Scientific images from the history of science to primary education: Insights from historiographic research on the visual history of science for the compilation of primary school science textbooks

Since 2008, the author of this paper has conducted historiographic research on the visual history of science in the West since the mid-twentieth century. The findings show that the cognitive functions of visual scientific representations in the history of science are connected with theories of knowledge development in dialectical materialist epistemology and theories on children's cognitive features at different ages in developmental psychology, as well as the stage-specific curriculum objectives outlined in the Compulsory Education Science Curriculum Standards (2022 Edition). These insights provide essential inspiration and theoretical support for the establishment of the twin-theme logical structure in the Primary School Science Textbooks (Daxiang Edition)—core competencies as the warp and cognitive development as the weft—and for the intentional cultivation of students’ cognitive abilities using scientific images across different learning stages and textbooks.