The Production of Meanings through Images in Chemistry textbooks

Abstract: In this article we aim to present an interpretation of the possible meanings in chemical science that are promoted by the images of experiments in the textbooks published in the period between the second decade of the twentieth century and the 1960s. Textbooks are discursive devices that promote stabilized, but precarious subjectivations, and, although they do not represent fixed senses or crystallized knowledge, they allow for the investigation of inscriptions both of the provisional senses in a given space / time and of the processes of production of meanings over time. The illustrations seem to indicate disputes in the process of producing meanings for chemical operations and, in this sense, we argue that, even when an experiment is presented through images as a way for the chemical science to be rediscovered by the student in the school, such discourse is inevitably translated for school purposes, turning science into a production with pedagogical purposes.

摘要：本研究旨在阐释20世纪10年代至20世纪60年代出版的化学教材中的实验图像所传递的化学科学潜在内涵。教材作为话语建构载体，推动形成了虽趋于稳定却仍存变数的主体认知。尽管此类教材并未承载固定不变的意义或固化成型的知识，却为探究特定时空下的临时性意义表征，以及随时间演进的意义生成过程提供了可行路径。教材中的实验插图似乎折射出化学实验操作的意义生成过程中存在的争议。据此我们认为，即便教材通过图像呈现实验，以期让学生在校园场景中重新认知化学科学，这类话语也必然会为适配教学目标而被重构，最终使科学知识转变为具有教育学导向的生产性内容。