Students’ perception of rural space in the Ibero-American context: a social representation approach

Rural space has been a classical component of geography, which forms part of a number of educational innovation projects in Latin America. It is related to a social representation, and it is sometimes seen as a homogeneous space, as nature with certain idealization regarding territorial reality. The objective of this study was to explore the perception of rural areas by 600 students (from Brazil, Colombia, and Spain) via their sketch maps in order to determine their level of geographic literacy. The quantitative analysis of psychometric properties allowed us to reveal similarities and differences in the students' perceptions. The results demonstrated that there was an idealized global awareness of rural space, which hinders geographic literacy levels from understanding social problems associated with rurality. The research proposes suggestions to incorporate geographic literacy into educational projects.