Research on Cartography for School Children - Maps for the Future Children Education and Internet - page 220

18.2 Research Based on the Jean Piaget's Approach
The impact of Jean Piaget's theory in Brazilian education was very strong through-
out the 70s and 80s. Regarding the teaching of maps, L´via de Oliveira's ( 1978 )
thesis influenced studies in this area and served as a reference for various research
papers afterwards. This paper was the first to present a detailed study of Piaget's
ideas regarding a child's representation of space. In accordance with this line of
studies, we published a book, which has been used by teachers for teaching maps
(Almeida and Passini 1989 ). We based our thesis (Almeida 1994 ) on Piaget's ideas,
which lead to other publications about cartographic concepts for primary school
children (Almeida 2002 , 2007 ).
In order to continue this approach, we supervised Miranda's research ( 2001 )on
the construction of a contour line concept by students of 11 and 12 years of age
through observations in the field and of a model done to scale. The results showed
us that the students are capable of identifying contour lines on large-scale maps
(1:1,000) and indicating which way the water should drain. However, they had
some difficulties in drawing contour lines on hydrographical maps and landmarks
they are familiar with.
Another study which followed the same approach was carried out by Val´ria
Cazetta ( 2002 ) and dealt with the concept of land use based on aerial photographs.
She used aerial photographs of the city's neighborhoods with students of 12 and
13 years of age (scale 1:5,000) to produce layers with a pre-defined key. In order to
identify the urban areas (built-up areas, uninhabited areas, squares and areas
occupied by large buildings). The research showed that the students had no
difficulties constructing the layers, however not all of them were able to identify
different types of neighborhoods based on the designated land use. We concluded
that additional knowledge is necessary for this concept to be learned, for example,
learning the historical background of the city.
We consider the Piagetian approach suitable for investigating the acquisition of
concepts related to spatial relations (topological, projective and Euclidian) and to
the logical structure of thought, however there are other factors, which interfere
with the learning process such as symbolic exchanges (through speech, gestures,
written forms, visual images, etc.) and the factors in the institutional and social
context. Thus we attempted other theories for producing school atlases with the
collaboration of the teachers. We changed the way we approached the projects on
the basis of the premise that time interferes in the production of knowledge. It is
necessary to allocate more time to the discussions so that there is interlocution
between the researchers and teachers (Bakhtin 1981 ). It is in the interlocution that
new knowledge arises and this is a methodological condition for the nature of the
research that we do. Another fundamental point is language, as knowledge and
language go hand in hand in terms of understanding the issues related to the
representation of space.