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.     

Anthropological Contributions and Challenges to the Study of Children and Childhoods

This essay considers the anthropology of childhood's recent growth. It summarizes the sub-field's extensive if often unacknowledged past, reviews its late 20th-century bourgeoning, and then highlights three influential teaching texts, each of which argues for a more considered, culturally informed understanding of children and childhood while performing the vital service of bringing together heretofore scattered ideas and data. To ensure the field's further maturation, scholars must leverage what an integrative, four-fields approach has to offer, attend to the conjoined, coterminous, and coeval facets of adulthood and childhood; leverage what an integrative, four-fields approach has to offer; expand the pediatric lens; and otherwise guard against our own cultural biases.     

基于流形学习与光谱解混的文物表面字迹增强——以云冈第38窟为例

文物表面的文字是了解历史的关键信息，对文物表面文字信息的探索成为文物保护的重要环节。结合流形学习与光谱解混，提出一种新的文物表面字迹增强方法。首先，利用基于流形学习的等距映射方法对预处理后的高光谱图像进行非线性降维，得到信息量最大的灰度图像；其次，分析文字与背景的光谱特征，通过多层非负矩阵分解方法得到字迹丰度图；然后，将二者进行加权平均得到字迹增强图像，再与合成真彩色影像进行HSV融合，得到字迹融合影像；最后，为更好地辨认文字，在字迹增强图像上裁剪文字并做形态学变换，得到字迹提取图。以云冈石窟第38窟的一景褪色文字高光谱图像为例进行了验证，结果表明，该方法能够有效地增强出文物表面的褪色文字，且较其他增强方法效果更好。     

Insights Regarding Transdisciplinarity and Knowledge Transfer Gained from Two Case Studies on Integrated Water Resources Management in Ukraine and Mongolia

Abstract

Transdisciplinary environmental research (TD research) seeks to solve problems arising at the point of interaction between ecological systems, the economy, and society. It seeks to enhance problem-solving capacity through interdisciplinarity and knowledge transfer between scientific and non-scientific actors. The article assesses how far the prerequisites for knowledge transfer are met in transdisciplinary projects on integrated water resources management (IWRM), particularly in post-socialist transition countries. It examines two relevant case studies, in Ukraine and Mongolia, which share a similar institutional and cultural background, and use some of the same methods closely related to knowledge transfer. It is shown that, in each case, knowledge transfer was achieved more or less effectively in both directions — from science to society and vice versa, despite the additional obstacles posed by a common post-socialist legacy. The paper concludes with a number of recommendations for designing and implementing similar TD research projects in the field of IWRM.     

Attending to grape vines: perceptual practices,planty agencies and multiple temporalities in Australian viticulture

This article considers the agency of crop plants within sociocultural processes by examining how grape vines influence seasonal labour patterns in Australian viticulture and wine production. Drawing on ethnographic research within a large Australian wine company, I examine how vineyard managers and winemakers coordinate the timing of the grape harvest with the ripening of grapes. I argue that by making the harvest's approach perceptible to humans, chemical and sensory tests of grape ripeness precipitate seasonal changes in viticultural work—rendering grape vines active participants in patterning social time. Practices of attention to ripening grapes thus render the social agency of grape vines perceptible. I analyse these time-reckoning practices as a ‘learning to be affected’, in which human viticulturists actively strive through multiple sensory practices to become attuned to plants' activities. However, attending to the multiple practices used to reckon the ‘right’ time to harvest grapes also emphasises that these ways of enacting the times and agencies of crop plants may interfere or conflict with one another. Highlighting the emotional stresses and tensions between viticultural workers that this may generate, I suggest that agricultural time is both more conflicted and more suffused with power relations than theoretical accounts have typically indicated.     

影响语言学习策略使用因素分析

在二语习得领域,影响语言学习策略使用的因素分析是近几年来语言学家的兴趣所在。通过阅读大量二语习得领域的资料,作者发现性别、职业、语言学习观、语言水平和学习者动机是对语言学习策略使用影响最为显著的因素。     

‘Bad Mothers’ and ‘Delinquent Children’: Unravelling anti-begging rhetoric in the Ecuadorian Andes

In this paper I examine the rhetorics that circulate surrounding the lives of young indigenous women and children who beg on the streets of Quito, Ecuador. I focus particularly on rhetorics being produced and reproduced by urban planners, social workers, religious leaders and the media. Drawing on in-depth interviews, I reveal how these groups regularly imagine indigenous women and children in terms of child exploitation/child delinquency, false manipulation of public sympathies, ignorance, laziness and filth. Indigenous women and children are further understood as being fundamentally ‘out of place’ in the city. I unravel these rhetorics in order to draw attention to how begging is differentiated according to gender, race and age and to reveal how these rhetorics become inserted into exclusionary policies and practices. Moreover, and as a counterpoint to such rhetorics, I provide an alternative understanding of women's and children's involvement in begging by drawing upon the perspectives of indigenous women and children themselves. I argue that far from being passive victims, indigenous women and children work with and around oppressive conditions and mobilise them to their own advantage.     

技术学习与创新:经济地理学的视角

技术学习与创新是20世纪90年代以来经济地理学研究的核心领域之一,它与"异端经济学"之间的互动,既促进了经济地理学的繁荣和学科地位的提升,也为"异端经济学"对技术学习与创新的研究提供了独特的地理视角。本文试图全面梳理经济地理学技术学习与创新研究兴起与深化的过程,从地理接近与面对面交流,关系接近与实践社区,制度接近、嵌入、路径依赖与创新场三个既相互争论又高度互补的方面,来系统阐述技术学习与创新的经济地理机制,并针对当前研究的局限性提出了建构高层次综合的技术学习创新与区域发展理论的设想。     

Networking and learning for tourism innovation: evidence from the Western Cape

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the nature of networking and learning by tourism firms in relation to accessing knowledge for innovation. In particular, the nature of tourism learning and networking, geography of networking linkages, and systemic characteristics of relationships between tourism firms, government agencies, higher education institutions, and other organisations in the Western Cape tourism system are examined. The analysis draws on 182 tourism firm, tourism system, and contextual interviews. This investigation demonstrates that even though tourism firms mostly use internal resources for innovation, external, non-local knowledge is significant for enhancing novel innovation. It is disclosed that whilst local network linkages are dense, loose, and of importance for business and marketing purposes, extra-regional network relationships are imperative for learning in relation to innovation. As further observed, network linkages between local and regional actors for supporting tourism innovation in the Western Cape are generally weak which points to the underdevelopment of local and regional innovation networks or systems. The paper provides planning recommendations for enhancing the competitiveness of tourism firms towards fostering development and growth in the regional tourism economy. Specifically, support for stimulating learning networks as well as strengthening systemic relationships in the Western Cape tourism system are recommended. It is underscored that strategic relationships with non-local partners need to be nurtured towards fostering tourism innovation and enhancing regional competitiveness.     

Learning by doing: enhancing hydrology lectures with individual fieldwork projects

Hydrology teaching deals with processes happening outside the classroom, which calls for active-learning methods to complement lectures. In a geography undergraduate course, new teaching methods and assessment were designed, in which students investigated a river of their choice by completing homework tasks and presenting their results on a poster. During a 3-year implementation process, the changes were evaluated using a combination of formal and informal student and lecturer feedback. Students mentioned that they enjoyed doing the project and that it helped their understanding of theory, their research skills, and their ability to select, organize and present information. Questionnaire results showed that, over the implementation period, students’ perceived value of homework increased strongly, while their perceived value of lectures remained high. In informal feedback, students noted that they enjoyed learning about where they live, preferred doing the projects individually and seeing each other’s projects, and spent more time on the coursework when assessed. When looking back in interviews, students commented that the projects had prepared them well for their dissertation and summer job. The advantage of using homework-based projects complementing lectures is the strong link between theory and practice, which could be further enhanced by discussing the homework in the lectures.