Children's Estimations of the Sizes of the Continents

Abstract

Summary Curriculum changes in geography have focused increasing attention on children's knowledge and understanding of global spatial relationships. Map projections have become fashionable once more in geographical education, which also raises issues of the cartographic representation of the relative proportions of the land masses. In this study, 62 children were asked to estimate the sizes of the continents in relation to Europe, by selecting from a range of cut‐out continents of different sizes. The results indicate that the size of Asia was underestimated and the sizes of Australasia and Antarctica were overestimated. Possible reasons for this are discussed and some teaching approaches suggested.