The South African Spatial Data Infrastructure (SASDI) was established in 2003.Registration of geographical information science (GISc) practitioners by the South African geomatics professional body followed in 2004 and accreditation of university GISc programmes in 2012. In 2010, the Committee for Spatial Information identified inadequate knowledge…

Because of the importance that geography plays in our understanding of economics, history, and politics, it has been argued that the subject should be taught to students beginning at the early elementary level, usually focusing on the family unit and local communities. However, when the proper technology tools and strategies are used, students at…

This study investigates the factors that draw working professionals towards distance education programs, and the factors that sustain their distance education experience. The study is conducted in difficult terrains of Uttarakhand, a hilly state in India which helps us investigate the phenomenon in difficult geographies. Through interviews of ten…

Although equity-oriented discourse is working to move the mathematics education community from achievement-gap rhetoric toward a focus on opportunity gaps, it does not currently recognize the role of space and the politics of space in creating and maintaining opportunity gaps as it relates to mathematics education in urban settings. The purpose of…

During the last century, primary school students studied geography every day. Today, educators are often unfamiliar with geography as an academic subject, limiting it to maps and demographics, topics of little interest to young children. Yet, in a National Geographic Education Foundation survey, "Young Americans Geographically Challenged"…

This paper presents the results of two independent studies that assessed the impact of writing as a learning tool in introductory-level geography courses. Student attitudes toward writing and their performance on exams were analyzed to determine the impact of writing for comprehension and application of geographical concepts. Student perceptions…

This paper discusses reforms in postgraduate education in geography in the Netherlands in the context of Europeanization and globalization. Europeanization and globalization have resulted in challenges as well as opportunities for students and universities. In terms of internationalization, Europeanization and the global economic crisis have…

Reflecting on a personal journey as a geography student, an academic, an educator and a teacher trainer, the article provides a critical narrative of the state of school geography in Singapore and argues that its development has remained relevant to the changing issues at a global level. Using personal reflections and document analyses, school…

In this article, we introduce and analyze learning experiences made possible by a teaching framework that we have developed and call "digital spatial story lines" (DSSLs). DSSLs offer a novel approach to learning on the move by engaging learners with related conceptual practices of archival curation, digital mapping, and the production…

This study introduces the Listening to Others' Voices (LOV) project, an empowering strategy in geography education. This research aims to create a dataset detailing the perspectives of negatively stereotyped countries with respect to how their countries are portrayed in geography textbooks and to investigate the pedagogical effects of the LOV…

This article reports the results of a case study that employed user-centered design to develop training tutorials for helping middle school social studies teachers use Web-based GIS in their classrooms. This study placed teachers in the center of the design process in planning, designing, and developing the tutorials. This article describes how…

Geography textbooks contain chapter or review questions that may engage students in spatial thinking. This research used Jo and Bednarz's (2009) "Taxonomy of Spatial Thinking" to evaluate the percentage of spatial thinking questions in four university-level world geography course textbooks. The results from this study were then…

Fictional film provides an opportunity to breathe life into the application of academic concepts by capturing the attention and imagination of students. Using the 2009 hit movie "Avatar", it is argued that popular fiction has the potential to help students grasp the dynamics of imperial/indigenous relationships in part because it removes…

This paper considers the photographic act as an affective and affirmative encounter--a reflexive, embodied, and relational community engagement that may produce a rupture in our habitual modes of thinking. The author uses the Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of the nomadic weapon to consider how the camera may become an affective trigger for…

This paper presents a case for interviewing students as an effective yet complex way to integrate reflexive practice into teaching and research. Even though many human geographers are accustomed to conducting qualitative interviews in various contexts, it is not straightforward to interview one's own students. This paper addresses three…