Familiarizing pupils 4-6 years old with forms of spatial representation. The use of photography as an auxiliary tool

Abstract

One of the research and teaching interests in early childhood education is the understanding of spatial concepts and orientation in space. The present study, which is a pilot study, attempts to investigate whether pre-school students can recognize familiar locations in photographs, the locations being in this case parts of their schoolyard, and furthermore if they can extract information from the photos and orient themselves in space. The sample of the study was made up of 18 children aged 4 to 6 years from a Greek kindergarten. The subjects of the sample underwent individual interviews. Qualitative analysis of the findings showed that photographs may be a useful tool for teaching spatial concepts such as those which concerned us in this investigation.