This study focuses on children's experiences and the creation of ''the big picture'', the Universe. It draws data from an age range 6À16 and is based on 270 children's drawings of how they imagine the Universe to be, and on their answers to a number of short questions about it. Results are discussed using as a base a specially developed systemic network, which is considered to be a formulation broad enough to cover the different ways of experiencing the Universe. The categories of descriptions which have been developed are exemplified by children's characteristic drawings, and analogies with historical conceptions are discussed. They have also been tested with groups of teachers' and studentÀteachers' descriptions. Moreover, dominant images held during the history of Science, have been explored in terms of their relevance to the categories of the systemic network. It appears that, although there is no analogical evolution of the ideas between these two fields, some historical instances resemble some of the children's models.

Our research is concerned with the visual representations found in textbooks used for the teaching of the Internet in Greek secondary schools. Visualization, as both the product and the process of creation, interpretation and reflection upon pictures and images, is considered here to be very important, as it is the only way students gain insight into the nature and function of the Internet, its size, complexity and invisibility. Initially, we attempted to analyze and reflect upon school textbooks' visual interpretations of the Internet. A scheme of categories of visual representations has been identified and reveals the characteristics of the textbooks' representations as well as their limitations. Sketch-comics and computer snap-shots are the more popular types of Vrep, although a considerable number of them cannot be characterized as accurate and few of them have an explanatory or complementary function in terms of the content presented in the text. We have also explored the impact on students' readings of two visual representations in one of the textbooks, used without any caption or textual information. The phenomenological aspects of the VRep seem to attract students' attention and create obstacles in conceptualizing the main idea conveyed in both representations, but when the field of ICT is implied and not clearly portrayed in the VRep, students face serious

This paper focuses on the attempt to include a historical perspective in a preservice teacher education course. It is based on the design research approach and the main aim is the development of a product, a module for student-teachers' actual involvement in the historic teaching design process. Student-teachers were presented and familiarized with the reasons for including a historical component in teaching, and with the meaning and teaching function of three historical examples. They were asked to search for historical materials on the basis of which they had to design teaching interventions justifying their choices. Total of 74 teaching interventions have been analyzed and a systemic network has been produced with the identified categories of their characteristics. Two case studies of students' interventions with their historical materials are also discussed. Findings show that the group of student-teachers studied was able to develop a range of interesting materials. Traditional models of teaching that are held by student-teachers are obstacles for substantiating the historical perspective. Only a few student-teachers succeed in stating meaningful epistemic goals, while some others lack awareness of the potential of their own material for communicating aspects of the nature of science to students. Results appear that can lead to a future module's revision, and further research steps.

This chapter focuses on practices that school textbooks and teachers use in handling texts and visual representations (VRs) when presenting scientific concepts to students. It is mainly based on the concept of “periodicity” as appears in physics and other STEM disciplines. Through an extensive literature review on textbooks' analysis and teachers' approaches, perspectives of how the reasoning in textbooks has been explored and studied, are identified. Particularly, evidence from different approaches in the research analysis of the arguments developed in the school science texts and the function of visual elements is investigated. Finally, research findings obtained during a three-year research project on how the concept of periodicity, appears through texts' inherit logic and teachers' actions.