Objects to Learn about and Objects for Learning 2

Which Teaching Practices for Which Issues?

Joel Bisault, Roselyne Le Bourgeois, Jean-Francois Themines, Mickael Le Mentec, Celine Chauvet-Chanoine

• Publisher: Wiley-ISTE
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781786307743
• eBook ISBN:
  9781119902454
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

Resulting from a conference that took place in Amiens, France, in June 2019, this book examines the place and role of objects centered in teaching practices from kindergarten to university, both in the context of France and elsewhere. These "objects for learning" are considered in their physicality as productions, work or signs that are used for learning. They become "objects to learn about" when the object itself is the learning objective.

This book offers a cross-disciplinary perspective, linking the different disciplinary fields studied and the many reference sources used by the authors. This two-volume work offers an overview of current research on the subject, with this second volume focusing on objects in representations of space and time, then on learners' activities in the making or use of objects, before concluding with different cultural and philosophical perspectives on objects

PART 1
Objects and Representations of Space and Time

1
The Map and the Game: Objects for Learning Geographical Points of Reference in Elementary School

1.1. Introduction

While learning geographical points of reference has always been and remains a component of training in the discipline, the time reserved for learning these locations as well as the procedures for their discovery should be interrogated in the context of a revitalized geography in which nomenclature is no longer the main subject of discussion.

My comments showcase my experience as a practitioner–researcher, as which I designed and produced a game to facilitate the acquisition of a number of spatial points of reference to be placed on wall maps based on features and locations. Just like other classroom posters (like timelines), this system of small cards to be stuck onto larger wall maps (France, Europe, the world) seeks to respond to the infrequent or even complete lack of use of the maps hanging on the wall, sometimes for a long time, which are already filled in and which provide no means for practical work.

This approach provides the opportunity to learn many things about pupils’ academic and personal knowledge, which can be used as points of reference for the game, about the way they categorize and define these points of reference, and about the possibility of connecting them to themes in the lesson plan so that these points of reference are not learned for their own sake or without putting them to use in a real analysis of how spaces are organized.

Does this process of focusing on an object that was designed, produced and appropriated make it possible to effectively acquire knowledge of these points of reference and to make the connection with the potential of a revitalized school geography that is now structured around reasoning, problem solving, dialog with other disciplines and the consideration of representations?

The temporal context of which this work is a part is important because, since 2015, elementary schools in France have benefited from lesson plans in geography that have contributed a strong, paradigm-shifting change (“living”) that remains very open, particularly with regard to points of reference, for which no specific list is provided. However, this does not help schoolteachers, who are rarely trained geographers and who remain, nevertheless, responsible for this learning of points of reference, hence the recourse to the experiment presented here.

After initially framing spatial points of reference in geography as it is taught and, more specifically, in the lesson plans for upper elementary school grades, I then present the protocol for creating the game and for interacting with it throughout the year, before concluding with results and analysis.

1.2. Points of reference: A special place in geography as it is taught

In France, school geography curricula are intended to reserve a specific place for the question of spatial points of reference. Learning about them is a non-negligible part of the process, generally under the label of “geographical points of reference.” What can we read behind this phrase, which seems all-encompassing?

The term “point of reference” is encountered in geographical dictionaries, where it signifies “a mark or a signal indicating a location or a place” (Brunet et al. 2005). The authors specify that this has three uses: the point of reference serves “to (1) situate or locate oneself in space, (2) as a basis for evaluating distance and (3) to indicate a risk or a danger” (Brunet et al. 2005). Other geographers have discussed the topic, adding that “the point of reference” can be understood vaguely as “using the identifiable elements of the landscape” or more precisely as “using a system of reference coordinates (orthonormal reference axes)” (Bavoux and Chapelon 2014). What lies behind this entry is one of the discipline’s biggest problems: that localization is determined both as “a position in space [and as] a point of reference for that position (and a process for moving to a particular location)” (Bavoux and Chapelon 2014).

For a long time, the prerogative of geography in its classic period (first half of the 20th century) entailed that the study of locations in the form of inventories was also central to geography as it was taught, where a dominant weight was accorded to the observable forms, to the learning of a nomenclature, whether a nomenclature of these forms or of proper names…” (Audigier and Tutiaux-Guillon 2004). While teaching in the discipline today has been heavily modernized (with the presence of a dynamic, albeit fragmented, didactics and an introduction of content with a better connection to the epistemology of the science of reference), we note that “these old forms of school geography persist in mainstream geography” (Chevalier 1997), such as the recent publication of work that exhumes old maps¹ or Internet games that are among the top results in Internet searches².

What remains clear, in the framework of a prescribed, revitalized school geography, heretofore focused on reasoning and problem solving, dialoging with other disciplines, and integrating representations and the digital, is that learning points of reference in space remains a strong component of the discipline as it is taught, and that we approach it from the perspective of objectives or competencies (Mérenne-Schoumaker 2012). Sometimes taken to be an “ideal-type of transmission of a self-centered vision of the world”, among other things “by filling the function of common culture destined for disadvantaged pupils” (Thémines 2004), the question of the geographical points of reference to be studied resonates more sharply in the framework of what we were interested in here, elementary school teaching, where teachers, who are generalists, are only suited for the discipline’s “surface elements” (Philippot 2008) because of their “imperfect polyvalence” (Philippot and Baillat 2011) and who consider this mastery of points of reference as an indispensable prerequisite for other forms of teaching, sometimes even beyond what is called for (Leroux and Le Bourgeois 2020).

If this need to present points of reference as an essential foundation sends school teachers back to the geographic education they received as pupils or to mainstream geography, another explanation lies in the fact that the study of locations and points of reference can be easily evaluated, which can lead ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• PART 1 Objects and Representations of Space and Time
• PART 2 Objects and Traces of the Activity
• PART 3 Points of View on Objects and Perspectives
• List of Authors
• Index
• Summary of Volume 1
• End User License Agreement