Representation and the Portrayal of Older Characters in 1st and 2nd Cycle Student’s Text Books: Policy Implication

Abstract

Students often see pictures before reading a text. Hence, pictures in the textbooks influence the attitude of students toward a group that were represented with the pictures.  The main objective of this research was to investigate the representation and portrayal of old people in 1st and 2nd cycle students’ textbooks of Ethiopia with its policy implication. A total of 32 primary school textbooks were analyzed within the scope of this study. Document analysis were used as a major data collection method.  It was found out that old people were portrayed with positive character that describe their activity in the society, have normal physical appearance, have minimum wrinkles, and socially cooperative. Parent role and grandparent role was used in the portrayal of old people while describing old people in the text books. All these show that variables associated with parental role like love and care were used as unique character of parents and grandparents indicate positive meaning given for the elderly in these text books. Finally, was recommended that curriculum planners should give due attention to pictures in text books since they have hidden agenda that they message to students. Moreover, since male and female were not equally represented in these text books it was recommended to consider it during textbook preparation.