Geografie 2016, 121, 279-299
What does a map-skills-test tell us about Czech pupils?
The paper focuses on the impacts of the general education curriculum reform that has placed the pupils’ skills in the foreground of interest. Map skills are one of the most important groups of geographical skills. A test of map skills was drawn up in order to evaluate the level of map skills among pupils aged 11, 15 and 18. Its implementation proved, among others, the elementary assumption that map skills develop along with pupils’ growing age. It was also proven that Czech pupils primarily master cognitively less demanding operations with maps such as location of objects in the map, while more difficult uses associated with map reading and analysis of information posed rather serious problems to them. Statistical figures showed that girls faced the problems significantly more often than boys. Last but not least, it was proven that pupils have not acquired map skills on such a level as prescribed by the curriculum for a given educational level.
Keywords
geographical education, map skills, test, curriculum, reform, Czechia.
Funding
The study was supported by the Czech Science Foundation, project No. P407/16-17749S “Factors influencing map skills development in Czech schools”.
