Understanding change through spatial thinking using ...

Original article doi: 10.1111/jcal.12166

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Understanding ‘change’ through spatial thinking using Google Earth in secondary geography X. Xiang* & Y. Liu† *School of Geographic Sciences, East China Normal University, China †School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management, The University of Queensland, Australia

Abstract

Understanding geographic changes has become an indispensable element in geography education. Describing and analyzing changes in space require spatial thinking skills emphasized in geography curriculum but often pose challenges for secondary school students. This schoolbased research targets a specific strand of spatial thinking skills and investigates whether students using geospatial technology, such as Google Earth, are able to develop their thinking about spatio-temporal changes. An experiment was conducted in a Singaporean secondary school in which skill development was framed within the formal geography curriculum. It compared the effectiveness of two pedagogical approaches: learning with Google Earth versus traditional instruction without the use of such a technology. Findings indicate that the use of Google Earth significantly increased students’ ability to identify spatial and temporal changes and analyse these changes. Qualitative data complemented the results by showing that Google Earth could offer students more opportunities to observe and infer changes, thus facilitating their understanding about the dynamic and the complex nature of changes.

Keywords

geographic changes, Google Earth, secondary geography classroom, skill development, spatial thinking, visualization.

Introduction

The world we live is changing dynamically with the advent of globalization, thereby students as the future citizens should have the ability to deal with these changes in space (Wilson, Murphy, Trautmann, & Makinster, 2009). Besides a temporal approach to understanding and explaining the concept of ‘change’, a spatial perspective unique to the discipline of geography adds insights into changes with regard to space (National Research Council, 2006). Learning geography can equip students with skills to identify patterns and trends of spatial changes, and analyse causes and impacts of the changes, which help students better respond to and live in the changing society (Xiang, 2014a). However,

Accepted: 31 October 2016 Correspondence: Xi Xiang, School of Geographic Sciences, East China Normal University, 500 Dongchuan Rd., Minhang District, Shanghai 200241, China. Email: [email protected]

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learning spatial thinking skills related to changes is perceived by students as difficult (Sawyer, Butler, & Cartis, 2011). Geospatial technologies, an alternative to the traditional mapping methods, are regarded as tools that play a positive role in fostering spatial thinking (Chun, 2008; Liu, Tan, & Xiang, 2012). Considering the challenges students face in perceiving changes and the role of geospatial technologies in displaying spatial changes, this research focuses on whether and how students’ thinking about changes in space could be fostered with the use of geospatial technologies in the upper secondary geography classroom.

Learning about spatial thinking and temporal changes

Spatial thinking is a powerful tool that informs decisionmaking in both the workforce and daily life and supports problem solving in scientific research (National Research Council, 2006). It is defined as ‘a collection of cognitive 1

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skills’ that ‘consist of a constructive amalgam of three elements: concept of space, tools of representations and processes of reasoning’ (National Research Council, 2006, p.2). Geographers have listed essential spatial concepts that constitute spatial thinking and reasoning processes, for instance, distribution, distance, change, hierarchy and overlay (Golledge, Marsh, & Battersby, 2008). Because geographic processes on the earth create constant changes, utilizing the spatial concept of ‘change’ is essential to develop an understanding of how and why our physical and human systems evolve (Rawding, 2013). Although the spatial skills to deal with change should become one of the most important components in spatial thinking, they are not clearly defined and properly assessed, and compared with other strands of spatial skills, has been least studied in prior pedagogical research. Nurturing spatial skills to recognize, track and analyze change is crucial in secondary school geography and is rightly highlighted in the geography syllabi in Singapore (Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board, 2014). It requires secondary school students to ‘develop knowledge with regard to various spatial and temporal changes in physical and human environments’. However, classroom practice indicates that students have difficulty in acquiring and applying spatial skills of changes (Bodzin, 2011; Xiang, 2014a). It has been reported that students at this level find it hard to perceive and visualize changes in space (Sawyer et al., 2011), possibly because they are unable to link together what had taken place to what is present. Besides, a majority of them are confronted with problems to construct the meaning of changes especially when explaining and predicting impacts of such changes (Xiang, 2014b). One reason for this is students’ lack of prior knowledge of the operating norm of geographical changes (Rawding, 2013). Another reason lies in the methodological limitation in representing changes. As the geographical changes usually occur within the enormous range of temporal and spatial scales that are beyond our daily life experience, representing these changes graphically is a significant cartographic challenge (Harrower, 2002). Interacting with geospatial technologies

It is anticipated that there is a connection between the development of spatial thinking and interacting with

X. Xiang & Y. Liu

geospatial technologies (Schultz, Kerski, & Patterson, 2008; Uttal, 2000). Geospatial technologies enable a large quantity of geographic data to be displayed, manipulated, analysed and synthesized in novel ways (Bodzin, 2011; National Research Council, 2006). They can provide students with the opportunity to visualize and understand geographic changes, thus developing their conceptual spatial–temporal skills (Bodzin and Fu, 2014; Schultz et al., 2008). Google Earth is one of such technologies that is adopted by geography teachers in classroom given its ease of implementation, strong visualization ability and entertainment components (Patterson, 2007). It has gained popularity as a learning tool for students to explore geographic changes within topics such as coasts (Xiang, 2014a) and urban land uses (Bodzin, 2011). Based on modern learning theories, working with computers provides students the opportunity to learn mind-skills and facilitate learning processes in a way that other tools may not be able to achieve (Jonassen, Howland, Marra, & Crismond, 2008). In particular, advantages of Google Earth over traditional teaching means have been identified based on existing literature regarding the development of students’ spatial skills related to ‘change’ (Bodzin & Cirucci, 2009; Bodzin & Fu, 2014). Balley, Whitmeyer, and De Paor (2012) suggested that utilizing the digital globe allows students to observe the surface processes and their geological structure at various scales. Similarly, Wilson et al. (2009) reported the case where students use the digital globe to obtain clearer and more concrete views of the changing geographic features. Besides, using functionalities inherent to Google Earth such as animated maps, placemarks and old photos can take students back in time and provide an overview of how places and features have changed (Lerman & Hicks, 2010; Patterson, 2007). In addition, students can explore different sets of data layers added to Google Earth to identify the associations in them and investigate the effects of changes (Bodzin & Fu, 2014). Nevertheless, it is yet to understand what types of spatial changes students can describe and analyse through engaging with Google Earth and how this type of technology may facilitate the learning process of spatial thinking. Besides, many studies have suggested that incorporating Google Earth into classroom can help promote spatial thinking from the perspective of curriculum design and implementation (Bodzin & Cirucci, 2009; © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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Guertin & Neville, 2010; Kulo & Bodzin, 2011; Patterson, 2007). However, empirical evidence that verifies the learning effects of using Google Earth in secondary education is scarce, especially when it is concerned with specific strands of spatial thinking skills (Baker et al., 2015; Demirci, Karaburun, & Kılar, 2013; Favier & van der Schee, 2014). Existing research has justified the positive effect of utilizing Google Earth on developing two strands of spatial skills, spatial relational thinking (Clagett, 2009) and spatial visualization skills (Giorgis, 2015), but it is unknown whether and how students’ thinking about space and time can be affected by the use of Google Earth. To fill these research gaps, the current study attempts to investigate the following two research questions. RQ1 Can the use of Google Earth help improve students’ spatial thinking skills to describe and analyse changes in space? RQ2 What types of spatial changes can students describe and analyse through engaging with Google Earth? Methods

To answer the two research questions, this study adapts a quasi-experimental design to investigate the relationship between geospatial technology and students’ spatial thinking. Additional qualitative data were collected as a supportive component to offer more in-depth insights into how students benefited from utilizing such a technology during the intervention.

Participants

Eighty secondary school students from two classes in one neighbourhood secondary school in Singapore formed the research sample composed of 33 males (41.3%) and 47 females (58.7%). Around 72% were Chinese, Malay, Indian and other cultural groups made

up the rest of the sample. This is close to the relative proportions of the ethnic groups at the national level. All the participants were in Secondary 3 (equating to Grade 9 in the USA) with their average age being 14.8. Both classes were placed in the express stream and took geography courses as an elective. Forty-five per cent of the students had some prior experience in using geospatial technologies in the geography classroom. Treatment

The study compared the effectiveness of two different learning approaches – learning with Google Earth versus a traditional instruction – through a quasi-experimental design. The experimental group used a pre-designed learning package. Each student worked on a series of worksheets in front of their computers in the lab, submitted results and obtained feedback at the beginning of the next session. The control group referred to geography textbooks, received the geography teacher’s instruction and completed similar worksheets. This experiment employed two rationales to guide the development of learning activities that hone students’ spatial thinking skills. First, three types of spatial skills were set up as learning goals of this intervention, including identifying changes, explaining changes and predicting the impacts of these changes. Nurturing these spatial skills was framed into learning of the Coasts within the formal geography curriculum. Both the experimental group and the control group conducted the study of the chapter of coasts within one introductory lesson and five sessions of 60 min, each within a two-semester time frame (Table 1). Second, three components, including spatial thinking skills, content knowledge and spatial visualizations, were combined into geography lessons used in the intervention. Table 2 presents an example to illustrate how the sessions were designed to engage students in the acquisition and application of the three spatial skills

Table 1. Schedule of Intervention Session

Timeline

Module

1 2 3 4 5

April May June July July

Coasts

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Learning outcome

Key issues to explore

Coast agents (waves) Coastal erosional features Coastal changes Coastal depositional features Coastal management

Where to surf? White Cliffs in England Coastal erosion at Holderness Coast How has Spurn Head come about? Management at Holderness Coast

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Table 2. Lesson Plan Integrating with Google Earth (Session 3: Coast Erosion) Spatial skill

Content knowledge

Geospatial technology Function

Identify changes

Describe the changes occurring along Holderness Coasts

Spatial representations and analysis tools

placemark

Coastal cliffs along Holderness Bird’s eye view Historical imagery

2012 2008 2006 Coastal changes at Holderness from 2006–2012 Explain changes

Analyse the rapid changes along this coastline

Overlay Zoom

Fetch of waves Geomorphology Factors contributing to the rapid erosion Predict impacts of changes

Predict the potential impacts of coastal changes on people’s life in Mappleton Village nearby

Ruler Placemark

Measuring the rate of cliff retreat at Holderness

of ‘changes’ within the context of coasts with different functions, tools and representations in Google Earth. Implementation

Before discussing how participants experienced the intervention, the threats to validity of findings emerging from this experiment were considered. First, the treatment conditions were properly manipulated to control the confounding variables that may affect the measured learning outcomes in spatial thinking. Specifically, students in both groups studied the same strands of spatial skills within the same geographic contexts and

were taught by the same geography teacher. The learning practices in the two classrooms merely differed in the way of interacting with spatial representations as a result of the intervention. With the Google Earth technology, the experimental group was able to access the spatial representations in a non-sequential manner, manipulate with add-on overlays and ‘see through’ the superimposed layer into the base layer, while the control group observed images in a sequence presented by the geography teacher and mentally overlaid maps for interpretation of spatial changes (Table 3). Besides, the experimental group took a warm-up session one week before the intervention in which they © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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Table 3. Comparison of Treatments for Both Groups (Session 3: Coast Erosion) Control group Learning task

Interaction with spatial representations

Compare the two maps showing the geology of Holderness Coast and disappearing towns along Holderness since Roman Times to explain coastal erosion in this area. Mentally overlay maps

explored their own school in Google Earth to become accustomed to the new learning environment. The main purpose of the warm-up session was an attempt to avoid ‘Hawthorne effects’ (Gay, Mills, & Airasian, 2011), which students’ engagement and interest observed in this intervention was not elevated by simply being treated ‘special’ for interacting with Google Earth images. To understand more about the nature of the intervention, this study used field notes and worksheets as tools to gather and record the spontaneity of the students’ reactions to the pre-designed learning package. The intervention began with students’ observation on various dynamically changing coastal landforms along Holderness coastlines with satellite imagery and aerial photographs, or looking from a bird’s eye view in Google Earth. It appeared that the overhead viewpoint aroused students’ curiosity. Then, students utilized the historical imagery function to explore changes over a couple of decades at various sites of Holderness Coasts. They showed a great interest in switching back and forth on the timeline that connects a sequence of ‘before’ and ‘after’ images. In the following learning sessions, students looked at the added Google KML data layers © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Experimental group

Manipulate with two overlays and ‘see through’ the superimposed layer into the base layer

showing, for instance, local geology and wave conditions at different zooms to investigate the causes of the severe coastal erosion along the Holderness. Based on answers in the worksheets, most of them drew correlations among Google Earth layers and were able to associate the rapid coastal changes with some geographic factors in the local context. Only a few of them successfully estimated the potential damage of the coastal erosion on the neighbourhood areas with the measurement tool according to their answers to the worksheet questions. Measurement

Alternative assessment methods have been incorporated to capture the development in spatial thinking because traditional objective methods such as multiple choices have limitations in detecting thinking processes. Essay questions are particularly useful in assessing how students use higher level thinking processes and demonstrate the integration of multiple spatial skills (Nitko & Brookhart, 2011). Therefore, a test item was crafted to measure students’ ability to identify and comprehend changes over time and transfer spatio-temporal skills to

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novel contexts (Appendix). This item was adapted from the one used in previous Singapore ‘O’-level examinations and assumed to have relatively high validity and reliability. All the participants answered this essay question in the pretest and post-test. In addition, a fivequestion survey was designed to gain more insights into how Google Earth facilitates acquisition of skills to describe and analyse changes of places. This survey was delivered to the experimental group as a part of their homework at the end of the coast chapter. Data analysis

All students’ responses to the aforementioned test item were reviewed to examine the extent to which they could employ spatial thinking skills relevant to changes. The coding process was divided into two steps to quantify the learning outcomes. First, the number of spatial changes each student identified was counted. Second, the occurrence of spatial vocabulary used by students to specify changes was recorded following a rubric created

to categorize concept usage based on the conceptual framework of geospatial thinking (Golledge, et al., 2008). To begin with, three spatial concepts, ‘size’, ‘shape’ and ‘area’, were grouped together as spatial property, because they are useful to display properties of geographic features in space. The second group, spatial representation, includes three concepts, ‘contour’, ‘relief’ and ‘gradient’, which represent characteristics of physical landforms. Multiple spatial concepts, such as ‘connection’, ‘nearby’, ‘relative direction’, ‘relative distance’ and ‘pattern’, are often applied to show how geographic features are in relation to others in space; hence, forming the third group. ‘Sequence’, ‘movement’ and ‘spread’ are spatial and temporal concepts that involve a time dimension and display the dynamic nature of geographic features, therefore, the group they formed was labelled as spatial dynamics. The last two concepts (‘association’ and ‘impact’) support students’ spatial reasoning and thereby were put in the spatial inference group (Table 4).

Table 4. Rubrics and Coding Book for Scoring Students’ Responses to the Test Item Type Spatial property

Spatial concept Size Shape Area

Spatial representation

Contour Relief Gradient

Spatial relations

Nearby Relative direction Connection

Spatial dynamics

Sequence Movement

Spatial inference

Association

Impact

Example of student response ‘The mountains became bigger.’ ‘The island has increased in size after the eruption.’ ‘The mountain got wider and longer’. ‘Some parts of the coastline looked more irregular’. ‘The mountain has occupied more surface area of the island’. ‘Most of the island (about 3/4) has been covered by lava’. ‘The mountain decreases in height and deepens downs to 600 m at the top now’. ‘A crater appeared on the top of the mountain after the eruption’. ‘The slope of mountain becomes more gentle or less steep with ash and lava’. ‘The buildings near the volcanic crater were wiped out’. ‘The fishing port in the north of the island disappeared’. ‘The road leading to the fishing port was broken and separated from the road network’. ‘Originally, there are two ports and roads. After the eruption, one of the sea ports is gone and roads are gone’. ‘The slope of the mountain was pushed further, and the coastline extended seaward’. ‘The perimeter of the island has been expanded as a result of solidification of volcanic ashes and lava’. ‘The transportation facilities were broken because they were melted away by the volcanic lava and ashes’. ‘The roads were destroyed partially, making transportation to the other parts of the island impossible’. ‘People living nearer towards the farmland and mountain got more affected by the vocalnic eruption and had to move to other places very soon, as their settlements were destroyed’.

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While the subjectivity of results can be unavoidable once essay questions were used in the test, systematic coding procedures were followed to make the raters’ judgments as accurate as possible (Liu, Bui, Chang, & Lossman, 2010). First, a coding rubric was crafted to ensure that the coding was conducted in a consistent way. Second, two markers were involved in the coding work, and they rated the essay question separately following the coding rubric. The inter-rater reliability coefficient was 0.7, which was high based on existing benchmark (Walford, Tucker, & Viswanathan, 2010). Third, the answers of essay questions were coded blind to all the students’ demographic characteristics, including name, gender and age. As the coding was based on counting the number of changes identified and the occurrences of five groups of spatial concepts utilized, students acquired a set of six scores in both the pretest and the post-test. The percentage of correctness students achieved for each group of spatial concepts in the pretest was calculated in order to judge the level of difficulty of these concepts. For the reason that the normality of the data was checked to be

non-normally distributed, the non-parametric tests were used to analyse the paired data. In particular, this study adopted Mann–Whitney U-test to determine whether there was significant difference between the means of the pretest scores and the post-test scores in the two unrelated groups. The student feedback in the survey was coded by the same markers and analysed to discover how students acquired and applied spatial and temporal skills with the support of Google Earth. Based on the desired learning goals of the intervention, the major student feedback comments were grouped into four categories: identifying and describing changes, analyzing changes and predicting their impacts. Within the four categories, the specific functionalities inherent to Google Earth that students reported to assist learning of spatial and temporal skills were identified (Table 5). Findings

Data from all participants indicated that students demonstrated substantial use of spatial concepts to specify

Table 5. Coding Book for Scoring Students’ Feedback on Learning Experience with Google Earth Spatial skills Identifying changes

Describing changes

Analyzing changes

Predicting changes

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The role of Google Earth on developing spatial skills ‘It is not easy to record how the coasts have changed. But with the function of historical imagery, I can get the rough sketch of how the coast used to look like in the early years, how much land has been eroded, how it looks like now’. ‘A timeline is put into Google Earth for viewers to observe and study coastal drawings. So that we are able to compare the coasts before and after deposited’. ‘Dragging the slide bar in a timeline seems like “simulating” the coastal processes’. ‘I can also observe the coastal features from above as if I was in a helicopter, a point of view that I have not experienced before’. ‘It (Google Earth) gives me a more accurate visual idea of what coastal changes look like in real life. The bird’s eye view allowed me to visualize the spit is rapidly elongated and becomes more curved over time’. ‘By providing detailed descriptions of the coasts with supporting photos as well as a more accurate scale, Google Earth helped me better analyze causes for the coastal changes’. ‘Google Earth shows the actual scene of the eroded areas of the coast so that I can study closely at the changes created by erosion and deposition. By adjusting the view, I began to realize the erosion has something to do with the nature of rocks, also the long-fetch waves coming from very cold sea’. ‘We don’t know how fast the coastal change may be. But when we use Google Earth, we can use the historical imagery to show the coastal erosion, utilize the ruler to measure the distance the cliffs has retreated, and then estimate the rate of erosion and predict its impacts on neighbourhood areas’. ‘By using the ruler and historical imagery in Google Earth, I can predict when the impacts of coastal changes would reach people in distance, for example when the crops nearby would be swallowed up by the sea. That way, I can identify the land area near the coastline that is suitable for people’s living, and warn people living near the top of the cliffs when to move’.

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changes taking place in a geographic context. A majority of students could identify changes taking place in space (63.8%) and analyse these changes in relation to their spatial relations (62.5%). However, describing and analyzing changes remain difficult for students based on the pretest scores. Only 25% were able to recognize changes in spatial property, 30% of them were able to represent changes, 33.8% could reason about movement-related changes and 23.8% could make associations with changes (Table 6). RQ1: Impact of Google Earth on students’ spatial skills to describe and analyse changes Considering the learning issues students confronted, interventional sessions were implemented to improve their spatial thinking skills of changes. Results documented that students from both groups did better to describe and analyse spatial changes in the post-test than in the pretest (Table 7). But independent samples test showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in three skill areas: identifying changes, describing changes in property and associating with changes. Table 8 presents findings under two categories: describing changes and analyzing changes. As for the category of ‘describing changes’, two strands of spatial skills responded to the use of Google Earth technology. First, students in the experimental group made greater improvements in identifying changes than the control group (z = 3.091, p = 0.002). They noticed more changes in the post-test than their counterparts with regard to the size and the morphology of the mountain and the island. Second, the use of Google Earth supported students to better describe changes in spatial properties of geographic features. The significant difference between groups (z = 2.422, p = 0.015) showed that the experimental group applied the three

Table 6. Percentage of Students that Used Spatial Concepts: Pretest Scores (N = 80) Category

Spatial concept

Percentage (%)

Describing changes

Change Property Representation Relations Dynamics Inference

63.8 25.0 30.0 62.5 33.8 23.8

Analyzing changes

Table 7. Average Number of Spatial Concepts Used by Students to Specify Spatial Changes (N = 80)

Spatial concept

Change Property Representation Relations Dynamics Inference

Group

Control Experimental Control Experimental Control Experimental Control Experimental Control Experimental Control Experimental

Average number of spatial concepts used Pretest

Post-test

3.62 3.78 0.20 0.33 0.30 0.30 1.80 1.00 0.48 0.50 0.28 0.38

4.27 5.02 0.38 0.77 0.50 0.70 2.70 2.80 0.88 0.80 0.35 0.75

spatial concepts (‘size’, ‘shape’ and ‘area’) more frequently than the control group. The other strand of spatial skill, representing changes with spatial concepts such as ‘relief’, ‘contour’ and ‘gradient’, was not significantly improved (z = 1.413, p = 0.158). The experimental group gave more accurate descriptions of the physical landscapes through interpretation of contour lines in the post-test than in the pretest, but both groups improved at a similar range without achieving a significant difference. Only one strand of spatial skill, associating with changes, was found to develop within the category of ‘analyzing changes’. Students in the experimental group used spatial inference concepts, ‘association’ and ‘impact’, twice as often in the post-test as they did in the pretest. Besides, improvement in making inference with the two concepts was significantly different between groups (z = 2.617, p = 0.009). To be specific, the experimental group provided more detailed and reasonable explanations for changes, as some of them attributed the increase in size of the island after the volcanic eruption to the cooling or solidified volcanic lava. Moreover, students using Google Earth packages were more willing to make predictions of changes in the post-test, and they listed potential damages of volcano eruption to different human activities on the island, such as fishing, transportation, farming and settlements. No significant difference was found between the experimental group and the control group in improvement in applying three spatio-temporal concepts (‘movement’, ‘sequence’ and ‘spread’) to analyse the dynamic © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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Table 8. Inferential Statistics for Concept Usage to Specify Spatial Changes: Frequency (N = 80) Category Describing changes

Analyzing changes

Spatial skills Identifying change Describing changes in property Representing changes Analyzing changes in relations Reasoning about dynamics Associating with changes

Pretest z= z= z= z= z= z=

0.205, p = 0.838 1.076, p = 0.282 0.408, p = 0.683 2.109, p* = 0.035 0.053, p = 0.957 0.045, p = 0.964

Improvement in post-test z= z= z= z= z= z=

3.091, p** = 0.002 2.422, p* = 0.015 1.413, p = 0.158 1.672, p = 0.095 1.432, p = 0.152 2.617, p** = 0.009

p* < 0.05; p** < 0.01

character of geographic features in space (z = 1.432, p = 0.152). In particular, the ‘movement’ concept was least adopted by students, with a possible reason that they noticed ‘some parts of the coastlines have pushed back’ but failed to visualize the underlying geological processes. With regard to the spatial relations concepts, our data reveal a pattern that needs further exploration. The significant difference in the pretest scores indicated students in the experimental group were weaker at analyzing changes with regard to spatial relations than the control group (z = 2.109, p = 0.035), while the post-test scores showed there was no significant difference between groups after the intervention (z = 0.468, p = 0.64). A comparison of pretest and post-test scores indicated that Google Earth possibly played a role in narrowing the learning gap between the two groups with respect to applying spatial relations skills. RQ2: The type of spatial changes that Google Earth enables students to describe and analyse The qualitative data collected from the students through the post intervention survey helps understand the quantitative results presented earlier. Student feedback in the survey revealed roles that Google Earth has played to facilitate different spatial and temporal skills. These are elaborated in the succeeding paragraphs and supported by the major students’ feedback comments (Table 5). First, the manipulation of the sequenced satellite images of many locations in Google Earth engaged students in active thinking and comparison to identify changes in space. Specifically, students highlighted the role of the timeline in Google Earth on retrieving the date information and visualizing the outcome of changes. Second, the bird’s eye view in Google Earth enabled students to observe how spatial properties of geographic features have altered more easily and clearly than © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

ground-level observations. Third, the scaling ability allowed students to expand the scope beyond the study site and analyse multiple causes of changes in a broader context where changes occur, leading to an enhanced understanding of the geographic processes. In addition, a combination of functions and tools, such as historical imagery, placemarks and ruler, supported students to do more advanced analysis of changes and to complement their comprehension of impacts of these changes. Further interpretation of the qualitative data indicated that the increased level of interactivity with spatial images provided by Google Earth could stimulate spatial and temporal thinking by allowing students to better visualize the spatial contexts in which geographic phenomena take place. This type of technology offers a dynamic learning environment that encourages students to take an active role in displaying and analyzing spatial information, thus reinforcing their spatial primitives and facilitating higher ordering thinking. Discussion

A synthesis of the quantitative and qualitative data answers the central research question ‘whether and how using geospatial technologies could help students to describe and analyse spatial changes’. Results indicated that students in the experiment group were able to identify more spatial and temporal changes than the control group (p = 0.002). The positive results exemplify the effectiveness of geospatial technologies on the development of spatial concepts and skills related to changes (Bodzin & Cirucci, 2009; Morrison, 2000), which is often investigated by a qualitative research method rather than a robust experimental design. As students’ feedback comments indicated, such an improvement was possibly a result of using the historical imagery function in Google Earth. This function has an interactive component,

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a timeline that links the sequenced satellite images and makes the spatial stimulus animated so that student users can have more control over the spatial representations (Chun, 2008) and set the learning at their own pace. Rather than merely passive observers, users could take a more active role in displaying spatial information with the animated maps (Harrower, 2002) and learn to better discern changes in patterns and trends than with static media (Patton & Cammack, 1996), thus facilitating their skill development (Xiang, 2014b). It is therefore recommended that besides the static maps that are often used in classrooms, geography teachers should consider incorporating animated images and maps retrieved from or added to Google Earth to illustrate temporal dynamics and model geographic processes. This study explored the impact of using tools like Google Earth on how students specified spatial changes, an untouched topic in previous research. It has been found that the two spatial concepts, ‘shape’ and ‘size’, are key elements that support students’ perception and interpretation of changes (Xiang, 2014b), while this study discovered that only 20% of students successfully applied these spatial primitives to specify changes in patterns. This is contrary to the traditional belief that secondary school students could make use of spatial primitives well for problem solving. More meaningful, empirical evidence from this research showed that the use of Google Earth significantly increased students’ ability to apply the ‘shape’ and ‘size’ spatial concepts (p = 0.015). Findings from this research imply that reinforcing the spatial primitives (e.g., shape, size) under the support of appropriate geospatial technologies would be an effective pedagogical strategy for students to derive more complex spatial skills (e.g., change). The qualitative data collated from students help explain how Google Earth enabled students to better perceive changes. Prior research suggested that students are unfamiliar with the top-down perspective (Wiegand, 1993), meaning they are ‘egocentric’ and tend to adopt the view that they can understand. Working with satellite images through using the function of bird’s eye view in Google Earth ‘forced’ students to adopt a ‘decentric’ viewpoint that is different from their own and would not be possible from the ground-level perspective presented in commonly used spatial stimulus (Palmer, 2013; Wilson et al., 2009). The research findings highlight the benefit of Google Earth in combining both the

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top-down and ground-level perspectives for better visualization and perception of geographic changes. The effect of using Google Earth on students’ spatial reasoning skills was also investigated. It is evident that analyzing changes is challenging for students; less than 25% of them were capable of associating with changes based on the pretest scores. But the significant difference between groups documented in this study showed that students who participated in learning activities integrated with Google Earth did enhance their ability to explain changes and predict their potential consequences (p = 0.009). This finding is of great importance for secondary geography education because it provides evidence that a new range of spatial skills would be enhanced by the use of geospatial technologies that were previously regarded as beyond the capacity of students of this age (Palladino & Goodchild, 1993; Schmeinck & Lidstone, 2014; Xiang, 2014b). The result also consolidates the idea put forward by some authors that interacting with geospatial technologies can develop effectively higher order thinking and understanding particularly from analysis to evaluation (Baker & White, 2003; Favier & van der Schee, 2014; Liu et al., 2010; West, 2003). This implies that learning activities integrated with geospatial technologies should not only emphasize interpretation of spatial changes but also encourage students’ critical thinking about the processes and effects accompanied with these changes. The qualitative data made attempts to elaborate on how the use of Google Earth better engaged students in learning spatial reasoning skills. It is probable that the strong scaling ability in Google Earth offers students more opportunities to drill down into geospatial data from local to global scales (Balley et al., 2012) and visualize changes of the desired areas in a broader context (Rhys, 1972). Therefore, students could think about how these changes are interrelated with geographic factors at various scales (Ratinen & Keinonen, 2011), generate new insights about the changing geographic phenomenon (Kulo & Bodzin, 2011) and grasp the significance of changes in areas (Bodzin & Cirucci, 2009). The finding is consistent with the theory claiming that computers as a tool can help visualize the ideas in the mind and thus facilitates higher level understanding and deep learning (Underwood & Underwood, 1990). Based on the finding, it is suggested that proper guidance be provided for students to think in depth about the satellite © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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images inherent to Google Earth, for example, how to analyze the spatial contexts of places represented on these images to be aware of the complexity of places that causes geographic changes. It is worth noticing that the two strands of spatial skills, representing space and reasoning about dynamics, were not significantly improved (p = 0.158, p = 0.152). One explanation is that these spatial skills were not the focus of this intervention and thus less practiced. The other reason is some spatial concepts, such as ‘contour’, ‘gradient’ and ‘spread’, are probably too complicated for students at the age period to master (Battersby, Golledge, & Marsh, 2006), and it would be better to lean on these spatial concepts at higher grades. For the strand of spatial relations skills, although no significant difference in improvement was found (p = 0.095), a comparison of pretest and posttest scores indicates that students who found it difficult to recognize changes in spatial relations were more likely to take advantage of using Google Earth than those with a greater ability to do so. This is in line with previous research that the low ability students gain particular benefit from the virtual reality learning environments (Lee & Wong, 2014). The reason possibly lies in the lower ability students who may have difficulty in constructing a mental visualization (Huk, 2006; Mayer 2001), while the presentation of dynamic visualizations in Google Earth helps them build their visual representation of the spatial layout of geographic features (Patterson, 2007), resulting in an easier identification of changes in spatial relations. This finding leads to the hypothesis that new technologies, combined with appropriate instructional design, play a positive role in closing the achievement gap between students with different entry abilities in spatial thinking. This is a topic that needs further investigation. Conclusion

This classroom-based research targets a strand of spatial skills that describes and analyses spatial changes and frames the skill development within the formal school curriculum based on the geography syllabus used in Singapore’s secondary school system. Results justify the positive learning effect of Google Earth, a type of geospatial technology, on spatial and temporal thinking of secondary school students. It is also found that Google Earth enhances spatial thinking by altering the approaches in which students visualize and analyze spatial information. This research contributes to the © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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existing corpus of knowledge in three aspects. First, having identified that visualizing and reasoning about spatial changes poses a challenge for secondary school students, this study utilized Google Earth as a learning tool in an attempt to overcome the learning difficulty. It measured whether different types of sub-skills, from spatial primitives to higher order thinking, evolve over time after students’ using the geospatial technology-infused curriculum. Findings help develop a holistic understanding of students’ thinking of temporal changes as well as the potential of geospatial technologies for facilitating specific spatial skills and higher order thinking in schools by providing concrete evidence. Second, the current study discovered ways Google Earth works to leverage on students’ capacity to think about spatial changes in geography classroom. This will enhance our knowledge on the advantages of using geospatial technologies on stimulating spatial thinking over traditional instructional methods and provide insights into how spatial thinking can be effectively learned with such technologies, consequently encouraging more process-oriented research in the future by examining the learning process itself. Third, this study highlights three factors that influence the learning effects of geospatial technologies. Students’ prior knowledge and skills in spatial thinking need to be diagnosed before designing school interventions, because their entry ability sets the starting point for the geospatial technology-infused curriculum and affects the extent they benefit from this type of instruction. In addition, spatial concepts and thinking skills should be taught to students in an order to progress from primitive spatial ideas toward building more sophisticated geospatial understandings and reasoning skills. Besides, the spatial stimulus linked to the geospatial technologies have to be cognitively appropriate for students to interpret and understand at their age period, for instance, presenting visualizations that display geographic features from multiple perspectives and at various spatial scales for observation and spatial analysis. Based on the empirical evidence from the current study, teachers should be encouraged to incorporate geospatial technologies as a supplement to traditional classroom teaching in order to achieve certain aspects of the learning outcomes that would not be easily achieved by means of traditional exposition. In addition, our findings support the policy to include geospatial technologies as an integral part of school curriculum

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for effective teaching and learning of spatial thinking. They also help us to develop pedagogical strategies that improve students’ learning experiences within the technology-based learning environment.

Study limitations

This study was conducted in one secondary school with a relatively small sample size; therefore, interpretation of the findings should be cautious. Further research needs to be replicated with larger samples and in wider contexts, for example, testing students from diverse types of secondary schools, using a couple of geo-visualization tools, and framing the skill development in different content knowledge. In the current study, only one type of assessment method, namely, essay questions, was used to evaluate students’ learning progress in such skills. Future research should incorporate multiple types of methods to measure nuances in development of spatial thinking skills that would not be captured by one type. In all, we would like to encourage more geography teachers and other practitioners to adopt a new way of working and supplement their teaching of spatio-temporal changes and other strands of spatial skills by integrating geospatial technologies into their classrooms. It is only through this way we can truly engage our students who are digital natives of the 21st century.

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Appendix

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