The importance of studying the image and its use in the media, mainly in the media with pedagogical features, establishes, in the school environment, the need to cope with the overwhelming presence of visual image in people's everyday life. This paper intends to analyze and understand the different aspects of visuality in Portuguese didactic books used in the last grades of Junior High School (from 5th to 8th grade of the Fundamental School in the Brazilian School System), during the 60s, 70s and 90s. Which role does school play, since it takes hold of the imagetical speech and submits it to the pedagogical speech? How have images been built by a speech that is specific to the school process, along the decades mentioned above? Three theoretical approaches, namely image seen form the functional, semiotical and cognitive points of view, aim at the constructing a set of reflections, the core of which is the teaching-learning relationship.