Geoscience Reference
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Table 19.1 Drawing the route from home to school (test 1)
a. Paths
0 Unclear directions
1 Single, curved lines or double lines with breakpoints
2 Single, curved lines or double lines with breakpoints and parts of the road not to be taken
b. Crossroads
0 None
1 One type of cross-road
2 Two or more types of cross-roads
c. Buildings
0 None
1 Home and/or school
2 At least one other building
d. Legend
0
None or only home and school
1
Bus stop, friend's house, church, bridge, parking
...
2 Names of streets and buildings
e. Traffic
0
None
1
One type (e.g. zebra crossing, traffic light
...
)
2
Two or more types (e.g. zebra crossing, traffic light
...
)
19.3.2 Test 2: Map of the Continents
To compose a map of the continents (test 2) a technique similar to Wiegand and
Stiell's (
1996
) cut-out continents was elaborated taking into account the methodo-
logical shortcomings of freehand sketch mapping mentioned above. Moreover, a
limited preliminary research had shown a lack of motivation for sketch mapping a
map of the world because of the difficulty of this task (which was not the case for
sketch mapping the route from home to school).
The children were given a paper with the outline of the continents and asked to
cut them out and paste them correctly (
see
Fig.
19.5
).
For this test the scoring table (
see
Table
19.2
) was based on previous studies
(Wiegand
1995
; Harwood and Rawlings
2001
; Schmeinck
2007
) and focuses on the
location of the shapes, clusters and labels.
19.3.3 Test 3: The Sun-Earth-Moon System
Previous research on children's understanding of the Earth as a cosmic body has
shown that children perform considerably better on recognition than on recall tasks
(Panagiotaki et al.
2006
). Test 3 therefore comprised 2 tasks (
see
Fig.
19.6
):
(a) Children had to mark out via arrows how Sun, Earth and Moon revolve around
one another given three circles representing Sun, Earth and Moon;
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