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.     

Use of Business-Naming Practices to Delineate Vernacular Regions: A Michigan Example

This article provides a history of efforts to map vernacular regions as context for offering readers a way of using business directories in order to construct a GIS-based map of vernacular regions. With Michigan as a case study, the article discusses regional-naming conventions, boundaries, and inclusions and omissions of areas from regional labels in order to offer educators ideas that can enhance classroom content on regions. This article concludes by providing suggestions for classroom activities collecting, analyzing, and discussing vernacular region patterns and processes in accordance with National Geography Standard Five at the eighth-grade level.     

The Elementary Social Studies: Sense and Nonsense in Integration

Abstract

The ultimate goal of all geographic education is to have our students think geographically for life. To this end, the five geographic skills sets allow teachers to use the inquiry approach to more accurately observe whether or not geographic thinking is actually taking place. As essential components of these geographic skills, fieldwork, journaling, and stories based on the field experience have proven to be effective tools of inquiry. This article demonstrates how a journal, kept by the author while on an advanced alliance summer institute to Russia in 1996, was used to write an original short story based on the author's fieldwork there. The author's experiences model the five geographic skills sets in developing lesson plans for the original short story, The Dragon and the Anchor. These activities allow the students to sharpen their geographic skills and develop a sense of place by studying the changes that have occurred in Russia since the fall of communism in 1991.     

独立书店消费者的休闲涉入和地方依恋研究

以广州1200bookshop为例,采用涉入量表和地方依恋量表,运用结构方程模型和文本分析探讨独立书店文化消费者的休闲涉入和地方依恋的关系。研究表明：（1）休闲涉入只有中心性对地方依恋的每个维度均有显著的正向关系,且对地方依赖的影响大于地方认同;（2）吸引力对地方依赖有显著正向影响,而自我表现对地方认同有显著的正向影响;（3）地方依赖对地方认同有显著的正向影响;（4）文化消费者对1200bookshop的地方依恋特征主要是功能性依赖和精神性认同。研究将“休闲涉入-地方依恋”模型迁移到城市日常休闲活动空间,验证并修正了该模型,拓展了该模型的适用范围,同时也为独立书店的经营和发展模式提供实践支持。     

物质地理学的研究进展和启示：追踪物质(following the things)视角

伴随着“文化转向”与“再物质化”思潮的出现,物质地理学已经成为西方社会文化地理研究中新兴且活跃的研究分支之一,而追踪物质(following the things)是物质地理学中重要的方法论视角,它强调人文地理学所重视的“流动性”,通过追踪特定物质在流动过程中物质性的变化以及能动性,揭示物质流动中的社会关系与文化意义。论文通过梳理和分析西方学界中物质地理学的相关文献,阐述了近年来的研究进展,同时指出现阶段在追踪物质视角下该领域的主要议题为：物质的象征研究、物质与认同研究、生产与消费研究以及权力博弈与协商研究等内容。最后,论文归纳总结了当下物质地理学存在的研究局限与空白,展望了未来中国物质地理学研究可进一步探索的话题与方向,以期打开未来中国与西方国家物质地理学的对话窗口。     

Another Typical Day in this Typical Town: place as inspiration for music creation and creative expression

Geographically isolated within its own State as well as from the rest of the country, and with the highest percentage of metropolitan primacy of all Australian States, Perth is a city somewhat uncomfortable with its creative and cultural identity. The city is physically peripheral to networks in the arts and creative industries that operate at the national level. And, symbolically, many in Perth’s cultural sector feel a sense of isolation. Yet, in certain cultural sectors, such as music, Perth demonstrably punches above its weight, consistently generating high-quality cultural exports. This paper unpicks this curious juxtaposition. It examines the influence of Perth—as a geographical location and a site of creative inspiration—on the music created and disseminated by local contemporary musicians who write and perform their own indie pop/rock music. I discuss the nuanced relationship between creative clustering and place, drawing on theories regarding the relationship between music and place, the notion of the music scenes and creativity and creative practices. I explore how living in Perth, a geographically isolated city, with a highly concentrated population and associated music sector, influences creative expressions, desires and inspirations, for a select group of local indie pop/rock musicians who achieved national and international notoriety with their music in the late 1990s and 2000s. Navigating isolation but nevertheless energised by strong social connections and scene participation, Perth musicians catalysed creativity in ways that contribute to evolving debates on the links between place, creativity and music.     

Delineating Hierarchical Hospital Service Areas in Florida

Hospital service area (HSA) and hospital referral region (HRR), known as a hierarchical HSA system, have been used as analysis units in a growing body of large‐scale studies of healthcare spending, utilization, and outcome in the United States. However, the popular Dartmouth HSAs and HRRs were produced more than two decades ago and are unable to represent contemporary healthcare markets. This research uses a revised Huff Model to delineate two levels of hospital service areas in Florida, resulting in sixty‐four HSAs nested in twenty‐one HRRs. Three elements distinguish our method from existing work. First, a best‐fitting distance‐decay function derived from the actual travel pattern of hospitalization is embedded in the Huff Model to strengthen the model's theoretical foundation in individual spatial behavior. Secondly, the hierarchal central place structure is supported by the differing travel‐friction coefficients for general versus specialized patients; general patients experience a steeper gradient and thus a shorter average travel range that supports delineating more HSAs of smaller area size, and specialized patients exhibit a flatter gradient and thus a longer average travel range that leads to fewer HRRs of large‐sized areas. Finally, the delineation method automated in geographic information systems (GIS) can be easily replicated in other regions to define large‐scale and consistent hierarchical HSA systems.     

Comparing the Validity and Reliability of Place Attachment Across Cultures

Researchers often measure human–place bonds via place attachment scales across a variety of settings. However, scale use does not always include an evaluation of the scales’ psychometric properties, especially in multisite studies. Failure to consider a place attachment scale’s measurement properties makes both validity and reliability assumptions and may lead to improper data interpretation. Hence, this investigation assessed a place attachment scale across three sites via data collected on site in natural resource protected areas in Colorado, Minnesota, and Germany. A series of confirmatory factor analyses assessed the hypothesized two-dimensional (i.e., place identity and place dependence) model, Cronbach’s alphas calculated a measure of internal consistency, and a multigroup procedure cross-validated the scale. Some items did not load on the hypothesized dimension and the pattern of factor loadings was not equivalent across settings, suggesting assessment of place attachment scales may be necessary when used in new contexts.     

The Influence of Place on the Willingness to Pay for Ecosystem Services

Sense of place, including an individual’s attitudes toward specific geographic settings, is generally predicted to influence willingness to engage in place-protective behaviors. Relatively little research, however, has empirically examined the influence of people’s attitudes toward a place on their willingness to pay for environmental protection. Using the example of a payment for ecosystem services (PES) initiative in the McKenzie River watershed, Oregon, USA, we found that place attitudes were a significant predictor of respondents’ willingness to pay for a program designed to benefit drinking water quality. These results suggest that connecting conservation actions to landscapes that are meaningful to people may increase their financial support for PES and other conservation programs. While program managers have little or no influence over stakeholders’ political ideology, gender, or income, managers may be able to influence prospective PES buyers’ awareness and attitudes through targeted communications, thereby potentially increasing support for place-based conservation efforts.     

Developing a Learning Progression for Place: A Provocation and a Response

The purpose of this short article is to offer a critical perspective on Larsen and Harrington's ambitious and stimulating review article. It does so by drawing a distinction between teaching and learning and discussing how progression metaphors for describing the latter can distort the moral purpose of the former. My response to the provocation offered by the review article is to resist the temptation to urge yet more research effort on developing a learning progression for place and instead focus on what is required to teach about place effectively. This would need to be driven by clear teaching goals rather than some technical learning progression.