Abstract
The economic geography section of the 9th-grade geography curriculum in Kazakhstan - industrial distribution, population dynamics, transport, agriculture, regional development - is spatial in nature but taught through descriptive, textbook-based methods. Students learn where phenomena are located but not how to reason about them spatially. This study develops and tests a methodology for forming geospatial competence through structured inquiry tasks embedded across the full course. A pedagogical experiment was conducted at the Republican Specialized School-Boarding for Gifted Children named after K. Baiseitova, Almaty (2024–2025) with 37 students: experimental group (n = 18) worked through purpose-designed geospatial tasks using Google My Maps, the electronic atlas of Kazakhstan, QGIS, and open data from stat.gov.kz; control group (n = 19) followed standard instruction. Geospatial competence was assessed at three points across three stages: localization, spatial correlation, and territorial analysis. Post-test results showed significant between-group differences (t = 5.9, p < 0.001, Cohen's d = 1.94, 95% CI [1.16, 2.73]): experimental group reached 76% of maximum score vs. 45% for controls. The widest gap was at Stage 3, independent territorial analysis: 64% vs. 22%, suggesting that within the conditions of this experiment conventional instruction developed map reading but was associated with only limited development of spatial reasoning. Findings offer geography teachers a curriculum-aligned task system covering all five sections of the 9th-grade course, tested in one specialised school and requiring replication in mainstream settings.