Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

Then these results were compared to the data of the questionnaire survey forexisting correlations.Children’s images of the word and EuropeIn his study with British children in the age from five to eleven Wiegand found astrong association with age. “The youngest children drew an archipelago of verysimilar, enclosed ‘lands’ indicating little understanding of the difference betweencontinents, countries and other places. With increasing age, these became progressivelydifferentiated by size and shape. […] By about 7 to 10 years, most childrendrew maps which indicated an understanding of how places ‘nest’ inside each other,such as countries within continents.” (Wiegand, 1998). Regarding the results of thepresent study it can be stated that the involved children do not possess a uniformconception of the world or Europe as map (Figure 3). The drawn mind maps canbe interpreted rather as the result of very different and individual experiences. Anage-related development could neither be diagnosed in the context of the study norin the pilot survey with children from kindergarten to university.Figure 3. Distribution of mind maps in relation to the categoriesAnother result of Wiegand’s studies was that “even in the later primary years, only10% of children could make a representation of the world with all seven continentspresent and in approximately the correct relative location” (Wiegand, 1998). Thisaspect could only be verified for the average of all countries together. However itcan be shown that the referring results in the five countries vary strongly. Thus forexample in the UK and in Switzerland approximately 20 per cent of the childrendraw ‘world-similar’ mind maps. In contrast to this there were less then 5 per cent inFrance, Germany and Spain. Remarkable in this context is the high proportion of 45per cent French children, who represented at least sections of the world (Figure 3).Also the – in the literature frequently described – “centrality”, i.e., the childrendraw their own country in the centre of the sheet and place the other countriesaround [1, 3, 4], could not be confirmed by an analysis of the mind maps. In thosemaps, which represented a recognisable world map (Figure 4), the children usually208