Developing Educational Cartography: Pupils criteria for selecting a school atlas
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2008 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Future prospects in Geography |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Pedagogy and education |
| Keywords | Didactics of geography;school atlas research;geography teaching and learning resarch;geography education; educational cartography; maps; atlases |
| Description | Atlas plays an important role in geography education. It enhances pupils orientation skills (among others by means of index), it graphically presents relationships and connections of phenomena and processes in regions as well as their comparison and also teaches how to interpret and evaluate information conveyed by the language of the map. Atlases are mostly researched in the context of childrens ability to read, interpret and use maps, eventually to explore childrens spatial thinking. However it was found that some maps are inadequate for pupils:there is an excessive amount of text, the use of colours is not clear, maps are too small etc. All of the above make it difficult for pupils to interpret the depicted phenomena. For both geographers and geography teachers in the future it is necessary to produce attractive educational media: especially attractive from the pupils point of view. Geography keeps disposal criteria for the school atlases selection. These criteria are mostly based on expert assessments. But what criteria do pupils prefer when selecting a school atlas? To answer this we employed the method of structured individual interview with 120 lower secondary pupils in which we discussed four atlases published by different publishing houses. The research results show what directions geographers, teachers and atlas publishers should follow in the future in geography education. |
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