Enhancing Spatial Thinking in High-School Education: An Evaluation of Geography Textbooks in Taiwan

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1 Enhancing Thinking in High-School Education: An Evaluation of Geography Textbooks in Taiwan Jinn-Guey Lay 1, Chih-Ying Wu 2, Chia-Jung Wu 3, Chung-An Wang 4 1 National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei 10617, Taiwan (R.O.C.), jglay@ntu.edu.tw 2 National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei 10617, Taiwan (R.O.C.), ying842@gmail.com 3 National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei 10617, Taiwan (R.O.C.), d @ntu.edu.tw 4 National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei 10617, Taiwan (R.O.C.), oilcut0116@gmai.com KEY WORDS: spatial thinking, high-school education, textbooks ABSTRACT: thinking has been considered as an essential ability for everyone in modern society and a core issue in geography education. From a global perspective, increasing studies have been conducted to discuss about enhancement of spatial literacy particularly at the university level. However, still little research has been made to delve into the challenges and opportunities of promoting spatial thinking in ground education. Accordingly, by analyzing the high-school geography textbooks in Taiwan, this research aims to examine how spatial thinking is introduced specifically to 10 th grade students. The analytical method is adapted from the spatial thinking taxonomy developed by Jo & Bednarz (2009), which covered three dimensions: spatial concepts, representation and cognitive processes. To go beyond the limited focus on the chapters related to geographic information and cartography, we selected four topics in both natural and human geography and compare their variations in illustrating spatial concepts. The findings of this research are as follows: (1) the narrative texts of the existing geography textbooks in Taiwan have contained a rich amount of concepts related to spatial thinking. However, a systematic way to integrate spatial thinking into every topic is lacking; and (2) in terms of representation, various types of tools are used; nevertheless, many were found with weak connection to the spatial concepts addressed in the texts. To conclude, we suggest that a comprehensive curriculum guideline and policy support is critically needed to foster a better integration of spatial thinking into geography textbooks in Taiwan.

2 1. INTRODUCTION thinking has received increasing attention in the geography education since the report Learning to Think ly was published by the National Research Council (NRC) in the United States in According to this report, spatial thinking is an essential skill for everyone in daily life and work and plays a significant role for scientific discovery. It is a way of thinking that should be developed through education at different levels (Goodchild &Janelle 2010; NRC, 2006). In the recent studies, three major aspects have been investigated regarding the strategies to enhance spatial thinking in school education. The first concerns about geography textbooks (Jo & Bednarz, 2009; Scholz et al. 2014), which are often considered as the media with direct impact on students. The second associates with the potentials and effects of technological tools like GIS to facilitate teaching of spatial thinking (Manson et al. 2014; Kim & Bednarz 2013; Kolvoord et al. 2011; Lee & Bednarz 2009; Patterson, 2007). The third deals with teachers training and dispositions towards spatial thinking (Jo & Bednarz, 2014). While many of these studies focused on English-speaking countries, relatively little attention explored development of spatial thinking in other educational cultures. As a showcase from Asia, this research attempted to investigate how spatial thinking is currently introduced in high-school education in Taiwan. Although a national commitment like NRC report to support spatial thinking education is lacking in Taiwan, a similar movement is going on in recent years. Based on the latest official guideline of geography curriculum for high-school, an increasing number of concepts related to spatial thinking became required in the contents of textbooks (Huang, 2012). To reflect upon this new development of education policy, this research aimed to understand how spatial thinking is presented in the existing textbooks and possible improvements in the future. Specifically, we examined the geography textbooks used for the 10 th grade students, which intend to provide a knowledge ground of geography for all students. Since this is a preliminary study to evaluate spatial thinking in the Taiwanese textbooks, the analysis is limited to selected chapters, instead of a comprehensive review. 2. MATERIALS & METHODS The geography textbooks analyzed in this study is published by Han-Lin, one of the most widely used in high schools of Taiwan. In order to understand how the concepts of spatial thinking are introduced in various topics, four major themes from both natural and human geography were selected, including geomorphology, climatology, population and city. Each theme consisted of several chapters in the textbooks for the 10 th grade students. The method to evaluate the existing textbooks is based on the taxonomy of spatial thinking proposed by Jo and Bednarz (2009). This method assessed spatial thinking by three components: spatial concepts (primitive / simple / complex level), representation (use / non-use) and cognitive process (input / processing / output). According to integration of these three dimensions, quality of spatial reasoning is divided into 24 grades. This way of evaluation was further adopted by Scholz (2014) to evaluate the university textbooks in the United States. It is noteworthy that the above-mentioned analysis particularly dealt with questions in textbooks, so that each question is graded in a

3 24-matrix of spatial thinking. In this study, however, the analysis focused on narrative texts and their accompanied figures/tables, since questions comprise a very small part in the Taiwanese textbooks and usually receive little attention in teaching practice. For this reason, we adapted Jo & Bednarz taxonomy as follows: First, we estimated to what extents that spatial concepts in different levels (primitive / simple / complex level) are integrated in narrative texts in each selected topic. Secondly, we identified the major types of representation tools used in textbooks and their relevance to spatial concepts embedded in texts. 3. EVALUATION of GEOGRAPHY TEXTBOOKS 3.1 Analysis of Narrative Texts To evaluate the relevance of texts to spatial concepts in three different levels, we used the indicators developed by Jo & Bednarz (2009), as shown in table 1. The percentage of each spatial level is calculated by the numbers of indicators used. Table 1. Indicators referring to spatial concepts in three levels, according to Jo & Bednarz (2009) Indicators Concepts Primitive Place-specific Identity, Location, Magnitude Simple Complex Distance, Direction, Connection & Linkage, Movement, Transition, Boundary, Region, Shape, Reference Frame, Arrangement, Adjacency, Enclosure Distribution, Pattern, Dispersion & Clustering, Density, Diffusion, Dominance, Hierarchy & Network, Spacial Association, Overlay, Layer, Gradient, Profile, Relief, Scale, Map Projection, Buffer Among the four selected topics, variations were found in terms of the integration of spatial concepts in three levels (see Figure 1). At the primitive level, all the four topics have achieved. Namely, all the three indicators are referred, including place-specific identity, location, and magnitude. However, at the simple level, geomorphology achieved the most (75%), whereas population the least (33%). Their commonly used indicators are: movement, directions and regions. When it comes to the complex level, city achieved the most (56%), while population the least (19%). They share only one indicator: distribution. Overall, geomorphology and city have a better integration of spatial concepts than climatology and population.

4 Geomorphology Climatology 44% 75% 44% 67% Population City 33% 56% 19% 58% Fig 1. Integration of three-level spatial concepts in four selected topics. 3.2 Analysis of Representation Tools For representation of spatial thinking, four major types of tools are identified: photos, maps, sketches and graphs. Their percentage is calculated by their numbers used in each selected topic (see Figure 2). Similar to the result in the previous section, variations were found among the four selected topics in the choices of representation tools. For photos, geomorphology achieved the most (60%), while population the least (25%); for maps, population achieved the most (21%), whereas city the least (13%); for sketches, climatology achieved the most (30%), while city achieved the least (17%); for graphs, population achieved the most (24%), while geomorphology achieved the least (1%). Overall, climatology and population combined different representation tools in a more balanced way. An interesting finding is that representation of spatial thinking seems to have weak connection to the spatial concepts addressed in narrative texts. For example, in the population chapters, a large number of maps are used to illustrate population distribution and different patterns in a country. However, there are only limited spatial concepts introduced in narrative texts, as shown in the previous section.

5 Sketches 25% Geomorphology 1% 20% Climatology 29% 14% 60% Sketches 30% 21% 24% Population 25% 22% City 48% Sketches 22% 29% Sketches 17% 13% Fig 2. Percentage of different representation tools used in four selected topics. 4. CONCLUSION The current geography textbooks in Taiwan have contained a rich amount of concepts related to spatial thinking. However, variations existed in different topics to address three levels of spatial thinking. It is obvious that a full scope and a systematic way to integrate spatial thinking into every topic of geography textbook is lacking. In addition, although various types of representation tools are used, many were found with weak connection to the spatial concepts addressed in narrative texts. To conclude, we suggest that a comprehensive curriculum guideline and policy support is critically needed to foster a better integration of spatial thinking into geography textbooks in Taiwan. References Goodchild, M. F., & Janelle, D. G., Toward critical spatial thinking in the social sciences and humanities. GeoJournal, 75(1), pp Huang, C. L., An Investigation on Curriculum Articulation of Thinking between Junior and Senior High School. Master thesis, Department of Geography, National Taiwan University. Jo, I., & Bednarz, S. W., Evaluating Geography Textbook Questions from a Perspective: Using Concepts of Space, Tools of Representation, and Cognitive Processes to Evaluate ity. Journal of Geography, 108, pp

6 Jo, I., & Bednarz, S. W., Dispositions Toward Teaching Thinking Through Geography: Conceptualization and an Exemplar Assessment. Journal of Geography, Vol. 113, Issue 5, pp Lee, J., & Bednarz, R., Effect of GIS Learning on Thinking. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, Vol.33, No.2, pp Kim, M., & Bednarz, R., Development of critical spatial thinking through GIS learning. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 37 (3), pp Kolvoord, R.A., Uttal, D. H., & Meadow, N. G., Using video case studies to assess the impact of the use of GIS on secondary students spatial thinking skills. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 21, pp Manson, S., Shannon, J., Eria, S., Kne, L., Dyke, K., Nelson, S., Batra, L., Bonsal, D., Kernik, M., Immich, J., & Matson, L., Resource Needs and Pedagogical Value of Web Mapping for Thinking. Journal of Geography, Vol. 113 Issue 3, pp NRC (National Research Council), Learning to think spatially: GIS as a support system in the K-12 curriculum.washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. Patterson, T. C., Google Earth as a (Not Just) geography Education Tool. Journal of Geography, 106, pp Scholz, M. A., Huynh, N. T., Brysch, C. P., & Scholz, R. W., An Evaluation of University World Geography Textbook Questions for Components of Thinking. Journal of Geography, Vol. 113 Issue 5, pp