As part of the research project that took place between 2023 and 2024, entitled “[in]visible - [in]visibility of identities in Portuguese 1st grade elementary textbooks of Social & Environmental Studies after 1974”, we questioned the presence of a subliminal discourse inducing discriminatory values in the representations of images in these textbooks. The research focused on identifying these discriminatory contents that disseminate the naturalised values of a culture built in the West, heir to a colonial, patriarchal and racist past.

By analysing the representations of identity in textbooks between 1974 and 2023 and building a critical reading archive based on this research, the project aimed to identify the impact of the information made (in)visible in these books (https://invisible.i2ads.up.pt/).

The purpose of this communication is to question the possibility that images representing identities could be different, in defence of anti-discriminatory values.

Based on a workshop held with students from the Master in Illustration, Edition and Print

[MIEI], in the subject “Illustration Project”, at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto [FBAUP] in February 2024, who experienced the possibilities of integrating these values into illustrations, the team proposes to present an analysis of the results of this session, in the context of the research carried out.

The relation between the workshop images and the studied textbooks' pictures will be part of the presentation.

A focus group was set up with MIEI students at the FBAUP, on a voluntary and informed basis, coordinated by their teacher designer and accompanied by members of the project team. The workshop took place while promoting the full freedom of each of the participants, without conditioning them on political or cultural values. The [in]visible team provided illustrations related to (un)representation of identities, and the task of the participants was to think about these images and illustrate the invisible characters. The work session was recorded, with each participant's authorisation. In the end, the participants answered a semi-structured survey with questions about the work process, any hesitations, decisions made, and reflections shared.

All the research in the [in]visible project is aimed at building an extended archive of the presence and absence of images of identities in Portuguese textbooks, continuing the study for textbooks in other subjects and school years, and extending it to the international field, in continuity with the actions already carried out in Argentina (“Congreso Internacional Territorios de la Educación Artística en Diálogo. Investigaciones, experiencias y desafios”, 2022), Brazil (“Encontro Internacional de Arte/Educacão · Grupos de Pesquisa ENREDE”, 2023), Cape Verde (“VII Encontro Internacional sobre Educação Artística”, 2021) and Mozambique (“VIII Encontro Internacional sobre Educação Artística”, 2023). Several communications and publications have already been presented from the study and the respective evaluation reports (https://invisible.i2ads.up.pt/?page_id=30).

DIAS, Margarida Dourado (2023). Proyecto [in]visible. In Gabriela Augustowsky & Damián Del Valle (Coord.), Territorios de la educación artística en diálogo (pp. 105-112). Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de las Artes. ISBN 978-987-3946-28-8. https://formaciondocente.una.edu.ar/noticias/se-lanza-el-libro-territorios-de-la-educacion-artistica-en-dialogo_40418 DIAS, Margarida Dourado (2023). Naturalizing Attitudes on Others Through Images in Portuguese PrimaryTextbooks. Arts and Research in Education: Opening Perspectives. Proceedings of ECER 2022 NW 29: Research on Arts Education: Yerevan (online), Armenia, 44-50. http://hdl.handle.net/10256/23035 FUCHS, Eckhardt & BOCK, Annekatrin (Eds.) (2018). The Palgrave Handbook of Textbook Studies. Palgrave Macmillan. MAGALHÃES, Justino (2011). O Mural do Tempo. Manuais escolares em Portugal. Edições Colibri. MERLIN, Nora (2017). El poder de la imagen. In Colonización de la subjetividad. Los médios massivos em la época del biomercado (pp. 99–103). Letra Viva. MERLIN, Nora (2019). Colonización de la subjetividad y neoliberalismo. Revista GEARTE, 6(2), 272-285. http://dx.doi.org/10.22456/2357-9854.92906 RICHAUDEAU, François (1979). Conception et production de manuels scolaires. UNESCO. SERRA, Filipe M. (2005). A imagem nos manuais do ensino primário do Estado Novo. Cultura, 21, 151-176. SOVIČ, Anja, & HUS, Vlasta (2015). Gender stereotype analysis of the textbooks for young learners. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 186, 495-501. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.080, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187704281502340X SUI, Jiajia (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/10.17507/jltr.1306.11