Abstrakt
The potential of geographic information systems (GIS) for education is very significant. Previous research showed that teaching with GIS can help students improve a variety of (not only geographical) skills.
Specifically, thanks to teaching with GIS, students can learn how to acquire, process, analyze, evaluate, and present spatial information and thereby develop their spatial thinking. Despite its educational potential, the implementation of GIS in schools is still rather sporadic.
The poster focuses on the following questions: What are the main limits or and barriers of using GIS in education and how they can be categorized? and Does perception of limits change over time? Based on these questions a systematic review of empirical studies was conducted. The systematic review is methodologically grounded in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyzes which is an explicit systematic method for identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing relevant results (Page et al. 2021).
Based on this methodology, 30 empirical articles consisting of 34 studies out of 2.852 potentially eligible articles were identified as relevant. As a result, 72 different limits of GIS implementation to education were identified in these studies.
The results showed that the most frequently mentioned limit was lack of technology followed by software complexity, teachers' lack of training, and software unavailability. As far as the variability of perception in time is concerned, it was expected that older studies would mainly mention limits related to lack of hardware, software, and possibly their price.
And, in contrast, current studies would mainly mention the limits on teachers' side. Contrary to the expectations, there were no significant differences in the perception of the main limits.
The results can be the first step to creating a suitable GIS course for pre-service teachers or a follow-up course for in-service teachers.