Developmental Changes in Children's Understanding of Maps: What, When, and How?

This chapter defines the particular kinds of maps that are studied. It also examines some of their key qualities and the cognitive challenges entailed by those qualities, and briefly comments on the kinds of developmental spatial progressions that are relevant for understanding and using maps. In addition, it provides a selective review of empirical work on children's developing understanding of the three aspects of maps and map use. It explicitly focuses on the question of how progress occurs. Moreover, it offers brief suggestions about potential directions for future research. It concludes that development of map understanding follows a prolonged path, a path that is not traversed easily by all individuals.