TALKING GEOGRAPHY: an investigation into young children's understanding of geographical terms PART 2

This research investigates the understanding by children of seven years of age of certain geographical terms and compares data collected in 1991, reported in an earlier paper, with that collected in 1993, after two years’ implementation of the English National Curriculum for Geography. The findings do not indicate any significant difference in the quality and range of response by the children. Most children, from both samples, appeared to show restricted or inconsistent understanding of most of the terms. It is clear from the research that children construct their own meanings for particular words, based on intuition and experience together with some formal teaching, but that even vernacular terms can present difficulties for them. Children have particular problems in conceptualising space. Further investigation of children's constructions, related to specific geographical concepts, is therefore urgently needed if geography teaching programmes are to be designed with adequate reference to the cognitive demands of particular aspects of the subject. We need to know more about children's views of geography.