Geospatial Thinking Learning Lines in Secondary Education: The GI Learner Project

Abstract

Geospatial thinking is a learning outcome mainly based on ways of thinking and reasoning related to pattern recognition, spatial description, visualization, spatial concept use and the spatial use of tools. It comprises a collection of different skills in order to achieve the critical application of spatial information to deal with real-world problems after studying and making sense of the characteristics and the interconnected processes of nature and human impact in time and at appropriate scale. The European Erasmus + project “Developing a learning line on GIScience in education” (GI Learner) developed therefore a geospatial thinking learning line for secondary schools, so that integration of geospatial thinking can take place. As a result of an extended literature review, a list of ten spatial thinking competencies was defined. The learning line concept used hereby different levels of complexity, referring to the taxonomy of Bloom, taking into account age and capabilities of students. For each of the competencies, lesson materials related to the curriculum were produced, thus facilitating the implementation in education on short term. To measure the impact of the learning lines on spatial thinking, a self-assessment test was therefore developed, taking into account the level of complexity of each competence (A, B or C) for each age group. The GI Learner project website (http://www.gilearner.eu) provides access to the materials developed as well as the research publications and the developed teaching resources.