The place of fieldtrips in New Zealand university geography

Abstract: This paper considers three questions: Why are fieldtrips used in geography? How does this mesh with the geographers’ own understandings of geography? What do lecturers hope to achieve on fieldtrips? Understandings are gleaned from interviews with those who run fieldtrips. There has been a tradition of fieldtrips in New Zealand and this very tradition helps to maintain them. Fieldtrips are shaped by geographers’ particular philosophical approaches to geography and take different approaches according to their aims.