Classroom responses of New Zealand school teachers following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake

Following a damaging magnitude 6.3 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand on February 22, 2011, an unprecedented number of displaced school children were enrolled temporarily or permanently in new schools throughout New Zealand. This study utilized accounts from primary school teachers in New Zealand, derived from focus groups scheduled in March and April 2011 for an evaluation of a disaster preparedness teaching resource, to examine how these disasters impacted individuals and schools outside of Christchurch. The educators’ focus group accounts provide an illustration of classroom responses including providing emotional support to displaced children, informal classroom discussions, curricular responses, addressing disaster rumors, and information seeking through peers. Some recommendations are provided on ways to support teachers’ important roles in disaster recovery, including targeting evidence-based guidance and teaching resources to schools enrolling displaced children, dispelling disaster rumors through schools and facilitating peer mentoring among teachers. An overarching lesson is that communities would benefit from teachers being better equipped to provide emotional support and responsive disaster education to children after disasters.     

An understanding of geography: The perspectives of English primary trainee teachers

There have been few studies of trainee teachers' conceptions of the term ‘geography’. Building on these, this study identifies a number of conceptions of geography held by primary school trainee teachers in England. Their ideas are compared with their understanding of the reasons for teaching geography to young children. Similar outcomes emerge. While a small number of primary trainee teachers see geography education as concerned with the study of places, a slightly larger group view teaching geography as developing children's sense of responsibility for the earth and its people. However, by far the largest groups of students perceive geography's role to be to develop younger children's awareness and knowledge of the environment. Additionally, a sizeable group of trainees see geography as providing knowledge about the features and countries of the world. The implications of these findings are considered for the brief geography study units which primary teacher trainees take as part of their initial teacher training programme in English higher education. The conclusion is that it is important to widen primary trainee teachers' perspectives during even the briefest of units, not least to enable them to teach the national curriculum requirements for geography in primary schools. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Geography's role in general education in the United States

In the United States, geography is taught most frequently in the junior secondary schools, is somewhat more limited as a regular course in the senior secondary schools, and is a prominent discipline within many college and university programs of instruction. At the secondary school level, geography is usually integrated within the broader based social studies, while at the college and university level it has an important function both within general education as well as specialized training. At the pre-collegiate and collegiate levels geography has developed quite independently at times, and at other times there has been a close relationship that has benefitted both levels of education. At the end of the 1980s decade, considerable cooperation was underway in the United States between teachers of secondary school and tertiary level geography in order to upgrade and enhance the discipline. In the first part of this paper, a general history of geography within American education is presented. The second part of the paper discusses geography's role within general education at the secondary and tertiary levels, including the academic backgrounds for teachers. The way in which geographic education in the United States provides students with the opportunity to study holistic relationships between people and the environment and its importance to informed citizenship are discussed in the final section of the paper.     

Assessing response behaviour of debris-flows affected communities in Kaohsiung,Taiwan

During Typhoon Morakot which hit Taiwan from 6 to 9 August, 2009, Kaohsiung City was highly affected by devastating debris-flows and flooding. Recorded casualties were 699 deaths and 1,766 damaged homes, mostly in the mountainous areas of Kaohsiung City. Due to a largely malfunctioning or absent early-warning system, residents in those mountainous villages were required to rely on individual- and/or community-based capacities to evacuate and respond to debris-flow-related disasters. Hence, this study investigates the response behaviour of selected debris-flow-affected communities in Kaohsiung City, based on a preparedness awareness action and affect model. Key results from the survey highlight that only 13.8 % of the households received formal (institutional) early warning, whereas 86.2 % households had to rely on their intrinsic senses and indigenous knowledge to recognise the onset of debris-flows in their villages during Typhoon Morakot. Among those households who did not receive formal early warning, 10 % of the households received previous disaster education, 17 % had previous disaster experience, and 73 % did have neither disaster education nor disaster experience. Furthermore, households with disaster education were among those who were best prepared and knew best how to evacuate and respond to debris-flow-related disasters followed by households with disaster experiences. Finally, findings from the survey and selected key informants’ interviews identified that the response behaviour of communities ought to be enhanced through the following measures: conduction of hydro-meteorological-related disaster education, improved participatory risk communication and enhanced recognition of communities as vital actors during a disaster to provide local knowledge and support to relief operations.     

Research on Cultural Dimension of Natural Disaster:A Literature Review

Culture provides an important perspective to understand society. It is one of the key factors that impact how people behave themselves, interact with one another, view the world; what they believe and value. Therefore, a good understanding of public disaster awareness and disaster coping is impossible without taking their culture context into consideration. Since the 1960s, cultural dimension in disaster issues and/or disaster reduction practices has been attracting increasingly attention; many empirical or theoretical explorations have been reported. This review aims to give an overview of research progresses on how culture impacts public awareness and coping of disasters, and analyze the corresponding implications for disaster research and disaster reduction practice. This review summarizes that: ①There is unanimous consensus on public awareness and coping of disaster, which are affected by their culture context. While the knowledge about the ways and degree of impact is still limited, further research is warranted. In addition, more systematic and in-depth studies conducted from cross-cultural perspectives are needed to design to further explore the origins of variance in public disaster awareness and coping, and to what extent from cultural differences. ②Research on public awareness of disaster, emergency response and recovery indicated that culture might have double-side impacts on disaster management—sometimes cultural factors such as value, norm, custom and belief might lead to people more vulnerable than the others, even could be the root causes, but they could also be the source of people’s resilience to disaster in some cases. How to identify those positive and negative impacts, then develop cultural-oriented disaster management policy is a challenge issue, which need special attention. ③There is an increasing acknowledgement that local knowledge and disaster subculture could play an important role in public disaster coping, while the lacking of the awareness of the value of local knowledge, the change of lifestyle, and the impact from external culture pose a threat to the inheritance of some local, traditional disaster coping strategies. So exploring how to conserve, protect, identify, document them, then combine them with modern science and technology should and will be the focus of relevant studies. On the bases of these summarizations, in terms of cultural dimension of natural disaster research in China, systematic and in-depth studies are needed to explore how Chinese culture affects public disaster awareness and coping, what cultural resources can be used in disaster (risk) reduction and for building and enhancing disaster resilience, and how to use them.     

Geography in general education in the Federal Republic of Germany

The professional formation of German geography teachers is advanced both at university level and for all types of schools. There is a long tradition of teaching geography as a separate independent subject in classes 5–13, whereas it is an integrated subject in classes 1–4 and only in some states, on the secondary level. Speaking for all schools and all ten federal states, it can be maintained that there is a minimum of one geography hour per week, sometimes up to two hours. However a certain decline of classroom hours has occurred during the last 30 years (which most other subjects suffered as well). As most geography teachers have another subject (or two), they have a tendency to identify as a maths teacher, for example, because of the higher general esteem the second subject may have. Still, public opinion considers geography to be of general importance for an educated citizen. This has effectively influenced the curricula, emphasizing cognitive insight in geographical aspects, topography and general understanding of man-land relationship. A higher level of critical insight, planning issues and higher intellectual objectives can be reached with geographical topics.     

Public response to earthquake disaster: a case study in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture

By considering an area affected by a Ms 7.1 earthquake in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, in 2010 as an example, this paper analyzed the public response level after an earthquake disaster and discussed the principal factors influencing public response behaviors using a questionnaire survey. The results showed that the local public’s response level is low in the studied area. The average response scoring rate is only 0.50. Gender, family income, experience and religion are the most significant factors influencing the public response level. Females or individuals with low family income and little education tend to have lower response capability and are more vulnerable during an earthquake disaster. Furthermore, on the whole, participants who had experience coping with unexpected safety events appear to adopt more reasonable response behavior during an earthquake disaster. The relatively undeveloped economy and low education level are the basic limiting factors for improving the public response capability in the studied area. Certain policies and suggestions to improve the response capability and disaster reduction were discussed.     

极端地质灾害与风险

极端地质灾害与风险是本文提出的一个概念.在地球演进过程中,极端地质灾害被认为是小概率事件.但这并不意味这种小概率的自然灾害只发生在遥远的未来,也不能排除这种事件发生在我们现在或者未来不久几代人中间.2008年汶川8.0级强震,吞噬了数万人的生命,大量的建筑被损毁,就是这种极端自然灾害的典型实例.它再一次向人类发出警告,...     

Engaging public for building resilient communities to reduce disaster impact

Perception about people’s behaviour during emergencies defines, to a large extent, the course of planning and resource allocation for community emergency response as well as development of mitigation measures. During the past decade, there has been a paradigm shift in the approach to disaster management. A recent trend has been to encourage more community participation as opposed to the top-down approach of the past. It is believed that community participation will bring about a comprehensive and accurate appreciation of people’s perception regarding hazards, risk, vulnerability, and resilience, and this research is an attempt to achieve just that. In order to accomplish our goal, we engaged a group of women that would typically fall into the category of “vulnerable group” in a focus group interview setting. The participants were mainly over 40 years old, the majority with little education, unemployed, facing language barriers, of low income, and reliant on public transit. Many participants identified that they lived in the vicinity of rivers, lakes, railways, or power plants, but did not seem to be aware of their exposure to potential threats—indicating a lack of education and awareness. The most common hazards and mitigation measures they were aware of, included floods (including basement flooding), fire, fire alarm, and smoke detectors. Additionally, illness and loneliness were mentioned as factors contributing to their increased vulnerability, hence reduced resiliency. With the help of the focus group members’ participation, we were able to discuss the importance of communities being aware of their surroundings, available resources and help, and permit them to voice their concerns in order to be able to cope during emergencies. We trust and hope that more community participation will lead to stronger and more resilient cities.     

Bridging the gaps: the role of local government capability and the management of a natural disaster in Bantul, Indonesia

This paper examines local government capability in managing pre-, during and post-natural disaster in Indonesia. The case study is the Bantul local government which had experience in managing the 2006 earthquake. Bantul is located in the most densely populated area of Java, where 1,500 people per square km square, and the earthquake destroyed domestic industries that had become the main resource of the Bantul local government. The capability of local government and the requirement to manage a disaster are very important issues for exploring the important role of local government in mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery disaster management activities, particularly in regard to the characteristics of local government in developing countries. In this paper, capability of local government in managing a disaster is defined as a function of institutions, human resources, policy for effective implementation, financial, technical resources and leadership. The capability requirement of each stage of disaster management has also been explained from the point of view of state and non-state actors and institutions. Finally, the paper integrates the capability requirement and reality in order to bridge these gaps.     

The Influence of American geography on Korean geography

Korean modern geography emerged from the dark age of unfortunate Japanese colonial rule after liberation in 1945, and has grown rapidly since the 1960s. Modern geographical theories and methodologies were introduced to Korea by the Korean geographers who received PhD degrees in the United States and returned home to teach at universities in Korea, especially in the 1970s and early 1980s. American geography has influenced the progress of the modern geography in Korea in various ways — education systems, curricula for college students, training graduate students — and research methodologies in Korean geography during the last half-century have been directly and indirectly influenced by American geography. The influence has had, however, both positive and negative effects in the development of Korean geography. There is a tendency in recent years to reinterpret Western theories and concepts in the Korean context, considering distinctive regional and cultural characteristics.     

Analysis of the climate change effect on wheat production systems and investigate the potential of management strategies

In an emergency, schools are responsible for the safety of students until they can be reunited with their families. This study explored emergencies (i.e. bomb threat, a flood, and an earthquake) in three case study schools in New Zealand. Within each case, a selection of stakeholders (i.e. school leaders, staff, and parents) shared their experiences of responding to emergency events in the school. Lessons from participants’ experiences established factors before, during, and after an emergency that contribute to an effective response. Foremost among those factors was the importance of prior preparation. The study also identified recurring response activities, irrespective of emergency type, which enabled the development of a six-stage model of an effective school-based emergency response. The stages are: (1) Alerts; (2) Safety behaviours; (3) Response actions; (4) Student release/Family reunification; (5) Temporary school closure; and (6) Business as usual. The present study contributes to our understanding of research investigating how schools respond to emergencies and therefore seeks to enhance school safety efforts.     

地球空间信息学与对地观测学在灾难管理中的应用研究进展

近年来地球空间信息学(Geomatics)和对地观测学(EOS)的迅速发展, 为灾难管理提供了强有力的支撑技术, 促进了灾难管理效率的提高。在简述地球空间信息学、对地观测学和灾难管理的基础上, 综述了地球空间信息学和对地观测学中多传感技术、高分辨率、多时相的卫星遥感系统的发展不仅满足了灾难管理需求数据的多源性、实时性, 而且提高了遥感影像解译精度和增强了对自然灾害的探测、识别能力; 认为日益完善的空间数据基础设施(SDI)和软件系统功能的增强, 将有利于灾难管理需求数据的可用性、可访问性和数据共享, 加强了灾难管理中海量数据管理、处理、分析和发布能力, 提高了预报和管理决策信息系统的可视化程度, 从而提高灾难管理各个环节的效率和效益。同时, 从技术的角度简述了当前地球空间信息学和对地观测技术在灾难管理应用中的局限性和存在的问题。      

高产高效矿井煤层瓦斯抽采工艺优化

瓦斯灾害因成灾类型多,瓦斯矿井分布广,灾害事故影响大,已成为我国多数煤矿常见自然灾害之首。当前瓦斯治理较为广泛的方法是运用瓦斯抽采技术,降低煤层残余瓦斯含量,而采用何种抽采工艺既能高效的消除瓦斯灾害威胁,又能保证良好的效益是需要权衡的关键问题。以我国高产高效工作面为试验区,通过开展多种瓦斯抽采工艺的对比试验,揭示了各类抽采钻孔在不同抽采孔径、不同间距、不同布置类型等工艺条件下的抽采参数特征,进而得出符合矿井实际的最优工艺类型及最优参数,为矿井的高效抽采提供重要依据。     

‘The magical operations of separation’: English elite schools’ on-line geographies,internationalisation and functional isolation

This paper examines the enduring separation and isolation of elite schools in England, in the face of increasing and substantial internationalisation. It presents the findings of a research project examining the geographical narratives produced by 30 elite schools on their websites and through their prospectuses, newsletters, blogs and twitter feeds. A critical visual and textual analysis was undertaken. Drawing on these data, the paper argues that elite schools remain highly focused on promoting and defending their separateness and isolation, despite extensive, documented international involvements. Work on institutional and carceral geographies and geographies of education have provided some theoretical justification for why this might be the case, and we explore these reasons here. The paper concludes with a plea for more work on the elite schooling sector in England, as their spatial practices (isolation and internationalisation) continue to have a weighty bearing upon society.     

Preventive disaster management of extreme natural events

Several recent extreme natural events resulted in great humanitarian tragedies because of weak preventive disaster management. Here we analyze several factors (natural, economical, political, awareness, and preparedness) that brought about the humanitarian tragedies of the early 21st century. We discuss then the role of science in the preventive disaster management of extreme natural events.     

The privatisation of secondary schooling and the desegregation of central Johannesburg

African education controlled by the state's Department of Education and Training has collapsed. Insufficient spending, low standards and persistent student boycotts have made township schools undesirable places of learning. African students with any financial means now seek secondary education at multi-racial private schools in affluent white suburbs or at street-academies in the centre of Johannesburg. The establishment of schooling services for African pupils in the traditionally white central business district contributes to the wider process of desegregation of South Africa's major urban area, Johannesburg.     

Assessment of noise exposure and associated health risk in school environment

Noise exposure has become one of the most important factors in determining the quality of life in indoor environments. This paper assesses and analyzes noise exposure levels at school and preschool classrooms with different indoor environments. The sound level [A-weighting equivalent steady sound level L _Aeq (dBA)] was measured using a CEL-63× digital sound level meter. The noise level measurements were performed inside two preschools at three classrooms (an activity room, classroom KG1 and classroom KG2) and three schools at different classrooms, starting from grade 1 to grade 12. The logarithmic average noise levels (L _{Aeq avg}) and the 8-h average noise exposure level (L _{EX, 8-h}) were estimated for each classroom. Furthermore, health risk issues associated with the exposure to high noise levels were investigated using a questionnaire and an interview with more than 250 teachers at the preschools and the schools. Then, the results were analyzed using different statistical tools and were compared with the World Health Organization, Occupational Health and Safety and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health standards. Also, the results were compared with those from different countries worldwide. The study results show that the 8-h average noise exposure level exceeded the allowable limits in some schools, which indicates that students and teachers can face a serious health effects from noise exposure. The comparisons show that the values of noise levels in Kuwait are higher than those in different countries. The maximum value of noise levels was found in secondary schools. The health problems found during the survey are potentially associated with issues related to hearing, voice, headache and the physiological function of teachers.     

Chemical Fundamentals of Geology, 2nd edn, by Robin Gill. Chapman and Hall, London, 1995. 296 pp. {pound}19.99 (paperback).

This textbook is aimed at Earth Science undergraduate students,who, through the inadequacies of their education system, haveonly a limited knowledge of basic chemistry; but for studentswith a more extensive background in chemistry, this book serveswell as a refresher, with examples derived from geology andthe vernacular. It has a fairly comprehensive