Parramatta Marist High School is a school in Western Sydney, New South Wales, that has over 14 years of experience in project-based learning in Stages 4 and 5 (Years 7-10). Over this period, projects have been constantly developed, redeveloped and improved by teachers based on their experience and feedback from their colleagues and their students.…

In this paper, the authors introduce a student project that can help students stay engaged in Advanced Placement Human Geography (APHG) classrooms through the end of the year, through a project that can be implemented after the APHG exam is given. The tight curriculum schedule of APHG leaves little room for implementing student-centered learning…

This paper is a lesson study of the instruction of China's Natural Resources (the third unit of eighth-grade geography), and its objective is to examine the efficacy of inquiry-based learning in geography education. In the experimental lesson, we reorganized the teaching content by integrating the learning materials from the four sections of…

World regional geography is one of the most popular and most heavily subscribed geography courses in the United States at both the undergraduate and K-12 levels (Rutherford 2001; Mueller 2003; Bednarz 2004). Yet little consensus exists about the content that the course should include or the approach that should be used to teach it. Debate exists…

Learning by doing has become a common phrase in the scholarship of teaching and learning as research continues to emphasize the benefits of active student engagement in higher education. Instead of passive vessels to be filled with information, students become the architects of their own education. While traditional ways of teaching focus on what…

Field trips, field courses, and other forms of field-based pedagogy have a long and storied history in geography and are frequently described as essential components of geographic education at the college, secondary, and primary levels. A recent and expanding literature on best practices for field-based geographical education provides instructors…

Applied geography represents the dialectic relationship between theory and application (Pacione 1999, 2004). A well-informed rigorous pedagogy must represent this dialectical relationship (Pacione 1999). How then can the relationship between the theoretical and the applied be challenged within the "spaces" of the university? I provide a…

With new standards in social science and science, student-centered inquiry drives contemporary geography education. This article introduces and explains the Geo-Inquiry Process. Developed by the National Geographic Society, the Geo-Inquiry Process centers on the fundamental nature of global interconnectedness, the idea that wise decisions at all…

Recruiting undergraduate students is a significant challenge for undergraduate geography programs. Few students have robust exposure to geography in secondary school and the major has low name recognition for entering first year students. In fact, geography is often a "found" major on many campuses with students coming to the major after…

The field of geography especially lends itself to fieldwork, getting students out of the classrooms and into the real world. Furthermore, studies have shown that when traditional lecture style is replaced at least in part with approaches that incorporate active learning, students earn higher examination grades and have a greater chance of passing…

As the popularity of project-based learning grows, so does the importance of understanding how this instructional approach can support students' learning and development. The authors describe a project-based approach to literacy and social studies instruction that research has shown to be effective. Key characteristics of the approach and…

Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) has risen up the global advocacy agenda and is recognized as an important child-safeguarding issue. The topic crystallizes key debates in my module, "Culture and Development in Africa," and enables Geography undergraduates to explore complex intersections of childhood, gender, sexuality, and…

Field trips are recognized as an essential component of the study of geography. They are popular with learners and teachers, but their value as learning experiences is largely assumed. What is needed are interactive and relevant learning activities like "drawing in the sand," a participatory learning activity that has been introduced…

Sustainability is an important topic of discussion in geography as society faces increasing challenges from depletion of natural resources and degradation of the natural environment (Yates 2012; Goudie 2013). A primary goal of educators is to prepare students to address complex issues such as these in their personal lives and professional careers.…

Faced with diminished faculty resources and increased student enrolment from 2010 to 2017, we sought to use blended learning to achieve active learning in a large c.400-student introductory geography class. Working iteratively over seven years and eight classes and using smart classrooms, better timetabling, experimentation with peer review and…