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 "polygon"

polygon

A polygon can be defined in a large number of ways ranging from Thiessen Polygons to arbitrarily bounded sets that pay little attention to the distance of the boundary from the peripheral members of adjoining sets (p. 37); see boundary

Geography

Golledge (1995)

Primitives of Spatial Knowledge

polygon

Determining areas with irregular edges (p. 92)

Geography

Golledge, et al. (2008)

Matching geospatial concepts with geographic educational needs