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Digital Tools for Fostering Spatial Literacy and Spatial Thinking in Primary Geography Education: An Integrative Review and Conceptual Synthesis
Spatial literacy and spatial thinking are fundamental skills for understanding space, interpreting geographical phenomena, and enabling active citizenship in a society increasingly driven by geospatial information. This review examines how digital tools and geospatial technologies contribute to cultivating spatial literacy and thinking within primary geography education. Following an integrative, PRISMA-informed review methodology combining searches of Scopus, Web of Science, and ERIC (n = 1373 records identified), this study draws on a corpus of 141 studies—comprising an original set of sources supplemented by newly identified, priority-ranked literature—examining digital maps, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Web GIS, StoryMaps, collaborative mapping, digital games, and augmented and virtual reality in geography teaching. This review proposes an explicit conceptual model clarifying the hierarchical and complementary relationships among spatial skills, spatial thinking, critical spatial thinking, spatial literacy, and spatial citizenship, together with a four-dimensional typology distinguishing technological platforms, representational formats, pedagogical approaches, and learning activity types; both are proposed as synthesizing heuristics for organizing the reviewed evidence and are offered as a basis for future empirical validation rather than as established models. The findings suggest that pedagogically grounded digital integration strengthens spatial skills, shifts learning toward active, participatory models, and helps cultivate spatial citizenship, though the strength of this evidence varies considerably by tool and by educational level, with primary-specific support remaining comparatively limited for higher-order outcomes such as critical spatial thinking. Crucially, the effective integration of these technologies depends on structured teacher training—addressing self-efficacy and confidence-related barriers alongside technical skills—and the adoption of innovative instructional approaches. Ultimately, digital tools provide effective means of deepening geographical learning and strengthening spatial literacy in primary schools. Realizing this potential, however, depends on matching the selection and use of each tool to the specific dimension of spatial learning it is evidenced to support.
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  • 24 Sep 2026
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