Incidental learning of geospatial concepts across grade levels:

Goodchild has suggested that “geographic” and “geospatial” are subsets of “spatial thinking” relevant to the geographic domain. With respect to this, we evaluate map overlay, a concept central to geospatial thinking to determine how it is naively and technically understood, as well as to identify when it is learned innately. In this paper we discuss results from studies at three grade levels to show the progression of incidentally learned geospatial knowledge as student develop more complex thinking strategies. Our findings from these studies have been quite informative in terms of understanding when and how geospatial concepts are learned. The results of the studies will be discussed in terms of creation of a hierarchy of concepts and use of a “minimal” GIS for geospatial education.