Part one of this article looked at the subtle differences between spatial literacy and geography education. This second part focuses again on location in spatial literacy.

Getting back to the specifics of location in spatial literacy, Malclom McInerney suggests that we need to develop an awareness of the location of features as well as identifying and locating of environments and the ability to describe the relative location of features and environments and discuss and analyse the reasons for the relative location of features and environment.

With this in mind then, the following ideas look at some ways of incorporating location in spatial literacy education.

Often spatial judgments, such as size, shape, distance, or direction comparisons, are not evaluations of properties of entities but rather evaluations that depend on relating an entity to a reference frame (e.g., determining whether something is upright), or relating one entity to another (e.g., deciding whether one glass is closer than another or filled higher than another). Determining location and comparing location are important spatial evaluations and comparisons that depend on relating an entity to a reference frame.

Introducing Absolute and Relative Location

• Place definitions of absolute and relative location on the board.  Discuss the similarities and differences among the definitions.
• Now discuss how we use this knowledge in constructing maps.  How is absolute location used in creating a map of the world?  How is relative location used in creating a map of the world?  Do we need absolute location?  Could we get by with relative location?

Working with The Space of Navigation for Relative Location

Barbara Tversky talks about this. The space of navigation is the space of potential travel. It is too large to be seen at once, so it is pieced together from a variety of kinds of experience, perceptual, from actual navigation, or cognitive, from maps or descriptions. The space of navigation serves to guide us as we walk, drive, fly about in the world. Constituents of the space of navigation include places, which may be buildings or parks or piazzas or rivers or mountains, as well as countries or planets or stars, on yet larger scales. It can be acquired from descriptions and from diagrams, notably maps, as well as from direct experience. Descriptions of the space of navigation locate places with respect to one another and a reference frame, from a ‘perspective’.

Consider using these types of narratives or descriptions for relative location exercises and for developing the space of navigation. The narratives correspond to natural ways in which we acquire representations of environments, from a single external viewpoint, from travelling through the environment, and from viewing an environment from a height.

Maps constructed from reading or listening to any perspective can be highly accurate and can assist in instilling mental representations of environments into learners.

o       gaze description

This perspective can be used to describe smaller environments, those that can be seen from a single viewpoint, such as a room from an entrance. Landmarks are described from the stationary viewpoint of an observer relative to each other in terms of the observer’s left and right.  For example, “The desk is left of the bed, and the bookcase is left of the desk.”

This example could be used in the Foundation Phase or early Intermediate Phase. Ask the children to draw a sign post showing where things are in relation to where they are sitting.

For example:

The arrows indicate the location of the objects / people in relation to the child (labelled “Me”). The length of the arrow indicates the distance between the child and the object / person. The children could make their sign posts more interesting by using pictures instead of words.

o       route perspective

The narrative or description takes a changing point of view within an environment, addressing the reader or listener as “you,” describing you navigating through an environment, locating landmarks relative to your changing position in terms of your left, right, front, and back. For example, “As you drive down Cape Road, you will pass the bank on your right and the post office on your left.  Turn right on Mount Road and the restaurant will be on your left.”

o       survey perspective

The narrative or description takes a stationary viewpoint above the environment, locating landmarks relative to each other in terms of an extrinsic frame of reference, typically, north-south-east-west.  For example, “The bank is east of the post office and the restaurant is north of the post office.”

For both these examples, learners could be put into pairs. One learner describes locations from one of the perspectives whilst the other learner attempts to draw a map or diagram of the environment described, using the locations highlighted. Depending on the ages of the learners, these environments could be local (the school, local community) or more universal.

If you have used approaches like those mentioned above, I’d love to hear what they are. Join me next time for another theme in spatial literacy education.

References used in this article

• Goodchild, M. F. (2006). The Fourth R ? Rethinking GIS Education. ArcNews Online, (September 2005).
• Leeuwen, W. S. V. (2009). Spatial literacy : the ABC of the ( X , Y , Z ) The five senses of GIS in education.
• McInerney, M. (2005). Spatial technology and spatial literacy in primary schools. Australian Geography Teachers Association.
• National Research Council. (2000). Learning to Think Spatially: GIS as a Support System in the K-12 Curriculum. Washington DC. doi: 10.1089/15245940050156012.
• Tversky, B. (2005). Functional significance of visuospatial representations. The Cambridge Handbook of Visuospatial Thinking, 1–34.

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