Reforming the national school system in the context of the conceptual principles of secondary school reform “The New Ukrainian School” raises the issue of improving the education content, the use of modern pedagogical technologies, as well as the modernization of teaching aids, among which the school textbook occupies an important place. Given that in Ukraine the process of creating and publishing alternative educational literature is still continuing, the problem of its illustration is especially important, as a set of visual images in the textbook is the basis for the concepts’ formation; affects the student academically, intellectually, and emotionally; develops the ability to observe, to comprehend what was seen, and to compare it with what was read.
Since the process of constructing this type of educational literature is closely related to the school textbook theory as a conceptual basis for creating a textbook, the
study of textbook creation experience in the second half of the 20th century is important in developing a modern strategy for illustrating textbooks for general secondary educational establishments.
The object of the research: the process of illustrating Ukrainian school textbooks.
The subject of the research: theory and practice of illustrating textbooks for Ukrainian primary schools of the second half of the 20th century.
The purpose of the research is to reveal the pedagogical basics of illustrating textbooks for Ukrainian primary schools of the second half of the 20th century for use of the positive ideas of the past in the Ukrainian textbook creation system.
The scientific novelty of the obtained results is that:
- for the first time a comprehensive study of the pedagogical basics of illustrating textbooks for Ukrainian primary schools of the second half of the 20th century was carried out, in particular: the stages of illustrating Ukrainian textbooks for primary schools of the second half of the 20th century were singled out (the 1st stage – the 50s of the 20th century – the substantiation of textbook illustration theoretical bases); the 2nd stage – the 60-70s of the 20th century – the polytechnization of the textbooks’ visual images content; the 3rd stage – the 80s of the 20th century – improvement of scientific approaches to illustrating educational literature for primary school; the 4th stage – the 90s of the 20th century – the national orientation of illustrative textbook material) taking into account the following factors: reforming the national school system, the development of school textbook theory and book graphics; the tendencies of each of the selected stages were determined;
- the analysis model of textbooks’ illustrative material for primary school was developed; the model covers didactic, hygienic, artistic, and aesthetic criteria and corresponding indicators;
- the understanding of the essence, functions, type diversity of illustrative material as a structural component of the textbook is specified; scientific approaches to the analysis and evaluation of primary education textbooks’ illustrative material were deepened;
- the requirements for visual images of primary school educational books have been further developed.
The practical significance of the obtained results lies in the implementation of the developed model based on the analysis of Ukrainian primary school textbooks’ illustrative material, published in the second half of the 20th century; the preparation of scientific and methodical recommendations on the use of visual images in the firstdegree school textbook structure. These recommendations, as well as the proposed model, can be used in the process of creating illustrative material for new educational publications; they can be used by educators during the monitoring of the educational literature quality; they can also be used by primary school teachers to increase the efficiency of working with the educational book visual row.
During 2011–2019 in the funds of regional, school, and scientific libraries and private collections the thesis author made a full-scale survey of 140 Ukrainian primary school textbooks published in the second half of the 20th century. A significant amount of photographic materials (over 700 units) was collected and processed, which gave an idea of illustrating books for younger schoolchildren of the period under study.
Based on the results, the thesis author prepared scientific and methodological recommendations for illustrative material use in primary school textbooks. The recommendations are divided into general (the requirements for connecting illustrative material with the text and other structural components of the textbook) and special (the requirements for the correspondence of illustrative material to age features of primary school students; hygienic requirements for illustrative material of
primary school textbooks; artistic and aesthetic requirements; additional recommendations for the illustrative material use) ones.
