Do Maps Contribute to Pupils’ Learning Skills in Primary Schools?

ABSTRACT

With the use of maps in different areas, a wide range of users exist who vary in their purposes and needs, according to their education level, age, cognitive level, and so on. Maps used by students in basic education need to be carefully designed and cartographers have important duties and responsibilities in designing maps according to the cognitive development levels of child users. An atlas design and production project entitled 'Atlas of Turkey for Elementary School' was carried out by the authors for the first stage of education. The aim of the study is to determine the contribution of the atlas to learning, reading and using maps. Thus, a questionnaire was applied to 494 students including 73 3rd grade (8–9 years) and 421 4th grade (9–10 years) students in four different schools. The results indicate that the use of the atlas increased the students' learning ability by an average of 40%.

KEYWORDS:

• Atlas
• cartographic design
• cartography education
• children’s maps
• geography education
• map use

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to acknowledge Scientific Research Projects Grant of Necmettin Erbakan University (Grant no: 161219016), who provided financial support for the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on the contributor

Ilkay Bugdayci graduated from Selcuk University Konya in 2002 as a Surveying Engineer. She started to work as a Research Assistant at Selcuk University in 2003. She worked as a Research Assistant at Selcuk University from 2003 to 2012 and completed an MSc in 2005 and a PhD in 2012 at Selcuk University. She studies cartography and GIS in education, cartographic design and map use. She has been working as an Assistant Professor at Necmettin Erbakan University since 2012.