New ways of presenting information have affected both contemporary society and education. School textbooks and other teaching aids for young pupils nowadays typically include, or sometimes entirely build on, illustrations and visual information. During the latest decades our view on literacy has shifted towards also comprising, as a necessity, visual and multimodal literacies Kress (2003). When using visual information in education, the transparency of pictures and models is often regarded as unproblematic. However, transparency is not an innate quality of illustrations and cannot be taken for granted (Pintó & Ametller, 2002). On the contrary, visual information is always coded and interpretations are always related to culture and context, so we must always ask what aspects of illustrations are easily understood by our young pupils’ and what aspects may be stumbling blocks for them.

Whilst there have been a number of research projects in this domain with older students (e.g., Åberg-Bengtsson & Ottosson, 2006; Cook, 2006), studies including primary and pre-school pupils is remarkably a domain that, to a great extent, lacks research. The present project redresses this imbalance as it investigates young pupils dealing with illustrations that have a particular focus on mathematics and science related phenomena. Typical illustrations of interest are pictures in textbooks such as exploded views, time axes of the Earth’s evolution etc., models of processes and circulatory system in our body, food chains and other ecological processes and animations in digital media, as well as three-dimensional models that can but do not necessarily have to be interactive. The research questions deal with the use of explanatory illustrations in classrooms, the teachers’ intentions, and pupils’ making of meaning. In addition we intend to point out and discuss pedagogical implications of our results.

The project takes overall cultural-historical and socio-cultural perspective in a Vygotskian tradition. In particular, it leans on the idea of instruments (tools and sign systems) mediating human-world relations (see, e.g., Vygotsky, 1978, 1987). The illustrations in focus (like language) certainly belong to the realm of sign systems. Such systems are cultural artifacts that obtain their meaning from the historical and cultural context where they are created and used. Even though Vygotsky evidently had profound interest in semiotics (Wertsch, 1981), the present project asks for a more elaborate semiotic theory. We found Kress and colleagues’ social approach (e.g., Kress, 2003, 2009; Kress, Jewitt, Ogborn, & Tsatsarelis, 2001; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996, 2001) rather than main stream semiotics to be compatible with cultural and activity perspectives. Here semiotics gets contextual and social overtones, implying that function and social use is stressed.

Åberg-Bengtsson, L., & Ottosson, T. (2006). What lies behind graphicacy? Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 43, 43-62. Cook, M. P. (2006). Visual representations in science education. Science Education, 90, 1073- 1091. Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. London: Routledge. Kress, G. (2009). Assessment in the Perspective of a Social Semiotic Theory of Multimodal Teaching and Learning. In C. Wyatt-Smith & J.J. Cumming (Eds.), Educational Assessment in the 21st Century (pp. 19-40). Dordrecht: Springer Science. Kress, G., Jewitt, C., Ogborn, J., & Tsatsarelis, C. (2001). Multimodal teaching and learning: The rhetorics of the science classroom. London: Continuum. Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design.London:Routledge. Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal Discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Arnold. Pintó, R., & Ametller, J. (2002). Students’ difficulties in reading images. International Journal of Science Education, 24, 333-341. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech (N. Minick, Trans.). In R. W. Rieber (Ed.), The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky. (Vol. 1). New York: Plenum Press. Wertsch, J. V. (Ed.). (1981). The concept of activity in Soviet psychology. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.