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.     

The Relationship Between Teaching and Research in Australian Geography

This paper considers how higher education geography is a discipline that can make a significant contribution to addressing inequality and engaging with the agenda for social change. It adopts the view that the teaching of geography can promote social transformation through the development of knowledge, skills and values in students that encourage social justice and equity. The paper explores how teaching about social transformation is closely interlinked with teaching for social transformation and considers some of the pedagogical approaches that might be used to achieve these. It considers how the lack of diversity of higher education geography teachers impacts on these issues before moving on to consider how the nature of different higher education systems supports or constrains geographers' abilities to teach for social transformation. Finally, the paper ends by asking individuals and geography departments to consider their commitment to teaching for social transformation.     

Towards a critical service learning in geography education: exploring challenges and possibilities through testimonio

There has been an increasing interest in exploring the transformational possibilities of experiential learning approaches like service learning, across post-secondary education, including geography. At the same time, scholars caution that such initiatives can entrench neoliberalism, white supremacy and other power structures and call for implementing a critical service learning (CSL) approach that is rooted in action against injustice. In response, this paper uses testimonio methodology to explore the experiences of a student and instructor engaging in a graduate geography course that implements CSL. We demonstrate how CSL is a complex process that is mired in the very power structures and institutional barriers it attempts to disrupt. Nonetheless, CSL creates opportunities for social change in the classroom and community, which make it a promising pedagogical strategy for geographers aiming to create alternative teaching approaches in their classrooms.     

E-learning for Geography's Teaching and Learning Spaces

The authors embed their advocacy of educational technology in a consideration of contemporary pedagogy in geography. They provide examples of e-learning from a wide range of teaching and learning contexts. They promote the idea that considering best practice with reference to educational technology will increase the versatility of teaching geography in higher education. On the basis of reviewing the pedagogic options associated with e-learning using a variety of technologies, and their promotion of versatility in the use of e-learning approaches, they find and illustrate the new spaces that have become available to teachers and learners of geography.     

The influence of an integrated PBL format on geography students’ perceptions of their self-directedness in learning

Problem-based learning can be implemented in South African geography teacher education to foster geography students’ self-directed learning skills. The purpose of this longitudinal case study was to determine B.Ed. geography students’ (n = 45) perceptions of their self-directedness in learning in integrated problem-based learning experiences over a three-year period. The study used quantitative and qualitative research methods based on questionnaire application and semi-structured focus group interviews. The students completed a standardized questionnaire at regular intervals with the implementation of integrated problem-based learning experiences in geography modules over a three-year period. Focus group interviews with participants (n = 8) were employed to get a deeper understanding of the results of quantitative data. The results indicated that the geography students’ self-directed learning scores increased with the implementation of an integrated problem-based learning format in geography over the three-year period. The students who measured average, below average and low levels of self-directed learning at the beginning of the study had the highest increase in self-directed learning scores over the three years. The female students’ perceptions of their self-directedness in learning had higher increases in their self-directed learning scores after the problem-based learning interventions when compared to the male students.     

Teaching ethics when working with geocoded data: a novel experiential learning approach

Research ethics are not the favourite subject of most undergraduate geography students. However, in the light of increasing mixed-methods research, as well as research using geocodes, it is necessary to train students in the field of ethics. Experiential learning is an approach to teaching that is potentially suitable for teaching ethics. The aim of this article is to discuss how the experiential learning process in a course on Ethics & GPS-tracking contributed to the ethical awareness of third-year undergraduate geography students. We conducted a qualitative study in which we held four focus group discussions with two cohorts of students (2016 and 2017). We explored the students’ views on the learning environment in relation to ethics in GPS-based and mixed-methods research. Our findings show how an informal learning environment and collaborative learning in a small group contributed to deep understanding of research ethics. These aspects of the learning environment are tied to an ethical framework that consists of three dimensions: (1) the ethics of collaborative research between staff and students; (2) the ethics of privacy raised by the geo-technology adopted in this research case study; and (3) the ethics of the research process with respect to informed consent and data storage.     

Pre-service teachers learn to teach geography: a suggested course model

How to improve geography education via teacher preparation programs has been a concern for nearly three decades, but few examples of a single, comprehensive university-level course exist. The purpose of this article is to share the model of a pre-service geography education methods course. Within the course, geography content (physical and social) is paired with different pedagogic strategies (visual, kinesthetic, technology) and other content areas (reading, history) to refine pre-service teacher conceptualizations of geography as a subject and to see geography’s potential inclusion across various grade levels. End of course student evaluations demonstrate student satisfaction and learning, while post-course interviews similarly indicate that the class was (1) more useful and practical than other education program coursework for beginning ones teaching career, and (2) stimulated the continued use of geographic concepts and materials.     

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.     

Experimenting with Active Learning in Geography: Dispelling the Myths that Perpetuate Resistance

While some geographers have embraced active learning as a means to engage students in a course, many others stick to conventional teaching methods. They are often deterred by suggestions that it can be difficult to implement active learning where students have no prior knowledge of a subject, that active learning requires too much work of lecturers and students, and that there are significant institutional constraints to implementing active learning. In this article the authors draw on their experiences of utilizing active learning in five different countries before dispelling myths which continue to constrain the uptake of active learning methods. Finally, they provide simple guidelines for successful integration of active learning in geography courses.     

Geography's secret powers to save the world

The purpose of this paper, prepared to present at the 2018 joint Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG) and International Geographical Union (IGU) regional conference, is to suggest three strategies, framed as proposals, that geography and geography education can deploy to “save the world.” The first proposal is to expand explicit instruction in spatial thinking to close gender‐based achievement gaps. The second proposal is to apply research from the learning sciences to develop persuasive geography curricula and instructional materials. The third proposal focuses on ways social media and geospatial technologies can be employed in civic education, an idea termed “spatial citizenship.” The paper suggests a re‐envisioning of geography education with an enhanced focus on teaching for, in, and about a world that fully appreciates difference and acts on that appreciation.     

An Inter national Perspective on Developing Skills through Geography Programmes for Employability and Life: Narratives from New Zealand and the United States

If there is a universal question that most academic geographers have been asked by students, it is “What can I do with geography?”. We argue in this paper that an important dimension of quality improvement in geography education is closing the gap between the perceived social usefulness of the subject (suggested by evidence to be relatively low) and the realities of what a subject offers as preparation for workplace roles (rated on evidence as relatively high). A potentially central part of the International Network in Learning and Teaching (INLT) Geography in Higher Education, therefore, is communicating information about skills for employment and life that are obtainable from geography-inspired instructional programmes. But behind the seemingly straightforward task of communicating a message is in fact a much more fundamental issue-getting to grips with socio-economic changes that are rewriting the nature and place of geographic learning and teaching. We suggest that positive outcomes from efforts to improve the quality of learning and teaching of geography will depend in part on strengthening and stabilising geography's image, particularly in the eyes of school and university students. We conclude that initiatives, already underway in several countries to popularise the 'skills profile' of a geography education, offer a framework for reimaging the subject.     

Learning Geography Bilingually

A concern with the role of the ‘Other’ in geography in higher education has led to work on the incorporation of marginalized social groups into learning contexts. Recently some authors have discussed the role of language in teaching, and in particular the dominant role of the English language in marginalizing non‐Anglophonic students and subject matter. In this paper an empirical case study of the experiences of bilingual students at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth is developed. This research provides an account of the role of language in bilingual students' engagements with geography, and addresses the practicalities and the politics of enabling students with a diversity of linguistic skills to become full citizens of their geographical education.     

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.     

Internationalising Learning and Teaching: A European experience

This paper focuses on experiences with international learning and teaching in a European (ERASMUS) programme on geography and gender during the period 1990-1998. This programme forms an example of collaborative work in which the author and colleagues experimented with an array of models to bring geography students and teachers of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds together. International learning and teaching is a confrontation with diversity. Diversity in language, in the mastery of English and the resulting hierarchies, in learning and teaching cultures and in defining geography form both challenges and opportunities to profit. In this paper the author will expound on the different strategies to deal with linguistic and cultural differences and to break down hierarchies. Furthermore the opportunities to "use" the differences as learning and teaching contexts will be discussed. Geography is a discipline concerning diversity. Direct contact between persons with different cultural backgrounds can form an efficient, effective and stimulating method to learn about differences in geographies and in teaching methods.     

To understand and be understood: facilitating interdisciplinary learning through the promotion of communicative competence

Whilst interdisciplinarity has become a central concern of research and learning in geography, few from the discipline have considered the practical facilitation of interdisciplinarity in the classroom. Module convenors, I argue, must pay greater attention to how learners engage and negotiate with peers and perspectives from other disciplines. In this paper, I focus on my own efforts in designing and teaching a second year undergraduate course on health, biomedicine, and society, to illuminate the opportunities and challenges facing teaching staff who seek to provide opportunities for interdisciplinary learning in the classroom. Drawing upon theories of communication, I demonstrate the significance of developing “communicative competence” as a pathway to successful interdisciplinary learning. Unless learners from one discipline can understand, and be understood by, peers from other disciplines, the accomplishment of interdisciplinary learning is undermined. Interdisciplinary modules should include learning outcomes that facilitate student development in this area. Approaching interdisciplinary learning through the lens of communicative competence casts critical attention upon the central abilities and cultural sensitivities that are the hallmarks of interdisciplinary collaboration – from negotiating meaning to critical disciplinary awareness – and highlights the lessons that interdisciplinarity poses for disciplines, such as geography, tasked with preparing students for interdisciplinary learning.     

First year on the faculty: the quality of their teaching

Abstract

This article considers the arguments being advanced in the USA for an expansion of academic programmes incorporating service‐learning, in which students undertake, as part of their studies, community service, and engage in academic activities designed to provide a context for reflection on their experience in doing so. Three arguments are usually advanced for this: the merits of experiential education, the value of service‐learning in education for citizenship, and its significance in promoting a sense of ‘community’. Some examples are given and the issues raised by these programmes are explored briefly. It is suggested that geography could profit from incorporating elements of service‐learning in order to enhance its treatment of moral and political issues.     

Student perspectives on the teaching of geographical information systems (GIS) in geography degrees

In an era when graduate employability is a key concern, the teaching of geographical information systems (GIS) has become a subject of considerable interest. This paper reports on a study of the GIS student learning experience using student survey data from six UK geography undergraduate programmes. The findings show that although students’ satisfaction levels are generally encouraging, more could be done to capitalize on the opportunities GIS offers both for the discipline and for our students. Recommendations are made for further enhancing the profile and quality of GIS pedagogy in geography curricula.     

21世纪高校人文地理学教学改革与实践——中山大学的探索

学科发展的根本在于人才培养,而人才培养的基石是课程体系。目前中国约有150多所高校开设了人文地理学专业,由于学科背景不同,形成了多种人文地理学教学课程体系,由此培养的学生知识结构也千差万别。在此背景下,本文基于中山大学实施人文地理学本科教学改革和教学计划调整的研究实践,在对比探讨国内外各代表院校人文地理学专业学科课程设置特点的基础上,结合本专业就业形势、历史传统、师资情况,提出了以"宽基础、强专业、重实践"为基本导向,以"突出精品、减量增效、资源共享、彰显个性、完善体系"为基本原则的课程改革计划,对人文地理学的教学改革、课程设置提出了基于实践的规范建议。希望此经验有助于国内各院校人文地理学教学改革的进一步深化,也为其他相关专业的教学改革和课程设置提供参考。     

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.     

A curriculum framework for faculty-led international programs in geography

Faculty-led international programs are widely considered to be a highly engaging and effective means to enhance students’ learning in geography. While international programs hold great opportunity for students’ academic and personal growth, actualizing their potential calls for balancing the logistics with a purposefully constructed curriculum. This article presents a curricular framework which applies the straightforward, time-tested learning model originally delineated by Bloom and subsequently updated and adapted by others, into the naturally occurring phases of a faculty-led international program. The framework, while simple in design, provides a clear means to encourage impactful learning within a short-term course.