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Municipal School Atlases of Minas Gerais, Brazil

Context The idea for the creation of the municipal school atlas series originated during testing of material produced for Professor LeSann’s doctoral thesis (1989). This material targeted children’s construction of basic notions of geography in the first four years of elementary school and was first tested in a school in Contagem, Minas Gerais. To meet the requirements of the official geography curriculum for the third grade it was necessary to produce specific material supporting the study of the locality. Thus the Atlas of Contagem was published in 1996 and gave rise to a research project on the production and use of a series of municipal school atlases. By the end of 2002, 11 atlases had been published and eight others are currently in the process of being developed. The municipal school atlases were created as a means of teaching geographical concepts to children of 9–11 years of age and developing students’ understanding of graphicacy by following the principles outlined in Bertin’s (1967, translated 1983) Semiology of Graphics. Although it cannot be said that they were produced to meet the specifications of a Government education authority, they were created to improve teachers’ opportunities for working with local information and data, as suggested by the official geography programmes. An important fact to consider was that teachers of the first four grades of elementary school in Brazil do not generally have an undergraduate degree in geography and therefore often have difficulty identifying appropriate curriculum content, obtaining information relevant to the locality and matching it to children’s grade level. The Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) Cartography and Children research team is responsible for coordinating and developing the atlas series, managing the digital cartography and undertaking final writing and editing of the texts. It also advises on the work of local teams of teachers from the different municipalities. These latter must do the fieldwork and look for much of the necessary information. They also choose the themes for the plates that constitute each atlas. Some of these plates may vary from atlas to atlas, according to local IRGEE 150C