The Effectiveness of a Proposed Unit in Geography on the Development of Map-Reading Skill for Students of First-Year Secondary Schoo

Abstract

The present study aimed to design a proposed unit in geography and to examine its effectiveness in developing the map-reading skill of the first-year secondary school students. To achieve the first objective of the study, the following procedures were carried out:

• A unit in geography containing aspects of map-reading skill was designed based on previous studies and literature in the field. A teacher's manual was also prepared to help teachers teach the unit.
• The unit was handed to a group of specialist verifiers in the field and then modified according to their suggestions. The final draft was experimented on students.

      To achieve the second objective regarding the effectiveness of the unit in the development of the students' map-reading skill, an experimental group was selected including 60 students from secondary school. And the designed unit was applied on this group.

     The results showed that there was statistically significant difference (0.01) between the means of the experimental group in favour of the post-test. The study also found that the proposed unit has a great impact (0.91) according to ETA Cohen equation.

    The study recommended that the development of the map-reading skill needs to be considered while designing the geography curriculum. The map-reading skill can motivate students towards the subject and improves their skill of reading the geography maps.