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.     

George G. Chisholm: His influence on university and school geography

EUROPE

I Saw Two Englands. 2nd edition. By H. V. Morton. Demy 8vo. London : Methucn and Co. Ltd. Price 9s. 6d.

The German Lebensraum. By Robert E. Dickinson. Pp. 223. Penguin Special.

Scottish Pilgrimage in the Land of Lost Content. By Radcliffe Barnett. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. x+207. Edinburgh: John Grant, 1943. Price 6s.

Wild Life of Britain. By F. Fraser Darling. Illustrated. 4to. Pp.48. London : Collins Ltd., 1943. Price 4s. 6d.

France. By P. Maiixaud. Illustrated. 4#fr1/2>×7#fr1/2>. Pp.138. London : Oxford University Press, 1943. Price 3s. 6d.

The Economic Reconstruction of Lithuania after 1918. By A. Simutis. Demy 8vo. Pp. 148. New York and London : Columbia University Press and Humphrey Milford, 1943.

Orientations. By Ronald Storrs. Definitive Edition. London : Nicholson and Watson, 1943. Price 10s. 6d.

ASIA

The Gobi Desert. By Mildred Cable with Francesca French. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp.301. London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1943. Price 21s.

Polynesians : Explorers of the Pacific. By J. E. Weckley. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 77. Washington : Smithsonian Institution, 1943.

Girlhood in the Pacific. By Mrs. Shane Leslie. London : Macdonald and Co. Price 10s. 6d.

Dawn in Siberia. By G. D. R. Phillips. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 196. London : Frederick Muller, 1943. Price 8s. 6d.

My India, My West. By Dr. Krishnalal Shridharani.

Growing Up in New Guinea. By Margaret Mead. Pelican Books, 1942.

India. By T. A. Raman. Illustrated. 4#fr1/2>×#fr1/2>. Pp.140. London: Humphrey Milford at the Oxford University Press, 1943. Price 3s. 6d.

Report from Tokyo. By J. C. Grew. Demy 8vo. Pp.103. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1943. Price 2s. 6d.

AFRICA

Diary of a District Officer. By K. Bradley. Demy 8vo. Pp. 192. London : George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd. Price 5s.

Libyan Log. By E. G. Ogilvie. Illustrated. 4#fr1/2>×7#fr1/2>. Pp.103. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd Ltd., 1943. Price 51.

North Africa. By A. H. Brodrick. Illustrated. 4#fr1/2>×7#fr1/2>. Pp.97. London: Oxford University Press, 1943. Price 3s. 6d.

Across Madagascar. By Olive Murray Chapman. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. 144. London : Burrows, 1943. Price 9s. 6d.

Dead Men Do Tell Tales. By Byron de Prorok. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp.221. London : George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd., 1943. Price 10s. 6d.

AMERICA

Canada. By B. K. Sandweix. Illustrated. Pp.124. 7#fr1/2>×4#fr1/2> London: Oxford University Press, 1943. Price 3s. 6d.

Exploring the Little Rivers of New Jersey. By James and Margaret Cawley. Princeton : Princeton University Press.

South America, with Mexico and Central America. By J. B. Trend. Illustrated. 7#fr1/2>×4#fr1/2>. Pp. 128. London : Oxford University Press, 1942. Price 3s. 6d.

Green Fire. By P. W. Rainier. Demy 8vo. Pp. viii+216. London: John Murray, 1943. Price 12s. 6d.

GENERAL

Climatic Accidents in Landscape‐making. By C. A. Cotton. Illustrated. Pp. xx+354. Wellington and London: Whitecombe and Tombs, 1942. Price 301.

Half a Life. By Major C. S. Jarvis. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. viii+216. London: John Murray, 1943. Price 15s.

Scottish Gaelic Studies. Vol. V, Part II. Demy 8vo. Pp. 198. London : Basil Blackwell, 1942. Price 9s.

Auld Reekie. By A. A. MacGregor. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. ix+204. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1943. Price 12s. 6d.

A Journey to Gibraltar. By R. Henrey. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. Pp. vi + 169. London : J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1943. Price 12s. 6d.

EDUCATIONAL

Teach Tourself Geography. By J. C. Kingsland and W. B. Cornish. Pp. 287. London : English Universities Press Ltd., 1943. Price 3s.     

Palynology and archaeological inference: bridging the gap between pollen washes and past behavior

Credible interpretation of pollen recovered from archaeological sites hinges upon understanding how pollen becomes deposited by both the environment and human behavior. The environmental role has been studied to some extent, but how the activities of people have formed the pollen assemblages at archaeological sites is usually just assumed rather than considered explicitly. Moreover, the complexity involved in the interaction between human behavior and pollen ecology is seldom considered. An archaeological case study of grinding tool pollen washes highlights the ambiguities of standard practice because the results confound common assumptions about pollen washes. A series of experimental seed and grinding tool washes designed to test the relationships between the processing of seeds and the deposition of pollen help explain why, for most situations, artifact pollen washes do not provide direct or even faithful records of plant processing. These results highlight the need for further experimental research with pollen so that we are warranted in making behavioral inferences from palynology. This conclusion is easily extended to other microbotanical data classes that archaeologists regularly employ.     

Mapping the audit traces of interdisciplinary collaboration: bridging and blending between choreography and cognitive science

ABSTRACT

Two long-term sci–art research projects are described and positioned in the broader conceptual landscape of interdisciplinary collaboration. Both projects were aimed at understanding and augmenting choreographic decision-making and both were grounded in research conducted within a leading contemporary dance company. In each case, the work drew upon methods and theory from the cognitive sciences, and both had a direct impact on the way in which the company made new work. In the synthesis presented here the concept of an audit trace is introduced. Audit traces identify how specific classes of knowledge are used and transformed not only within the arts or sciences but also when arts practice is informed by science or when arts practice informs science.     

Facilitating the transition from being a geography student to becoming a geographer in Spain: the role of professional identity

ABSTRACT

The transition between university studies and workplace is often described as a difficult and challenging process. In this paper, we propose a series of modifications to the curriculum of geography studies based on an exploration of both student and professional perceptions on the image of the geography profession and how they identify with it. Based on several interviews, we suggest a series of recommendations for curriculum design to reconcile the disagreement found between student and professional perceptions and to foster students’ identification with professional images.     

Improving the transition to university: introducing student voices into the formal induction process for new geography undergraduates

Recently, there has been renewed interest in the area of school to university transitions within geography. This article focuses upon one aspect of these transitions, namely the induction programmes offered by universities to their new undergraduates. It argues in favour of extending the length of the induction period currently offered by many institutions and incorporating student voices into the induction process through peer mentoring. In making this argument, the article reports upon the new Extended Induction to Geography programme that Newcastle University piloted for the first time in 2011–2012.     

A continuing agenda for gender: the role of the IGU Commission on gender and geography

In examining the development of the International Geographical Union’s (IGU) Commission on Gender and Geography over the last three decades, we first highlight the advances made to establish visibility for gender studies within the IGU and create structures for more inclusive feminist geographies across national, disciplinary and other borders. Given that many of the early and most widely-known advances were largely within Anglophone contexts, we then discuss the ongoing challenges and possibilities for advancement faced by feminist geographers who teach, research, and write on gender in other locations. While some of these challenges (such as a continued lack of recognition for gender studies, paternalistic hierarchies, and specific government regimes) are country-specific, others are related to broader issues of neoliberalism and corporatization, and inequities in academic publishing. Clearly, continued efforts are needed to strengthen the agenda for gender to promote more inclusive histories, practices and processes of gender/feminist geography in research, teaching and application in the international arena.     

Curriculum development and society: West German geographers respond to the American high school geography project

Abstract

Industrial geography courses at the Historically Black Universities (HBUs) and the Historically White Universities (HWUs) in South Africa are a true reflection of apartheid education designed by the government in the 1950s. The education system offers whites good and quality education, while blacks receive poor education. The nature and history of the HBUs have affected the content and the teaching of industrial geography. Unlike the HWUs industrial geography courses at the HBUs do not contain much of the recent changes in the subject.     

Children's daily travel to school in Johannesburg-Soweto,South Africa: geography and school choice in the Birth to Twenty cohort study

This paper has two aims: to explore approaches to the measurement of children's daily travel to school in a context of limited geospatial data availability and to provide data regarding school choice and distance travelled to school in Soweto-Johannesburg, South Africa. The paper makes use of data from the Birth to Twenty cohort study (n?=?1428) to explore three different approaches to estimating school choice and travel to school. First, straight-line distance between home and school is calculated. Second, census geography is used to determine whether a child's home and school fall in the same area. Third, distance data are used to determine whether a child attends the nearest school. Each of these approaches highlights a different aspect of mobility, and all provide valuable data. Overall, primary-school-aged children in Soweto-Johannesburg are shown to be travelling substantial distances to school on a daily basis. Over a third travel more than 3 km one way to school, 60% attend schools outside of the suburb in which they live, and only 18% attend their nearest school. These data provide evidence for high levels of school choice in Johannesburg-Soweto, and that families and children are making substantial investments in pursuit of high-quality educational opportunities. Additionally, these data suggest that two patterns of school choice are evident: one pattern involving travel of substantial distances and requiring a higher level of financial investment and a second pattern involving choice between more local schools, requiring less travel and a more limited financial investment.     

Constructive comments on D Massey 'Space-time, "science" and the relationship between physical geography and human geography:rsquo;

This paper provides a discussion of Massey's (1999) account of the role of space-time in human and physical geography. Recognizing the relative (but not absolute) paucity of comment from physical geographers on questions of approach and method, the paper seeks to demonstrate three things. First, it casts a history of a narrow part of geomorphology in a similar vein to a part of human geography to demonstrate that it is possible to find strong shared characteristics in the ways in which the two subjects are being approached. This emphasizes the importance of analyses that recognize both space and time in seeking explanation in physical geography and which has important implications for: (i) the nature of laws and processes in geomorphology; and hence (ii) the interpretation of specific landforms and their histories. Second, the paper argues that much of what Massey addresses relates to the closure required to make things amenable to study, something that is characteristic of almost every type of research. This has long been acknowledged in science in general and in physical geography in particular, but is often forgotten. Third, the paper uses this consideration of closure to address the issue of the relational nature of different sorts of space-time models. Following Massey's argument that the sort of space-time model that we adopt needs to be informed by the entities that we study, the paper concludes that some of the space-time models that Massey critiques (e.g. classical Newtonian mechanics) may still be fundamental to what we do, and in no sense necessarily ahistorical.     

Bridging the gap: a terrestrial view of shallow marine sequences and the importance of the transition zone

The shallow shelf area around the coast of the UK contains an important record of maritime and, potentially prehistoric archaeology. Increasingly this area is the focus of anthropogenic activity such as gravel extraction and cable laying in advance of which it is increasingly common practice to investigate the archaeological potential of the sequences/regions. Well structured approaches have been developed for the investigation of maritime wrecks and the latest Prehistoric remains, however the Palaeolithic archaeological potential of these regions is less clear. This is partly due to the depth of burial of archaeological material and the rather more fragmentary nature of the sequences present. Where consideration of the Palaeolithic archaeology has been undertaken, models and presumptions derived from terrestrial situations have been extrapolated across the near shore zone, where often there is no data, and into the maritime area. Within the maritime area these models have been used to interpret seismic data and scarce offshore core data for making regional reconstructions. Here we consider some of the issues in reconstruction and highlight the difficultly in extrapolating between terrestrial and maritime situations without careful investigation in the transition zone. In particular we argue that rather than assuming similarities between patterns of landscape evolution between the on- and off-systems we should anticipate dissimilarity of patterns, missing sequences and different landscape formation processes particularly in those areas of the shallow shelf area formerly occupied by drainage basins during sea level low-stands.     

When Natural met Social: A Review of Collaboration between the Natural and Social Sciences

Abstract

This paper investigates the opportunities for further collaboration between the natural and social sciences. From 81 systematically identified and reviewed papers published in scientific journals, it became clear that complex situations that depend on human behaviour as well as natural processes require natural–social science collaboration. The creation of a community of collaborative natural–social science research, that learns from and can contribute to best practice across the sciences, is advocated to support natural– social science collaboration. Across disciplines, it became clear that such a community should deal with (1) difference between paradigms in the current sciences; (2) creation of skills and competences of the involved scientists; (3) scarcity of institutions sympathetic to collaborative research; and (4) the internal organization of collaborative projects.     

Connecting high school and university teachers in national and international contexts: perspectives from the 2012 Bangalore workshop of the AAG-CGGE

This paper focuses on the Center for Global Geography Education teaching workshop held in Bangalore, India, in March 2012 which served as a collaborative forum linking geography teachers in secondary and higher education in the USA and India. It considers the inclusion of the Advanced Placement Human Geography teachers from the USA and the building of global teaching content in collaborative teams as a useful way to connect geography teachers across institutional contexts. Based on a survey of workshop participants, it also highlights some of the issues that need to be addressed for further strengthening of high school–university linkages within national and across international contexts.     

“Living together separately”: Thoughts on the relationship between political science and political geography

In their provocatively titled book, Living Together Separately, Michael Romann and Alex Weingrod argue that the shared terrain of Jerusalem obscures deep divisions in the physical and social lives of its Arab and Jewish ethnic communities (Romann & Weingrod, 1991). Multiple divisions exist not only among peoples sharing a common space; they are also found among communities of scholars sharing common intellectual interests. This has certainly been the case of Political Science and Political Geography during much of the twentieth century. Members of both disciplinary communities seek insights into the role of politics and political structures in human society, yet until recently they have pursued their work within orbits that only rarely intersected. They attended different conferences and symposia, they employed different methodological tools, and they did not draw heavily on each others published work.Recent theoretical and empirical developments have begun to erode the barriers separating Political Science and Political Geography, and a discussion of the relationship between the disciplines is thus both timely and welcome. Professor Elazar is an appropriate person to place at the center of this discussion, for his work as a political scientist is unusual sensitivity to geography. Professor Elazar's comments about research orientations and career constraints provide an interesting point of departure for such a discussion, but to understand the nature and depth of the divide between the disciplines it is important to consider the core intellectual constructs and practices that have characterized Political Science and Political Geography during the twentieth century. These have fostered theoretical orientations and research approaches that are sufficiently different from one another to create significant barriers to interdisciplinary contact.     

When the rule of law met rule by the party: the conflicts between Baptist schools and the local Guomindang in Republican Suzhou

ABSTRACT

This study examines the relationship between the Guomindang (GMD) and the courts by focusing on the 1929 conflicts between the Suzhou Baptist schools and the local GMD party apparatus. The GMD regime supported the principle of rule by the party. At the local level, the GMD’s rise was often stymied by the independent judiciary whose judgments were based on the principle of the rule of law. The local party might not have been able to control the local court in the early years of the GMD regime, but it did steadily alter state-society relationships, as it could benefit from the local court’s commitment to the rule of law. For instance, the district court in Suzhou actively defended the principle of rule by the party in conflicts between Baptist schools and the local party because the GMD had made that principle the law of the land.     

萨珊波斯帝国在拜占廷金币传入过程中的影响

地处东西两大文明交汇点的萨珊波斯帝国,不仅本身创造出灿烂辉煌的文明,也为东西商贸文化交流做出了巨大的贡献。本文以中国出现之拜占廷金币及其仿制品为线索,考察萨珊波斯帝国在罗马帝国（及拜占廷帝国）与东方之间的联系作用,证明它在拜占廷金币向东传播、流向中国的过程中有着非常重要的影响,是古代东西经济文化交流的重要媒介之一。     

Towards more (un)balanced trade. Production linkages between China and the Visegrad countries: country-level and sector-level analysis*

This article presents the Visegrad Group member countries with special focus on the role of these countries in global value chains (GVCs). The goal of this paper is to analyse the role these states play in global production linkages and evaluation of connections between the VG states and China. We verified two hypotheses: (1) the Visegrad countries have deteriorated their positions in GVCs in relation to China recently; (2) the Visegrad states have become more dependent on Chinese value added in selected sectors. The analysis consists of two steps. Firstly, we evaluated the role of the Visegrad countries in international production linkages with China using value-added foreign trade using country-level approach. Secondly, we focused on the sectoral links between China and the Visegrad countries.