This article presents a dialogue with Monte Joffee. Joffee has been an active leader in the small school and charter school movements in New York City for over 20 years. He is a cofounder of The Renaissance Charter School in New York City and served as its founding principal (1993-2007). In this dialogue, Joffee articulates the ways in which…

This handbook was developed for high school teachers looking for new sources of timely information and ways to make courses more engaging and relevant to students. The American Community Survey (ACS) provides a wide online array of social, economic, and demographic information about the nation, states, and local communities. These data can be…

A new regionalism has been much documented and researched for metropolitan areas; this article documents that there is a new rural regionalism as well. In the United States, these groups appear most likely to emerge in areas that are challenged by outcomes characterizing globalization's effects on the rural condition: namely, exurban or…

Outdoor education practice around the world occurs in diverse circumstances, environments and cultures. The application of outdoor education to specific cultural and environmental issues in particular places and communities has received little attention in research. While research in fields such as cultural geography has addressed the…

Since 2005, the English government has adopted a policy of regenerating disadvantaged neighbourhoods by reconstructing them as mixed communities, in which schools appealing to higher income residents are a key feature. This creates some difficulties for those concerned with social justice, who support the notion of integrated schools and…

The American economy has had the fastest and most dramatic development of all the world's major economies. Four hundred years ago, the economic output of the area that became the United States was negligible by world standards. Yet only 250 years later, the U.S. economy had become the largest in the world, surpassing all other countries, including…

This paper is about how rural landscape is experienced according to combinations of practical engagements with land and the ways meaning is made in relation to it. It presents the case of the ambiguous position of the Orkney Islands within categorisations of Highland and Lowland landscapes in Scotland. Through a discussion of the physical and…

A careful reading of recent issues of the "Natural Areas Journal," the publication of the Natural Areas Association, will leave you with the conclusion that humans are not a part of natural areas. When humans do appear, it is either as disturbing agents, disrupting the naturalness through, for example, the introduction of exotic plants…

The author describes historical demography in terms of the major techniques used in the field. He assesses its importance and relationship to both demography and history as separate disciplines. (Author/AV)

Discusses how genetic data on present human population relationships and data from the Pleistocene fossil hominid record are being used to compare two contrasting models for the origin of modern humans. (TW)

Argues that a scholarly discipline seems to progress best when it knows what it is and proceeds confidently in pursuing a generally accepted core of significant goals and questions. Identifies trends in geography which detract from or add to the progress of geography. Maintains that disciplinary accord is related to quality and amount of geography…

This article describes how medieval cartography and art showing landscape scenes communicate important geographical knowledge. Specific attention is devoted to "Haymaking," the 1565 painting of Pieter Brueghel. (JDH)

Provides practical advice on how to construct social surveys. Reviews ethical problems, sampling bias, problems of nonresponse, and the merits of self-completion versus interview surveys. A brief bibliography is attached. (JDH)

By analyzing nineteenth-century mental health data, college level geography students discover the concept of distance decay, which describes the decrease in intensity of a phenomenon with increasing distance from some central place. (RM)

Argues that geography can be made more relevant in today's social studies if it is presented as the study of the environmental impact of culture. This theme is illustrated by contrasting cultural influences which shaped the physically similar east and southeastern regions of China and the U.S. (JDH)