Spatial Concept Perspectives

We have gathered ~300 excerpts from published works about fundamental spatial concept terms. These have been cross-referenced with the concept lexicon appearing on the left. Those terms were drawn from the U.S.National Science Education Standards (NSES 1996) for topic areas B - Physical Science, C - Life Science, D - Earth and Space Science, as well as from the 1994 U.S. Geography Teaching Standards for grades 9-12. Those standards can be browsed here.

spatial concept terms

disciplinary perspectives on "place"

analog

What places have similar conditions? (p. 106); Similar position and therefore similar conditions on a different continent, country, or urban area (p. 267)

Geography

Gersmehl (2005)

Teaching geography

analog

Spatial analogs are places that may be far apart but have locations that are similar, and therefore they may have other conditions and/or connections that also are similar (p. 186, see source for more)

Geography

Gersmehl and Gersmehl (2007)

Spatial thinking by young children. Neurologic evidence for early development and "educability"

condition

What is there? (p. 100); Characteristic or feature in a given location (p. 268); Site: all local conditions (terrain, climate, soil, vegetation, energy, mineral resources, and so on) that affect what people can do in a place (p. 273)

Geography

Gersmehl (2005)

Teaching geography

condition

the facts about a location...[include] all the conditions that occur at a particular place-its climate, architecture, population density, vegetation, animals, agriculture, industry, politics, religion, and so forth (p. 183, see source for more)

Geography

Gersmehl and Gersmehl (2007)

Spatial thinking by young children. Neurologic evidence for early development and "educability"

identity

...the narrow meaning of that common term: "a sense of place." Identity is the extent to which a person can recognize or recall a place as being distinct from other places--as having a vivid, or unique, or at least a particular, character of its own. (p 131)

Design (urban, architecture)
Architecture

Lynch (1984)

Good City Form

multiple properties of place

Conceptualizing the world as a series of layers, each mapping a specific property or class of properties; correlating layers and integrating information and processes across layers. "Analysts often use the term overlay to refer to the superimposition and analysis of layers of geographic data about the same place. Overlay may require the superimposition of area on area, or line on area, or point on area, or line on line, or point on line, depending on the nature of the objects in the database."

Geography

de Smith, et al. (2008)

Geospatial Analysis: A comprehensive guide to principles, techniques, and software tools

place

The divisions of the world, recognized. e.g., as place names, landmarks, rasters, polygons, reporting zones, tessellations, etc. "At the centre of all spatial analysis is the concept of place. The Earth's surface comprises some 500,000,000 sq km, so there would be room to pack half a billion industrial sites of 1 sq km each (assuming that nothing else required space, and that the two-thirds of the Earth's surface that is covered by water was as acceptable as the one-third that is land); and 500 trillion sites of 1 sq m each (roughly the space occupied by a sleeping human).

Geography

de Smith, et al. (2008)

Geospatial Analysis: A comprehensive guide to principles, techniques, and software tools

place

(an object) exists at some absolute place or position within the latitude and longitude coordinates shown, and at a place relative to other objects or areas (p 174)

Geography

Kaufman (2004)

Using Spatial-Temporal Primitives to Improve Geographic Skills for Preservice Teachers

place

Constituents of the space of navigation include places, which may be buildings or parks or piazzas or rivers or mountains, as well as countries, planets or stars, on yet larger scales. Places are interrelated in terms of paths or directions in a reference frame (p 9). Places [are] configurations of objects such as walls and furniture, buildings, streets and trees...(p 10).

Psychology

Tversky (2005)

Functional Significance of Visuospatial Representations

place and landscape

Topic CF2-4.

Geography
Education

DiBiase, et al. (2006)

Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge