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

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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.