This is an interesting little book, primarily pitched at the United Kingdom market but with general themes which make it of interest to geography teachers elsewhere. Throughout the book the author has attempted to illustrate his disquisition with examples from a number of places.

What follows is ostensibly a review of a book called Signposts for Geography Teaching, edited by Rex Walford, and published by the Longman Group (1981) at £4.50. It should be stated, however, that the latitude usually accorded to reviews has, in this instance, been strained beyond the norm. In other words, this review is so highly selective and idiosyncratic that it hardly warrants the term, “review”, at all.

In this paper, 360 mental maps drawn by 120 Jamaican students are examined with regard to the influence of age and gender on the development of skills of spatial representation The spatial representations produced as mental maps give an indication of spatial conception, although the two are not synonymous. The patterns to emerge from the research were complex, with evidence both for a steady accretion of spatial information and for developmental stages. There were also no simplistic or unidirectional gender effects.