ENGLISH AND ITALIAN CHILDRENS KNOWLEDGE OF EUROPEAN GEOGRAPHY

English and Italian children's geographical knowledge of Europe was st udied, particularly their landmark, configurational and route knowledg e. The children were aged 7-11-years-old, and their knowledge of Europ e was assessed using a variety of different methods, including verbal questioning, a categorization task, a physical arrangement task, an ou tline map task and a textbook map vs. satellite photo interpretation t ask. Convergent findings were obtained by the use of these various met hods. In addition to differences associated with age, there were consi stent and substantial differences in landmark and configurational know ledge between the Italian and English children, with the Italian child ren exhibiting a higher level of knowledge about Europe compared with their English peers. Sex differences were also found, but these were p rimarily confined to the children's configurational knowledge. It is s uggested that the nationality differences may be due to the differenti al availability of information about Europe to children in Italy and E ngland, with this differential availability of information itself bein g a product of the different social representations of Europe which pr evail in these two countries.