THE LANGUAGE IN THE MOBILIZATION OF GEOGRAPHICAL REASONING

Abstract

In this article, we seek to highlight how language can contribute to the mobilization of geographical knowledge. Language is a mediating instrument of communication that enables people to connect, access information, and represent analyses of spatial phenomena and dynamics. In the school context, languages such as images, photographs, maps, diagrams, audiovisual materials, graphs, and other forms of representation are fundamental resources for mobilizing students' knowledge. By incorporating multiple languages into teaching, students’ ability to read and interpret the world from different perspectives is expanded. More than a didactic strategy, working with diverse languages fosters the development of cognitive operations such as identifying, relating, comparing, ordering, hypothesizing, conceptualizing, and memorizing. These skills are essential for the development of geographical reasoning. Developing such competencies involves equipping students with the tools to understand the complexity of space. It is the teacher’s role to guide the reading and use of these languages so that they support both student engagement and teaching practice, contributing to the construction of scientific concepts in the classroom. However, students’ knowledge is constructed both inside and outside of school, since the ability to read the world begins in early childhood, even before formal education, as demonstrated by Piaget and Vygotsky. Thus, the teacher plays a crucial role in mediating a more critical view of the world. By addressing geographical reasoning as a means to interpret the spatiality of phenomena, we seek to engage with geographical theorists in order to understand the concepts and actions that enable such mobilization.