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The constructivist approach emphasises students' active roles in the education process, as well as their capabilities of developing their own knowledge by themselves based on experience and previous knowledge. This empirical study outlines research on the representation of the constructivist approach, focused on didactic strategies, conducted among 181 lower primary school teachers teaching social studies in Slovenia in the fourth or fifth grades in the academic year 2015/2016. The results have shown that teachers believe that they have a basic knowledge on constructivism and that in their opinion it is possible to teach social studies according to constructivism. Results also show that the selection of didactic strategies for individual content matches special didactic recommendations offered by the curriculum for social studies and that the social studies teachers most often decide to use experiential-, research-and problem-based learning. It is due to lack of time and too many students per class, constructivism-oriented teaching strategies are not used to a greater extent.

Authenticity is an important element in the newer models of teaching, evaluation and assessment. Due to the fact that it is quite unclear how authentic evaluation and assessment should be implemented into practice, teachers still cling too much to traditional forms of knowledge evaluation and assessment. First, some basic theoretical facts on evaluation and assessment with an emphasis on authentic evaluation and assessment are listed. Next, an outline of empirical research findings on the characteristics of evaluation and assessment in the subject Social Science in Year 4 is presented. Data were obtained by a web questionnaire on a representative sample of teachers who were teaching the subject Social Science in Year 4 at various primary schools in Slovenia. We discovered that teachers very commonly use summative knowledge evaluation and assessment form. Among the authentic and alternative forms research and simulation are predominant.

Illustration is very important media. It is the media from which children learn especially when they are 5 to 6 years old. If they don't know the meaning of illustration, they find it senseless. Illustration as any material which is used in education, should follow and support child's cognitive development. Semiotics despite its unfamiliarity is very important part of child's cognitive development. Different symbols are learned at different stages and there are a lot of symbols in textbook's illustration. The semiotic analysis of three textbooks for young learners (Playway to English 1, Magic Adventure 2, Cookie and Friends) showed that these textbooks need some corrections according to child's cognitive development and their visual perception. The textbook's illustrations all include "motion devices" and what is ever more the same symbols represent different meanings.