Spatial Thinking: a powerful tool for educators to empower youth, improve society, and change the world

Abstract

This paper argues that spatial thinking can effect positive change in individuals and society. Spatial thinking plays a role in shaping young people’s capacities to learn and to function in society and thus is valuable enough that it should be explicitly taught to learners beginning at very young ages. Spatial thinking, supported by maps and geospatial technologies as appropriate, can be used to create active, participatory, and emancipated youth engaged in spatial citizenship. Modern society will benefit from a spatially literate population with an enhanced understanding of the world as seen through the key concepts of geography: space, place, scale, power, and human-environment relationships. Critical geography education must have the goal of teaching for a better, more just world.

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