Familiarizing pupils 4-6 years old with forms of spatial representation. The use of photography as an auxiliary tool

Abstract

One of the research and teaching interests in early childhood education is the understanding of spatial concepts and orientation in space. The present study, which is a pilot study, attempts to investigate whether pre-school students can recognize familiar locations in photographs, the locations being in this case parts of their schoolyard, and furthermore if they can extract information from the photos and orient themselves in space. The sample of the study was made up of 18 children aged 4 to 6 years from a Greek kindergarten. The subjects of the sample underwent individual interviews. Qualitative analysis of the findings showed that photographs may be a useful tool for teaching spatial concepts such as those which concerned us in this investigation.

Four- to six-year-old children using photographs as sources of information about space

“…The concept of representation The concept of representation is shown schematically in the form of internal and external representations (DeLoache, Uttal, and Pierroutsakos 1998;Goldin and Kaput 1996;Zacharos 2012, 2014;Vosniadou 2010;Zacharos, Kilia, and Ravanis 2014).…”

“…Other studies have also investigated whether early childhood education children are able to understand aerial photographs as spatial representations and as a source of information (Blaut and Stea 1974;Matthews 1985;Plester et al 2002;Sowden et al 1996;Zacharos, Kilia, and Ravanis 2014). More specifically, according to research conducted by Plester et al (2002), children performed better using oblique aerial photographs than vertical because the photographs had a perspective and the corners of the buildings were visible.…”