Summary. This paper examines aspects of children's understanding of illustrations used as an adjunct to learning. It reports an experiment designed to determine whether first‐year secondary school pupils could identify the cut surfaces of objects in six biological illustrations taken from commonly used textbooks. The results show that few children were able to perform the tasks correctly but that the illustrations were not equally difficult. Picture analysis indicated that not only the features of the object depicted but also the number and type of pictorial conventions employed posed significant difficulties. It is concluded that the findings have implications both for theories of perceptual development and for the role of illustrations in teaching. It is suggested that teachers should regard the use of illustrations as learning aids as problematical and consider the need to teach about illustrations.

The introduction of GRIDS for schools to review their curricula was received positively. Teachers welcomed their greater involvement in decisions and better communications. Further work was found to be needed on the processes of change in schools.

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A technique is described for sensitising normative school-focused research by enabling the practitioner's perspective to be uncovered and systematically incorporated into research design. The procedure is based upon small group discussions, but involves specific procedures, sampling, timing and methods of recording. It is claimed that the approach not only permits teachers to articulate their views and practice in a manner which is relatively undistorted by received rhetoric, but also results in data which readily inform the design of normative research aimed at investigating the process of schooling. Two examples are given of the technique in operation, one concerned with investigating the ways that infant teachers value and use pictures and the other an evaluation of the implementation of GRIDS (Guidelines for Review and Internal Development in Schools) in a group of schools. In each case, the results of the exploratory group are shown to have substantially influenced the extent to which the related studies were able to address issues from the school perspective.

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