Primary Childrens Collaborative Cartography: Communication and Mapping Processes

Simple but powerful computer drawing tools give primary school pupils the opportunity to act as creative cartographers and to collaborate in the construction of electronic maps. Use of such technology in schools is promoted by the Ordnance Survey and by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the body responsible for the delivery of the National Curriculum in English primary and secondary schools. However, there remains much work to be done in developing effective teaching and learning approaches that make the most of both new technology and well established cartographic principles. This paper presents data and analysis from an ongoing PhD research project. The research focuses on the collaborative processes used by children aged between seven and ten years old to solve mapping problems. During the current school year, 80 children from one primary school worked in pairs to make collaborative maps. They used a computer drawing application to represent nominal and ordinal data in the creation of a map of the locality surrounding their school. Data presented includes examples of the children's maps and the system used to categorise the maps, transcripts of the children's talk showing the evidence for peer support during the map-making process, and the results of interviews with the children. The initial analysis of this data explores possible relationships between the quality of mapping and the processes of collaboration. The paper concludes with a discussion of the next steps in the research and an interim exploration of the implications of the study for teachers, software developers and researchers interested in children and cartography.