Syahrul Ridha, Sugeng Utaya, Syamsul Bachri, Budi Handoyo
Geographic skills area major competency that must be developed through spatial thinking. This paper describes whether learning material questions about Geographic Information System (GIS) in geography textbooks contains components of spatial thinking: concepts of space, use of representation tools, and reasoning processes. This study uses a descriptive qualitative approach with content analysis design. We conducted the evaluation of learning material questions about GIS on four geography textbooks of senior high schools in Indonesia by coding using taxonomy of spatial thinking. The 92 questions evaluated in this study contained multiple choice and essay practice questions. We identified questions by the following steps: 1) classifying concepts of space questions into non-spatial, spatial primitives, simple spatial, complex spatial; 2) determining the nature of tools of representation in the questions—use and non-use; 3) classifying processes of reasoning from each question into input, processing, and output. The results showed that the majority of GIS learning material questions are not based on spatial thinking. Seventy-one percent of questions are non-spatial, 73 percent of questions did not use maps to represent spatial thinking, and 67 percent of questions are low-level reasoning process (input). These findings indicate that GIS learning material questions in geography textbooks do not include the complete spatial thinking component. As a result, the lack of a complete spatial thinking component in GIS learning material questions in geography textbooks results in less developed geography competency among students. Learning material questions should contain the components of spatial thinking at a high level, such as using complex spatial on concepts of space, using tools for representation, and using output for reasoning processes. Therefore, for geographic textbooks, the National Education Standards Agency must develop standardized questions focused on spatial concepts to represent high-level spatial thinking. © 2019, Association for Social Studies Educa. All rights reserved.
Students Doctoral of Graduate School Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia; Geography Education, Sekolah Tinggi Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan Al-Washliyah Banda Aceh, Indonesia; Geography Education, Faculty of Social Science Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia
