Children’s mental maps: comparative research in France and Poland
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Bogacz, K.
1UNIVERSITÉ LUMIÈRE LYON 2 Email: k.bogacz@hotmail.fr
Abstract
This comparative research - in France and Poland - was carried out with 192 pupils in Lyon and Cracow. The objective was to compare the children’s spatial representations of Lyon and Cracow. In order to examine the children’s spatial representations, mental maps are mobilized. This research project studies the modalities of spatial learning. The work focuses on spatial mobility as a factor of change of spatial representations of children. To obtain the children’s mental maps, they were asked to draw their city on a white paper, without documents or oral supplementary indication. Mental maps analysis opens several routes of reflection. The question is to elaborate the model of analysis and interpretation of mental maps, and this one is, obviously, foreign to classic topographical representation. The research is related to two disciplines, geography and psychology. It is supported by the postulate of spatial representations within the framework of the paradigm of spatial production. The research postulated that the connection to reality is inseparable from the filter of the representations. Through experiences, the individual constructs an interior model of his or her environment. The work is part of an approach to geography, in which the lived-in space is in the centre of preoccupations. The theoretical and epistemological reflections of geographers, which consider the values attributed by the individual to the space, lead to mobilizing the theoretical and methodological elements of psychology. The representations, in the sense of reconstitution and interpretation, are very important in this teaming of disciplines.
Keywords
mental map; spatial representation; spatial learning