Ask any teacher about their life as a teacher and they will begin with their experience of place. "First I taught there and then I moved there", the matter of time often hazy or more peripheral to the story of place. As Deleuze and Guattari (1987) argue, becomings are matters of geography more than history, our lives punctuated by…

Through this middle school curriculum, students observe bird feeders outside their classrooms, learn to identify birds that visit, and use a simple protocol for counting the birds and collecting other data before sending it to Cornell scientists via the Internet. The activities within the curriculum are inquiry-based and interdisciplinary. This…

To investigate relationships between spatial terms and the human experience of space, participants in three separate experiments were asked to sort 35 English spatial terms into groups on the basis of which items seemed most similar to one another. Participants also were asked to provide a descriptive rationale for each of their groupings. Once…

Previous literature discussing and exemplifying the teaching of political geography has emphasized the material to be disseminated. Building upon those contributions, this paper offers a means of connecting student, teacher, and subject matter. Using the perspective of Parker Palmer, as illustrated in his book "The Courage to Teach," it is…

Geographers have, in recent years, attempted to re-fashion a critical race pedagogy. Accordingly, propositions have been forwarded that geographers use readings that validate the experiences of diverse groups. In so doing we may provide students with a critical understanding of racism and other forms of discrimination as societal phenomena. This…

In this article, the authors build upon the use of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) in U.S. history and in current demographic studies, using examples from co-author Herschel Sarnoff's classroom in the Watts section of Los Angeles. They discuss theoretical and conceptual approaches that support student learning with GIS and provide resources…

Formal research training is integral to research degrees in human geography completed in UK higher education institutions today. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has been the driving force behind the formalization of research training. Arguably less well known among the ESRC research training recommendations is the stipulation that…

The ancient Silk Routes connecting China to Europe across the rugged mountains and deserts of central Asia are one of the primary examples of transculturation in world history. Traders on these routes dealt not only in goods such as silk and horses but also made possible the spread of art forms as well as two major religions, Buddhism and Islam. …

Involving reluctant and low-achieving students with reading is an essential step to increasing students' content area knowledge. One way to increase students' engagement with text is by linking social studies content with foreign films that have English subtitles. Not only can subtitled films help increase students' engaged time with text, but the…

This article reports the results of a qualitative case study that explored the use of Internet-based geographic information systems (IGIS) with ninth-grade geography students. The students worked in teams to examine the geography of Africa using IGIS resources with the instructional goal of developing a presentation on a significant issue facing…

A Multi-Scaffolding Environment (MSE) is a multimedia environment reliant on authentic scaffolding. We examine the impact of the availability of multiple scaffolds on learning and cognitive load within an MSE where learners are assigned a real-world task and given access to four support tools to help them complete the task. By examining an MSE in…

This paper reports on a classroom investigation of a sequence of cross-disciplinary mapping lessons undertaken by Grade Five students at Black Hill Primary, a Victorian State Primary School in Ballarat. While this activity was broadly framed around Mathematics, there were also important elements from Geography, (a new emphasis in the Victorian…

Hayes recognizes the value of connections kids make when authors and settings strike a familiar note. She invites readers to participate in a new event at this year's NCTE Annual Convention in New York City: The 21st-Century Literary Map Project gallery, where attendees are encouraged to examine affiliates' literary maps, see digital or…

Graphic organizers offer visual models that equip teachers and students with tools, concepts, and language to organize, understand, and apply information. Many teachers, concerned that social studies tends to overwhelm students, feel social studies is viewed as a complex and confusing subject unrelated to the contemporary world. Graphic organizers…

Learning science includes learning to argue with "inscriptions": images used to symbolize information persuasively. This study examined sixth-graders learning to invest inscriptions with representational status, in a geographic information system (GIS)-based science investigation. Learning to reason with inscriptions was studied in emergent…