How are non-geography majors motivated in a large introductory world geography course?

University students who do not declare geography as their major are at risk of poor motivation to learn in an introductory geography class. However, research exploring the role of non-majors' motivation is lacking. This study examines motivational factors impacting non-geography students' engagement and performance. The findings suggest that non-geography majors demonstrate deep engagement when they focus on mastering the content and value geography. Also, when students feel confident of learning geography, they are more likely to demonstrate a high level of achievement. The paper concludes with practical suggestions for enhancing non-geography students' motivation and engagement in an introductory geography class.     

After the graduation ceremony: Some thoughts on geography graduate careers

Abstract

An increase in the level of concern with geography graduate careers is needed. Geographers in higher education should undertake fuller and more detailed analysis of career patterns so that they can give careers advice and provide courses that give students some marketable skills. A brief survey of information currently available on geography graduate careers is followed by an analysis of the career patterns of geography graduates from the universities and a polytechnic. Suggestions are made for data improvement and for immediate action.     

Exploring the Transition: Coursework to Research‐Based Study in the Geography Honours Year

The transition from coursework study to independent research is a component of many geography Honours programs in Australian tertiary institutions. Despite being canvassed at the 2003 annual meeting of the Australian Heads of Geography Units, it is a topic that has, to date, received relatively little academic attention. This paper developed from a review of the Geography Honours program at the University of Sydney, conducted by the authors in early 2004. The paper aims to help address the perceived deficiency of research into Honours study. Three topics, related to the Honours year transition, are discussed. These are: the rationale for the Honours year transition from undergraduate coursework to research‐focussed study; the composition and rationale behind coursework programs for geography Honours students, and student‐supervisor relations and their impact on independent Honours research. In the process of examining these issues this paper offers suggestions as to how tertiary geography schools can look to develop their Honours year programs. These recommendations are made with the understanding that all tertiary Honours programs are unique and that issues such as staffing levels and departmental structure will influence what suggestions are appropriate for individual institutions. It is hoped that this paper will encourage more discussion about the nature of the Honours year. It is through such communication that the value of the Honours year in student development can be enhanced     

Opportunities,challenges, and transitions: educational aspirations of Pakistani migrant youth in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

Through the experiences of Pakistani-migrant families in Hong Kong, this paper explores ethnic minority students’ aspirations for education, work and the future in a context where education is highly valued but also extremely competitive. The first part depicts how Pakistani youth and their parents articulate their aspirations and opportunities and investigates the sociopolitical changes in education that are creating new opportunities for young Pakistani students. The second part considers the challenges from the larger Hong Kong society and within the Pakistani community that may hamper aspirations. The last part examines transitions and promises and the ways Pakistani youth negotiate for better futures. This article delineates the intertwining dynamics of cultural consensus, cultural dissonance and children's agency as the youth navigate the terrain of education and career.     

Renewing the purpose of geography education: Eco-anxiety,powerful knowledge,and pathways for transformation

Concerns about the decline in uptake of secondary geography education continue despite arguments supporting the value of geography education, the power of geographical thinking, and geography’s critical role in preparing students to deal with complex challenges. Already constrained by neoliberal politics of disadvantage, young people must plan and prepare for chaotic futures. Consequently, young people are becoming distressed and worried about their futures and feeling powerless as society fails to adequately address these issues. In this article, we ask what schools and universities can do as place-based public institutions to serve young people to effectively respond to eco-anxiety and build capacities to surf the unrelenting waves of change. We draw on journeys that brought three young doctoral candidates to study geography. From their stories, we sketch what a geographical education could offer in terms of relevance, practicality, and engagement with transformative system change. We think that under current world conditions, this is a moment to revive geography education and give it renewed purpose to encourage young people to develop skills and competences to tackle wicked problems.     

Geography students' assessment of internship experience at a Kenyan university

This paper reports findings of Moi University's geography students' assessment of their internship, which underscore the importance of internship in bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and its application in the real world of work. Not only were the majority of the students able to apply geographical knowledge and skills in their work situations, they also acquired new competences, gained work experience and were able to map their career paths and make contacts with relevant professionals and potential employers. As a result, most students came out of internship more upbeat about the geography programme and their career and job prospects.     

Geography and the Australian Curriculum: Unfulfilled Knowledges in Secondary School Education

The introduction of geography as a separate discipline within the Australian Curriculum offers hope for revitalisation of the subject in Australian school education after decades of decline. Since the 1990s, the subject has been largely submerged within an integrated curriculum framework that has had significant consequences for the presence and character of secondary school geography. Its inclusion in the learning area of SOSE (Studies of Society and Environment) within schools has diluted the degree, breadth and depth of geographical education. However, in spite of the hope provided by its re‐institution, the process of national curriculum construction has had disconcerting consequences for the type of geography being offered to Australian students at the secondary level. Building on critical overviews of the history of secondary geography as an Australian school subject since the 1980s, recent philosophical discourse on approaches to geographical knowledge in a school context, and the author's personal experience as a geographical educator and researcher, this paper argues that the nature of knowledge embodied by the new geography study design in Years 7–10 is flawed in both its scope and its direction. While reflecting many of the characteristics of a social realist approach to geographical knowledge, the Australian Curriculum minimises the elements of critical analysis that provide geography with its unique educational identity and value.     

‘I couldn't hold the whole thing’: the role of gender,individualisation and risk in shaping fertility preferences in Taiwan

Taiwan has one of the lowest fertility rates in Asia. High direct and indirect costs of childbearing have been identified as key drivers behind this at the macro-level, but little is known about the mechanism of these influences at the individual-level. In 32 qualitative interviews with parents in Taipei, we sought to explore the salient factors for couples in their decisions about having further children. We identified a tension between gendered expectations of childcare responsibilities and women's desire to ‘build a life of one's own’ – a life with options and the freedom to pursue career and social aspirations. Based on our grounded analysis, we reflect on the high relevance of individualisation, risk society and incomplete gender revolution theories for understanding why many couples – and women in particular – choose to cease childbearing at parity one.     

Career paths and mobility in the Swedish hospitality sector

ABSTRACT

How career paths are interpreted and conceptualised by hospitality workers and industry representatives remains underexplored in current literature. In this paper, we highlight and discuss sector-specific and contextual factors that influence the possibility of establishing a career within the Swedish hospitality sector. The paper uses interviews with hotel managers, who describe and discuss motivations and choices made throughout their own careers and interviews with young (former) seasonal hospitality workers who describe and reflect on their future plans and work-life experience. Additional data are derived through observations at national seminars and meetings for representatives from the Swedish tourism and hospitality industry, where issues of competence and careers were discussed. The findings indicate that the shaping of career paths within the hospitality sector is influenced by two normative and discursively produced ‘truths’ about career paths in the hospitality sector: the importance of internal knowledge transfer and the importance of high mobility. These narratives impose expectations on individuals to be mobile, to change jobs frequently and to work their way from the bottom-up within the industry, and are based on a presumption of a diversified and dense local hospitality labour market. However, since the conditions are different due to contextual, geographical features of labour market size and structure, attractiveness of places, etc., these expectations are difficult to fulfil in places other than in larger urban areas. These normative assumptions of what a successful hospitality career is also have consequences for the development of the hospitality sector as external influences of competence from other sectors and higher education are not seen as valuable, which makes the sector self-contained and not open to external, potentially innovative knowledge.     

Please mind the gap: students' perspectives of the transition in academic skills between A-level and degree-level geography

This paper explores first-year undergraduates' perceptions of the transition from studying geography at pre-university level to studying for a degree. This move is the largest step students make in their education, and the debate about it in the UK has been reignited due to the government's planned changes to A-level geography. However, missing from most of this debate is an appreciation of the way in which geography students themselves perceive their transition to university. This paper begins to rectify this absence. Using student insights, we show that their main concern is acquiring the higher level skills required for university learning.     

Effects of an introductory geography course on student perceptions of geography at the University of Idaho

This case study surveyed students in geography courses at the University of Idaho, investigating perceptions of geography's role in their daily lives, relevance to careers or academics, and parts of their geographic skill. Primarily, white, younger than 20, gender-balanced students in Introduction to Physical Geography and Human Geography courses comprised the study sample. A sample of 265 students formed the pre-course survey and 82 students formed the post-course survey. Pre-course, men held a more positive sense of geographic skill, while women viewed more positively geography's relevance to careers and academics. Post-course, women's agreement concerning geography's role significantly increased, outpacing men's agreement.     

The future of human geography? Reflections on reading three recent texts

It is vital that we teach our students to understand and evaluate the rich diversity of geography's conceptual and philosophical approaches. If we do not, they will be in a poor position in their future careers to justify the application of particular geographical skills, or to understand the linkages between geography and other disciplines. Society's respect for the value and relevance of geography will be diminished and the subject's future placed in jeopardy. This article gives some pointers to the conceptual and philosophical bases of different approaches, and expresses concern that, despite the considerable strengths of two of the three text books reviewed they all fail to discuss the differences of approach evident in their source material and the implications of these differences.     

Advice and reflections for a university teacher beginning an academic career

Although graduate programs typically prepare university students well for research activity, many have been less successful in educating for other aspects of academic careers. This article discusses Iain Hay's “Letter to a New University Teacher,” which has been used internationally to help new lecturers beginning their career. Prepared as an autoethnographic account for a recent graduate, “The Letter” distils principles held to underpin a successful academic career. Five university teachers and academic managers discuss critically the content and their applications of “The Letter” and make some suggestions for its use in continuously transforming higher education contexts.     

Trust and Confidence: A Study of Young Queenslanders

This paper provides a unique perspective on trust in Australian society using data from the first wave of a longitudinal study of young people in Queensland. Questions central to young people's expectations regarding institutions and significant others are interrogated. Trust assumes critical importance in this context because it is an important aspect of the future-oriented deliberative processes young people engage in. Gender, indigenous status and religiosity are key determinants of trust across a range of indicators. Boys are less likely than girls to trust significant others such as friends and siblings or to trust environmental groups, but are more trusting of sportspeople, television and the Internet. Aboriginal children are more trusting of their siblings, teachers and neighbours, but less so of their parents. ‘Smart’ children are more trusting of their teachers and schools and feel more confident about their future, while general life satisfaction is positively associated with most measures of trust.     

The parliamentary wife: Participant in the two‐person single career

The concept of the ‘two‐person single career’ was introduced by Papanek (1973) to describe those occupations in which the wife is expected to participate in her husband's career, although her participation is neither directly acknowledged nor remunerated. Using data collected during interviews with Australian federal parliamentarians, this paper argues that, with minor differences, the occupation of the member of parliament exhibits the typical characteristics of the two‐person career. The paper then examines the increasing tendency for some parliamentary wives to reject this role and argues that this, plus the fact that unmarried male members of the parliament and the ever increasing numbers of female parliamentarians function effectively without the backing of a parliamentary spouse, suggests that the parliamentary career, as indeed may be the case for similar careers mentioned by Papanek, is a two‐person one by convention and convenience rather than of necessity.     

Video annotation software application for thorough collaborative assessment of and feedback on microteaching lessons in geography education

This article discusses the process and findings of a study in which video annotation (VideoANT) and a learning management system (LMS) were implemented together in the microteaching lessons of fourth-year geography student teachers. The aim was to ensure adequate assessment of and feedback for each student, since these aspects are, in general, a shortcoming of micro-lesson facilitation. VideoANT is an online environment synchronizing web-based video application with timeline-based text annotations, and it was imported into and managed in the university's LMS called eFundi. The web videos of the geography students' micro-lessons on VideoANT were made accessible by the lecturer according to a rotational time schedule managed in eFundi. This enabled students to assess fellow students' micro-lessons in a collaborative blended learning environment and to receive feedback on their own lessons. Qualitative as well as quantitative data were collected, and the results indicate that geography student teachers held positive views of these technology applications for geography microteaching in particular and for their teaching training in general.     

Tutoring Relevant Geography: A People's Geography Project initiative

UK geography departments are now reaching the stage where, in light of social change and growing competition for students, the need to offer a degree programme that is relevant to the needs and expectations of students is a real urgency. Drawing on the People's Geography Project, an initiative from the USA, this paper details the experiences of the author in teaching relevant geography in first-year undergraduate tutorials. The paper contends that by providing an opportunity for students to engage in contentious debate and to adopt a political position, students are encouraged to approach issues from a critical geographical perspective, demonstrate the relevance of a geographical perspective in contemporary issues, recognise the conflicting interests from competing discourses and reach a possible, just solution to social problems. This paper reports on the choice of topics, the forum of debate and assessment through alternative coursework styles, and it analyses the learning of both geographical and transferable skills through a People's Geography tutorial programme. The degree of relevance perceived by both the students and the tutor is evaluated, and suggestions are made for further development of a People's Geography approach.     

Geographers and the Discourse of an Earth Transformed: Influencing the Intellectual Weather or Changing the Intellectual Climate?

This article considers how geographers might choose to respond to many geoscientists' claims that we are entering ‘the age of humans’. These claims, expressed in the concepts of the Anthropocene, planetary boundaries and global tipping points, make epochal claims about Earth surface change that are also far‐reaching claims upon Earth's current inhabitants. The scale and scope of their normative implications are extraordinarily grand. After describing the content and wider context for these claims, the history of some geographers' engagement with global change research is sketched and their current contributions described. Wider alterations in the modus operandi of global change scientists seem to offer a perfect opportunity for geographers to demonstrate the intellectual and societal value of their discipline's ‘integrative’ aspirations. However, the article suggests that this opportunity is likely to be used in a rather conservative way that downplays the sort of wide, deep and plural forms of integrative analysis that a post‐Holocene world surely calls for. Such forms exist in geography but are currently not, by and large, feeding into wider debates in global change research about how to understand and influence the future of Earth and humanity. The question is: how might they serve to alter the intellectual climate prevailing in global change research as Future Earth becomes the new umbrella for its next phase of development?     

Composing our careers: Susan Hanson's contributions to geography and geographers

Susan Hanson's career exemplifies the notion that our lives are compositions rather than predictable, linear trajectories. In this essay I argue that Susan's career is an empowering example of a collage of woven-together life experiences, substantive research interests, feminist values and progressive professional practices. I illustrate these ideas through three compositions that I trace throughout Susan's career: networking gender; caring geography; and reproducing geography. Susan's work connects and validates the diverse elements of our lives through her scholarship, her commitment to feminist values and her disciplinary leadership.