The aim of this study was to investigate students' conceptions of causes, processes and consequences of earthquakes and to examine their geographical understanding of such hazards in terms of spatial and societal-nature relations. Data consists of 134 responses from 12 to 13-year-old students who had completed an assignment in the Swedish national…

Environmental degradation and global disaster encourage the education sector to devise adaptation and mitigation strategies. The scientific approach, from intradisciplinary to interdisciplinary, has urged education into a different array. These narratives provide a context for how disaster risk education must incorporate ecological understanding…

The main natural risk in the Mediterranean region is flooding. Therefore, in Spain, explaining this issue in Primary Education classrooms of Social Sciences should be a priority and is established as such in the current curriculum. The aims of this study are to carry out an analysis of the contents on flood risk included in the Social Science…

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction develops and implements strategies to reduce disaster risks and can be used as a pedagogical tool to improve knowledge of natural hazards. From an early age, individuals can contribute positively to natural hazard mitigation and this is supported by research conducted in schools in countries like…

This study aims to assess the perception that 9th year students have about some key concepts related to the "science of risk" and to evaluate their ability to identify and classify the natural and mixed risks with a greater probability of occurrence, both at national level and in the Metropolitan Area of Porto (MAP). A questionnaire was…

Until now various quantitative studies have shown that adults and students in the Netherlands have low flood risk perceptions. In this study we interviewed fifty 15-year-old students in two different flood prone areas. In order to find out how they think and reason about the risk of flooding, the mental model approach was used. Flood risk turned…

Does geography have an American constituency? Setbacks for the discipline at all levels of education over the past 65 years would suggest that geography is universally unpopular in the United States, but is that really true? The American Geographical Society (AGS) polled adult US residents on their understanding of the discipline itself and…

Understanding the causes, effects and geographic patterns of local hazards is important for helping individuals make educated decisions about how to respond to their threat. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to find comprehensive sources of information about local hazards. In this paper, we discuss the development of an online hazards atlas for…

This paper reports data from an exploratory questionnaire designed to capture "curriculum P-waves"--those curriculum responses that were the fastest and therefore measured first--following a significant earthquake in New Zealand. As well as taking a professional interest in a major disaster in their backyard, it is assumed that social…

This paper reports the findings of a study designed to assess 16 experienced geography teachers' epistemological beliefs about learning and teaching and their awareness of common alternative conceptions held by students. The investigation forms part of a larger study exploring the ways in which experienced geography teachers use their knowledge of…

Can disaster risk reduction and dealing with disasters be taught in the classroom at the secondary school level? This paper seeks to answer this research question in order to apply and critique pedagogical theories for improving how teachers are trained to teach disaster-related topics and how these topics could be introduced into the classroom.…

While Shulman argues that an important component of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is teachers' understanding of the alternative conceptions commonly held by students, relatively little is known about what students believe about many topics in the school curriculum. This paper focuses on a content area typically featured in Geography…

Hazards are taught with the belief that knowing something about their occurrence might help us avoid their consequences. The integrative nature of hazards--physical and social systems bound together--is attractive to the student and the instructor alike. Answering why we teach hazards is fairly straightforward. A more pressing question at present…

This paper discusses the concept of "primal landscapes" as a way of conceptualising the interactions between children and the environments they grow up in. The paper discusses this concept drawing on empirical research conducted in the field of human geography on how people learn about their environments. The research employed a…

In July 1997, on the 10th anniversary of the great "Black Friday" Tornado, city officials of Edmonton, the print and broadcast media, agencies dealing in emergency management, and the national weather organisation recounted stories of the 1987, F5 tornado that struck Edmonton on a holiday weekend. The information campaign also presented…