Teaching exchange: A rewarding personal experience

Abstract

This paper discusses the teaching of the analytical approach to behavioural geography. After examining the relationship between teaching and research in this area of inquiry, the paper proceeds to outline some fundamental concepts and principles, concentrating specifically on models of man, models of environment, perception and cognition, information diffusion and adoption, space preferences and time‐path analysis. Comments are then made as to how analytical behavioural geography may be taught at all levels of education, from elementary schooling to postgraduate courses.     

Never mind the kudos,join the dialogue

Abstract

This paper reports on the redevelopment of medical geography courses taught to both undergraduate and graduate students in a US university. The author participated in a curriculum development seminar that focused explicitly on the creation of new courses that incorporate perspectives from current research on women and other marginalised, ignored or forgotten groups. The experience and feedback from this seminar led to changes in undergraduate courses in medical geography and to the creation of a new and specific graduate seminar course that critiques medical geography for its gender and colour blindness. The paper includes a commentary on the institutional context that allowed such changes to occur and discussion of issues relating to introducing perspectives on women into the curriculum. Spin‐offs from course redevelopment included the creation of resource materials (a bibliographic database) and a reformulation of teaching strategies.     

Editorial II

Abstract

This paper begins by outlining some recent initiatives to encourage the incorporation of ‘enterprise skills’ in British higher education and discusses the response of the academic community. Geographers are at the forefront of these developments. The second part of the paper illustrates how a first year practical course in geography was redesigned into a set of largely resource‐based group projects which incorporate many of the personal transferable skills emphasised in the various enterprise initiatives. It is concluded that the inclusion of enterprise skills is relevant to geography courses, but they are best integrated into mainline courses rather than taught as separate courses.     

'An Unbelievable Academic and Personal Experience': Issues around teaching undergraduate field courses in Africa

This paper explores the teaching of geography field courses in Africa for UK university undergraduates. Using largely qualitative feedback, the experiences of students, staff and local communities involved in field courses to Kenya, Zimbabwe and The Gambia are evaluated. Benefits and disbenefits of these field courses to the participating students, the local community and teaching staff are scrutinised. The paper concludes that such field courses to 'exotic' destinations are an effective means to student recruitment and certainly achieve their aims while providing meaningful teaching and learning experiences. Furthermore, the analysis shows that field courses to 'poor' destinations in sub-Saharan Africa can avoid dangers of 'development tourism' if conducted with ethical sensitivity.     

Teaching Geography to Non-geographers at Glasgow Caledonian University

This paper discusses the teaching of geography to 'non-geographers' at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU). GCU is one of the so-called 'new' universities in the UK and it shares with many of these institutions a mission to facilitate access to groups that have traditionally been under-represented in higher education. Human geography is one of the six subject area streams within the interdisciplinary social sciences degree programme, although geographical subject matter is taught in many other degree programmes, in each of GCU's three faculties. The arrangements for teaching human geography at GCU present pedagogical challenges for staff. Means to address these problems have been implemented. In this case study, it is argued that the experience of teaching human geography to 'non-geographers' at GCU may be of more general significance to the discipline, to the teaching of geography in both 'old' and 'new' universities and to those responsible for the delivery of mainstream geography degree programmes.     

Problems and Possibilities of Delivering 'Footloose' Geography: The case for space

Within the UK Higher Education system, geography is sometimes taught outside the framework of a conventional geography degree programme. Using a case study of the situation at Napier University, Edinburgh, this paper explores the problems and possibilities of delivering 'footloose' geography within a broadly, but not exclusively, social science context.     

Teaching geomorphology at university

Abstract

A questionnaire survey on the content and structure of geomorphology courses taught in university geography departments in Britain reveals that current practice is for teaching to be structured around courses and subheadings which reflect the main landform/process systems (e.g. fluvial, glacial) rather than more abstract concepts. This empirically‐based orientation is convenient, but in the long run it could be inefficient and unchallenging. Three alternative ways of structuring teaching on a more theoretical basis would be to focus explicitly on more fundamental geomorphic processes; to structure teaching on the use of a systems approach; or to introduce more specific courses on key methodological problems.     

Students as learners

Abstract

This paper examines the changes in teaching practice that follow from adopting a feminist perspective on geography. The first part discusses changes in the content and organisation of undergraduate courses, the second discusses changes in methods of teaching. The paper concludes by briefly examining the relationship between the theoretical analysis of women's oppression and the fight for women's rights.     

After the relevance debate: The teaching of social geography

Abstract

An examination of the recent relevance debate in geography shows that this debate has led to an explicit realisation of the significance of values, the addition of a rigorous political, social and economic dimension to social geography and a recognition of the importance of problem and policy perspectives. Three trends in modern social geography are identified — problem orientations, humanistic perspectives, and structural perspectives — and their impacts on taught courses and individual projects are assessed. Curriculum developments and problems are also discussed. Full incorporation of such schemes into the subject depends not only on published research findings, but also on the values and interests of individual teachers.     

Two modes of peer teaching in introductory college geography

Abstract

Two modes of using undergraduate students as peer teachers in introductory courses have been developed at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Peer teachers are small group leaders in a human geography course built around role playing simulations; in two physical geography courses they are tutors in a self‐paced system. A separate course provides peer teacher guidance—a course‐within‐a‐course model. Socio‐psychological, pedagogical, economic, and political implications of peer teaching are interpreted after ten years' experience with the programme.     

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.     

Educating geographers in Spain: geography teaching renewal by implementing the European Higher Education Area

This article discusses the current state of the geography discipline in Spanish Universities after putting into action the European Higher Education Area. After decades of geography teaching, following theoretical and expository discourse models, the so-called Bologna Process has been a great opportunity to reflect what geography should be taught, how geography should be taught and why geography should be taught. Aspects such as competences, employability, learning methodologies, assessment, Geographical Information Systems domain have been incorporated into the renewal of geography teaching in Spanish higher education, which has contributed to the strengthening of geography in a context of geospatial technologies revolution and public awareness of spatial challenges.     

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.     

Searching for good practice in postgraduate education

Regional geography courses have declined in status and number at many North American universities. Yet it is regional courses which students with limited geographical education at the high school level may identify as typical geography, and thus regional courses may play a significant role in recruitment of geography majors. Regional courses on the students' country or state/province offer an excellent opportunity to showcase how geographic perspectives can enrich our understanding of the familiar, both in terms of place and discipline. This paper discusses the pivotal role a regional geography course has been given in a new university's geography curriculum, and the innovative structuring of the course so as to avoid some of the deficiencies of common instructional patterns which may deter some students from pursuing further geographic education.     

International geography field courses: practices and challenges

Abstract

This paper introduces a special issue of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education on the practices and challenges associated with taking undergraduate geography students abroad on field courses. I argue that geography is positioned to benefit from both the internationalization of higher education and the demand by students for global experiences. The papers in this special issue focus on three aspects of international field courses: curriculum design and international partnerships, student engagement during short-duration field courses, and how encounters with place can be aided through reflection and play. I conclude with suggestions for future research on international field courses.     

The silver screen

Abstract

Based in educational theory and with an interdisciplinary backdrop, this paper applies to economic geography thoughts and contributions pioneered in agricultural science by Professor Richard Bawden. Commonly held educational objectives are interpreted alongside three major teaching traditions. From this analysis, the potential relevance of experiential learning is examined in the light of paradigmatic shifts in economic geography and practical developments in tertiary milieu. The conclusion is that praxis‐based teaching deserves more attention than it has previously received.     

Moving with the Times: An oral history of a geography department

The 30-year story of the geography department at Oxford Brookes University is presented as an oral history in the words of the experienced full-time staff. The department has gained a reputation in the UK and beyond for innovative active-learning methods and its story is an example of how a pedagogic culture can develop in a geography department. The story can also be read as a case study of a workplace in higher education, or as a contribution to the history of education. Most importantly, though, it offers insight into the key factors concerning the development of innovative teaching practice.     

Introductory texts in biogeography

Abstract

Only a view of extreme pessimism or arrogance discounts the knowledge already acquired by those who enter the study of geography in higher education. The changes which occur in the teaching of school geography should be of considerable interest to those who teach geographical and related studies in higher education. This paper outlines and assesses the significance of the major changes which have occurred in geography teaching in schools in England and Wales in the past two decades. It also seeks to identify some of the influences which are likely to shape such teaching in the future.     

Feminist geographies in Greece: a personal trajectory between ‘local’ and ‘international’

Abstract

Feminist debates in the context of an active women's/feminist movement found their way into the Greek academy in the second half of the 1970s, initially in history. Urban studies and geography were ‘late-comers’ in these debates which took place in different disciplinary environments where geography courses were taught. The article presents a personal account in and through the development of feminist approaches in urban geography, drawing from my teaching and research experience since 1982 in a department of urban and regional planning. This experience has been accumulated as a hard exercise in navigating through the denial and reluctant consent of various levels of administration, students’ changing acceptance, some women’s valuable active support, in the university and beyond, and other colleagues’ opposition or indifference. In this process, recent and longer-term developments have contributed to form a (continuously negotiated and contested) space for feminism, for tolerance, diversity and difference, in which a ‘we’ has been tortuously formed which speaks across worlds, participates in a plurality of communities, communicates in more than one languages and in a plurality of voices between ‘local’ and ‘international’.     

Virtual Geographies and the Use of the Internet for Learning and Teaching Geography in Higher Education

Despite the plethora of teaching materials that are available on the Internet to enhance geography higher education, few assessments of the effectiveness of these materials exist. This symposium collects papers that provide guidelines for using the Internet effectively for teaching geography. Students must learn how to use the Internet effectively to promote learning; instructors need to learn how to use the Internet effectively to promote good practice in higher education; instructors need to learn how to use the Internet effectively to enhance learning; and higher educators need to learn how to use the Internet effectively not only in traditional classroom settings, but in new, non-traditional settings such as those used for distance learning. These papers provide some assessment of these various aspects of using the Internet for teaching geography in higher education.