Research on Cartography for School Children - Maps for the Future Children Education and Internet - page 221

18.3 Other Approaches for Research

A new approach enabled us to attain the objectives that we had defined related to the
curriculum , school culture and the teacher's qualifications . We mainly based our
research of the curriculum and school culture on Ivor Goodson's ( 2001 ) ideas. He
considered the curriculum to be a result of the power plays between the dominant
groups within higher educational institutions and the social lobby groups that have a
direct influence on schools and the community. This enabled us to observe how
effectively this cartographic knowledge is implemented in the school's curriculum.
We are aware that in the educational process that the teachers are the most
important agents, therefore we observed the teacher's practices in the classroom.
To this end we used L. Stenhouse's, John Elliott's and Kenneth M. Zeichner's
publications presented by Corinta Geraldi (ed 1998 ). Other authors that were
important in shaping our research methodology were D. Jean Clandinin and
F. Michael Connelly ( 1995 , 2000 ).
This theoretical approach confirmed various studies related to the production of
local school atlases at Master and Doctorate levels, as is shown in the table above:

Date Level Title Short abstract

2002 M The production of the municipal atlas

of Santa Maria (RS)

The greatest difficulty faced by teachers
attempting to produce a local Atlas
was their lack of knowledge of
cartographic visualization that is
adequate for primary school students.
This resulted in maps that were
confusing, inaccurate and overly
detailed for the students (Viero 2002 )

A history of Ipe ´ na—SP 2004 M As this city didn't possess historical

records, the researcher put together a
historical account for the School
Atlas based on the methodology of
research using oral history and
statements of former residents
(Machado 2004 )

2005 D Educational practices, mapping

processes and aerial photographs:
Passages and constitution of
knowledge

The researcher presents cartography as
passage between human experiences
in space and a search for the
production of sense (Cazetta 2005 )

2006 M Challenges that arose in the teaching-

learning process of place in the early
primary years: Possibilities to
achieve citizenship

The researcher observes and analyses a
series of classes of one group of
students whose families had moved
(migrated) a number of times. Use of
the school atlas during classes had a
certain impact on the comprehension
of local space and its representation,
once the neighborhood where the
school was located a long way from
the city. This made it difficult for the
(continued)