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

本研究项目的目的是分析影响喜恶地图形成的因素，探讨地理教育对喜恶地图的改进方法。在这个项目的第一年，我们对大学生进行了问卷调查，以阐明人们不喜欢地图的原因。问卷调查的结果显示，大部分受访者在学龄时喜欢地图和地图集。但随着成长，许多学生失去了这种感觉。另以小学生为研究对象进行问卷调查，以厘清地图呈现方式、地图比例尺与地图偏好因素之间的关系。从这些调查中，我们发现在许多情况下，地图在学校没有得到有效的利用，因为许多在小学和初中教地理的老师不是地理专业的。学生也很少有机会使用地形图或小范围地图。他们无法学习如何在日常生活中使用地图。这个项目的第二年，我们研究了美国和英国的地图教育，以改进日本教师在地理课上不擅长使用地图的培训计划，并改进学校地理学科中学习地图的课程。本研究阐明了有效的学习资源和对初级阶段地图有用性的理解的重要性。

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.