When pupils learn geography they are extending their world view and reshaping it. This paper analyses representations of Africa and African countries and cultures in Irish primary geography textbooks and assesses to what extent these textbook portrayals facilitate or repress multicultural education, specifically critical multicultural education…

Many college teachers have a required textbook(s) for their courses, yet textbooks often misrepresent facts both directly and indirectly -- through both the perspective and possible bias of the author(s) and/or the omission of information and events. As textbooks are primary sources of knowledge, and students believe the information to be true, it…

This paper considered the changes in education that are needed in response to the rapidly deteriorating state of the Earth's environment. We argued that such changes should be focussed on developing an effective education that equips inhabitants of the Earth to understand their environment towards contributing to its conservation, especially with…

This work presents a new teaching module for understanding the geographical dimensions of historical events in Africa. This case study focuses in particular on the Joola shipwreck in Senegal in order to illustrate geographic areas of study including the rural-urban divide, colonial geopolitics, cultural diversity, and West Africa's physical…

Research suggests numerous cognitive benefits of authentic learning experiences. Beyond cognition, there are additional dimensions for learners who engage in authentic learning experiences. In education, the affective experiences of authentic learning and the role of students' social interactions remain largely unexplored. This paper examines…

''Agriculture, Food, and Rural Land Use" constitutes a major part of the AP Human Geography course outline. This article explores challenging topics to teach, emerging research trends in agricultural geography, and sample teaching approaches for concretizing abstract topics. It addresses content identified as "essential knowledge"…

Amidst rapid socio-economic change, higher education (HE) academics across the world face major challenges to its organisation, finance and management. This paper discusses the role of transnational networking in higher education. Data from 40 interviews with geographically distributed academics engaged in learning and teaching transnational…

This article describes a lesson plan on achieving synthesis, the integration of diverse information sources to create a new whole, vital to the intellectual task of the geographer. This is true regardless of the type of geography being conducted or studied. Synthesis remains central to geography, whether understanding a region, pulling together an…

This article examines possibilities associated with the cultivation of balanced regional images via the use of simple methods. Two experiments based on the primacy effect and the painting picture rule, or visual depiction of regions, were conducted. The results show significant differences in the formation of regional images. More specifically,…

Though lasting less than 200 years, large-scale rice production in South Carolina and Georgia "probably represented the most significant utilization of the tidewater zone for crop agriculture ever attained in the United States." Rice is a specialty crop where successful cultivation relied heavily upon "adaptation" to nature via…

In this critical discourse analysis of six high-school world geography textbooks, we explore how constructions and representations of North Africa and Southwest Asia have served to reinforce Orientalist discourse in formal curriculum. Visual and written representations in these textbooks were overwhelmingly confounded by a traditional/modern…

Food topics are uniquely suited to increase students' interest in human geography. A highly processed food like chocolate can be studied in a variety of different ways, making it possible to include chocolate examples and activities at various points in a human geography class. The goals of this article are to provide sufficient background…

This study examines the regionalization of Africa through analysis of forty-two English-language geography of Africa texts written for undergraduates between 1953 and 2004. Authors identify regions with reference to one or more variables. Some authors provided no explanation for their regionalization; others labored mightily to justify their…

When discussing the topic "Hunger in Africa" with students, incorrect and biased ideas on the causes for hunger are revealed. In order to change the students' personal concepts it is necessary to become acquainted with their mental models. Therefore, a survey of Geography students' different personal theories concerning "Hunger in…

This article presents a lesson plan used to teach about African urbanization using Kenyan novels. Specifically, three urban novels written by Meja Mwangi are used. Based on a qualitative survey of student preference and learning, this lesson plan uses these novels alongside more traditional academic texts to achieve effective student learning.…