This study examines aspects of children’s geographical knowledge of Europe in Estonia between the years 2000 and 2012. The participants were 55 5th-graders in year 2000 and 41 5th-graders in year 2012, with the mean age of 12. Participants completed two tasks, (i) drawing a map of Europe and (ii) filling in country names in a contour map of Europe. Participants also had to state which countries they had visited. Though in 2000 children filled the contour map more accurately than in 2012, some countries (Finland, Norway and the UK) were drawn more accurately in 2012 and the drawing and contour map tasks were highly correlated with each other. Although children travelled more in 2012 compared to 2000, travelling experience had very little effect on children’s knowledge of Europe, suggesting that it only plays a marginal role in the formation of place schemas.
Axia, G. (1988) “Language and orientation: memory for route elements in verbal descriptions by children and adults”. In Looking Back to the Future, IAPS, v01.2, 513–521. H. van Hoogdalem, N. L. Prak, J.T.M. van der Voordt, and H.B.R. van Wegen, eds. Delft: Delft University Press.
Axia, G. and J.G. Bremner (1992) Children’s understanding of Europe: British and Italian points of view. Paper presented at the 5th European Conference on Developmental Psychology, Seville, Spain, September.
Axia, G., J.G. Bremner, P. Deluca, and G. Andreasen (1998) “Children drawing Europe: the effects of nationality, age and teaching”. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 16, 423–437.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835X.1998.tb00762.x
Barrett, M. and J. Short (1992) “Images of European people in a group of 5–10-year-old English schoolchildren”. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 10, 339–363.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835X.1992.tb00582.x
Barrett, M. (1996) “English children’s acquisition of a European identity”. In Changing European identities: social-psychological analyses of social change. G. Breakwell and E. Lyons, eds. Oxford: Butterworth-Heineman.
Barrett, M. and Farroni, T. (1996) “English and Italian children’s knowledge of European geography”. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 14, 257–273.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835X.1996.tb00705.x
Barrett, M., E. Lyons, M. Bennett, I. Vila, A. Gimenez, L. Arcuri, and A.S. de Rosa (1997) Children’s beliefs and feelings about their own and other national groups in Europe. End of Award Report to the Commission of the European Communities, Directorate-General XII for Science, Research and Development, Human Capital and Mobility (HCM) Programme, Research Network No. CHRX-CT94-0687.
Blades, M. and C. Spencer (1994) “The development of children’s ability to use spatial representations”. In H. W. Reese, ed. Advances in child development and behaviour, 157–199. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Brewer, W. F., C.A. Chinn, and A. Samarapungavan (2000) “Explanation in scientists and children”. In Explanation and cognition, 279–323. F. C. Keil and R. A. Wilson, eds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Evans, G. (1980) “Environmental cognition”. Psychological Bulletin 88, 259–287.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.88.2.259
Hannust, T. and E. Kikas (2010) “Young children’s acquisition of knowledge about the Earth: a longitudinal study”. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 107, 164–180.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2010.04.002
Hart, R. (1979) Children’s experience of place. New York: Irvington. International Monetary Fund (2012) Available online at <http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2012/01/weodata/ weorept.aspx?sy=2000&ey=2013&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&pr1.x=35&pr1.y=19&c=939&s=NGDPRPC%2CNGDPPC%2CNGDPDPC&grp=0&a>. Accessed on 31.08.2012.
Jahoda, G. (1963) “The development of children´s ideas about country and nationality”. British Journal of Educational Psychology 53, 47–60.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1963.tb00562.x
Jahoda, G. (1964) “Children’s concepts of nationality: a critical study of Piaget’s stages”. Child Development 35, 1081–1092.
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1126855
Johnson, N., M. Middleton, and H. Tajfel (1970) “The relationship between children’s preferences for and knowledge about other nations”. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 9, 232–240.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8260.1970.tb00669.x
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1992) Beyond modularity: a developmental perspective on cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kikas, E. (2003) “Constructing knowledge beyond senses: worlds too big and small to see”. In Cultural guidance in the development of the human mind, 211–227. A. Toomela, ed. London: Ablex.
Lambert, W. and O. Klineberg (1959) “A pilot study of the origin and development of national stereotypes”. International Social Science Bulletin 11, 221–238.
Lynch, K. (1977) Growing up in cities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mandler, J. (1984) Stories, scripts and scenes: aspects of schema theories. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Matthews, M. H. (1992) Making sense of place: children’s understanding of large-scale environments. Hemel Hempstread: Harvester.
Piaget, J. (1928) Judgement and reasoning in the child. London: Kegan Paul.
http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203207260
Spencer, C. and Z. Darvizeh (1981) “The case for developing a cognitive environmental psychology that does not understimate the abilities of young children”. Journal of Environmental Psychology 1, 21–31.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0272-4944(81)80015-1
Spencer, C. and M. Blades (2006) Children and their environments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511521232
Tajfel, H., C. Nemeth, G. Jahoda, J. Campbell, and N. Johnson (1970) “The development of children’s preference for their own country: a cross-national study”. International Journal of Psychology 5, 245–253.
Vygotsky, L. (1997) Thought and language. A. Kozulin, ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Original work published in 1934.)