The research of the factors which make likes and dislikes maps and the improvement method by the geography education.

本研究旨在分析影响学生对地图的好恶的因素，并探讨地理教育的改善方法。本研究在第一年对大学生进行问卷调查，以了解学生对地图的好恶。问卷调查结果显示，大多数受访者在学龄期喜欢地图和地图集。但根据调查，许多学生失去了这种感觉。另以国小学童为研究对象，进行问卷调查，以探讨地图表现方式、地图比例尺与地图偏好因子的关系。从这些调查中，我们发现，在许多情况下，地图在学校中没有得到有效的使用，因为许多在小学和初中教授地理的教师不是地理专业的。学生也很少有机会使用地形图或小范围地图。他们不能学习如何在日常生活中使用地图。本项目的第二年，我们研究了美国和英国的地图教育，以改善日本教师谁不擅长使用地图在他们的地理课的培训计划，并改善在学校地理学科学习地图的教材。本研究阐明了在小学阶段有效的学习资源和对地图有用性的理解是重要的。

The purpose of this research project is to analyze factors which make likes and dislikes maps and to examine the improvement method by the geography education.1st year of this project, we make a questionnaire survey on university students to clarify what makes people dislike maps. The result of questionnaire survey, most of the respondents like maps and atlas at school age. But many students lost that feeling according to growig up. Another questionnaire survey was done on elementary school students to clarify the relationships between map representation method, map scale and the factor of preferences of maps. From these surveys, we find maps are not used effectively at schools in many cases because many teachers who teaches geography in elementary schools and junior high schools don't major geography. Students also have few chances to use topographical maps or small range maps. They cannot learn how to use maps in the daily life.2nd year of this project, we research map education in United States and United Kingdom in order to improve a training program for Japanese teachers who are not good at using maps in their geography class and to improve curriculums for learning maps in the school subject of geography. This research clarified that the effective learning resources and understanding of maps usefulness at elementary phase is important.