Educational aspects of space perception

The purpose of this thesis is to focus on the research of space perception. Under the term space perception is understood the widest possible meaning as a process wherein an individual creates ideas about the outside world (Siwek 2011). Space imaginations contains objects with their attributes and relations between each other. In as much as each of us creates ideas about space, then it can be assumed a relatively wide interest in different scientific disciplines, which causes an unclear scientific anchoring of terminology and methodology. Therefore, this thesis first discusses the terminology and methodology regarding the research within a geographical education. Then this thesis proceeds to the definition of key terms: mental map, cognitive map and sketch map. Mental map and cognitive map in this thesis are understood as synonyms that reflects the ideas in the memory of an individual about the outside world, whereas the sketch map is one of the methods how to collect these ideas. Furthermore, this thesis defines the methods of collecting data of subjective characteristics contained in mental maps, which can be subsequently visualised through thematic mental maps. Therefore, the following part of the thesis focuses on the sketch map and thematic mental map as a tool and a subject of geographical..