This thesis explores an aspect of human navigation; specifically, the ability to maintain orientation whilst moving through a complex environment. It stems from the hypothesis that an understanding of the strategies which are inherent to successful wayfinding, and the development of those strategies, enable educators to offer appropriate learning experiences. The first and second studies focused on the natural orientation behaviours of four groups of children aged between 7 and 10 years as they used a map to navigate a complex route across a uniform grid. The results offered no evidence for differences for gender or handedness. However, there was a significant difference in the use of orientation strategies by the different age groups. The younger 7 year old group of children made significantly more errors in route choice as they completed a complex route across a uniform grid when the salient landmarks were not visible. Generally, they adopted a trial and error strategy in order to complete the task. This was in contrast to the 8, 9 and 10 year-olds who, generally, recruited some form of orientation strategy in order to complete the task. The consensus of the empirical evidence from both the developmental and the environmental psychology would support the argument that this difference is a result of either experiential or maturational factors rather than a reflection of developmental differences. The third and fourth studies evidenced the development and efficacy of an experientially based intervention programme using compass based information and landmark based information. It was found that, following a four week intervention programme, 7 year old children significantly improved performance on a complex route following task. They were able to recruit appropriate orientation strategies using either compass and/ or landmarks, in order to successfully complete the task. More importantly, a control group did not significantly improve their performance on the task and were unable to recruit appropriate orientation strategies in order to complete the task. The efficacy of this experiential based approach was further tested in an applied wayfinding task. A fifth qualitative study examined the transfer of two specific orientation strategies within the sport of orienteering. The relative efficacy of using either a compass-based strategy or a landmark-based strategy was explored within three different environmental conditions; familiar and known, familiar and unknown, and unfamiliar and unknown. It was found that within each of the environments that the children used the compass-based strategy for orientation at the start of each new problem space e.g . the beginning of the route and for relocation) and they used the landmark-based strategy as a means of route reinforcement ( e.g. matching predicted and actual landmarks as they travelled). The findings from the five studies were consistent with an argument that young children (7 years) are able to maintain orientation using map based information within complex routes in the absence of salient visible landmarks if they have appropriate learning experiences.