Background: Environmental issues are frequently controversial and involve conflicting interests and values. Much environmental education literature explicitly encourages teachers to promote pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours amongst their students, despite evidence that teacher support for such a policy is ambiguous at best. The literature…

The region of South-eastern Europe has been under two different socioeconomic regimes until the early 1990s, so the development of both geographical and environmental education in the region is now in the process of significant changes. Hence, the current problems relating to geographical and/or environmental education differ significantly among…

There are undoubtedly many parallels between Australia and New Zealand in the history of geographic information system (GIS) in schools. These parallels occur in the social, institutional, professional development, and curricula areas, and each of these topics is considered in this article. In New Zealand at least, there is still a lot that needs…

In recent years, geomatics has had a tremendous effect on geographical education at the post-secondary level. Courses, departments and even entire colleges such as the College of Geographic Sciences in Nova Scotia, Canada, are now dedicated to its study and use. Predictably, the impact of geomatics on classroom teaching at the secondary level has…

Education in rural communities is an interesting site for an analysis of the relationship between place and the cultural politics of schooling. In particular the movements of people, ideas and practices to and from, and also within, rural places suggest the need for theorizing on rural education to consider the relevance of new mobility…

Geographic information systems (GIS) technology and methods have transformed decision-making in society by bringing geographic analysis to the desktop computer. Although some educators consider GIS to be a promising means for implementing reform, it has been adopted by less than 2 percent of American high schools. The reasons behind the interest…

Regional suburbanization processes are transforming rural America socially and physically, threatening the uniqueness of small towns whose diversity is a national resource. This article reviews existing holistic descriptions of American rural communities since post-World War II by rural sociologists and anthropologists. Three new community case…

Students frequently struggle when scientific instruction seems divorced from personal experience, especially in the physical sub-disciplines, like climatology, where exercise books often present historical or abstracted case studies. In contrast I present a three-phase project involving student input on experimental design, data collection, and…

This article situates geospatial technologies as a constructivist tool in the K-12 classroom and examines student experiences with real-time authentic geospatial data provided through a hybrid adventure learning environment. Qualitative data from seven student focus groups demonstrate the effectiveness of using real-time authentic data, peer…

This article examines an effort to use urban schools to promote the revitalization of a large northeastern city in the United States. In order to attract and retain professional families to a regenerated central city, downtown schools are re-branded and promoted to such families as suitable for their children. The article draws on interviews and…

Based on an ethnographic case study done in an all-white, rural middle school, this article examines the students' experience with and interpretation of an international education program implemented with a hope of providing more global/international contents to the curriculum. The study shows that these students interpreted other cultures…

This book of instructional materials is intended to support the teaching and learning of themes, concepts and skills in geography at all levels of instruction. Divided into five parts, part 1 of this Teacher's manual, "Communicating Basic Spatial Ideas," offers the following: (1) "Introduction"; (2) "Location"; (3) "Distance"; (4) "Direction"; (5)…

This document reviews progress in the nine high-populations countries towards the goal of Education for All (EFA). The nine countries are Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Since the Thailand conference in 1990, most countries have shown improvement with primary education increasing by over 40…

This packet provides sample lessons from the program "Stones and Bones: A Laboratory Approach to Physical Anthropology." The samples are from the unit of 20 lessons that are investigative-oriented for students to explore anthropological topics. Unit 1, "In Search of Human Ancestors. How We Study Our Past: Stories Told by…

This resource book is designed to assist teachers in implementing California's history-social science framework at the 10th grade level. The models support implementation at the local level and may be used to plan topics and select resources for professional development and preservice education. This document provides a link between the…