As people head further into the 21st Century, they are living in a constantly changing and interdependent world. As such, students need a global awareness that includes familiarity with different cultures, beliefs, and lifestyles in order to understand and address global issues. Geography can help students understand these issues. In this article,…

Introduction: We report on a pilot study of students' use of sources in authoring Wikipedia articles. The procedure is demonstrated by investigating how students processed texts from sources to compose their own texts. Method: Four groups of upper secondary school students (aged 17-18 years) participated in an eight-week geography course and seven…

This paper considers the possibility of overt political disagreement between human geographers and their students. Recent literature suggests that geographers should encourage their students to become more politically engaged through innovative teaching methods that could include frank discussion of the various positions taken by lecturers and…

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.…

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are adequate for analyzing complex scientific and spatial phenomena in geography education. "Google Earth" is a geographic information tool for GIS-based learning. It allows students to engage in the lesson, explore the Earth, explain what they identify and evaluate the implications of what they are…

Using postcolonial feminist theory, the researcher attempts in this article to redefine the interpretive framework through which courses on Islam and North African women are being taught in American undergraduate classes. Several conceptual limitations have been identified: inadequate knowledge of the geography and history of North Africa; the…

Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) has seen explosive growth over the last decade. Immersive VR attempts to give users the sensation of being fully immersed in a synthetic environment by providing them with 3D hardware, and allowing them to interact with objects in virtual worlds. The technology is extremely effective for learning and exploration, and…

This paper makes the claim that student teachers' learning depends a great deal on the individual school department where they are working, its social practices and the relationships of the teachers involved in initial teacher education (ITE). The paper considers how using a Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) lens to view data generated on…

Field trips have become less common due to issues including budget constraints and large class sizes. Research suggests that virtual field trips can substitute for field visits, but the role of webcams has not been evaluated. To investigate the potential for webcams to substitute for field trips, participants viewed urban and physical landscapes…

This article examines whether questions embedded in geography textbooks address three components of spatial thinking: concepts of space, tools of representation, and processes of reasoning. A three-dimensional taxonomy of spatial thinking was developed and used to evaluate questions in four high school level geography textbooks. The results…

Google Earth photographs often show ships and their wakes in great detail. We discuss how the images can be used to calculate the velocity of these ships. (Contains 4 figures.)

Volunteered geographic information (VGI) refers to the geographic subset of online user-generated content. Through Geobrowsers and online mapping services, which use geovisualization and Web technologies to share and produce VGI, a global digital commons of geographic information has emerged. A notable example is Wikipedia, an online collaborative…

This research has been conducted to reveal the secondary school students' perceptions in relation with metaphors about the "geography" concept. A total of 110 students attending to secondary schools in Karabuk city center joined the research within the 2009-2010 academic year. Following questions were searched to answer: 1-Which…

Many theories either implicitly or explicitly assume that individuals readily move to places that improve their financial well-being. Other forces, however, offset these tendencies; for example, people often wish to remain close to family and friends. We introduce a methodology for determining how individuals weigh these countervailing forces, and…

Researchers in geography education have access to a wide range of research methods, spanning the quantitative-qualitative continuum. However, the choice of which methods to employ in one's research has a direct impact on the subsequent quality of the research findings and should therefore be carefully considered. This paper briefly explores the…