WebGIS-Based Projects as a means to improve students’ Spatial Habits Of Mind in school education

The purpose of this paper is to design, develop and implement a learning environment for school education, which incorporates the PBL teaching methodology supported by the Web-GIS technology. In order to explore the proposed learning environment that affects the Spatial Habits of Mind, a quasi-experimental study was conducted on 58, 10th and 11th grade of High School students of the General Lyceum. According to the scenario of the educational intervention, the students designed and implemented in the framework of the aforementioned learning environment, three research projects with topics pertaining to the local and wider community. The results of the present study revealed that students" completion of a Web-GIS-based project improves their Spatial Habits of Mind, which are further enhanced when field work caters for local community issues while, as proven, there is no obvious differentiation between genders.