Effective Teaching of Research Design in Physical Geography: a case study

A problem-solving approach to the teaching of research design in physical geography is introduced. Focusing on the study of the effectiveness of a local river restoration scheme, students are empowered with the responsibility for and control of their learning by means of group discussions and decision making in a series of workshops. With carefully staged guidance by tutors, students devise research questions and execute their project, analysing data collected on a field day. Although students may find this approach to be challenging and demanding, they acquire research experience and develop key skills, such as visualisation of problems and capacity for logical thought, aided by critical self-appraisal of their performance. Such an approach is particularly relevant today because of subject benchmarking skills. Developing transferable skills, such as initiative and teamwork, valued by employers also promotes self-confidence. Using a case study, this paper considers the experiences of students and staff with this approach, identifying its strengths and weaknesses, and offers possible options for its development.     

Developing External Links through Teaching and Learning in Geography and Environmental Science: The use of the mini-conference

A student-led mini-conference has been used as a means of developing employer links. The one-day conference forms part of a final-year module in the Department of Geography at Edge Hill and involves the participation of external agencies. Links with the world of work, the enhancement of student learning and the promotion of regional research are reported. It is suggested that the conference could be used successfully in a variety of subject disciplines.     

World Geography: Organizational and Teaching Strategies

Teaching students to develop an appreciation and understanding of World Geography is a difficult task. This article presents a number of approaches to design effective teaching methods and strategies to stimulate student learning and to develop spatial interconnections. A suggested framework for organization and study of geographic regions of the world is suggested in the article. Atlas exercises, written assignments, course objectives, and seminar projects are designed to improve the understanding of geographic relationships and spatial concepts in World Geography.     

Co-learning: Re-linking Research and Teaching in Geography

Focusing on Digital Worlds, a first-year geography blended learning course at the University of Auckland, this paper gives voice to the students, examining how they perceived e-learning versus traditional learning mechanisms; how e-learning mechanisms have affected their learning behaviour; and why certain e-learning mechanisms offered in the course were more appealing than others. It demonstrates that students' views are determined by their individual learning styles and how they perceive the university experience. Information and communication technologies were recognized to provide complementary learning benefits, especially when other factors inhibited learning, but traditional mechanisms such as lectures were still greatly valued.     

Student Perceptions of Geography and Environmental Science Fieldwork in the Light of Restricted Access to the Field,Caused by Foot and Mouth Disease in the UK in 2001

Internationally, fieldwork is generally seen as intrinsic to the very nature of geographical education. However, objective experimentation comparing student learning experiences with and without fieldwork is rare. During 2001 in the UK, fieldwork was withdrawn from many university degree programmes as Foot and Mouth Disease led to restrictions on access to the countryside. This restriction provided an unexpected opportunity to assess student perceptions of fieldwork in the light of its absence and to review those alternative learning strategies which were put in its place (where appropriate). To this end, nominal group technique (NGT) was applied to five groups of students from five separate UK universities to obtain information on the groups' perceptions of the value of fieldwork. NGT elicited almost 300 responses from 33 final-year students representing a high level of group consensus on the issues involved. Rationalisation of responses identified 12 categories, which reflect and amplify key educational objectives addressed by fieldwork in geography and environmental sciences from existing theoretical literature. Results demonstrate that student perception of fieldwork (based on previous university-level field experiences) is overwhelmingly positive. The groups identified the experience of geographical reality, developing subject knowledge, acquiring technical, transferable and holistic skills, and working with peers and lecturers as being the most important perceived benefits of fieldwork. Negative impacts of fieldwork included high levels of time consumption. Using a systematic and objective methodology, these results confirm, in a novel rigorous multi-institutional approach, the conception of geography and environmental science fieldwork as being of significant value for the overall student learning experience.     

Memory Work,Geography and Environmental Studies: Some Suggestions for Teaching and Research

In geography and environmental studies, the subjective and objective are often pitted one against the other, and we are often required to divorce the personal and anecdotal from our formal production of knowledge. I question the sense of this practice. First, I examine a method of self-exploration, known as memory work. I then describe how this method can be used in teaching and research to help us explore how we make and give meaning to place. Beyond these concerns, I also discuss some of the links between memory work and the conception of subjectivity and place in geography and environmental studies. Finally, I comment on how both memory and the language in which we couch our experiences are central concerns for geographers and environmental scholars wishing to effect social change.     

Using Teaching Observations and Reflective Practice to Challenge Conventions and Conceptions of Teaching in Geography

Cultural activities such as teaching and learning are highly complex systems that are deeply embedded in a wider culture and these factors impede change. Despite feeling directly the effect of the recent drive towards mass participation in higher education, most lecturers have not accounted for these changes in their teaching methods. Unless lecturers engage in critical reflection and ongoing discovery they stay trapped in unexamined judgements, interpretations, assumptions and expectations. Collaborative teaching observations and reflective practice were conducted by the author and colleagues with a range of experience within a geography department. Several surprising discrepancies appeared between lecturers' expectations and observations of the teaching sessions. The experience showed that, regardless of teaching experience, lectures allow the lecturer in his/her routine practice to neither appreciate his/her performance nor be aware of student understanding. Reflection on these experiences caused the re-evaluation of events and experience and the investigation of other firmly held beliefs that were frustrating and difficult to explain. If lecturers are to become proactive in their professional development, to question their teaching practice and become reflective practitioners, then our teaching culture must embrace the need for change and differences in teaching and learning.     

Teaching Research Methodology to Geography Undergraduates: rationale and practice in a human geography programme

Recent acknowledgement that geography students should gain knowledge and experience in the research process has not been matched by accounts of how this experience should be taught. In human geography, apart from a small selection of informative textbooks, scholars have remained relatively quiet on the matter of curriculum design and teaching programmes that would provide this experience. Instead, attention has been devoted to specific, individual research skills or selected intersections between teaching and research. In contrast, this paper argues that it is important to consider how we might best teach research methodology in a comprehensive manner to human geography undergraduates. The authors identify pedagogic and pragmatic reasons for teaching this material and then address some of the difficulties and challenges associated with this endeavour. Taking one New Zealand human geography example, the aims and structure of a 200-level course that attempts to provide such an example of research methodology teaching are then sketched out. Responses to the course are noted and followed by reflections on the pragmatic and disciplinary challenges that continue to exist.     

Teaching Economic Geography in Two Contrasting Asian Contexts: Decentering Anglo-American Economic Geography in China and Singapore

Teaching economic geography outside Anglo-American countries presents a particular pedagogical challenge, as theories and concepts developed in these countries might not be directly applicable outside their intellectual and national contexts. In this paper, the authors show how the peculiar institutional and development environments in China and Singapore have shaped the ways in which the economic geography curriculum is developed and taught in institutions of higher education. They also examine how students respond to the intellectual challenges presented to them. In their view, successful pedagogy in teaching economic geography requires a significant degree of localization of the curriculum.     

Integrated IT-based Geography Teaching and Learning: A Macquarie University case study

Use of information technology (IT) is increasingly common in geography teaching and learning. This paper outlines a still relatively unusual initiative involving the integrated use of a variety of IT-based components across all aspects of a large course unit. Multiple evaluations reveal strongly positive reactions to the IT-based approach and the time and place flexibility offered; there are few technical impediments to, and no detectable gender differences in, students' use of the system. Most aspects of the integrated approach work well, although it has not yet succeeded in facilitating a genuinely participative online dialogue. Many aspects of the initiative can be transferred cost-effectively to other contexts.     

地理的视角:中国历史地理研究与教学的前沿

2011年2月19日到20日,在美国中南部的阿肯色州州会小石城举行了"中国历史的地理视角国际学术研讨会",藉以推广地理学在传统汉学界的影响。本次会议由阿肯色州大学小石城分校(University of Arkansas,Little Rock)组织,得到了中国大陆、中国台湾、英国、德国、白俄罗斯与美国等各地学者的高度重视。19日全天开会,总共提交12篇论文,论点创新,时地跨越很广,从古代到当代,从华西北到华东南,收获相当丰富。主要演讲者是伊利诺斯州大学芝加哥分校(University of Illinois,Chicago)的何特勒(Laura Hostetler)和哈佛大学(Harvard University)的包弼德(Peter Bol)。20日上午包弼德举行颇有启示的讲座,即关于"中国历史地理信息系统"的研究与教学实用。     

Preparing Geography,Earth and Environmental Science (GEES) Students for Employment in the Enterprise Culture

Maps and related graphics are important means of representing key issues in development education and related themes. This paper examines the use of world maps in materials used in teaching development in higher education and concludes that many are not 'fit for purpose'. Many of these maps create false connotations, which can lead to misleading understandings of key issues.     

Geography and Global Change Science: Relationships Necessary,Absent, and Possible

Initiated by geoscientists, the growing debate about the Anthropocene, ‘planetary boundaries’ and global ‘tipping points’ is a significant opportunity for geographers to reconfigure two things: one is the internal relationships among their discipline's many and varied perspectives (topical, philosophical, and methodological) on the real; the other the discipline's actual and perceived contributions to important issues in the wider society. Yet, without concerted effort and struggle, the opportunity is likely to be used in a ‘safe’ and rather predictable way by only a sub‐set of human‐environment geographers. The socio‐environmental challenges of a post‐Holocene world invite old narratives about Geography's holistic intellectual contributions to be reprised in the present. These narratives speak well to many geoscientists, social scientists, and decision‐makers outside Geography. However, they risk perpetuating an emaciated conception of reality wherein Earth systems and social systems are seen as knowable and manageable if the ‘right’ ensemble of expertise is achieved. I argue that we need to get out from under the shadow of these long‐standing narratives. Using suggestive examples, I make the case for forms of inquiry across the human‐physical ‘divide’ that eschew ontological monism and that serve to reveal the many legitimate cognitive, moral, and aesthetic framings of Earth present and future. Geography is unusual in that the potential for these forms of inquiry to become normalised is high compared with other subjects. This potential will only be taken advantage of if certain human‐environment geographers unaccustomed to engaging the world of geoscience and environmental policy change their modus operandi.     

Disease, Social Identity, and Risk: Rethinking the Geography of AIDS

The emergence of new diseases and the re-emergence of 'old' diseases necessitates a relook at what shapes vulnerability to ill health. A framework is proposed that combines a realist approach to mapping vulnerability with feminist and post-structural approaches that focus more attention upon the role of social identities and cultural framings of disease. Too often investigations of disease focus either upon structural determinants of risk such as political policy and the economy, or on discursive definitions of disease that impact its experience. A combination of these approaches would result in a more effective framework for evaluating vulnerability, and subsequently for generating effective disease prevention strategies. The social, economic, political, and cultural context of HIV/AIDS in Malawi is given as an illustration of this framework.     

Ideology, Discourse, and the Geography of Hegemony: From Socialist to Neoliberal Development in Postapartheid South Africa

The African National Congress (ANC) has long stood for a development policy committed to improving living conditions for black people in South Africa. Assuming power in 1994, the ANC adopted a leftist, basic-needs-oriented Reconstruction and Development Programme as the popular foundation for its economic policy. Within two years, the ANC had switched to a rightist, neoliberal Growth, Employment and Redistribution policy stressing privatization, deregulation, and trade liberalization. This article critically examines the displacement of economic policy from socialism to neoliberalism. My thesis is that ANC policy was disciplined by a neoliberal economic discourse formulated by an academic-institutional-media complex with linked centers of persuasion inside and outside the country. The article combines ideas about hegemony from Gramsci with notions of discourse derived from Foucault in constructing a geographic theory of globally hegemonic discursive formations colonizing alternative, counterhegemonic discourses.     

From Hawaii to Glasgow: The International Network for Learning and Teaching Geography in Higher Education (INLT) Five Years On

This paper examines and reflects on the activities of the International Network for Learning and Teaching Geography in Higher Education (INLT) from its founding at the Association of American Geographers' Annual Conference in Hawaii in 1999 to the post-International Geographical Congress workshop in Glasgow five years later. It provides a context and introduction to the following six papers, which resulted from the Glasgow workshop. It is suggested that, despite some of the proposals in Hawaii proving over-ambitious, several other projects have emerged and the INLT continues largely to meet the goals and purposes set out in 1999. Although the desire of the INLT to move beyond its Anglo-American and Australasian origins largely remains a challenge to be met, the INLT has established itself as a valuable forum for the geography higher education community to identify and reflect on similarities and differences in national practices, to engage in debate virtually and face-to-face on issues concerned with learning and teaching, and to bring geographers from different countries to work together on educational projects.     

Naval Heritage and Postcolonial Geography: Why It Should Matter to Australia

Naval heritage is of global significance, enhanced by its association with waterfront revitalisation, its established literary/institutional framework and its postcolonial connotations. This paper reviews its background and its significance for the worldwide chain of (ex‐)naval bases which formerly bound the British Empire, with particular reference to its use for heritage tourism in Bermuda, Malta and Gibraltar and possible wider potential for this. Australian naval heritage is considered in this context and in its subsequent postcolonial evolution; Australian geographers are prompted to give their more informed consideration to its significance, not least for national identity.     

Mourning Geography: A Punctum,Strathclyde and the Death of a Subject

Abstract

This article documents the formal consultation held at the University of Strathclyde in 2011 which concluded with a decision to withdraw the geography programme from the academic curriculum. In examining the remains of this consultation, the article offers an understanding of the reactions of staff and students to the proposed closure through the theoretical work on mourning by Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida. With use of the notions of punctum and studium in particular, it tracks the discursive location, if not definition, of what was and is poignant about geography at this higher education institution.