Young children's understanding of nested hierarchies of place relationships

Teaching Place: Developing Early Understanding of ‘Nested Hierarchies’

“…When we consider Harwood's (1998) developmental sequence -however it might be modified for younger pupils -the recitation of an address by a child aged 4-7 years is, of itself, unlikely to mean that they have any internalised geographical conception of the nested arrangement of places within places, which adults would accept without question. Yet, it appears that the teaching activities described here have, to some extent, enabled a majority of the Year 1 children to begin to approach this conceptually difficult aspect of learning.…”

“…Implicit in this NLS requirement is teaching an understanding (through an address) of the concept of nested hierarchies. Harwood (1998) noted that this is 'an important objective of primary geography . .…”

“…This question is the focus of this study. Harwood (1998;Harwood & McShane, 1996) identifies the approaches used in his studies as • verbal tests without cues;…”

“…The two key texts are those of Harwood (1998) and Deacon (1997), the former focused on approaches to the teaching of nested hierarchies, the latter on symbolic representations in language and learning.…”

Mapping the place knowledge of teachers in training

“…There is now a substantial body of work on children's free recall maps, both as a means of assessing and promoting spatial knowledge (Saveland, 1978, Metz, 1990Wise & Kon, 1990, Hayes, 1993, Rifas, 1996 and as a way of uncovering the development of their place awareness with age (Drumheller, 1968, Wiegand, 1995Wiegand & Dickinson, 1996). Key difficulties experienced by children include not only errors of size and shape with respect to spatial units but also failure to recognise that smaller units 'nest' inside larger ones (Jahoda, 1963;Harwood & McShane, 1996). The National Curriculum requirement for children to be able to identify points of reference on specific maps in the statutory orders has stimulated research into children's knowledge and understanding of places, but although patterns are emerging in the development of the way children construe small scale space (Wiegand & Stiell, 1996a, 1996b, there is a shortage of comparative material from teachers or other adults in the UK.…”