‘Why did they build this hill so steep?’: Problems of assessing primary children's understanding of physical landscape features in the context of the UK national curriculum

Harwood, Doug; Jackson, P D

doi:10.1080/10382046.1993.9964911

Cited by 18 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…In the primary phase, children's understanding of physical landscape concepts (mountain, hill, valley, etc.) is not always secure (Lunnon, 1969;Milburn, 1972;Harwood & Jackson, 1993). Nevertheless, although their descriptions of the models were not always elegant, we were satisfied that the children in our sample understood that the sand shapes represented hills and that they were able to observe differences between their features.…”

Section: Children's Descriptions Of the Modelsmentioning

confidence: 68%

Children's Relief Maps of Model Landscapes

Wiegand

Stiell

1997

British Educational Res J

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There is widespread recognition that children (and adults) find the conventions of relief mapping difficult to interpret. In this study, 111 primary age children were asked to map four model landscapes of increasing complexity. The results show an age‐related progression from representing hills in elevation only, through simple outline plans and various attempts to differentiate slope, to their early experiments with the use of contours. It is suggested that teachers can support children's understanding of relief mapping by acknowledging children's own prior cartographic thinking and making strategic use of maps employing hill signs other than contours.

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Section: Children's Descriptions Of the Modelsmentioning

confidence: 68%

Children's Relief Maps of Model Landscapes

Wiegand

Stiell

1997

British Educational Res J

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“…Interview protocols were scored only once and at the level of individual items. Scoring itself was derived from a procedure introduced by Harwood and Jackson (1993) and made use of a 4-point scale:…”

Section: Methods and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Children's ideas about the solar system and the chaos in learning science

Sharp

Kuerbis

2005

Sci. Ed.

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ABSTRACT:Findings from a quasi-experimental study of children's ideas about the solar system and how these ideas changed in response to a 10-week intervention period of formal astronomy teaching at a single primary school in England are presented in detail. Initial interviews with all of the 9-to 11-year-olds involved revealed a relatively poorly developed prior knowledge base, and this was reflected in the predominantly intuitive and transitional nature of the different mental models expressed and used when answering questions and completing tasks. Following intervention, progression was evident in many different forms and this could be described and measured both qualitatively and quantitatively. The routes and pathways toward scientific conceptualization were often direct, and most changes could be attributed largely to the processes of weak and radical knowledge restructuring. Together with the retention of newly formed ideas over time, learning outcomes were considered particularly encouraging. In order to explain findings more fully, evidence is presented which lends some support to the notion of chaos in cognition.

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“…According to this researcher, in order for school pupils to develop 3D cognitive models of rivers they need to be given more time to acquire experiences by visiting different parts of the river from the spring to the delta, rather than "focusing" on terminology to describe the features and processes of rivers through books or images. Similar ideas had also been employed in the past by May [8], Harwood and Jackson [9], Platten [10,11] Lunnon [12], and Piaget [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

An Investigation of Hand-Drawn Representations of Rivers by Fifth-Grade Students in Greek Elementary Schools

Galani¹,

Rokka

2014

ISRN Education

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This paper is part of a wider study and reflects an attempt to explore the cognitive representations that Greek pupils in the 5th grade of elementary school have, as they emerge from the freehand drawing of rivers. An attempt was made to explore the extent to which the cognitive representation skills of school pupils are associated with real images of space and the extent to which intervention by the teacher who presents the structure of a river emphasizing on how it is formed can contribute to an improvement in the drawings made. Two groups of pupils ( = 125, = 113) took part in this study. They were taught one of two parallel lesson plans, to create representations relating to the concept of river. This was followed by an analysis of the drawings and the pre-and postteaching interviews ( = 60/group). The results indicate that pupils perceive the differences between reality and how it is conveyed in images, and they reproduce stereotypical models of rivers presented in schoolbooks without using complex structures to represent them. In addition, it was clear how encouraging use of children's mental maps can be not only in revising existing teaching theories but also in building new ones.

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‘Why did they build this hill so steep?’: Problems of assessing primary children's understanding of physical landscape features in the context of the UK national curriculum

Cited by 18 publications

References 1 publication

Children's Relief Maps of Model Landscapes

Children's Relief Maps of Model Landscapes

Children's ideas about the solar system and the chaos in learning science

An Investigation of Hand-Drawn Representations of Rivers by Fifth-Grade Students in Greek Elementary Schools

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