The National Curriculum may require children to make maps at the end of Year 2, but it isn’t until they are older than seven that they are capable of making even a basic physical map from a set of toys.
Contrary to previous research, which has suggested that children have in-built mapping abilities, a study of 80 three, four and five-year-olds concludes that, while even young children do have geographical awareness, they cannot understand fundamental mapping until they are at least seven.
The pre-schoolers produced layouts in which roads don’t connect and buildings are clustered together. The Year 1 pupils were better at road networks but grouped the houses and cars in lines, and the Year 2s were able to create more complex road layouts and place buildings on both sides of the road.
These are in contrast to layouts by adults, in which there were sophisticated road networks and buildings close to the roads, and grouped into areas such as residential and business sectors. It was only adults who placed the cars on the left side of the road.
The researchers say that, given children’s difficulties with mapping before the age of seven, the requirements of the national curriculum are unrealistic.
The Role of Toy Play in Early Mapping and Geographical Understanding: A Developmental Study by Kathryn Desmond, Christopher Spencer and Mark Blades, Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield. E-mail: pcp00kd@sheffield.ac.uk
