Assessing the suitability of the illustrations of 5th grade Turkish text books for the 11 year old students in view of their forms and contents and comparing them with the drawings made by the same age group students

The purpose of this research is to determine whether the illustration in the Turkish Elementary School Textbooks (age 11 group) which were approved by the Ministry of Education and Training Committee are appropriate for children at the relevant age group or not. This thesis is intended to provide guidance for teachers who are evaluating textbooks for adoption into a curriculum.Ten illustrations were randomly selected from Turkish Textbooks. Each illustration was assessed in context of its relationship with the text. Students from 10 different schools in 6 different cities (Ankara 4, Çankırı 1, Afyon 2, Erzurum 1, Ağrı 1 and Van 1) were asked to draw pictures describing each text they read. 55 drawings were chosen by the experts and were compared with the pictures in the books.The illustrations in the textbooks should be prepared in line with the mental development levels and drawing skills of children taking their aesthetics into consideration. In the research which was carried out for the 5th grade Turkish Textbooks it was found out that the quality of painting is very low and that photos are used together with the illustrations. Besides, the anatomic defects of figures will cause adverse effects on artistic development of children. It has been seen the sensitivity, sincerity, the harmony between the colours and the composition in the pictures drawn by children have been expressed more successfully than in the illustrations used in the textbooks.