This study sought to analyze the possibilities of developing theoretical reasoning via cartography-related concepts and contents, generally taught in Geography licentiate courses.The theoretical framework used is Vasili V. Davidov's Developmental Teaching approach, whose principles are based on Vygotsky's Cultural-Historical Theory and on Leontiev's Activity Theory.Bringing together these researchers is the attempt to put forward teaching approaches that help students develop thinking skills which surpass those of formal logic.Qualitative research included the use of questionnaires, interviews, and documentary analyses.Additionally, a didacticformative experiment was carried out.The questionnaires, answered by 159 students and 21 teachers from eight Geography courses taught at three universities in Goiás, confirmed findings from previous studies carried out in this Brazilian state as well as in others.According to such findings, cartographic concepts, particularly scale, projection, geographic coordinates, and remote sensing pose difficulties for both learning and teaching.Furthermore, they revealed the cause of such difficulties as well as experiments designed by teachers to bring higher education Cartography closer to the demands posed by Geography in primary education.Course project analyses showed considerable similarity among institutions as regards course and subject proposals.Whereas syllabi and references were quite similar, there was no coherence between critical teacher training proposals and the approach actually given to Cartography.Based on collected data and on theoretical references which support the need to restructure Cartography contents, thus bringing them closer to Geography, a didacticformative experiment was carried out in 2012 with 15 students enrolled in the first year of Geography in a university in Goiás.This experiment followed the structure of Davidov's learning activity, which served as role model for planning various actions, operations, and tasks for the concepts of cartography, map, projection, scale, and symbolall regarded as necessary for appropriating the essence of Cartography as a language of Geography.Experiment results showed the possibilities and real difficulties in developing students' theoretical reasoning, through the passage of abstract to concrete and through interactivity among students and with multimedia resources, particularly animations and simulations used for the teaching of difficult content.In addition, the results fostered the debate on restructuring the teaching of Cartography in higher education, aiming at a more effective integration of its contents and the demands posed by Geography, both at university and primary school level.