HR: 0830h
AN: ED31B-1170    [PDF]
TI: Students' Misconceptions About the Correspondences Between a Map and the Terrain Represented by the Map
AU: * Kastens, K A
EM: kastens@ldeo.columbia.edu
AF: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Rt 9W, Palisades, NY 10964
AU: Griffith, J
AF: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Rt 9W, Palisades, NY 10964
AU: Liben, L
AF: Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA 16802
AU: Pistolesi, L
AF: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Rt 9W, Palisades, NY 10964
AB: Skillful use of maps is a prerequisite for success in many fields of geoscience. Geoscience instructors find that many high school and undergraduate students are not skilled at using maps and other spatial representations to obtain or convey information. In an attempt to understand why so many students come to their study of geoscience with such poor map skills, we are studying map comprehension and map curricula in elementary schools. An analysis of published K-5 map skills curriculum materials shows that students are rarely explicitly instructed on the crucial skill of translating from map to reality and vice versa. Instead they are asked questions that can be answered entirely within the frame of reference of the map without thinking about the terrain represented by the map. We have developed a field-based test of map skills that requires students to transfer information from a map into the real world and from the real world onto a map. In the world-to-map task, students place stickers on a map to show where colored flags are located in the real world, just as a field geologist places colored pencil marks on a map to show where specific rock units are located. In the map-to-world test, students use a map to go to locations specified by stickers on a map and place markers on the ground at each location. This is the same skill required by an environmental scientist who follows a map to go to specific sampling locations. Approximately a fifth of 4th graders produce deeply-flawed answers on these tasks, showing a lack of understanding of the basic correspondences between features on the map and the represented terrain. Flaws include placing round stickers arbitrarily on round map symbols, and placing a sticker on a built object that should have been on a natural feature or vice versa. Another category of mistake is to reverse west/east and/or north/south; this mistake tends to be associated with poor performance on a standard psychometric test of mental rotations ability.
DE: 6605 Education
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting