https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6080-8667
ABSTRACT
The introduction to this special issue begins with a brief background on some of the milestones in the history of school cartography, from the publication of the first school atlases to research activities developed in the twentieth century. The research projects developed in the twentieth century contributed to determine e.g. which core skills children should develop when they begin to learn map use, as well as tried to find answers to diverse questions that cartographers, geographers, teachers and other colleagues ask when teaching concepts related to maps or map use in schools. Finally, a short overview of the articles chosen for the special issue is offered, giving a general idea of the wide spectrum of themes that editors wished to cover with this selection.
What is the first, most traditional image that we associate with school cartography? Majority of us will imagine a classroom with children listening to their teacher, who is explaining some geographical (or historical or other) knowledge using a wall map, a globe or an atlas. This special issue is published to complete and modernize this old image by giving new elements to the readers so that they form a more exact idea of those fields that were, are being or will be researched on School Cartography.
Map use in schools has a long history. It is difficult to establish when teachers used maps for the first time to enrich their explanations in the lessons. Beginnings of school cartography can be referred to different dates. One of them is the publication of the first atlases specifically created to be used in schools. Researchers agree that the first school atlases were published by Johann Baptist Homann in Nuremberg: Kleiner Atlas Scholasticus (1710) and Atlas Methodicus (1719). The use of various cartographic materials in schools was extended and diversified during the nineteenth century. Here are only two examples that confirm this statement: the Geography textbooks written by Pierre Émile Levasseur in France and profusely illustrated with thematic maps, and the diversified production of school atlases by several publishing houses in the United States, excelling those published by William C. Woodbridge, Jessie Olney, Sidney E. Morse and Nathaniel G. Huntington among others. Already in the first school atlases appeared an introduction dedicated to the graphic representation of astronomical concepts, which would soon be complemented with basic map concepts to be taught in the classrooms: scale, types of maps, projections, etc.
The twentieth century brought about the strengthening of school cartography as a research topic: first in search of traditional solutions that would make teaching activities more interesting and effective, and later, under the influence of impetuous computational development, cartographers began to study how to adapt and optimize these solutions to the new options offered by the digital world.
The results achieved in research projects on traditional or digital solutions to be used in schools provide cartographers with guidelines and principles that must be followed when we make maps for children. One of our invited authors, Emeritus Prof. Simon Catling, in the ‘Understanding and teaching Primary Geography’ book written by him and with Tessa Willy, defined four core skills to be developed by children when they begin to use maps: understand the meaning of symbols, find the location of features, be able to find directions and recognize what the scale of the map is. These skills lay the foundations for the correct use of maps in their daily and school activities, and it is the first step to understand more complex maps, which represent scientific information needed for their secondary studies.
Nor should we forget that school cartography is more than map use, reading and understanding by pupils in elementary and secondary schools. Our researches should also give answers to questions as How to create different cartographic materials (from atlases to globes) to be used in schools? Which methods of representation should be used on those maps targeted for schools, according to the age of the pupils and their educational level, as well as the basic knowledge-oriented in the national curriculum? How to train teachers on professional (and personal) map use? How can map concepts be taught with more effective methods that can arouse children’s interest? How can the modern technologies (web, GIS, etc.) be used to improve the traditional school cartography? Which types of solutions can be applied to make maps (and to teach map use) for pupils with visual disabilities?
The list of questions can be endless; however, our special issue tries to give answers at least to some of them. Editors intended to collect articles that cover varied fields of the current school cartography, including also some less researched themes. In his leading article, Simon Catling (Oxford Brookes University) reflected on primary children’s out-of-school mapping, how children can build their own mental maps and how imaginary maps can help children’s map learning. Colleagues from Norway (Trine Bjerva, Thorsteinn Sigurjonsson and Jon Anders Graesli) wrote about the relationship between wayfinding and gender during childhood, developing a survey with the participation of 97 children of 3–13 years old. Bulgaria is represented by Temenoujka Bandrova and Silvia Marinova, who introduces us to which cartographic materials and training are being developed in their country to help pupils’ responses to specific disaster situations. All those colleagues interested in the digital technologies will read with special interest the experiences of a Brazilian professor, Iomara Sousa, combining the use of anaglyphs and Google Earth in elementary schools.
This special issue cannot forget a very important field, namely inclusive cartography. We can find one article dedicated to the maps for blind and partially sighted children, which was written by colleagues of a country (Brazil) characterized by a very intensive activity in the interest of giving multifaceted solutions for children with visual disabilities. During the last 20 years specialists and institutions from Brazilian universities have become examples of what cartographers can do to help a more thorough integration in the society of these children and young people.
When we talk about the development of school cartography in the twentieth and twenty-first century, we cannot omit the role played by the international organizations and their commissions, which have served as a communication bridge between specialists from different countries. Events organized by the International Cartographic Association (ICA) or the International Geographical Union (IGU) have been and should remain a meeting point for new ideas that can inspire joint international research projects. Particularly, this special issue could not have been made without the mutual collaboration of members of the ICA Commissions on Cartography and Children and on Maps and Graphics for Blind and Partially Sighted People, as well as the IGU Commission on Geographical Education.
I would not like to finish this introduction without thanking each of the authors for their valuable contributions, and also the main editors of the International Journal of Cartography, Anne Ruas and William Cartwright – their invitation and help to make this issue dedicated to School Cartography has come true. In its relatively short six years of life and from its very first number in 2015, IJC always showed marked interest in publishing articles related to school cartography. All of us are confident that the current issue can come up with new information on the results obtained in our research area, motivating cartographers, teachers and specialists from related sciences to join our community and make new contributions to foment the interest of the new generations in maps.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributor
José Jesús Reyes Nunez is Associate Professor at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. His research interests lie in Cartography for Children (teaching of cartographic concepts and map use in Elementary and Secondary Schools), Digital and GIS Cartography, Web Cartography and Geovisualization. Author of more than 25 articles in scientific publications and more than 65 papers in different events, he has collaborated as cartographer in more than 40 textbooks and atlases. He is responsible for the organization of the Barbara Petchenik Map Competition in Hungary from 1999, being President of the International Jury in 2005 and 2007. He was Chair of the ICA Commission on Cartography and Children from 2007 to 2015, currently Vice-Chair of the same Commission. The International Cartographic Association awarded him with the Diploma for Outstandings Services to ICA in 2015.