An analysis of landscape photographs in geographic education: Comparative research study about geographers and undergraduate students

An analysis of landscape photographs in geographic education: Comparative research study about geographers and undergraduate students

This research attempts to reveal the factors which make an analysis of landscape photographs meaningful. In order to this research, an experiment was planned and carried out. For the experiment, participants consisted of geographers and undergraduate students who were asked to solve a few tasks which were created using landscape photographs. The think-aloud method was used to make the thinking processes of the participants visible. Using this data, their thinking processes were compared. ln the think-aloud method, participants were instructed to keep talking about what they were thinking while they were performing the tasks. Two factors below were revealed from the results of the experiment. Firstly, the more perspectives participants used to analyze landscape photographs, the deeper was the level of information processing that resulted. Secondly, in order to have an meaningful analysis of landscape photographs, it is important to choose between divergent thinking or convergent thinking depending on the task.