A CONTRIBUIÇÃO DO PENSAMENTO ESPACIAL NO DESENVOLVIMENTO DO PENSAMENTO GEOGRÁFICO DE ALUNOS NO ENSINO FUNDAMENTAL (original) (raw)

The teaching of Geography in the elementary school of basic education has the function of developing the students' geographic thinking. This thinking is made up of several cognitive processes, including those of spatial thinking skills. In this sense, the objective of this work is to analyze how spatial thinking can contribute to the development of geographic thinking by elementary school students. For this, a qualitative approach is used in the production and interpretation of data, which were produced through bibliographic and field procedures. In the first stage, theoretical foundations are raised on spatial thinking, geographical thinking and the school garden. Afterwards, there was a semi-structured interview and an analysis of a class with elements from the school garden. The results show that spatial thinking consists of a set of cognitive skills, such as orientation, direction, size, coordination, displacement, distance, alternation, spatial geometry, classification, among others. These cognitive skills are fundamental for the development of geographic thinking, among other ways of thinking. It is concluded that, both to develop and to mobilize geographical thinking, it is essential to appropriate cognitive processes, including the topological skills of spatial thinking.