A Capstone Course of “Geographic Ideas”

Abstract

Through an instructional approach, this article offers a template for a classroom-based geography capstone course grounded in pedagogical elements of synthesis and reflection, as based on exploration of ten key geographic ideas. It provides insights into course goals, structure, and components for instructors who may wish to implement it in geography or in other disciplines, and it situates the template in the general structure of capstone courses detailed in social science literature. The article contributes to geography instruction with a focus on classroom-based capstone courses as an application of teaching and learning undergraduate geography.     

Geography Current

Abstract

Broadening the intercultural awareness and international outlook of undergraduate students is best achieved through active rather than passive learning. The international student interview provides an excellent strategy for such active learning in introductory human geography classes. It allows American-born students to enter into a dialogue with students from other countries and learn about their cultures while simultaneously reexamining their own society and cultural frames of reference. The exercise also provides instructors with an opportunity to discuss the ethics and social practices associated with interviewing. Feedback from University of Georgia students completing this assignment underscored these benefits and provided suggestions for refinement of the exercise.     

The Status of Geography in the Social Studies Curricula of Canadian Schools

Abstract

Successful curriculum development that will have impact upon individual American classrooms remains the key to maintaining the momentum of Geography for Life: National Geography Standards 1994. Teachers and students must be able to translate the national geography standards from the national stage to the local classroom setting to become geographically informed people. One example of this development for elementary urban geography is the Main Street lesson plan. It encourages observation and analysis required by Standard 4: The geographically informed student knows and understands the physical and human characteristics of places. After testing in a variety of Missouri classrooms, instructors thought that Main Street was a unique way of studying urban places and allowing students to gain a greater understanding of place.     

Bluegrass Grows All Around: The Spatial Dimensions of A Country Music Style

Abstract

Country music offers students and instructors of geography a fertile area for explaining many of the concepts and traditions emphasized in the field. This study focuses on the physical, man-land, and spatial traditions of geography and their significance in analyzing a particular style of American country music. During the early part of the twentieth century, bluegrass music originated in Appalachia where man-land relationships were important to the inhabitants. It has since been diffused by the migration of musicians and facilities accommodating the old-time “pickin' and singin'” sound. The purpose of this study is to lend insight to the possibilities of using country music to illustrate the spatial-temporal phases of American culture.     

Volume 111 Index

Abstract

Concepts related to alternative map projections can be difficult to explain to students given the diversity and complexity of available projections. Students frequently have trouble understanding how distortions caused by the choice of a projection can affect map readability and comprehension. Programs available for personal computers now provide geography and cartography instructors with a method for interactively educating students concerning the distortions associated with alternative map projections. Such software can be incorporated into laboratory assignments in introductory geography courses or in more advanced courses that deal with map design or thematic cartography.     

Measuring Research Data Uncertainty in the 2010 NRC Assessment of Geography Graduate Education

Abstract

This article characterizes and measures errors in the 2010 National Research Council (NRC) assessment of research-doctorate programs in geography. This article provides a conceptual model for data-based sources of uncertainty and reports on a quantitative assessment of NRC research data uncertainty for a particular geography doctoral program. Findings indicate that important variables, including faculty totals and allocations and publication counts, are substantially undercounted, with important and negative impacts on program research activity measures. Further, these research measures are highly sensitive to small changes in counts and are particularly problematic for interdisciplinary fields such as geography. We caution against using the 2010 NRC data or metrics for any assessment-oriented study of research productivity.     

Geographic Education and Careers in Geography

Abstract

Disciplinary concern with career options and opportunities has fluctuated over the years. Not surprisingly, geography continues to be incorrectly stereotyped as a field of study offering limited employment prospects. While geographic education has long focused on content, it must also embrace the importance of educating instructors, students, and career counselors concerning how the field opens doors to viable careers. This article presents a program that can be implemented by college and university departments to raise awareness and disseminate information about career opportunities in geography. The program emphasizes an integrated approach that includes partnerships with alumni, campus placement offices, and employers.     

Grading Book Review Assignments

Abstract

Geographers have a tradition of using novels in the classroom. Given our busy schedules, however, and the need for students to write, instructors may find that it takes too much time to grade writing assignments. This paper provides an efficient method of grading book review assignments. It requires students to use headings and subheadings, which may be internalized as a future organizational scheme for writing assignments. Experience has shown this method to be “grader-friendly” for instructors, making it easier to comment and score.     

Integrating GIS into the Undergraduate Learning Environment

Abstract

Despite the promise of GIS, substantial barriers have prevented its widespread use in geographic education. Among the key factors are technical impediments stemming from software complexity, pedagogic issues related to the lack of experienced faculty and the shortage of curriculum materials, and systemic issues associated with faculty motivation. This case study describes strategies that were employed for addressing each of these barriers in a large enrollment, multisection world geography course. Successful implementation of those strategies has enabled large numbers of students in classes taught by instructors with no formal GIS experience to spend a substantial amount of time learning geography with the help of simple, easy-to-use GIS software applications.     

James M. Goodman 1929—2004: Professor Emeritus of Geography University of Oklahoma

Abstract

Effective use of time has become even more critical in today's classrooms. Creating geographically literate students by the year 2000 presents some dilemmas for teachers who are faced with expanding curricula. Developing an efficient, meaningful means of teaching geographical features to help curb geographical illiteracy is a possibility. A group of college instructors and more than 75 preservice elementary teachers experimented with an idea that effectively integrated geography, vocabulary development, writing across the curriculum, and the visual arts. Their successful and time-saving idea can be incorporated into any upper elementary to high school classroom committed to teaching children about geographical features.     

Geographic information systems and health: An educational resource

Abstract

The use of geographic information systems to analyze spatial dimensions of health care and disease ecology is becoming a realistic prospect for investigators in the social sciences. This review of the literature, bringing together a diverse collection of professional and academic journals, can be grouped into four categories: potential, cautionary, preliminary, and application. Enough references have been collected and reviewed to provide instructors with material for a classroom unit about 1) using GIS in a medical geography class: 2) medical applications in a GIS class; or 3) using GIS in classes which have a health and disease component.     

The Pecan. Its Culture and Commercial Value

Abstract

This paper addresses the neglect of social justice and social change in the undergraduate general education curriculum at a community college. The intended audience of this paper is community college instructors with heavy teaching loads of mostly general education courses. Without pretending to be a rigorous analysis of theories of radical pedagogy in the classroom, this article aims to balance a review of the discourse surrounding the undergraduate general education curriculum with examples of classroom practices.

The first step in preparing our students to become agents of social change is to equip them with understanding and empathy, in the hope of ending the alienation that is a barrier to action. Assignments in general education geography courses are shared and reflected upon as a first step in grounding theory and introducing students to the struggle for social justice at home and abroad.     

Making Space for the Citizen in Geographic Education

Abstract

This article argues that we need to reconsider the connection between citizenship and geography. Although geographic education purports to prepare citizens, the possibilities for this relationship have been addressed by few scholars. The study shows that citizenship is situated in places and students’ actions as citizens reinscribe the meaning of these places. Because of this intersection, educators must be attentive to how they teach about places, particularly the ongoing interconnection between place and identity. One of the identities common in the teaching of places is citizenship. Geography instructors need to be thoughtful about their role as citizenship educators.     

Childhood asthma: Regional and social inequalities in parents' perceptions of the diagnostic process in Norway

This paper focuses on the 'cultural turn' which has taken place in British and to a lesser extent North American and Australian human geography in the last decade. It begins by exploring what constitutes the cultural in what has been dubbed 'new cultural geography'. It then explores contemporary claims that cultural geography has eclipsed or marginalised social geography. The final section evaluates these claims about the demise of the social, arguing that the social has not been evacuated but rather has been redefined. While this paper tells a specific story about a particular tradition and geographical frame of reference, it nonetheless has wider relevance because it provides an example of the differential development of particular sub-disciplinary areas, of the way subdisciplinary knowledges shape each other, and of the way understandings of disciplinary trends are contested.     

Looking Toward the Future: A Concepts,Themes, and Standards Approach to Preservice Teacher Education

Abstract

Preservice teacher education based on content, skills, and perspectives specified in Geography for Life: National Geography Standards 1994 is essential for dissemination of the Standards to classrooms all across the country. Curricular materials are often structured around the five fundamental themes of geography; however, it is essential that teacher preparation courses integrate the content of the Standards into the themes of location, place, human—environment interaction, and region. One model of this approach to preservice education, as summarized here, provides future teachers with a conceptual basis for learning and teaching geography, enhancing opportunities for disseminating solid geography content to all grade levels nationwide.     

Escalation: A Simulation of Contemporary Geo-Politics

Abstract

ESCALATION is a one-hour simulation game that treats international power politics from a geographic perspective. It has been pilot-tested in several high schools and two universities. ESCALATION is deemed appropriate for high school geography and social studies classes, and for introductory college geography courses. Three important geographic principles are dramatically demonstrated by the activity. First, students discover that traditional ways of viewing maps can create misleading geographic stereotypes. Second, students learn the importance of cultural conditioning in viewing international relations. Third, students learn that numerous interacting factors influence nations in their selection of allies. The activity elaborated in the article provides geography teachers with a practical, ready-made teaching activity that is powerful in concepts and dramatic in presentation. The classroom teacher simply needs to transform the map (Figure 1) into a transparency and briefly review the simulation procedures. The teacher then presents the four sequential stages in the ESCALATION game and conducts a post-simulation discussion of what happened and why. The activity, in short, provides geography and social studies teachers with a simulation activity that combines role playing, decision-making, and surprise to generate several important geographic concepts and principles. The surprise climax invariably produces considerable discussion.     

Positionality and Active Learning: Confronting Privilege in Field-Exercise Design

Abstract

University instructors are increasingly drawing on active learning exercises to engender critical thinking skills among students. In this article, we introduce the design and implementation of an active learning exercise about mobility and transportation that we assigned in an introductory human geography class at the University of Georgia. The students' responses and the survey instrument we used to assess the effectiveness of the exercise revealed disappointing results and caused us to think carefully about the role of positionality in designing active learning exercises. In this article, we argue that we need to understand privilege—particularly class privilege—in order to design effective assignments.     

Integrated Teaching of Geographic Information Science and Physical Geography Through Digital Terrain Analysis

Abstract

We present an outline of a course in digital terrain analysis that provides students with integrated instruction in geographic information science (GISci) and topics in physical geography and earth science. Integrated teaching of GISci and other sub-fields of geography has value because it presents GISci technologies in the context of their application. Nevertheless, the design of college and university geography courses is often fragmented rather than integrated. Our course provides one potential model for such integration. Assessment of student reaction, using focus groups of both enrolled and non-enrolled students, revealed a generally positive attitude toward the course and pointed out the barriers that prevent some students from taking it.     

Classroom Investigation Of The Origin and Historical Geography Of Local Communities

Abstract

Field work is an important but often neglected facet of a sound undergraduate geography training program. Literature, both geographic and nongeographic, offers very few practical suggestions or realistic approaches that can be utilized in some way by geography departments organizing undergraduate field programs. This article eliminates a hiatus in the literature for it analyzes field work, explores proven methods of undergraduate field training, and describes the importance of the selection of a study area and field camp site. It stresses the value of careful organization, and problems of topic selection and field data generation, and provides a detailed model, a proven schedule, concomitantly with a sound approach to field work. The two-week field course with deferred papers is an immediate, realistic, and inexpensive solution to the problem of undergraduate field work.     

Physical Geography and Environmental Problems: Relevance in a Course Content and Structure

Abstract

This paper explores the concept of relevancy in the context of an introductory physical geography course. The concern is with a relevant content and structure. Both are introduced through a problem-orientation. Current societal problems related to the physical environment are used to introduce students to conditions and processes involving environmental elements such as atmosphere, water, soil, vegetation, and topography. Because they are societal problems, the additional element, man, is included. The structure assumes a priori that the student has some prior knowledge of environmental problems. With a relatively high level of individual involvement, the student is asked to utilize this knowledge in learning about environmental processes and physical geographic concepts. Feedback from student to instructors is maximized through greater reliance on discussion groups, exercises, papers, and a problem-solving examination. In transmitting subject matter and environmental problems information, greater reliance is placed on readings and less on lectures.