“Draw me a map of your town”: An investigation of the construction of a free-recall hand-drawn map of a known physical environment by young children

The underlying thesis of this research was that children possess more complex understandings of their large scale physical environment than were captured by existing models of classification for their artefact maps. In order to investigate this thesis, a convenience sample of 40 children was obtained at three (3) schools in East Kent in the United Kingdom and those children were asked to perform two tasks.

Task One investigated whether or not children of 7-9 years of age could identify nominated features on a map of a fictional area through their ability to interpret conventional cartographic symbols.

Task Two investigated the children’s survey and environmental knowledge of a known large scale environment by constructing a free-recall sketch map of ‘their town’ without them being given a subsequent purpose for this map. During the construction of this artefact map the researcher interacted verbally with the children so that the temporal order of construction could be examined and the environmental knowledge of the children could be explored.

Consistent with the thesis, the children displayed considerably more detailed environmental and survey knowledge about their town that it would have been possible to obtain from adult-centric post-factum interpretations of their artefact maps. Following this finding a new model for the classification of children’s artefact maps was proposed.