Tratamiento didáctico y semiótico de las representaciones visuales en libros de texto escolares de básica secundaria (grado sexto) respecto al concepto de fotosíntesis

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to determine the didactic and semiotic treatment that visual representations of school textbooks have with respect to the concept of photosynthesis, understanding according to theoretical referents, that didactics attributes the relationship between knowledge, student and teacher. In the present document is taken as the determining object of knowledge, this is done by means of a descriptive content analysis that allows to characterize said treatment from the construction of categories, in order to identify the way in which this concept can be represented visually, recognizing aspects such as configuration and organization tools. For this, it was vitally important to review the documents, specifically, the relationship of the concept with the Basic Standards of competences and the Curricular Guidelines, established by the Ministry of Education. We analyzed 11 books from 4 different publishers: Norma, Voluntad, Santillana and Ediciones SM, because they are the most widely disseminated publishers in the country. School textbooks comprised between the period of the year 2009 and the year 2016 were characterized. 30 visual representations were found, associated to the concept, where the representation that predominated to make known the concept of photosynthesis was the illustration, followed by the Photography. Because they play a fundamental role in the function they fulfill as representation, since they are presented as motivating; that is, in many cases it is used to motivate the reading of the text, trying to approach the clarification of a concept, but resulting simply as a decorative or enjoyment aspect. Regarding how the concept is presented, it is evident that there is an absence of representation in other organisms, predominantly the physiological representation of photosynthesis, because it is probably the simplest way to represent the concept from the organelles and organs involved in this process, lacking a fundamental aspect that is the ecosystemic one, that is to say, the relation with the factors of the biotope and the biocenosis.