.

1. Promoting and assessing student´s Critical
Spatial Thinking skills for significant
learning in ESD through geospatial
technologies
Vânia Carlos (University of Aveiro) | vania.carlos@ua.pt
Norberto Santos (University of Coimbra) | norgeo@ci.uc.pt

2.  Example of a cycle..
The Action/Research Project

3.  Geographical Teaching and Learning strategies
supported by geospatial technologies promote
significant learning in ESD through Critical Spatial
Thinking
Hypothesis
http://vampcat.wikia.com/wiki/File:ArcView_GIS_Spatial_Analyst.gif

4.  How to promote and assess Critical Spatial Thinking,
on the scope for ESD?
 Does the use of geospatial technologies promote the
development and assessment of Critical Spatial
Thinking?
 What are the main difficulties to promote CST skills?
Goals and research questions

5.  Literature Review
 Focus Group (specialists researchers)
 Learning goals with Geographic Information
Technologies
 Assessment of Critical Spatial Thinking skills through
fieldwork (geographic enquiry)
 Focus Group (students)
Methodology

6.  Taxonomies of Spatial Thinking
- National Research Council (2006)
- Jo, I., Bednarz, S., & Metoyer, S. (2010)
- Janelle, D. G. and M. F. Goodchild (2011)
Literature Review
http://www.teachspatial.org/finding-
spatial/6485&docid
http://www.teachspatial.org/fi
nding-spatial/449&docid
http://www.teachspatial.org/finding-
spatial/6486&docid

7.  Taxonomies of Critical Thinking
Literature Review
http://pegiflynt.com/images/criticalThinkingSkills.png

8. Focus Group
(specialists)
 CT attitudes
- Try to be well informed
- Having an open mind
- Take a position (and change)
 CT capabilities
- Focusing on one issue
- Analyze arguments
- Make and evaluate
inferences
 ST concepts
- scale, space, territory, place
- distance and routes
- location
- spatial dependence
- “thirdspace” or lived places
 ST reasoning processes
- scaling and levels of
conceptualization
- generalization and relativisation,
- spatial perception
- summarizing

9. Focus Group
(specialists)
 Geographical competences
- The development of the ability to think geographically
- The correct use of graphic and cartographic techniques
- The predisposition to be geographically well informed
- The relativization of the importance of the place where the individual lives
 Geographical learning goals
- The student develops fieldwork for the collection of data needed to
understand places and physical and human phenomena
- The student identifies and uses arguments based on the discussion of
environmental and social issues
- The student evaluates alternative views on interventions in the territory

10.  Spatial Thinking – fundamental concepts
- Spatial primitives (LG1 - LG3)
- Simple spatial concepts (LG4 – LG7)
- Complex spatial concepts (LG8 – LG12)
 Geographic Enquiry and Spatial Thinking
process
- Intern (LG13 – LG14)
- Extern (LG15 – LG21)
 Geographic Education and
Transdisciplinarity
- (LG22 – LG29)
Learning goals with Geographic
Information Technologies

11.  Group I
- LG1 - Uses formal and informal methods
to determine "where" through
Reference System coordinates
(Location)
- LG15 - Speak, write and think spatially,
through the use of spatial language
(limit, boundary, region, area, location,
direction, distance, ...)
- LG19 - Represent geographic
phenomena using geometric shapes
(points, lines and polygons)
- LG23 - Values socio cultural and
biological diversity
- LG27 - Combines the use of TIG with
traditional resources (books, atlas,
globe, photography)
Learning goals with Geographic
Information Technologies
 Group II
- LG1 - Uses formal and informal
methods to determine "where"
through Reference System
coordinates (Location)
- LG2 - Recognizes the identity and
uniqueness of places and territory
space (Space, Place, Territory)
- LG15
- LG23
- LG26 – Uses GIT to collect data and to
present and analyze the data
collected in the field
- LG29 - Is motivated with articulated
strategies in with ICT, Art, TE,
Mathematics, Natural Sciences, etc.

12.  Factual enquiry / Values enquiry
- Observation and perception
- Definition and description
- Analysis and explanation
- Prediction and evaluation
- Decision-making
 Personal evaluation and judgment
 Personal response
 General attitudes
- Curiosity
- Respect
- Attention
- Engagement
Levels: 1.Beggining 2. Developing 3. Accomplished
4. Exemplary
Assessment of Critical Spatial Thinking
skills through fieldwork and geographic
enquiry

13. Group I
 Values enquiry :
- Analysis and
explanation
- Prediction and
evaluation
 Transversal
attitudes:
- Curiosity
- Respect
- Engagement
Assessment of Critical Spatial Thinking
skills through fieldwork and geographic
enquiry

14. Assessment of Critical Spatial Thinking
skills through fieldwork and geographic
enquiry
Group II
 Factual enquiry :
- Observation and
perception
- Definition and
description
 Transversal
attitudes:
- Curiosity
- Respect
- Attention
- Engagement

15.  Does the use of Geospatial Technologies (GT) promote the
development and assessment of CST?
- Purpose: ‘see if there were changes or not’, ‘know if there´s a
connection between man and nature’
- Competences: ‘sustainable consumption’, ‘environmental
responsibility’, ‘entrepreneurship and innovation’, ‘civic participation’
- GT and (C)ST: ‘get to places where I have never been’, ‘explore’, ‘find
things, know more about them and why they are there’, ‘without GT
we couldn´t mark places and we couldn´t know where we had
passed´, ‘preserve’
- Best: ‘had fun and learned at the same time’, used new technologies’,
‘shared different ideas’, ‘we were not taking classes… we were, but
in a fun way’
Focus Group
(students / Group I)

16. Focus Group
(students / Group II)
 Does the use of Geospatial Technologies (GT) promote the
development and assessment of CST?
- Purpose: ´go to the reserve of oleander’, ‘Explore, choose the paths,
discover new ways´, ‘Take pictures of what we found most important’
- Competences: ‘critical thinking and solving problems’,
‘entrepreneurship and innovation’, ‘environmental responsibility’,
‘civic participation’
- GT and (C)ST: ‘Mark paths, record routes’, ‘Find places, with GPS’,
‘take pictures, notes, descriptions’, ‘know the distance between the
reserve and the school’, ‘to travel’, ‘ít´s like a touristic center, we go
there (Google Earth) and check if we would like to go to some place
or not’

17. Focus Group
(students / Group II)
 Does the use of Geospatial Technologies (GT) promote the development
and assessment of CST?
- Best: ‘In class we can only hear how it is, and here we actually experienced
it’, ‘We had various disciplines at the same time without realizing it’, ‘some
subjects we don´t like, here we enjoyed (mathematics)’, ‘never had
crossed the river, and did not even know that there were trout and
barbel’, ‘Knowing the oleanders, never had there been’
- Relevance of (C)ST: ‘to think about where we are’, ‘why is it reserve?’, ‘In
what other places there are oleander?’, ‘why only there?’, ‘To outsiders this
is a surprise. For us is not much, because we see it so often…’, ‘to know
the tourist and economic value’
- Fieldwork: ‘If we go there with a purpose, we find better things. When we
just walk we are distracted’ / ‘When we go there with no goal we can
discover no more goals’

18.  Spatial thinking and GT » focus now on the “Critical”
 Design strategies/materials (scripts) for the
promotion of CST skills, as examples…
 Evolve students in their own evaluation process…
Conclusion and further
development

19. Thanks, Danke, Obrigada!