Abstract
Upper-secondary students work regularly with maps of various types during the geography lessons. One of the most used map types is a general-reference map.
However, strategies that students use when solving cognitively more demanding map analysis tasks with general-reference maps are little understood. Therefore, this study aim was to identify map analysis strategies of 20 upper-secondary students.
Strategies that were identified during the eye-tracking experiment were analyzed in terms of four strategy dimensions that include strategy repertoire, distribution, adaptiveness, and efficiency. The results uncovered a broad repertoire of strategies of various types as well as some differences in the efficiency of these types and their combinations that can be related to the level of participants' map skills.
According to the results, the participants were able to adapt their strategies to a specific task demand, and thus, used appropriate map elements to solve the task correctly. In addition, students' perception of their strategies was examined using a follow-up questionnaire.
The responses indicated that the participants did not realize their strategies in detail and thus the perceived strategy repertoire was not only different but less broad in comparison to the used repertoire. The eye-tracking experiment backed with the follow-up questionnaire proved suitable for data collection regarding the map use strategies and the combination of these methods creates the opportunity to compare students' strategies used for diverse mapping methods, task demands, and map skills (Havelková & Hanus, 2019, 2021).