A utilização de mapas mentais enquanto reflexão para a construção do conceito de lugar; experiência com alunos do 9º ano

Abstract

The need for a Geography that gets closer to the social-spatial students’ reality is evident, relating the experiences and the everyday as initial point for the geographical knowledge building to be efficient in the classroom. Including the category “Place” makes the learning process easier and leads to reflection about the environment in which they’re inserted, providing them social and cultural implications, among others, making the student a protagonist in the geographical learning. Relating the student’s everyday knowledge to geographical knowledge learnt at school is fundamental to the efficiency of Geography teaching, contributing to the vision of a critical citizen, that knows and takes place in the space. This way, we begin with the premise that teaching Geography must be a target of constant renovation in order to contribute to the improvement of methods capable of provoking practical effects in the student’s routine, being necessary the comprehension of the relations between the student’s socio-spatial experiences, or the place in which they’re inserted and the geographical knowledge construction at school. The proposal of mental maps production by the students consists in representing everyday facts that surround them and that, for being common, may be unnoticed, but, in doing the exercise of transposing, moves the main structures of cartography, and consequently of Geography, if we consider the specialization of phenomena through representation. If the space is transformed, and quickly, studying it isn’t easy, it’s complicated, but that’s what Geography is for, for this world’s complex matters, seeking answers to the knowledge construction, and, this way, we validate Geography itself, after all, every place is a place for Geography .