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Mapping as inquiry

Published on Feb 06, 2016

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PRESENTATION OUTLINE

Mapping as inquiry

erin adams + Stacey Kerr

What does map drawing have to do with posing and answering questions?

In this paper session, we describe how asking students to draw maps fosters critical inquiry into problems they face in school and society.
Photo by bilderheld

Presentation Overview

  • Overview of Inquiry & Mapping as Inquiry
  • Example: Maps as a Mode of Learning about Students
  • Example: Maps As Inquiry into New Places with Preservice Teachers
  • Concluding Comment
Chard compiled the following list of advantages inquiry-based instruction has for students (2004). Inquiry-based instruction:

Helps students identify and refine “real” questions into learning projects;

opportunities to learn with more freedom while reinforcing the basic skills

Incorporates interdisciplinary study;

suited for a collaborative learning environment or team projects;

Works with any age group and as students get older, more sophisticated questioning and research skills are developed;

Acknowledges students’ “funds of knowledge,” a term coined by Luis Moll, which opens opportunities for minorities and disadvantaged students (Chard 2004).
Photo by naotakem

Inquiry

  • Inquiry: process of seeking truth(s), information, or knowledge by questioning
  • Levstik & Barton (2001): helps students develop skills needed to make informed and reasoned decisions that promote personal and public good
Photo by chrisbulle

How can maps function as a form of inquiry?

  • Segall (2003) - Maps As Stories About the World
  • Major goal of social studies: Help students become critical readers of media
  • Make Maps Problematic
a main purpose of social studies education is to help students become critical readers of the various media they encounter both in and out of school. The ability and disposition to read texts critically—to question their purpose, underlying assumptions and values, and mechanisms of persuasion—is fundamental to the citizenry of a democracy. (Segall 2003)

Photo by Jo Naylor

questioning Maps

  • What does the map depict?
  • What story is it attempting to tell?
  • Does this map serve to perpetuate or challenge existing political and/or social goals, issues, and interests (and how does it do it)?
  • What might this map imply about the assumptions, commitments, and values of its maker as well as those of its intended readers?

QUESTIONING MAPS

  • What position (i.e., powerful or powerless, insider or outsider) does the map invite you, its reader, to assume?
  • How does the map accomplish that positioning (what textual and visual devices or conventions does it recruit)?
  • What alternative depictions might be possible?
  • What (or who) could be included that is currently missing?
Photo by yewenyi

QUESTIONING MAPS

  • What position (i.e., powerful or powerless, insider or outsider) does the map invite you, its reader, to assume?
  • How does the map accomplish that positioning (what textual and visual devices or conventions does it recruit)?
  • What alternative depictions might be possible?
  • What (or who) could be included that is currently missing?
Photo by yewenyi

Maps as a Mode of Learning about Students

  • Sense-Making in Social Studies, Exploring the Ties Between Economics and Geography Education (Adams, 2015)
  • Children made maps of their schools and various grocery stores for preservice teachers to read
  • Maps as both a materialization of one’s reading of space as well as material to be read
Photo by shinealight

learning about students

  • Maps as both a materialization of one’s reading of space as well as material to be read - give us a glimpse into how students make sense and read their world
  • When teachers view these maps alongside their own mental maps of schools, non-hierarchal relationships are fostered, in which both parties attempt to make sense of these spaces together
Photo by nickfyson

Untitled Slide

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Maps As Inquiry into New Places

  • Work with preservice teachers
  • Identification of Social Studies Terms
  • Finding and photo taking of terms "IRL" and then mapping of those ideas

Untitled Slide

Mapping as inquiry is twofold. Maps are both a subject and object of inquiry. We can ask questions of them, we can ask questions of our own viewing of them, and when we draw maps, we can inquire into both the map itself, the space it depicts, and its author.
ts, and its author.