"There is no reality. There are no facts, there are interpretations. The truth, or what we call truth, is an interpretation that has prevailed over others."

"El ciudadano ilustre" [movie], Gastón Duprat & Mariano Cohn [diretors], 2016, 01:50:28-01:50:40, Argentina.

"It's when it's small that the cucumber gets twisted."

[“De pequenino se torce o pepino”], Portuguese proverb

In a world full of images as exemplifications of the (un)desired realities, in a world of books as mirrors of (un)desired lives, textbooks also contribute to the design of identities in a school context. Used in the first years of schooling as an indispensable didactic tool to support teaching and learning, these books (like other products) are "expressions of embodied human labour", as would Karl Marx says, and are carriers of specific cultures. As products of human relations, they combine the desires of publishers/editors with the desires of (inter)national governmental institutions. They are passed on to schools, teachers, students, and carers (parents/grandparents/family) as a valid truth and reality. They embody economic, political (ideological), social, cultural and educational purposes and represent a mainstream. Being a product of the mainstream culture, they can (in)directly contribute to inequalities and discrimination, manipulating subjectivities to a uniform (a desired) identity (Merlin, 2017).

Besides improving the teaching activities and being the primary learning source (Sui, 2022), some of the main and direct goals of textbooks in the first years of school are to teach children to decode letters, words and images. And although they combine texts and images, the attention is primarily centred on the words. Images are given to support the world of words (Duborgel, 1995), and the reasons for their choices can be questioned. Textbooks, as pedagogical instruments with political and educational power, contribute to shaping a collective memory of the people related to them, especially children. In the occidental society, the trust given to the knowledge produced through texts and books (academic knowledge) could be shaken by the rising realities represented in the textbooks. Realities and histories that were chosen intentionally or not?

"[in]visible - [in]visibility of identities in Portuguese 1st grade elementary textbooks of Social & Environmental Studies after 1974" is an FCT-funded project that began in 2023. This paper intends to present an analysis of certain textbooks, considering the possible contribution of their images and representations in shaping specific stereotyped and uniformed identities.

The project team intends to have, by the time of the ECER, the image's collection and treatment completed. The drawing of an archive of identities in images of Portuguese textbooks is being prepared, and the data analyses will be in the course, providing specific contributions to the discussion of the paper.

From the methodological perspective, through a mixed strategy, which uses quantitative and qualitative tools for gathering information, the images of Portuguese textbooks will be analysed, and a historical archive of these representations will be created. The chosen subject and grade of the textbook is Social & Environmental Studies of the first grade, published in the democratic period in Portugal (since 1974 and until nowadays). The choice of the subject and the first grade is explicitly related to the scholar's introduction to cultural and social notions about "I", "other", "family", and "national identity", where images are used as the main contact with children. The project aims to design and expose a visual thought about the (in)different representations of (in)visible identities in Portugal, touching diversity through different approaches, such as ethnicity, disability, gender and sexuality, age, and others, in an intersectional way. Focusing on images and visual representations of identities in textbooks, the project intends to assess how the producers and legitimisers of textbooks interpret/apply the Portuguese educational policies regarding the presence or absence of plural representation of the identity of their citizens. According to the High Commission for Migrations report, the 1st cycle of school has the most significant number of international students enrolled in mainland Portugal (Oliveira, 2020). A growth in cultural diversity is evidenced, with an increase in primary/secondary education (South America-45.1%; PALOP-24.5%; EU-12.3%; Eastern Europe-10.5%; Asia-8.1%; others-3.1%), justifying the relevance of this study in the field of ethnic diversity. Focusing on critical visual analysis is a way to make the images' power visible when seeing beyond the first visual impact. The historical choice was made because of the interest in studying the presence or absence of the dictatorship past in the construction of the Portuguese people.

The project's intention is to create a space and time for critical and visual thought about the power of the images in textbooks and how they contribute to constructing and maintaining or not stereotyped identities. Giving and hiding examples of visual representations of identities, these books influence their readers with a single history related to the identification. And a single (hist)story might be a problem (Adichie, 2009). Exposing interpretations about the (un)represented identities, the project aims to contribute to a more inclusive world where diversity could be visible in the mirror of society and culture. The possibility of designing and sharing an archive of images of (in)visible identities represented and presented in Portuguese textbooks opens an opportunity to think about these and share experiences in different societies/cultures/research, but also in the editorial milieu and the school.

Adichie, C. N. (2009). The danger of a single story. In TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story Duborgel, B. (1995). Imaginário e pedagogia. Instituto Piaget. Merlin, N. (2017). El poder de la imagen. In J. Márquez (Ed.), Colonización de la subjetividad. Los médios massivos em la época del biomercado (pp. 99–103). Letra Viva. Oliveira, C. R. de. (2020). Indicadores de integração de imigrantes: relatório estatístico anual 2020. 1a ed. (Imigração em Números – Relatórios Anuais 5). Sui, J. (2022). Gender Role of Characters in the Illustrations of Local and Introduced Edition Textbooks of College Portuguese Teaching in China. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 13(6), 1232–1242. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.17507/jltr.1306.11