The relationship between a text and an illustration: illustrators’ and primary school teachers’ perspective

Abstract

Illustrations as an effective means of communication help children to understand what they have read, enriching at the same time their vocabulary and ultimately influencing children’s motivation and achievement. The aim of this paper is to determine how teachers and illustrators perceive and understand the relationship between a text and an illustration in a primer. A qualitative research was conducted using a focus group with primary school teachers and an interview with an illustrator. The research results show that from the illustrator’s and teachers’ narratives one can single out, on one hand, the categories related to and explaining the relationship between a text and an illustration, and on the other hand, the categories describing the scope of the illustrator and the teachers in the process of text and illustration integration, as well as their motivation. A critical attitude of the illustrator and the teachers towards publishing, as well as the importance of illustration, was a common point in the narratives, where they emphasized that it is necessary to have a measure in order to establish the relationship between a text and an illustration in general. It was observed that the responsibility for the integration of texts and illustrations should be shared by all participants in creating the final textbook/primer, and that it is necessary to emphasize the need to connect the authors and illustrators during the creation of the relationship between a text and an illustration on one page of the primer/ textbook. It is additionally important to develop a further framework for teacher education in terms of emphasizing the importance of illustration in the learning process in teaching.

Keywords

• illustration
• text
• perspective
• illustrator
• primary school teachers.