O uso dos mapas mentais no ensino de geografia como possibilidade de inserção do lugar para uma aprendizagem significativa

Abstract

Searching for the scholar Geography that is linked to the students’ contemporary reality, the city and their habitual place seem to the student as an alternative, like an entity to be explored by the teacher who is aiming to teach. Against what was showed, looking at the Geography teaching process and, more specifically, to the cartographic language field, this research started off from the questions: does the mental map as a teaching resource contribute to teaching Geography in schools? Do the analysis of mental maps made by the students help the teacher to understand the space notions built by them? In our hypothesis of work, the answers to the questions above are positives. We bring as general objective to verify the potentialities of mental maps elaborated by the students as a teaching resource of scholar Geography. The didactic resource used was the mental map in the context of scholar Geography from the analysis of the mental maps’ content proposed by Kozel methodology. The spatial complexity activates the use of languages as a way to achieve the full comprehension of the phenomena. To achieve the maps comprehension, many abilities and readings must be used, because this instrument is imbued with information through different symbols. Across the spatial manifestations, it is possible to understand the roots of a society in its whole relational complexity. Thus, the mental maps tell us a lot about the subject’s spatial perception, so this appeal indicates the place where the individual speaks from. The confection and reading of mental maps contribute to reaching the levels of literacy and apprehension of cartographic language. As much as the maps in general, encoded or decoded by the students, are restricted, the information related to their location in space, the spatial logics that pass through such location must be focused during the teaching practice.