s textbook on recent world history.

There are two main reasons why depictions of war memorials were rare in unionwide textbooks before 1965. Before 1965 commemorative culture was much weaker in Moscow and generally in cities far from the former frontlines than in the western parts of the Soviet Union from Moldova to the Baltics, where monuments were both more numerous and more prominent than in much of Russia. Accordingly, as will be seen, they started to appear in republic-level textbooks, especially in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, but also in Turkmenistan, earlier than they did in Moscow. No less importantly, war commemoration was in many ways seen as the preserve of the army, and thus war memorials and pictures thereof played a much larger role in the patriotic education of future soldiers than they did in history lessons.

The first picture of a Great Patriotic War memorial to appear in a regular unionwide history textbook showed the Treptow soldier ( Figure 1 ). Even though it was a photographic image, it bore a marked resemblance to the drawings published earlier in newspapers and military manuals ( Figure 2 ), exhibiting two features that would prove to have a lasting influence.

Photographic reproduction of the soldier-liberator statue erected in 1949 in Treptower Park in Berlin, in a book of “stories about the history of the USSR” for year four. Tamara Golubeva, Lev Gellershtein, Rasskazy po istorii SSSR (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1965), 158.

Citation: Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 15, 1; 10.3167/jemms.2023.150106

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An exercise from a workbook of Entertaining Military Science Exercises for children published in 1958 with a print run of forty-five thousand by the Soviet paramilitary sports organization: Ed. Val'dman, Zanimatel'nye zadachi po voennomu delu (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo DOSAAF, 1958), 16. It shows six drawings of Soviet “monuments of glory and victory” located in foreign capitals and asks children to identify the countries and combine selected letters from each country's name to spell a phrase (“The Soviet Army is a Liberating Army”).

The first feature was a visually decontextualized presentation. The statue, with part of its pedestal, was shown against a white background, with none of the surrounding area or any visitors visible. Of course this technique was not new; it echoed drawings of monuments in nineteenth-century European textbooks and, in the case of Treptow the soldier's silhouette, had become a staple of Soviet newspaper publications well before the mid-1960s. As a result of this kind of repetition across different media, the picture became familiar in the sense of being instantly recognizable and began to appear timeless. The historian Carlo Ginzburg coined the notion of fuite de sens to denote traces of polyphony in authoritative archival documents; the visual historian Sylvie Lindeberg has suggested that this term could be applied in order to describe elements of an image that may have escaped the attention of the camera operator or photographer capturing it but become relevant to later viewers. 24 The technique of cutting out the background of what was being depicted sought to suppress such uncontrollable elements, directing the viewer's gaze squarely to the object presented and almost placing it outside time and space, giving it the eternal quality that late Stalinism claimed for architecture, 25 a quality which came to be associated with the entire Soviet project by the Brezhnev period. 26 Regarding monuments, this technique was used primarily for those located in east central Europe, inaccessible to most Soviet citizens and symbolizing eternal gratitude, in contrast with monuments inside the Soviet Union, which the textbooks tended to domesticate by presenting them in context, as will be discussed later. This made pictures of such monuments special in one respect: unlike other well-known images, they became truly iconic in the literal sense of pointing to a transcendent reality devoid of any additions that might lend themselves to alternative interpretations. (The Red Banner over the Reichstag photograph, for example, is full of details such as pedestrians, destroyed buildings, statues, and ornaments that might conceivably lead the viewer's gaze away from the meaning the image is supposed to transport.) While such techniques were applied to photographs, the desire to retain control over what is shown may partly explain the wide use of drawings and paintings as illustrations in twentieth-century history textbooks, which has continued into the post-Soviet period.

The second feature was that pictures of monuments built in the postwar era were almost invariably used anachronistically to illustrate events of the war rather than the period of their construction. In the 1965 primary school reader and in all its subsequent appearances in textbooks, the soldier statue from Treptow accompanied a chapter about the liberating role of the Red Army (anachronistically called “Soviet Army,” its name after 1946) rather than about postwar East Germany. Associating any monument with the period when it was built was generally a rare practice in Soviet history textbooks. For war memorials, it was almost unheard of. Such types of presentation erase any distinction between a monument and the time period it refers to, implicitly turning any attack on a monument into an attack on a revered period of history. This holds especially true of monuments located outside the former Soviet Union, since the removal of the surroundings described earlier decontextualizes them not only geographically but also chronologically.

Very few deviations from this rule can be found in the Soviet or even in the post-Soviet period. For Soviet-era textbooks, I have found only two—albeit prominent—exceptions. One is multiple editions of the standard textbook on Soviet history for the final year of secondary school throughout the late 1960s and 1970s that show recent memorials in Moscow and Volgograd as evidence that “the first year of the [eighth] five-year plan was marked by important sociopolitical events.” 27 The other is the textbook about contemporary world history showing a drawing of the Slavín memorial to Red Army soldiers in Bratislava as an uncommented illustration in a passage about Soviet economic support of Czechoslovakia and the crushing of the Prague Spring (“The failure of anti-socialist plans”), implying a continuity of the Soviet “protector” role in that country. 28

The Treptow soldier never vanished from the year four history primers after its first appearance in 1965. It was sometimes shown twice in the same book, and joined from 1985 on by a photograph of the memorial to General Dmitrii Karbyshev, who was frozen to death at Mauthausen concentration camp in 1945. While prominent enough, these two images never represented more than 7 percent of the overall illustrations in these primers.

In textbooks on the history of individual union or autonomous republics, war memorials played a more significant role. Indeed, some of the ways of presenting monuments that would later make it to the union level were first developed in textbooks on republican or regional history. My sample includes seventy-seven relevant textbooks on the history of republics or autonomous regions published between 1957 and 1983. These textbooks were much less standardized than might have been expected, and the share devoted to the Great Patriotic War could vary considerably, ranging from a mere 1 to 2 percent (in various editions of the secondary school textbook on Georgian history) to 24 percent (in the 1972 edition of Stories from the History of Turkmenistan , a primer for year four).

Portraits of local heroes were by far the most frequent type of illustration in the war chapters. Their presentation was often abstracted in ways somewhat reminiscent of drawings of war memorials such as the Treptow soldier. Frontal views directed the war heroes’ determined gazes at the viewers to be inspired. With monuments, the same effect was achieved via low angles, presenting bronze soldiers as examples to—literally—look up to.

While they were included less systematically than portraits of heroes, almost 40 percent of the regional history textbooks (thirty out of the seventy-seven in my sample 29 ) also contained pictures of one or two local war monuments (or memorials to soldiers from that region who died elsewhere). Given the predominance of text over images in textbooks of that period, these one to two pictures could constitute up to a third of the total number of illustrations. In the textbook about the history of the Belarusian Republic from 1982 to 1983, the number of pictures of war memorials even rose to six (one in every four illustrations in the chapter).

Ukraine and Belarus were the first parts of the Soviet Union in which war memorials were included in republican history textbooks. Given the high status of war memory there, this is hardly surprising. The Victory Monument in Minsk appeared in all editions of the secondary level textbook for the ten-year curriculum in Belarus from when they were first published in 1960 ( Figure 3 ). A shorter textbook for the abridged year eight curriculum first came out in the following year, featuring instead a picture of the Minsk monument to the pioneer martyr Marat Kazei. In Ukraine, these two memorial types—a centrally located monument and one showing heroic child martyrs to be emulated—were combined in the pages of one and the same secondary level textbook. The 1962 edition showed the monument to General Nikolai Vatutin in central Kyiv and a 1959 memorial in Lubny to three fifteen-year-old “young heroes” who had been executed by the Germans because they had destroyed a locomotive ( Figure 4 ). Later editions displayed the Eternal Flame in Kyiv and the Young Guard monument in Krasnodon. The other republics in which a Great Patriotic War memorial appeared before unionwide textbooks were Lithuania and Turkmenistan. In the Lithuanian case, the very first secondary school textbook on the republic's history, published in 1958, already included an image of Juozas Mikėnas's statue of the local partisan Marytė Melnikaitė, installed in Zarasai three years earlier—in fact, this is the earliest image of a war memorial I have found in a school history textbook in the USSR. 30 In Turkmenistan, the primary school history primer first published in 1964 featured a bust of Major General Iakub Kuliev. 31 More union and autonomous republics followed suit in the 1970s.

The Victory Monument, installed in Minsk in 1954, shown in a secondary school textbook on the history of Belarus. Lavrentii Abetsedarskii, Mariia Baranova, Nina Pavlova, Istoriia BSSR. Uchebnoe posobie dlia uchashchikhsia srednei shkoly (Minsk: Gosudarstvennoe uchebno-pedgagicheskoe izdatel'stvo Ministerstva Prosvheshcheniia BSSR, 1960), 179.

Memorial to the teenage anti-German resistance fighters Boris Haidai, Anatolii Butsenko, and Ivan Sats'kii in Lubny, Poltava region, Ukraine, shown in a year seven to year eight textbook on the history of Ukraine. Vadim Diadychenko, Fedir Los’, Vasyl’ Spyts'kyi, Istoriia Ukraїns'koї RSR. Pidruchnyk dlia 7-8 klasiv vos'mirichnoї shkoly . Kyiv: Radians'ka shkola, 1962, 155.

Unlike the abstracted way in which emblematic monuments such as the Treptower Park soldier were presented, these local memorials were usually shown in context, with their surrounding landscape ( Figure 5 ) or visitors ( Figure 6 ). This style of presentation can already be found in official histories published in the mid-1950s. 32 Thus this style was well established by the time monuments made it into school textbooks. The photograph of the 1954 Victory Monument in Minsk included in consecutive editions of the Belarusian secondary school textbook showed the obelisk during a celebration, surrounded by festively clad people with flags. Even where people and/or flowers were absent from the pictures, war memorials were always shown surrounded by vegetation or at least clouds, evoking the monument's specific location. In this way the textbooks turned (the official version of) each region's experience during the war into a central feature of its—thereby Sovietized—identity. At the same time, they visualized a republic's or region's belonging to the family of Soviet nations by showcasing its contribution to the joint war effort. More systematically than any other period of history, the Great Patriotic War and specifically the monuments commemorating it came to mediate pupils’ identification not only with the entire socialist motherland but also with their own republic or region. 33

Endsheet of Aldona Gaigalaitė, Regina Žepkaitė , Lietuvos TSR Istorija: mokymo priemonė X-XI klasei . Kaunas: Šviesa, 1972. A color photograph of Gediminas Jokubonis's 1960 monument to the victims of fascism at Pirčiupis in Lithuania, most of whose residents were burned alive by the Germans in June 1944. The monument—the book's most prominent visual—is shown with its surrounding landscape.

A memorial to residents of the village of Sundyr’ shown with a group of people that includes at least two men on crutches. Soviet commemorative iconography rarely depicted war invalids. From a secondary school textbook on the history of Chuvashia. Vasilii Kakhovskii, Rodnoi krai: uchebnoe posobie po istorii Chuvashskoi ASSR dlia uchashchikhsia srednei shkoly (Cheboksary: Chuvashskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1972), 108.

Thus the mode of presentation of war memorials in Soviet history textbooks produced two different kinds of familiarity. The sociologist Maxime Felder has argued that the term refers to two contradictory relationships, denoting “what we know intimately and what we only recognize from having seen before.” 34 Monuments outside the Soviet Union—above all the Treptow soldier—were presented in a way that produced familiarity-as-recognition: shown again and again, but usually shorn of local context. Domestic monuments, on the other hand, were typically inscribed into a landscape, treated as mediators and signifiers of local identity. Pupils were also likely to visit them on field trips or even encounter them in their daily lives, producing the familiarity of intimate knowledge that did not require discursive mediation. This was also encouraged by the relationship between text and picture in the textbooks. In the vast majority of cases, the monuments depicted were not discussed or even referenced in the main body of the text. Thus they acted as an additional visual layer prompting the kind of personal identification that Thévenot described as a feature of Soviet and post-Soviet school education.

This interpretation is also supported by the way in which the Soviet pedagogical literature instructed teachers to work with war memorials and visual depictions thereof. A 1976 manual on the teaching of history in year four used the standard drawing of the Treptow soldier as one of its main examples of the use of visuals in history lessons to encourage pupils to express contents in their own words. While the author cited both good and bad pupil presentations on the picture, both referred to the monument's location only by saying, “In Berlin in a park there is a monument to a Soviet soldier.” 35 The question put to pupils asked them only to interpret the sculptor's intentions and did not point to local context. By contrast, guidelines for teaching local history amply referenced monuments as destinations for class trips as early as 1954, always exhorting teachers to place them in local context: “in placing pupils in front of an object such as a monument or historic building…one needs to talk about it, as it were connecting the narrative with this object, with this territory.” 36

• War Memorials in Post-Soviet Textbooks

The early 1990s were the nadir of war commemoration in general. 37 Displays of war memorials became rare in textbooks. The sheer speed of change in historical debates played a role in this, but the decisive factors were spiraling costs and the abrupt crash of the state-funded publishing industry with its colossal print runs. This also meant that pre-perestroika Soviet textbooks were sometimes used well into the post-Soviet era despite a complete change in official historical narratives. 38

Following this visual slump, by the early 2000s textbooks in most post-Soviet countries came to include rich, often color illustrations. The total number of pictures also increased. One Estonian textbook from 2002 has 101 illustrations in the chapter about the Second World War alone. 39 However, it would be an exaggeration to speak of a full pictorial turn in post-Soviet textbooks as a whole, since the overall volume of text has also increased, keeping the number of illustrations per page comparatively low. Even among books published between 2010 and 2019, war-related chapters have less than one illustration per page on average, and fewer than 30 percent of books (many of them from Belarus) have more than that.

Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, education systems and textbook markets in the fifteen successor states diverged significantly from each other, as did narratives about the history of the Second World War. Nevertheless, a number of similarities remain, one of them being the basic structure of school history education, with the period of the Second World War typically addressed in history primers in the fourth or fifth year of primary education, and then again in textbooks for year nine, ten, and/or eleven, most often in separate volumes on national and world history.

The visual components of post-Soviet textbooks also continue to exhibit a number of transnational similarities across national systems of education. One of them is that, except for a few cases in the Baltic states, pictures of monuments are never used as objects of critical analysis. Rather, they serve purely illustrative purposes, with the distinction between the monument and what it depicts typically blurred.

• National-level Textbooks

With the partial exception of Azerbaijan, publishers in all Soviet successor states in my sample tend to place pictures of monuments on the covers of national-level textbooks to symbolize an era or place, resuming 1980s Soviet practice. Occasionally these are monuments created during the period under consideration, but much more often the pictures selected are later monuments that make reference to a specific epoch or seek to epitomize the nation as a whole. However, Soviet war memorials only rarely appear on covers outside of Belarus and Russia.

War memorials feature in different ways as illustrations in national-level textbooks from one post-Soviet country to another. Estonia can serve as an example of radical departure from the Soviet precedent. I have not found a single image of a Soviet war monument anywhere in a post-Soviet Estonian history textbook (not even the famous Tallinn Bronze Soldier at the moment of its removal in 2007). There are, however, occasional drawings and photographs of monuments commemorating the Liberation War of 1918 to 1920, which sometimes make it onto the cover of textbooks. Nor does any Estonian textbook in my sample feature the “Red banner over the Reichstag” image, which has become the single most widespread illustration in war-related chapters in history textbooks across post-Soviet space and is also familiar to Western readers. At the same time, Estonia is the one country where I have found war memorials being discussed in the pedagogical literature as objects of teaching and critical analysis. 40 The other country in which no pictures of Soviet war memorials are to be found is Tajikistan (though that is probably due to the general dearth of illustrations in the few Tajik textbooks in my sample).

Belarus is the other extreme. Even in Soviet times, Belarusian history textbooks depicted more war memorials than those of any other republic. This tradition continued into the post-Soviet period. The Belarusian ruler Aliaksandr Lukashenka has heavily relied on a cult of the Great Patriotic War to prop up his legitimacy and salvage a heavily Sovietized version of Belarusian identity. 41 The associated imagery seeped well beyond history textbooks: post-Soviet Belarus took the Soviet regional history tradition of using war memorials as markers of national and local identity to an extreme. From the beginning of Lukashenka's rule, year four manuals entitled My Homeland Is Belarus made ample use of pictures of war memorials. 42 Most post-Soviet Belarusian textbooks on twentieth-century history have featured war memorials on their covers, typically the Treptow soldier for international history and, for national history, the 1954 Victory Monument, the 1985 Hero City obelisk in Minsk, or the Mound of Glory from 1969. In addition to textbooks on twentieth-century history, photos of war memorials have also featured very prominently in social studies textbooks 43 and in specialized books such as an Illustrated Chronology of the History of Belarus published in 1998 and an amply illustrated 2004 volume entitled The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet People , published in separate versions for year eleven pupils and university students. 44

By the latter years of Lukashenka's rule, war memorials came to dominate the visual layer of textbooks throughout pupils’ school careers. The 2018 edition of My Homeland Is Belarus includes color photos of nine war memorials in addition to an endsheet map of “memorable places of Belarus” showing several more ( Figure 7 ). 45 A 2021 picture book entitled Belarus—Our Homeland and distributed to all year one pupils as a gift from the president includes photographic presentations of each of the country's administrative regions. Most of them feature photos of Great Patriotic War memorials. Thus in Belarus, war memorials are among the main visual tools used to forge Sovietized versions of both national and regional identity, continuing and even expanding on the Soviet visual technique of generating familiarity by associating war memorials with their location and surrounding landscape. Yet unlike the late Soviet period, in post-Soviet Belarus this is done with textbooks that deal with national history. Separate textbooks on regional or local history are absent from the Belarusian school curriculum, and attempts to introduce them have been met with hostility by the regime. 46

Map of Belarus from the endsheet of a year four social studies primer entitled My Homeland Is Belarus . The map shows several Great Patriotic War memorials among other “memorable places of Belarus.” The angles from which they are shown are those from which visitors might view the monuments. Siarhei Panou, Siarhei Tarasau, Chalavek i svet. Maia radzima—Belarus’. 4 klas (Minsk, Vydavetski tsentr BDU, 2018).

Overall, among post-Soviet textbooks in my sample (across countries, and including books on international, national, and regional history) that have illustrated chapters on the Great Patriotic War, just over one in five includes at least one image of a war memorial, and over half of those are Belarusian publications.

Among textbooks that have illustrated chapters on the Second World War (rather than, or in addition to, the Great Patriotic War), 13 percent include pictures of war memorials. Within that relatively small percentage, the pictorial canon has expanded. In addition to Soviet war memorials, both major and local, one now finds, for example, monuments erected near the Babyn Yar execution site in Kyiv (in Ukrainian textbooks 47 ) or the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (in a 2008 Turkmen textbook 48 ). Moldova, with its hybrid culture of memorializing the Second World War, is a particularly interesting case. Thus one year nine history textbook on The History of the Romanians and the World from 2013 has a chapter on the Second World War that includes photos of the 1975 Eternity (formerly Victory) monument in Chis,inău, a 1992 memorial to the victims of the Jewish ghetto, and the 1941 opening of a cemetery for members of Romania's fascist Iron Guard in the village of T,iganca. 49

• Regional and Local History Textbooks

For regional and local history textbooks (my sample includes such books from post-Soviet Ukraine and Russia, plus Azeri language textbooks for Karabakh and Russian language ones for Transnistria), the situation is quite diverse. Their covers show that textbook publishers vary in how prominent they consider these memorials to be as embodiments of regional identity. Photos or drawings of local Soviet war memorials do feature among the collages or galleries that constitute the most typical cover layout of these textbooks. Examples from Ukraine include the Zaporizhzhia region in the south of the country ( Figure 8 ) and the western Chernivtsi region. In Russia, such monuments have made it onto textbook covers not only in regions that saw battles in the Second World War, such as Briansk, but also in those far to the east of the frontline, such as Bashkortostan ( Figure 9 ), Komi, or Penza. However, there are also cases in which covers do not show any monuments at all or only include post-Soviet monuments not related to the Great Patriotic War. This also corresponds to the varying weight that the Great Patriotic War occupies in regional history textbooks: chapters that deal with it can take up anything from 1 percent (in Karabakh or Sakhalin) to 29 percent (in Kaliningrad—but also, less predictably, 25 percent in the case of a history workbook on the Southern Urals). 50

Cover of Ihor Shchupak, Istoriia ridnoho kraiu. Pidruchnyk dlia 5 klasu zahal'noosvitnikh navchal'nykh zakladiv . Zaporizhzhia: Prem'ier, 2007. Zaporizhzhia's tank monument from 1960 is shown as one element among others in a collage.

Cover of: Marat Kul'sharipov, Istoriia Bashkortostana. XX vek: uchebnik dlia 9 klassa obshcheobrazovatel'nykh shkol (Ufa: Kitap, 2005). The 1967 monument to eighteenth-century Bashkir folk hero Salavat Iulaev (Salauat Yulay) is shown inside the outline of a map of Bashkortostan. The bottom right-hand corner features a photograph of the 1985 Great Patriotic War memorial in Ufa, the republic's capital.

War memorials are also shown far less systematically in regional history textbooks than in Soviet times. Out of the thirty-seven post-Soviet textbooks on regional or local history in my sample, twenty-nine have a chapter that discusses the Great Patriotic War or, in two cases, the Second World War. Of these, only six (roughly one fifth) display war memorials: three books from the Zaporizhzhia region in Ukraine, and one each for the Russian regions of Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, and Stavropol’. The relative prominence of war memorials within the chapters also varies. Whereas a 2001 textbook on the history of Tatarstan shows only one such picture (the 1966 statue of martyred poet Musa Cälil) among twenty-one illustrations, in the case of a 2003 book on the history of the Stavropol’ region, three out of the four illustrations are war memorials. 51

Thus in Russia, it almost seems as if the situation has been reversed from the Soviet era. While regional textbooks do sometimes feature memorials to the Great Patriotic War, they are routinely presented alongside other symbols of regional identity. In national history textbooks, by contrast, the war has gradually come to crowd out all other visual symbols of history: one standard textbook of twentieth and twenty-first century Russian history published in 2019 has a cover image collating a decontextualized photograph of the Treptow soldier with a painting of the liberation of Minsk in 1944—two images related to the Second World War (both, ironically, referencing locations outside Russia). 52

At the outset of this study, I had expected to find war memorials as a central visual element across Soviet and post-Soviet history textbooks and one that pupils are taught to experience via a regime of familiarity. What I have discovered is a much more complex picture, suggesting that we need to distinguish between different modes of familiarization but also between different ways in which war memorials have been depicted in textbooks on international, national, republican, regional, and local history, not to mention the obvious divergences between post-Soviet countries.

In Soviet times, war memorials were presented in accordance with two main modes of familiarization. One, prevalent in unionwide textbooks, was centered on recognition through frequent repetition of images shorn of context. The other was predicated on creating intimate knowledge and mediating pupils’ attachment to their republic or region through markers of a Sovietized identity centered on the Great Patriotic War. This second mode was pioneered in republican and regional history textbooks in the late 1950s and presented a much larger range of war memorials than the first, whose icon was the Treptow soldier. By the 1980s the types of presentation first developed in sub-union-level textbooks came to influence unionwide publications as well, and war memorials frequently dominated the covers and/or endsheets of some of the widest circulating books.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, countries diverged in whether their textbooks continued to display Soviet war memorials, but the tradition of using monuments in general as unproblematic visualizations of the periods they referred to has continued almost everywhere. Monuments have come to dominate textbook covers. Pictures of Soviet war memorials have remained frequent illustrations in Russia, Belarus, and partly in Ukraine, but the extent to which they are now used as markers of regional identity varies much more than it did in the late Soviet period. However, in Russia and Belarus, war memorials now play a much larger role in textbooks on national history, and in the Belarusian case the use of such memorials to anchor local identities has grown compared to the Soviet period, although it is now done through national-level textbooks given the Belarusian regime's distrust of potentially subversive local histories. Thus textbooks in countries that try to keep the Soviet-era war cult alive continue to present war memorials through the mode of familiarity-as-recognition (especially the Treptow soldier) and of familiarity-as-intimacy, it appears that, unlike in late Soviet times, the latter has now become more relevant to national rather than regional identity constructs.

There is no straightforward causal link between the ways in which war memorials have been presented in Soviet and post-Soviet history textbooks and people's affective and pragmatic attitudes toward such memorials. Textbooks are far from the only media that shape the visual historical imagination, and pictures of war memorials in particular circulate across many other media. However, there does appear to be a common post-Soviet culture of associating monuments with the periods they represent rather than those when they were built. At the same time there is an increasing gap between countries where Soviet war memorials have disappeared entirely as visual components in history textbooks, and those—most of all Belarus and Russia—where their significance has grown. Taken together, these factors contribute to the severity of the ongoing post-Soviet monument wars, since there is an emotional—rather than merely narrative—chasm between those educated into familiarity with Soviet war memorials as icons of a commemorative cult and familiar symbols of attachment, and those who see those same monuments as foreign objects, as imposed markers of occupation and Sovietization.

• Acknowledgments

This research was funded by FWF (Austrian Science Fund) grant M-3377. At the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media / Georg Eckert Institute (GEI), librarian Susann Leonhardt's help was crucial in building my bibliographic data set. A brief GEI visiting fellowship enabled me to begin my research at the library, and funding from the Hamburg Foundation for Science and Culture allowed me to visit several more times to continue my work. Daria Svirina and Ekaterina Melnikova helped me locate and scan additional materials at the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg. A visiting fellowship at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna provided the ideal conditions to complete the manuscript. I am grateful to Anna Topolska for reading both the full and the present abridged version of the text and offering helpful comments. I also thank two of the three reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive remarks.

I use “war memorials” as an umbrella term for constructions commemorating a war and its participants under any aspect. Thus for the purposes of this article, I do not adopt a systematic distinction between celebratory monuments to heroes and cautionary memorials to victims of war, unlike Aaron J. Cohen, War Monuments, Public Patriotism, and Bereavement in Russia, 1905–2015 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020).

For the notion of visual grammar, see Gunther R. Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (London: Routledge, 2020). See also the introduction to this special thematic issue for an overview of theoretical developments and issues in the visual analysis of history textbooks.

Such as Jeannie Bauvois, “Images comparées de la Grande Guerre dans les manuels d'histoire allemands et français de la première moitié du XXème siècle” [A comparison of images of the Great War in German and French history textbooks from the first half of the twentieth century], International Textbook Research/Internationale Schulbuchforschung 22, no. 3 (2000): 349–366.

See, for example, Mischa Gabowitsch, Cordula Gdaniec, and Ekaterina Makhotina, eds., Kriegsgedenken als Event. Der 9. Mai 2015 im postsozialistischen Europa [War commemoration as an event. 9 May 2015 in post-socialist Europe] (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2017); Mikhail Gabovich [Mischa Gabowitsch], ed., Pamiatnik i prazdnik. Etnografiia Dnia Pobedy [Monument and celebration: an ethnography of Victory Day] (Moscow and Saint Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriia, 2020).

For example, for the Krasnodon monument to the Youth Guard resistance group. See the meeting transcript of the Architecture Council of the Board of Architecture, Council of Ministers, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, 22 July 1946. Central State Archive of the Highest Organs of Government and Administration of Ukraine (TsDAVO), f. 4906 o. 1 spr. 2194 a. 5-6. As soon as it was completed, pictures of the monument made it into a range of Soviet textbooks on Ukrainian history as well as the Military Sciences workbook discussed later in this article.

The most sophisticated expression of this approach is James V. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

For a critical discussion of narrative representations that treats them as a particular kind of visual grammar instead of reading all images as narratives, see Kress and van Leeuwen, Reading Images , 45–78.

For a recent example, see Li Bennich-Björkman and Sergiy Kurbatov, eds., When the Future Came: The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Emergence of National Memory in Post-Soviet History Textbooks (Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2019).

For an introduction in English, see Laurent Thévenot, “Voicing Concern and Difference: From Public Spaces to Common-Places,” European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology 1, no. 1 (2014): 7–34.

Ibid., 13–16.

This is consistent with ways in which visuals are frequently used in textbooks internationally. See the introduction to this thematic issue for a longer discussion.

Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).

In her study of French and German history textbooks, Bauvois (“Images comparées”) shows how pre-First World War textbooks primarily showed soldier statues (p. 358), whereas memorials to dead soldiers became common motifs after the First World War (p. 363).

W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 11–34.

Kostas Dimopoulos, Vasilis Koulaidis, and Spyridoula Sklaveniti, “Towards an Analysis of Visual Images in School Science Textbooks and Press Articles about Science and Technology,” Research in Science Education 33, no. 2 (2003): 210, https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025006310503 . By the early 1990s, pictures sometimes made up half of all textbooks, as noted by Alain Choppin, “Aspekte der Illustration und Konzeption von Schulbüchern” [Aspects of the illustration and conception of school textbooks], in Schulbücher auf dem Prüfstand: Perspektiven der Schulbuchforschung und Schulbuchbeurteilung in Europa [Putting school textbooks to the test: perspectives of textbook research and textbook evaluation in Europe], ed. K. Peter Fritzsche (Frankfurt am Main: Moritz, 1992), 137–150.

For the distinction between product-oriented and effect-oriented (as well as process-oriented) textbook research, see Peter Weinbrenner, “Methodologies of Textbook Analysis Used to Date,” in History and Social Studies – Methodologies of Textbook Analysis , ed. Hilary Bourdillon (Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1992), 33–54.

For an overview of the market for Russian history textbooks, see Philipp Bürger, Geschichte im Dienst für das Vaterland: Traditionen und Ziele der russländischen Geschichtspolitik seit 2000 [History in the service of the fatherland: traditions and objectives of Russia's politics of history since 2000] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), 123–192.

Kress and van Leeuwen, Reading Images ; Dimopoulos et al., “Towards an Analysis of Visual Images.”

On the role of maps in Soviet school education see Galina Orlova, “Za strokoiu uchebnika: kartograficheskaia politika i sovetskaia shkola v 1930-e gg.” [Beyond the lines of the textbook: cartographic policies and Soviet schools in the 1930s] in Uchebnyi tekst v sovetskoi shkole: sbornik statei [Educational texts in Soviet schools: a collection of articles], ed. Svetlana Leont'eva and Kirill Maslinskii (Saint Petersburg and Moscow: Institut Logiki, kognitologii i razvitiia lichnosti, 2008), 77–103.

Mischa Gabowitsch, “Victory Day before the Cult: War Commemoration in the USSR, 1945-65,” in The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia , ed. David L. Hoffmann (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021), 64–85.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow, the Motherland statue in Leningrad's Piskarevskoe cemetery, the Treptow soldier, and the war memorial in Budapest's Liberty Square. For example: Vladimir Esakov, Iurii Kukushkin, Al'bert Nenarokov, Istoriia SSSR. Uchebnik dlia 10 klassa srednikh shkol (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1984), 41, 49, 96, 111.

T. N. Bekova, G. G. Chumalova, Atlas noveishei istorii zarubezhnykh stran dlia srednei shkoly (Moscow: Glavnoe upravlenie geodezii i kartografii ministerstva geologii SSSR, 1967).

Sylvie Lindeperg, “La voie des images. Valeur documentaire, puissance spectrale” [The path of images. Documentary value, spectral power] Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques 24, no. 2–3 (2014): 41–68, https://doi.org/10.7202/1025148ar .

Antony Kalashnikov, Monuments for posterity: self-commemoration and the Stalinist culture of time (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2023).

Yurchak, Everything Was Forever .

Il'ia Berkhin, Mikhail Belen'kii, and Maksim Kim, Istoriia SSSR. Epokha sotsializma. Uchebnoe posobie dlia srednei shkoly , 4th ed. (Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1967), 399.

The eighth edition (1977) is missing from my sample. Earlier editions do not show the drawing.

My sample includes textbooks for all fifteen of the non-Russian Soviet republics (no textbooks were published in Karelia before it lost its status as the sixteenth republic in 1956), and for eight out of the RSFSR's sixteen autonomous republics (Dagestan, Mari-El, Bashkortostan, Karelia, Chechnya, Tatarstan, North Ossetia, and Chuvashia).

Iu. Iurginis [Juozas Jurginis], Istoriia Litovskoi SSR. Uchebnik dlia srednikh shkol (Kaunas: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo pedagogicheskoi literatury, 1958), 158.

Aman Il'iasov, Aleksandra Shipitsyna, Rasskazy iz istorii Turkmenistana. 4 klass (Ashgabat: Turkmenskoe izdatel'stvo, 1964), 36.

Thus the 1956 edition of the standard two-volume history of Ukraine includes photographs of the Krasnodon Young Guard monument and the monument to General Nikolai Vatutin in Kyiv. Both are shown with their surroundings, and the Young Guard monument with people and flowers. Oleksandr Kasymenko, ed., Istoriia Ukraïns'koï RSR [History of the Ukrainian SSR], vol. II (Kyiv: Vydavnytstvo Akademiï Nauk Ukraïns'koï RSR, 1956), 500, 538.

My discussion of non-heroic monuments shown in regional textbooks, and of colonialism and ethnic hierarchy in monuments and their presentation, had to be removed from this version of the article because of a lack of space.

Maxime Felder, “Familiarity as a Practical Sense of Place,” Sociological Theory 39, no. 3 (2021): 180–199, https://doi.org/10.1177/07352751211037724 .

Galina Gerasimova, Obuchenie istorii v IV klasse. Metodicheskoe posobie dlia uchitelei [Teaching history in year four. A teaching aid] (Moscow: Prosvechchenie, 1976), 107.

Aleksandr Rodin, Istoriia rodnogo sela [The history of the home village] (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Akademii pedagogicheskikh nauk, 1954), 59–60.

Nina Tumarkin, The Living & the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia (New York: Basic Books, 1994) is an English-language expression of the sentiments prevalent in Moscow at the time.

One copy of Dmitrii S¸emiakov, Andrei Grecul, and Artem Lazarev, Istoria RSS Moldovenes,ti. Clasele 9-10 (Chis,inău: Lumina, 1982) held in the GEI library is inscribed with the names of users up to and including the school year of 1993 to 1994.

Andrei Fjodorov, XX sajandi ajalugu. Õpik gümnaasiumile. II osa: 1939–2000 (Tallinn: Avita, 2002).

Anu Raudsepp, Ajaloo õpetamise metoodika käsiraamat [A handbook of history teaching methodology] (Tartu: Raudpats, 2006); Anu Raudsepp et al., Sõjad ja konfliktid [Wars and conflicts] (Tartu: Raudpats, 2008).

David R. Marples, ‘Our Glorious Past’. Lukashenka's Belarus and the Great Patriotic War (Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2014); Per Anders Rudling, “‘Unhappy Is the Person Who Has No Motherland’: National Ideology and History Writing in Lukashenka's Belarus,” in War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus , eds. Julie Fedor et al. (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017), 71–105, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66523-8_3 .

For example, Valentina Belaia et al., Maia radzima – Belarus’. Padruchnik dlia 4 klasa (Minsk: Narodnaia Asveta, 1996).

For example, on the cover of Mikhail Vishneŭski, ed., Hramadaznaŭstva: vuchebny dapamozhnik dlia 9 klasa ahul'naadukatsyinykh ustanoŭ z belaruskai movai navuchannia (Minsk: Adukatsyia i vykhavanne, 2009).

Gennadii Pashkov, Iosif Khovratovich, Eduard Zhakevich, Illiustrirovannaia khronologiia istorii Belarusi (Minsk: Belorusskaia entsiklopediia, 1998); Aleksandr Kovalenia et al. Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina sovetskogo naroda (v kontekste Vtoroi mirovoi voiny). Uchebnoe posobie dlia 11-go klassa uchrezhdenii, obespechivaiushchikh poluchenie obshchego srednego obrazovaniia, s russkim iazykom obucheniia s 11-letnim srokom obucheniia (Minsk: Izdatel'skii tsentr Belorusskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 2004); Aleksandr Kovalenia et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina sovetskogo naroda (v kontekste Vtoroi mirovoi voiny). Uchebnoe posobie dlia studentov uchrezhdenii, obespechivaiushchikh poluchenie vysshego obrazovaniia (Minsk: Izdatel'skii tsentr Belorusskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 2004).

Siarhei Panoŭ and Siarhei Tarasaŭ, Chalavek i svet. Maia Radzima—Belarus’ (Minsk: Vydavetski tsentr BDU, 2018).

Nasta Kryvasheeva, “Skol'ko prepodavatel_ei v Belarusi uvolili po politicheskim prichinam?” [How many teachers in Belarus have been dismissed for political reasons?] Studentskaia dumka, 22 May 2021, https://dumka.me/uyvolneniya .

For example: Vitalii Vlasov, Vstup do istoriï. Pidruchnyk dlia 5 klasu zakladiv zahal‘noï seredn'oï osvity (Kyiv: Heneza, 2020), 120.

Jepbarguly Hatamow, Jumamyrat Gurbangeldiýew, 1939–2008 ýý. Orta mekdepleriň X synpy üçin synag okuw kitaby (Dünýä taryhy. 2. Bölek) (Ashgabat: Türkmen döwlet neşirýat gullugy).

Igor Sarov, Igor Ca su, Maia Dobzeu, Pavel Cerbusca, Istoria românilor si universală. Manual pentru clasa a IX-A (Chisinău: Cartdidact, 2013).

For textbooks on both national or world history and regional history in my sample that have chapters on the Great Patriotic War, the median is 6 percent.

Faiaz Khuzin, Atlas k posobiiu Istoriia Tatarstana (Kazan‘: TaRIKh, 2001), 23; Aleksei Krugov, S. Krugova, Stranitsy istorii kraia (Stavropol’: Stavropol'skoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 2003), 11, 13, 17.

Oleg Volobuev, Sergei Karpachev, P. N. Romanov, Istoriia Rossii. Nachalo XX – nachalo XXI veka (Moscow: Drofa, 2019).

• Textbook Bibliography

Abetsedarskii , Lavrentii , Mariia Baranova , and Nina Pavlova . Istoriia BSSR. Uchebnoe posobie dlia uchashchikhsia srednei shkoly [History of the Belarusian SSR. Textbook for secondary school pupils]. Minsk : Gosudarstvennoe uchebno-pedagogicheskoe izdatel'stvo Ministerstva Prosvheshcheniia BSSR , 1960 .

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Bekova , T. N. and G. G. Chumalova . Atlas noveishei istorii zarubezhnykh stran dlia srednei shkoly [Atlas of the contemporary history of foreign countries for secondary school]. Moscow : Glavnoe upravlenie geodezii i kartografii ministerstva geologii SSSR , 1967 .

Belaia , Valentina , et al. Maia radzima—Belarus’. Padruchnik dlia 4 klasa [My homeland is Belarus. Textbook for year four]. Minsk : Narodnaia Asveta , 1996 .

Berkhin , Il'ia , Mikhail Belen'kii , and Maksim Kim . Istoriia SSSR. Epokha sotsializma. Uchebnoe posobie dlia srednei shkoly [History of the USSR. The age of socialism. Secondary school textbook]. 4th ed. Moscow : Prosveshchenie , 1967 .

Diadychenko , Vadim , Fedir Los’ , and Vasyl’ Spyts'kyi . Istoriia Ukraïns'koï RSR. Pidruchnyk dlia 7-8 klasiv vos'mirichnoï shkoly [History of the Ukrainian SSR. Textbook for years seven and eight of schools with an eight-year curriculum]. Kyiv : Radians'ka shkola , 1962 .

Esakov , Vladimir , Iurii Kukushkin , and Al'bert Nenarokov . Istoriia SSSR. Uchebnik dlia 10 klassa srednikh shkol [History of the USSR. A textbook for year ten of secondary schools]. Moscow : Prosveshchenie , 1984 .

Fjodorov , Andrei , XX sajandi ajalugu. Õpik gümnaasiumile. II osa: 1939–2000 [Twentieth-century history. Textbook for secondary school. Part II: 1939–2000]. Tallinn : Avita , 2002 .

Gaigalaitė , Aldona , and Regina Žepkaitė . Lietuvos TSR Istorija: mokymo priemonė X-XI klasei [History of the Lithuanian SSR. A textbook for years ten and eleven]. Kaunas : Šviesa , 1972 .

Golubeva , Tamara , and Lev Gellershtein . Rasskazy po istorii SSSR [Stories on the history of the USSR]. Moscow : Prosveshchenie , 1965 .

Hatamow , Jepbarguly , and Jumamyrat Gurbangeldiýew . 1939–2008 ýý. Orta mekdepleriň X synpy üçin synag okuw kitaby. Dünýä taryhy. 2. Bölek [1939–2008. Textbook for year ten of secondary school. World History. Part two]. Ashgabat : Türkmen döwlet nesşirýat gullugy , 2008 .

Il'iasov , Aman , and Aleksandra Shipitsyna , Rasskazy iz istorii Turkmenistana. 4 klass [Stories from the history of Turkmenistan. Year four]. Ashgabat : Turkmenskoe izdatel'stvo , 1964 .

Iurginis , Iuozas [Juozas Jurginis] . Istoriia Litovskoi SSR. Uchebnik dlia srednikh shkol [History of the Lithuanian SSR. Secondary school textbook]. Kaunas : Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo pedagogicheskoi literatury , 1958 .

Kakhovskii , Vasilii . Rodnoi krai: uchebnoe posobie po istorii Chuvashskoi ASSR dlia uchashchikhsia srednei shkoly [Native region: A textbook on the history of the Chuvash ASSR for secondary school pupils]. Cheboksary : Chuvashskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo , 1972 .

Khuzin , Faiaz . Atlas k posobiiu Istoriia Tatarstana [Companion atlas to the textbook History of Tatarstan ]. Kazan’ : TaRIKh , 2001 .

Kovalenia , Aleksandr , et al. Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina sovetskogo naroda v kontekste Vtoroi mirovoi voiny. Uchebnoe posobie dlia 11-go klassa uchrezhdenii, obespechivaiushchikh poluchenie obshchego srednego obrazovaniia, s russkim iazykom obucheniia s 11-letnim srokom obucheniia [The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people in the context of the Second World War. Textbook for year eleven of institutions offering a year eleven Russian language curriculum of comprehensive secondary education]. Minsk : Izdatel'skii tsentr Belorusskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta , 2004 .

Kovalenia , Aleksandr , et al . Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina sovetskogo naroda v kontekste Vtoroi mirovoi voiny. Uchebnoe posobie dlia studentov uchrezhdenii, obespechivaiushchikh poluchenie vysshego obrazovaniia [The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people in the context of the Second World War. Textbook for students at institutions of higher education]. Minsk : Izdatel'skii tsentr Belorusskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta , 2004 .

Krugov , Aleksei , and S. A. Krugova . Stranitsy istorii kraia [Pages from the history of our region]. Stavropol’ : Stavropol'skoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo , 2003 .

Kul'sharipov , Marat . Istoriia Bashkortostana. XX vek: uchebnik dlia 9 klassa obshcheobrazovatel'nykh shkol [History of Bashkortostan in the twentieth century. A textbook for year nine]. Ufa : Kitap , 2005 .

Panou , Siarhei , and Siarhei Tarasau . Chalavek i svet. Maia Radzima—Belarus’ [My homeland is Belarus]. Minsk : Vydavetski tsentr BDU , 2018 .

Panou , Siarhei , and Siarhei Tarasau . Chalavek i svet. Maia radzima—Belarus’ 4 klas [Man and the world. My homeland is Belarus. Year four]. Minsk , Vydavetski tsentr BDU , 2018 .

Pashkov , Gennadii , Iosif Khovratovich , and Eduard Zhakevich . Illiustrirovannaia khronologiia istorii Belarusi [An illustrated chronology of the history of Belarus]. Minsk : Belorusskaia entsiklopediia , 1998 .

Sarov , Igor , Igor Casu , Maia Dobzeu , and Pavel Cerbusca. Istoria românilor s,i universală. Manual pentru clasa a IX-a [History of the Romanians and the world. Textbook for year nine]. Chisinău : Cartdidact , 2013 .

Semiakov , Dmitrii , Andrei Grecul , and Artem Lazarev . Istoria RSS Moldovenesti. Clasele 9-10 [History of the Moldovan SSR. For years nine and ten]. Chisinău : Lumina , 1982 .

Shchupak , Ihor . Istoriia ridnoho kraiu. Pidruchnyk dlia 5 klasu zahal'noosvitnikh navchal'nykh zakladiv [History of the native region. A textbook for year five of comprehensive primary schools]. Zaporizhzhia : Prem'ier , 2007 .

Val'dman , Edgar . Zanimatel'nye zadachi po voennomu delu [Entertaining military science exercises]. Moscow : Izdatel'stvo DOSAAF , 1958 .

Vishneuski , Mikhail , ed. Hramadaznaustva. Vuchebny dapamozhnik dlia 9 klasa ahul'naadukatsyinykh ustanou z belaruskai movai navuchannia [Social studies. Textbook for year nine of Belarusian language comprehensive schools]. Minsk : Adukatsyia i vykhavanne , 2009 .

Vlasov , Vitalii . Vstup do istoriï. Pidruchnyk dlia 5 klasu zakladiv zahal'noï seredn'oï osvity [Introduction to history. Textbook for year five of comprehensive secondary education]. Kyiv : Heneza , 2020 .

Volobuev , Oleg , Sergei Karpachev , and Petr Romanov . Istoriia Rossii. Nachalo XX—nachalo XXI veka [History of Russia. From the early twentieth to the early twenty-first century]. Moscow : Drofa , 2019 .

Contributor Notes

Mischa Gabowitsch is a Lise Meitner Fellow at the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) at the University of Vienna and a visiting fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna. Email [email protected]

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