Conceptos, lugares y mapas en los manuales escolares de Ciencias Sociales de Educación Primaria de las islas Baleares

Abstract

The main aim of this study is to analyse the concepts, places and maps used in social science textbooks for primary schools (over the six years of this obligatory education stage). To do this, three of the most important publishers of school textbooks in Spain were selected (Anaya, Santillana and Vicens Vives). Given the imbalanced thematic distribution of the social science syllabus in primary education, and its straightjacketing into a traditional framework, this very same issue is logically also reflected in the textbooks themselves. The topics and their extent have been analysed to uncover how geography is approached: the textbooks reproduce a classical physicalhuman framework with scant attention paid to ideas and concepts inherent to environmental geography (whose concepts constantly number below 7.5%). The places included mostly belong to enclaves and milestones of the nation-state of Spain (representing between 45 and 60% of cited places); and, in turn, local geography has a low weighting, below that even of global locations (Europe and the rest of the world). This same pattern occurs with map images. Lastly, and not dissimilar to a Matryoshka doll, Piaget's theory of geographical hierarchy plays a key role in interpreting the underlying discourse.