Exploring Map Drawing Skills of Geography Teacher Training Students

Abstract

Map skills stand at the core of Geography education. Map reading and map drawing, however, do not enjoy similar attention and consideration in Geography classrooms. Empirical research shows less developed competence models of map drawing as opposed to map reading and an overall map-drawing skill acquisition mainly based on classroom teaching experience. Furthermore, studies showed that teacher training students encounter difficulties when asked to represent geographic space. Drawing upon the theoretical Competence Model of Map Drawing, this paper analyses the symbolic and graphic coding skills of teacher training students. A total of 120 students enrolled in regular (60 persons) and distance education (60 participants) in kindergarten and primary teacher training programs (at the specialisation the Pedagogy of the Primary Grades and of Kindergarten, in Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania) participated in the study and delivered sketch maps based on instructions. Mixed methods served to analyse the representations. The results of the study show that, despite optical presentations resembling maps, most sketch maps actually resemble mental maps, which is proved by rudimentary symbolic coding.

Views of the islands: The geographical perception of the Balearic Islands among graduate students in primary education

“…Global knowledge was the objective of several of these essays (Polonsky & Novotny, 2010;Nishimoto, 2012). Meanwhile, European scholars focused their attention on Hungarian (Rédep et al, 2012), Romanian (Bagoly-Simó et al, 2016), and Turkish (Sudas & Gokten, 2012) students. Currently, the Meaningful Maps project stands out based on its use of mental maps made by UK school children from 7 to 11 years of age to evaluate both their progress in obtaining cartographic skills and geographic knowledge and their sense of place, which reflects the affective aspects that determine the students' sketches the cultural reasons for them (Vujakovic et al, 2018).…”

Regional Geography And Graphic Organisers. Geography-Specific And Didactic Competences In University

“…In the last two decades, in the Romanian geographical pre-university education system, an interest was shown in organising Regional Geography information into graphic organisers of different types (tables, clusters, tree, Venn diagram, etc.) (Dulamă, 2010) and also in representing space within map sketches (Bagoly-Simó, Dulamă, Ilovan, Kosinszki, & Răcășan, 2016).…”