Evaluating Progression in Students' Relational Thinking While Working on Tasks with Geospatial Technologies.

Abstract

One of the facets of geographic literacy is the ability to think in a structured way about geographicrelationships. Geospatial technologies offer many opportunities to stimulate students’ geographicrelational thinking. The question is: How can these opportunities be effectuated? This paper discussesthe results of a process-oriented experiment that aimed to gain insight into the characteristics ofstudents’ learning processes and the factors that influence students’ learning when they work withgeospatial technologies, and to provide ideas on how to optimise the learning outcomes. Eighteenstudents were observed in a laboratory research setting while working on tasks with a geogame and aWebGIS, and were interviewed about their learning afterwards. The study shows that using appropriateeducational technologies is only part of the story. Well-designed tasks and active coaching by theteacher also seem to be indispensable ingredients. The data suggest that, in order to increase theeffectiveness of instruction methods with geospatial technologies, teachers should include tasks inwhich students have to summarize their system knowledge in a conceptual framework, and thatteachers should help students structure their system knowledge via dialogical teaching. In the tasks andsupport, attention should be paid to the grammar of relational thinking.

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