Title of presentation: PERSONAL GEOGRAPHIES: MAPPING AS A WORLDMAKING TOOL

Abstract: How we mentally map the world and our place within it is a remarkably little understood domain of literacy. But in an increasingly global and interdependent world, where questions of sustainability and human use of natural resources have become paramount, mapping literacy is a critical domain of human development. Where individuals place themselves within greatly expanded spatial horizons is not just an interesting question of personal identity. How we develop our capacities to spatially represent and imagine the physical and social world will be key to understanding what democracy and citizenship might mean in the 21st Century. The question of scale and the multiple layers of spatial engagement people have with the world needs to be considered, as does the changing set of tools we have available in the development of mapping literacy. Mapping literacy will be a critical component of the kinds of communicative practices needed in the building of a socially just and ecologically sustainable way of life. These are just some of the questions of this large agenda that this presentation will bring to the floor of the conference for discussion. To limit the task somewhat the presentation will focus on the development of mapping literacy in children and young people.

Roger Hart is Professor of Environmental and Developmental Psychology in the Ph.D. Psychology Program of the Graduate School of the City University of New York and Co-Director of the Children's Environments Research Group. He earned a B.A. in Geography from Hull University in England and a Ph.D. from Clark University in Massachusetts. While at Clark he became interested in the geography of children and children's geographies and worked hard to assimilate what psychology had to say of relevance. He moved to New York where he founded the Children's Environments Research Group and the journal Children's Environments (now Children, Youth and Environment). Much of his work continues to focus on children's relationship with physical environments and he collaborates closely with planners, architects, landscape architects, environmental educators and environmental policy-makers. In the past fifteen years he has also been more broadly concerned with building theory and practice on children's democratic development and community governance and on the participation of young people in articulating their concerns. He has continued to work with low-income communities in New York City while collaborating on research related to children's rights in many countries with UNICEF and the Save the Children Alliance.