Research On Factors Influencing Geographic Sense Of Direction Of Senior High School Students

Geographic sense of direction is an important aspect of individual's geospatial ability,which has significance for the implementation of geographic core literacy.Revealing the factors of individual's geographic sense of direction is of great importance for cultivating students' geographic sense of direction in scientific ways.Through literature analysis and theoretical deduction,geographic sense of direction is defined as people's cognitive ability of understanding the spatial position and direction of themselves and the geographical environment,and geographic sense of direction can be divided into four dimensions: self-representation,environment-representation,direction integration,and direction updating.It is preliminarily hypothesized that general intelligence level,orientation language experience,spatial game experience,spatial habits of mind,wayfinding strategy,knowledge of direction are the main factors of senior high school students' geographic sense of direction.Based on the definition of geographic sense of direction,a measuring tool of geographic sense of direction was developed.After that,students from Shuren School of Yangzhou Middle School Education Group,Middle School Affiliated to Nanjing Normal University,and students majoring in geography science and geography teaching from East China Normal University were selected as the test subjects in order to test the reliability,validity and item quality of the measuring tool,and finally formed a Likert scale consisting of 23 self-reported items along with 17 test items after revision.Then select current measurement tools of six hypothesized factors,edit them into a set of measurement tools including a short-form intelligence test and a questionnaire on 5 other factors.Select students of Shanghai Fuxing Senior High School,Shanghai Gaoqiao Senior High School,and Yancheng Tianjiabing Senior High School as subjects,390 valid samples were collected.Correlation analysis,independent sample T test,regression analysis,partial correlation analysis and mediation effect analysis were carried out on the data of geographic sense of direction and its factors.The results showed that: general intelligence level,spatial game experience,orientation language experience,spatial habits of mind,wayfinding strategy and knowledge of direction are the factors of the development of high school students' geographic sense of direction.Their respective effects on geographic sense of direction are in descending order: spatial habits of mind > knowledge of direction > wayfinding strategy > general intelligence level > orientation language experience > spatial game experience.Regression equation based on spatial habits of mind,knowledge of direction,and general intelligence level can relatively predict the development level of student's geographic sense of direction.Wayfinding strategy has an important indirect influence on geographic sense of direction.The development of wayfinding strategy depends on individual's knowledge of direction,and it affects geographic sense of direction by affecting spatial habits of mind first.On this basis,teaching suggestions for cultivating senior high school students' geographic sense of direction are put forward,including: extracting knowledge of direction in teaching content and highlighting its practicality;guiding students to gradually form the habit of thinking spatially;relying on knowledge of direction and spatial habits of mind to carry out teaching on wayfinding strategies.