Journal of Educational Sciences > Volume 29, No. 1, 2017

Images Adaptation of 8th Grade Science Textbook according to Social Semiotics / Abdulrahman Ali Aloraini, and Fahad Suliman Alshaya

The Ministry of Education translated and adopted an American Series (McGraw-Hill) for science and mathematics education,
while there are social differences between Saudi Arabia and USA, so this study aimed to study the social semiotics of the images in 8th grade
science textbook. The study followed a qualitative approach, which analyzed 263 images of the science textbook, as non-human sample. The
results found that 63 images (24%) which have been replaced or modified in such a way to adapted with the social context, 115 images
(44%) replaced because of copy rights, while the others remain as the original textbook. This replacement and modification have some
problems in the design of images, which cause contradiction of images with social context, or cause weakness in social function. These
problem were: explicit contradiction of images with society' culture, probability of contradiction between the image and it's social function,
contradiction between the image and it's social function, weak function of the image on original series, the direction of reading in Arabic
language (right to left), and weak function of the image because of image modification.