The development of Slovenian botanical textbooks is an issue that in the past has not been widely discussed and published even less. We represented our research of the topic in four parts: general overview of the school system in Slovenia, development of botany in the curriculum over time, a general overview of 21 botanical textbooks in Slovenian language (in the period from 1864 to 1969) and a more precise analysis of the three selected Slovenian botanical textbooks within approximately 50 years’ time interval. We were interested primarily in the content component of textbooks – why authors choose selected contents, specific illustrations and why they choose to eliminate certain topics or expand them in future releases, etc. A great deal of factors impact these decisions, among which there are the historical turning points, the progress of science and botany as a scientific discipline, changes in school system and others. The general comparison included 21 Slovenian botanical textbooks, which were analyzed and compared. We chose three textbooks for further detailed analysis. The comparison was based on two basic factors: content and illustrations. Our attention was also focused on the design, linguistic and stylistic features. Using the MS Access database program helped us to import all the information of textbooks in the base, followed by a comparative analysis in graphical and textual form. In the detailed analysis part of the paper, we also added illustrations to certain chapters of selected three textbooks for.
|
