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ABSTRACT
Spatial thinking and learning are essential components of geography education. The National Research Council's 2006 report "Learning to Think Spatially" emphasized that people vary with respect to performance on spatial tasks. This pilot study at a large Texas university investigated geospatial thinking variances among undergraduate students based on academic experience of students. This exploratory study uses the Geospatial Thinking Survey (GTS), based on the Spatial Thinking Ability Test (STAT) endorsed by Association of American Geographers (2006) and published by Lee and Bednarz (2012), to assess the geospatial thinking differences of undergraduate students. The results show that academic major, academic classification, and exposure to academic geography influence comprehension of geospatial concepts, use of geospatial representation tools, and application of geospatial reasoning processes.
Key Words: geospatial thinking, geography, academic major, academic classification
INTRODUCTION
A groundbreaking National Research Council publication, Learning to Think Spatially, offered a new approach to spatial thinking (NRC 2006). The report defined spatial thinking as a constructive combination of concepts of space, tools of representation, and processes of reasoning, using space to structure problems, find answers, and express solutions. Spatial thinking is a cognitive ability to visualize and interpret location, position, distance, direction, relationships, movement, and change over space, in different situations and at different scales (Sinton et al. 2013). Geospatial knowledge helps us to make sense of chaotic and diversified environments (Golledge 2002). Geospatial thinking is important for significant everyday life exercises such as remembering a specific map, route planning, following directions to a lo- cation, calculating distances and directions, determining spatial patterns among different features on land, visualizing 3-D topography from an alternative perspective, or choosing the best location based on given geographical criteria. The basic building block for spatial thinking is space, and the operations that humans can perform in space form its foundation. Geospatial thinking, focusing on the geography of human life spaces (spatial thinking at the level of Earth), is a subset of spatial thinking in general (Golledge, Marsh, and Battersby 2008b). Geospatial thinking is using Earth space or geographic space at different scales to frame problems, identify answers, and provide solutions employing geospatial concepts, representation tools, and reasoning processes.
The NRC argued that spatial thinking is universal, malleable, powerful, and pervasive in academic disciplines, the...