"Curriculum making", highlighted in the Geographical Association's Manifesto in 2009, was the focus of a research symposium held in London in April 2011. Using an auto-ethnographic approach, I reflect on and explore my experience of participating in that symposium. The analysis explores the "cultures of influence" and the…

The idea for this paper emerged from a recent qualitative investigation which examined the ways in which six Australian primary teachers conceptualised geography and geography teaching (Preston, 2014b). A finding of this research was a strong correlation between the breadth of geographical understandings and the years of experience and age of…

In the Republic of Ireland, geography is recognized as an important subject for children to learn and all pupils take it throughout their primary school years. The current curriculum, the Primary School Curriculum-Geography, follows a tradition of innovative, child-centered geography curricula in Ireland. This article outlines the history of…

This article on the development of Beijing can introduce students to many topics found in the urban geography section of the AP Human Geography course outline published in 2013. The author provides lesson plans and a PowerPoint presentation as resources for teaching a unit about the city.

The "Journal of Geography" has used key words since 1990 to help readers and researchers seek out work of particular interest. Key words generally supplement article titles and are hopefully chosen with care. The focus of this article is the "Journal of Geography" key word, its presence, timing, and frequency. Using a…

Teachers play an important role in promoting climate change literacy in schools, but not much is known about which teacher characteristics significantly influence Geography teachers' climate change science literacy. The purpose of this study is to determine the influence of teachers' characteristics such as gender, age, qualification,…

Interest is a central learning prerequisite for teaching. The article deals with a survey among 1600 primary school pupils in forms 2, 3 and 4 (ages 7-10) in the German federal state of Bavaria who were interviewed on their interest in geographical topics and working methods. They were given a questionnaire including 40 items to indicate their…

Getting students interested in events that are distant in time and space is an ongoing challenge in education. In this article, the authors demonstrate how learning at the sites where historical events happened abroad engages undergraduate students by reducing the effects of time and distance. Using student quotations gathered during three…

Understanding geographic changes has become an indispensable element in geography education. Describing and analyzing changes in space require spatial thinking skills emphasized in geography curriculum but often pose challenges for secondary school students. This school-based research targets a specific strand of spatial thinking skills and…

Purpose: In the last few years, the interest on professional identity development (PID) and the factors that influence PID has become central in higher education (HE) literature. However, the knowledge developed in this domain has focussed on a factor at a time and on a degree or discipline, thus being difficult to have a general picture of all…

Teachers learned knowledge, skills, values, and dispositions through spending significant amounts of time working with heritage sites as they learned more about social studies. Elementary social studies teachers engaged in teacher in-service to increase their abilities to meet geography standards. Teacher professional development that caused…

In this article, a social studies teacher and a literacy teacher describe a vision for social studies that highlights reading practices that foster disciplinary literacy in elementary geography. Their purpose is to share a practical approach for enriching elementary social studies lessons and activities with a geographic lens. During the…

The issue of curriculum relevance has attracted attention of academics and the general public in Lesotho where there are social, economic, environmental and political challenges confronting the society. To address these challenges education, through various school subjects, is expected to play a pivotal role. However, there are concerns that the…

Before graduating from my year as a student in an initial teacher education programme, I am tasked with demonstrating my ability to show how I am able to achieve equitable outcomes for 'priority student groups'. My success or failure in this hinges on a number of factors. Arguably, the most important factor is the quality of practice I observe…

This explorative, qualitative study examines the use and effectiveness of resources of multilinguality, with particular regard to the development of causal links in geography classes. Contentual and linguistic strategies of multilingual pupils in creating causal links were collected and evaluated systematically. This was done by means of a…