Trends in Environmental Education Images of Textbooks from Western and Eastern European Countries and Non-European Countries

Abstract

Textbook analysis is seen as a major element for studying environmental education addressing pupils, image analysis being rather relevant when studying textbooks written in 11 languages. We analysed 25 textbooks from 14 countries addressed to 14–16-year-old pupils, focusing on: (1) local and foreign/global images; (2) urban/rural and nature images; (3) negative impact, human management, and the beauty of nature; and (4) men and women in images with negative and positive impact. We distinguished some trends between Western (WEc) and Eastern (EEc) European countries and non-European countries (NEc). In contrast to textbooks from EEc and NEc, which tend to show the beauty of nature with little human influence, WEc textbooks tend to exhibit more images of urban/rural landscape, of human negative impact and of human management, expressing an anthropocentric view of the environment. Men are usually more present in textbook images than women. However, some images exhibiting more women than men could be found in textbooks from WEc and EEc, but never in NEc. In negative impact pictures, men are more often present than women but NEc women are never present in such images. Women are more frequent than men in positive impact images. Results suggest that textbooks from EEc and NEc should give more emphasis to human management and urban/rural images, whereas those from WEc should give more attention to the beauty of nature. A balance in the presence of men and women in images should be a matter of greater concern by all textbooks’ authors and publishers.

Keywords:

• Environmental education
• Secondary school
• Multicultural
• Textbooks
• Images
• Comparative analysis

Acknowledgements

This work had the financial support of European project FP6 Biohead-Citizen CIT2-CT-2004-506015 and the Portuguese FCT project (‘Analysis of school textbooks’ PTDC/CED/65224/200). The authors particularly thank the colleagues who gathered data or coordinated this process concerning the topic ‘Environmental Education’ in the textbooks of their respective countries: Nicos Valanides (Cyprus), Kai Pata and Tago Saraparuu (Estonia), Anna-Liisa Kosonen (Finland), Pierre Clément (France-Lyon), Claude Caussidier and Daniel Favre (France-Montpellier), Christine Geier and Franz Bogner (Germany), Dániel Horváth and Attila Varga (Hungary), Silvia Caravita (Italy), Iman Khalil (Lebanon), Paul Pace (Malta), Sabah Selmaoui (Morocco), Adrienne Kozan (Romania), Mame Seyni Thiaw and Valdiodio Ndiaye (Senegal).

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