Why Some Students Have Trouble with Maps and Other Spatial Representations

Geoscience learning requires mastery of various spatially demanding tasks, and the learning-science literature offers research findings that illuminate the mental processes underlying such geospatial tasks. Research on spatial abilities shows that there are large individual differences in performance on spatial tasks, that spatial skills can improve with appropriate training but that the improvement may not transfer to related tasks, and that the form of effective training may vary with the student's spatial ability. Research on use of maps in real-world settings shows that the map-reading task involves three constituent understandings: representational correspondence, configurational correspondence and directional correspondence between a map and the real world. Research on topographic-map use has uncovered consistent, teachable strategies used by successful map users. These include grouping features into configurations rather than focusing on individual features separately, and evaluating multiple hypotheses about one's viewpoint. Research on how people comprehend 2-D representations of 3-D structures aids in diagnosing the nature of students' errors on such tasks. Students making non-penetrative errors, in which they only use information visible on the exterior of the 3-D volume, may need different interventions than students who make penetrative errors, in which they try to envision the unseen portions of the 3-D volume.