Session Information
27 SES 08 B, Visual and ICT Artefacts in Didactical Designs
Paper/Poster Session
Contribution
Visual displays play an important role in various school subjects (cf. Anglin, Towers, & Levie, 1996); in geography they are however most appreciated. Some of the authors therefore speak about iconic turn and prime of the visual culture in specific domains of education (e.g. Tolia-Kelly, 2012; Dikovitskaya, 2005). Geography as a school subject deals with exploration and clarification of spatial processes, interactions and patterns existing in physical as well as social environment. It therefore relies heavily on intelligible explanations, which contribute to the lucidity of geographical phenomena (Haubrich, 2006). Considering the complexity of the geography content and educational aims, especially beneficial are the explanations which are of visual nature (cf. Schnotz, 2002). These visual representations allow to grasp initially unknown and abstract geographical phenomena in a more comprehensible manner, which is closer to pupils´ experience and cognitive abilities, however, pupils interpret them unexpectedly and oftentimes even in a contra productive manner (e.g. Lieber, 2012).
The proposed contribution therefore focuses attention on the significance of visual representations in geographical education (cf. Rose, 1996). Its main objective is to introduce and elaborate the concept of visual geographical information. The visual geographical information represents a pictorial representation of varying degrees of abstractness, which occurs in traditional (i.e. printed) as well as modern (i.e. electronic) educational means (cf. Janko & Knecht, 2013). Being in analogic or digital form, the visual geographical information affects ways of seeing, thinking, and action on the cultural, social, political and educational aspects of geographical phenomena and thus may support generalization and integration of newly acquired geographical information into already existing cognitive structures (Elwood, 2010). The employment of visual geographical information in geography instruction may thus contribute to stimulation of pupils´ conceptual change related to geographical phenomena (Anderson & Contino, 2013).
Although the significance of visual geographical information grows at the expense of other communication modes within school instruction, we cannot conclude that it is effective under all of the circumstances. Systematic research on how much the visual geographical information affect pupils´ learning and what characteristics determine its didactical functioning is realized only sparingly. Especially, it is still questionable to which extent various forms of visual geographical information correspond with pupils´ cognitive abilities and which characteristics of the concept support pupils´ understanding of geographical phenomena (cf. Stylianidou, 2002).
The research objective of this contribution is therefore to introduce the concept of visual geographical information and to delineate the inherent characteristics which underlie its didactical functioning in geography instruction. The objective is transformed into the research questions which are as follows:
- How does the representational nature of visual geographical information arise? What kind of benefits does visual geographical information offer in comparison to other geographical didactical means?
- Which position does visual geographical information keep within the hierarchy of other didactical means? What are the concrete examples of effective visual geographical information?
- Which of the inherent characteristics of visual geographical information arouse the greatest attention and expectations among pupils? Which geographical concepts does visual geographical information encourage in pupils?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Anglin, G. J., Towers, R. L., & Levie, W. H. (1996). Visual message design and learning: The role of static and dynamic illustrations. In D. H. Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook of research for educational communication and technology (pp. 755–794). New York: Macmillan. Anderson, R. O. & Contino, J. (2013). The role of visualization in conceptualizing learning and conceptual change. In K. D. Finson, & J. E. Pedersen (Eds.), Visual data and their use in science education (pp. 3–21). Charlotte: Information age publishing. Cohen, L., Manion, L, & Morrison, K. (2011). Research methods in education. 7th edition. New York: Routledge. Creswell, J. W. (2014). Educational research: Planning, conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research. Harlow: Pearson. Dikovitskaya, M. (2005). Visual culture: The study of the visual after the cultural turn. Cambridge: MIT Press. Elwood, S. (2010). Geographic information science: Visualization, visual methods, and the geoweb. Progress in Human Geography, 35(3), 401–408. Haubrich, H. (Ed.). (2006). Geographie unterrichten lernen. Die neue Didaktik der Geographie konkret. München: Oldenbourg. Janko, T. & Knecht, P. (2013). Visuals in Geography Textbooks: Categorization of Types and Assessment of Their Instructional Qualities. Review of International Geographical Education Online, 3(1), 26–43. Lieber, G. (2012). „Ich mag es, wenn ich noch selbst überlegen kann.” Schulbuchillustration, Leerstellen und kindliches Bildinteresse. In J. Doll, K. Frank, D. Fickermann, & K. Schwippert (Hrsg.), Schulbücher im Fokus. Nutzungen, Wirkungen und Evaluation (pp. 67–80). Münster: Waxmann. Rose, G. (1996). Teaching visualised geographise: towards a methodology for the interpretation of visual materials. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 20(3), 281–294. Schnotz, W. (2002). Towards an Integrated View of Learning from Text and Visual Displays. Educational Psychology Review, 14(1), 101–120. Stylianidou, F. (2002). Analysis of Science Textbook Pictures About Energy and Pupils' Reading of Them. International Journal of Science Education, 24(3), 257–283. Tolia-Kelly, D. P. (2012). The geographies of cultural geography II: Visual culture. Progress in Human Geography, 36(1), 135–142. Whittemore, R., & Knafl, K. (2005). The integrative review: Updated methodology. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 52(5), 546–553.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.