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SPATIAL CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION
Spatial Citizenship Education is an innovative exploration of ways to engage and promote citizenship through a deeper understanding of spatial and geographic perspectives. The authors propose that recognizing the relationship between space and citizenry enables productive and positive engagement with important societal issues such as equity, justice, and environmental stewardship. By providing a historical overview of geography’s contribution to citizenship education, including progress made and challenges faced by educational reform movements, this collection shows how geography can contribute to a new type of citizen—one with an enhanced understanding of the world as seen through the key concepts of geography: space, place, scale, power, and human-environment relationships. Through a theoretical explanation of key citizenship ideas, and by providing practical, classroom-based teaching tools, this volume will be essential for geography education researchers and social studies educators alike. Euikyung E. Shin is a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois where she teaches curriculum studies and social studies education. Her research interests include incorporation of spatial perspectives for global citizenship education and integration of geospatial technology to social studies curriculum. Sarah Witham Bednarz is Professor Emerita of Geography at Texas A&M University. Bednarz co-authored the national geography standards, Geography for Life (1994 and 2012), served on the Committee on Spatial Thinking (2004– 2006), and co-chaired the Geography Education Research Committee (GERC) of the 21st Century Road Map for 21st Century Geography Education Project.
SPATIAL CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION Citizenship through Geography
Edited by Euikyung E. Shin and Sarah Witham Bednarz
First published 2019 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Euikyung E. Shin and Sarah Witham Bednarz to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-05644-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-05645-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-16535-6 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
Preface Joseph P. Stoltman 1 Conceptualizing Spatial Citizenship Euikyung E. Shin and Sarah Witham Bednarz 2 Geography as a Social Study: Its Significance for Civic Competence Stephen J. Thornton
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3 Geography, Capabilities, and the Educated Person David Lambert
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4 The Spatial Production and Navigation of Vulnerable Citizens Sandra J. Schmidt
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5 Citizenship Education in a Spatially Enhanced World Sarah Witham Bednarz and Robert S. Bednarz
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6 Rediscovering the Local: Collaborative, Community Maps for Civic Awareness Todd W. Kenreich
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7 Cultivating Student Citizens: Using Critical Pedagogy of Place Curriculum to Enhance Spatial Thinking, Civic Engagement, and Inquiry Through Student-Generated Topics M. Beth Schlemper and Victoria C. Stewart 8 Geotechnologies and the Spatial Citizen Tom Baker, Mary Curtis, and Lisa Millsaps 9 Informed Citizenry Starts in the Preschool and Elementary Grades—and With Geography Elizabeth R. Hinde 10 Spatial Citizenship in Secondary Geography Curriculum Injeong Jo
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11 Spatial Citizenship in Geography/Social Studies Teacher Education Euikyung E. Shin
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List of Contributors Index
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PREFACE
Citizenship and geography education share a common goal: the preparation of students to be well-informed citizens capable of making informed civic decisions. An informed citizen has the capacity to participate in decision-making processes to address the common good for the community in which they live, for the country to which they belong, and for Earth, which they inhabit. Citizenship education is preparation for civic engagement. Geography’s role relative to citizenship education is to equip learners with the knowledge and skills they need to become responsible decision makers. The following widely accepted goal of citizenship education is an open invitation for geography education to participate. Civic education should help young people acquire and learn to use skills, knowledge and attitudes that will prepare them to be competent and responsible citizens throughout their lives. ( Carnegie Corporation of New York, 2003, p. 2) It seems that if geography were substituted for citizenship (Civic), then there would be relative close agreement that geography education shares much with citizenship education as a common educational goal. As a newly minted teacher of middle school students some years ago, I was often reminded by more experienced colleagues that every teacher is a teacher of reading. We assigned reading from the geography textbook and expected students to grasp the conceptual components and to link them together as they built their knowledge and comprehension of the world. While I recollect the attention to reading, I do not recall that we spent much time attending to the role of civic behavior that was in the best interests of the larger community where the school was located. It was taken for granted that our students would use the knowledge
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they were acquiring to become responsible citizens. The editors of this book intend to increase the attention given to the benefits of a geography education as students practice civic responsibility and engage others in doing the same. The chapters in the book are evidence of a commitment to use geography as a means to leverage civic responsibility and citizenship. It is an invitation for educators at all grade levels to think deeply about the relationship between geography and being a responsible citizen. In the 21st century, every teacher is a teacher of citizenship. The book’s chapters are future looking and recognize the growing use of technology within communities, with a special emphasis on geospatial technology and mapping. Seldom does an event of local importance occur that it is not captured by a person nearby who is using the video device on a smartphone. Geography and geospatial technology are a significant component in capturing and analyzing those events. Events have a spatial dimension with regard to their scale, their occurrence at a particular place, and their association with specific environmental conditions, both human and natural. The geographic challenge is to identify and analyze the relationships among concepts central to geographic inquiry, such as space, place, and environment. The citizenship challenge is to apply the geographic information and concepts within a geographical context in order to make informed decisions for the common good. When the term citizenship is used in either formal or casual conversation, as well as in the media, it is most often interpreted as the legal association between an individual and the state, or the country. Citizenship defines who has the right to a domicile within a country and the protections and responsibilities under the laws of that country. Citizenship education has been treated very broadly within schools in different countries, ranging from indoctrination regarding the political position of a country’s leaders, to the quest for responsible individual behavior and desirable moral values within the community. While citizenship is diverse in its applications and practices, it does depend heavily on the societal context in which it is practiced. In some societies, it is based on the birthright within a country or the result of the formalities of immigration and naturalization to a country and its laws. In other countries, citizenship is based on the lineage of one’s parents. Still other countries may treat citizenship as the act of being a resident in a place with a formal or legal attachment following a period of residency that qualifies a person to be a citizen. The requirements necessary to become a citizen are almost always included in the content of the citizenship, civics, or government curricula that is presented in schools. Knowing about the procedural components of citizenship are most often what educational specialists and curriculum developers identify as the most basic steps in defining one’s role as a citizen. Social and political contexts generally determine where the development of civic skills is included within the curriculum. In most countries, citizenship education is largely within the disciplines of history and political science. History
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tells the story of how a country became established, incorporated its laws and rules, took international relationship steps to gain recognition through peaceful negotiations, war or territorial acquisitions, and assembled a population that viewed themselves as citizens of the national unit or country. Citizenship represents the bonding between individual and country; this bond can range from extremely nationalistic to a relative casual relationship, or in most cases, a balance between those ends of a citizenship spectrum. Those are the historical components of citizenship education. Political science as a discipline represents citizenship education within the curriculum in a more specific, legalistic fashion. Political science entails the study of procedural content that describes the development of government as legislative legalities. Within the curriculum, a frequent pattern for citizenship education is to promote the type of government in power rather than to undertake a comparative study of different types of government. The rationale is often used that citizens need to be educated, beginning in primary school, regarding the operations, expectations, and successes of a government or system that governs the country. Of course, the critical analysis of government by its citizens may result in upheaval against those governments that ignore procedural laws, or it may result in a passive acceptance of the role a government pursues rather than what should be the purpose of government. Other elements of citizenship education, beyond historical accounts and governmental procedures, are components of the curricula in many countries. Citizenship education may also include the morals, ethics, and values that students experience in their studies as they interact within society. Moral and ethical actions result from a lifetime of learning and practice, both in and out of school. However, it is the early years of education that provide the basis for citizens to make sound moral judgments, ethical decisions, and ref lect values that promote the common good. Usually, morals, ethics, and values are merged either specifically or by stealth into the content that students study in school subjects ranging from mathematics to health/physical education. They include the underlying qualities of honesty, fairness, courage, and integrity, just to name a few, that educators aspire to promote in their students regardless of age or subject in school. Morals, ethics, and values are perhaps the very basis from which education as a social practice emerged. They continue to be part of the formal and/ or informal curriculum by virtue of their importance as building blocks of a civil society. Teachers are regularly concerned with student behavior and the civility of the classroom environment as a place to engage with and learn from each other as well as to complete formal studies. The classroom is a part of the larger preparation for living in a civil society. This is the setting where the content being taught and the skills and values which teachers are charged to help students develop intersect with citizenship education. This book is written to help educators determine how geography can be positioned within the curriculum in
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order to assist in the attainment of priorities and objectives regarding citizenship education. Positioning geography in the curriculum so that it complements citizenship education is an obvious way to forge a link between them. For example, we know that history instruction addresses the relationship between the discipline and citizenship preparation. It examines, through time, the relationship between the people and their country. It recognizes past trends that affect current conditions of the civil society. We also know that political science includes much of the procedural aspects of citizenship, including participation in local, regional, and national communities. The question thus becomes: what remains for geography? There remains plenty that geography has to offer within the realm of the civil society, civic participation, informed position taking on issues and public policies that are reflective of place, space, and the environment. The challenge is to identify learning opportunities that engage geographic content and skills and that enhance one’s role as a citizen now and into the future. Those opportunities, perspectives, and suggestions form the basis for this book. What is the past record of geography education forging a link with citizenship education? Geography education has defined its relationship with citizenship in the school curriculum several times since the early 20th century. Perhaps the earliest formal discussion of geography and citizenship in modern times was published in Britain under the title Geography in Education and Citizenship (Barker, 1927). In the 1920s Britain was still a world colonial power and its citizens were residents (referred to as expatriates) throughout the empire. British policymakers were concerned with promoting attachments, both political and emotional, to the home islands. One way to achieve that attachment was through the teaching of geography. Much of the book by Barker was devoted to living elsewhere, but being a citizen of the United Kingdom (UK) and Northern Ireland. The 1920s were also a time when citizenship education was gaining prominence in the United States through the newly implemented social studies curriculum. Citizenship gained a prominent position in the curricula of the individual states in the United States, based on loyalty and attachment to the place. Many states had a single specific requirement for graduation from high school and it was the successful completion of a course in government, civics, or citizenship. Traditionally, geography’s role in citizenship education has been minimal, as I concluded in 1990 ( Stoltman, 1990) after working within the social studies curriculum and with social studies educators. It wasn’t that social studies educators disliked geography, but rather because they viewed little in geography that was related to the roles of a citizen. Following that 1990 review of geography education and citizenship, there was not much additional attention in professional writing specifically addressing geography’s role in citizenship education in the United States. The situation was not much different in other countries, including the UK. Michael Williams, a noted geography educator in the UK, concluded from his research of published bibliographic sources in geography
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education from 1970 to 1990 that the inclusion of citizenship applications by geography educators was sparse. He concluded that “researchers in geography education have paid remarkably little attention to citizenship education” (Williams, 2001, p. 33). However, at the beginning of the 21st century in the UK, there was a major enlightenment regarding geography and citizenship, and it was in response to political developments on the European continent. Beginning in 1989, Europe underwent a major political transition precipitated by the reunification of Germany. Over the next three years, independent and (arguably) democratic governments became operational in nearly all of the countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. That momentous change gave rise to considerable influence and attention by national governments to the topic of citizenship in school curricula. In Africa and Asia during this same period, countries were recovering from colonialism and its residual impact in education, political isolation, conflict, and social unrest. As well as preparing young people as citizens, countries were also faced with preparing citizens for the coming global society. As Michael Williams had observed, geography was not well positioned for the new attention to citizenship that was sweeping through various regions of the globe. Citizenship education increasingly became the subject of legislative processes as countries sought to assure citizens’ attachments to the particular country’s curriculum about governing and civic activity. Curriculum reviews, visits by western educators, and restructuring of schooling were underway in many countries. One example was the book edited by Lambert and Machon (2001), which included the chapter by Williams cited here. Legislation, debate among educators, and the publication of the book brought geography education and citizenship to the forefront in the UK. The book was in response to a governmental movement to increase the attention to citizenship in the national curriculum. The school timetable revolves around a specific number of hours and classes available to students. If citizenship were added, then what would be decreased to keep the timetable in balance? Geography teachers did not want to sacrifice any portion of their subject’s time, so the response was to identify the role that geography could play in citizenship education. In many ways the book, Citizenship through Secondary Geography, was a masterful move that further substantiated geography as essential content for all students, but that also recognized the importance of citizenship education at the beginning of the 21st century. The book provided a public statement regarding the importance of geography as a component of citizenship education and the significance of the discipline in furthering the goals of a civil society. In many countries, history and political science generally share a broad brief regarding their dominant role in citizenship education. The dominance of the role is clearly established by both the nature of each discipline and the way they are viewed by the public. Both disciplines are able to incorporate the story of a country’s political evolution in an interesting and informative fashion. The
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current book has focused the spotlight on geography as a component of citizenship. What does geography education bring to the civic mission of education regarding issues at local, national, and international scales? Geography’s main content in the curriculum is concerned with three widely recognized elements: space, place, and the natural environment. The authors of the chapters delve into discussions of geography, education, and citizenship in order to provide a clear pathway for the discipline’s contribution to the preparation of students for civic life. Chapter 1 is written by the co-editors of the book, Euikyung E. Shin and Sarah Witham Bednarz. They speak to the importance of citizenship in education and explain its role as a pivotal core within geography. Like reading instruction, citizenship education is a right of all students and a responsibility of all teachers. Learning about the political processes and power relations of a country’s government has been practiced in the education fabric of schooling for many centuries. The editors have guided the preparation of the chapters in the book to envelop geography as a discipline and demonstrate its contributions to citizenship education. David Lambert ( Chapter 3) reflects on the potential impact of a multi-year educational project in the European Union that applies powerful knowledge as a critical component for being an informed, responsible citizen. He presents geographic knowledge and skills as being the basis for a citizens’ toolkit necessary to address issues related to the local community, country, and world. The ability to act in an informed manner is made possible by a foundation in geographic content that makes connections to the world in which students live. A powerful content background in geography enables people to use the content in an array of citizen roles throughout their lives. Sarah Witham Bednarz and Robert S. Bednarz (Chapter 5) put geography squarely in citizenship education by citing the importance of spatial and geospatial thinking. They argue that the spatial viewpoint extends through the applications of geographical tools and provides a means to analyze civic activities and citizenship behaviors. Spatial technology is a powerful pedagogical tool for teachers to use in the study and practice of citizenship, with numerous opportunities for students to engage software when examining issues or solving problems. Geospatial information processing and mapping permit the visual analysis and discussion of civic spatial patterns that range from voting to planning community projects. Sandra J. Schmidt ( Chapter 4) presents geography’s role in citizenship education as an opportunity to equalize citizen opportunities, including opportunities to participate (voting, policy making), to be employed (workforce preparation), and to have affordable and adequate housing (residential equality), among other social and economic issues. The author builds the case that citizenship is deeply engrained in the struggle for political power, the major determinant of representation in any political system. Spatially relevant issues that cross over
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between geography and citizenship include poverty, social justice, and political disenfranchisement. Stephen J. Thornton ( Chapter 2) begins with a general revisiting of geography’s linkage to education, beginning with John Dewey. The social studies movement in the United States is then addressed, focusing on the opportunities, missed opportunities, and potential to build a mutually beneficial link between geography and citizenship education. The author concludes that geography’s efforts to address and improve the civic competencies of elementary and secondary students has been sporadic. He further discusses and encourages teacher educators and the preparation of teachers to demonstrate the importance of content in order to build civic competency. Todd W. Kenreich ( Chapter 6) takes the approach that fieldwork in geography is an important gateway for civic and moral development among elementary and secondary students. In the absence of fieldwork in most schools, the emphasis on inquiry as a classroom pedagogy becomes the next best option for delving into issues that confront citizens. Kenreich presents a case study in which inquiry and geospatial technologies are used to develop civic narratives in the form of story maps. An out-of-school presentation to a local civic group is used to communicate the conclusions of the study. Thus, citizenship and geography education are presented as civic participation culminating with the presentation of compelling geography information. Tom Baker, Mary Curtis, and Lisa Millsaps ( Chapter 8) present the case for the development of the spatial citizen as a goal of education in geography. The widely popular and increasingly necessary use of geospatial applications in cellphones and cars, and the ubiquity of location-based tracking services ranging from devices used with bird banding and Earth movement sensing, have made a majority of people spatial citizens. The authors argue that geospatial technologies have expanded citizenship and civic engagement beyond local and national borders to become a global platform by way of virtual communities. Emphasis is given to applying geospatial technologies within the various school disciplines that deliver curricula for citizenship, decision making, and problem solving. Elizabeth R. Hinde (Chapter 9) draws attention to the development of citizenship experiences in the elementary curriculum and in pre-service teacher education. The author reminds readers that the purpose of education is to launch students towards meaningful lives and to develop the dispositions and skills necessary for responsible citizenship. An advantage for geography is the early engagement in local studies and the gradual expansion to the study of the world in many curricula. In the 21st century that process is accelerated considerably and young students can begin participating globally with other communities of student citizens through both planned and unplanned interactions along the social pathways of the World Wide Web. The ability to connect with students in other places expands school and national boundaries within which students navigate socially and academically. Geography education has the technology and
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conceptual core for participation in making those connections meaningful experiences for citizenship education. Injeong Jo ( Chapter 10) builds the case that a citizen’s activities are enhanced if students have the preparation to locate and use geospatial information. As students make decisions and participate in the democratic process, the skills and knowledge gained from geography prove to be valuable in both analyzing and communicating the results of their inquiries. The author researched bibliographies with citizenship and geospatial knowledge cross-referenced as a methodology. The author concluded that there remains a dearth of research or applied articles in the literature explaining geography’s role in citizenship education. Recommended steps to remedy the situation include research publications devoted to the topic; the engagement of teachers and students in community projects that use digital maps on computers and hand-held devices; and to engage students in the development of citizen story boards addressing issues of significance to the public. M. Beth Schlemper and Victoria C. Stewart ( Chapter 7) approach geography’s role in citizenship education from a critical pedagogical perspective. The political and social transformation of society envisioned by the authors will require a gateway for greater geography education via citizenship education. This is because citizenship education addresses the fundamental procedures of government and civic participation, and geography provides the content and skills that will make civic participation meaningful and fruitful. The authors use the example of geography education as the means to enact place-based learning. The place-based approach necessitates a focus on local communities and the issues faced by those communities. The means for geography to participate is under the umbrella of citizenship education and the application of geographic content, concepts, and skills, including the use of geographic information systems and mapping. Citizenship and civic responsibility are largely based on information that is provided by direct observation or from reliable sources. Geography provides a powerful means to acquire information, apply skills of analysis, and present information in a format that is visual (maps) and interactive (computer models). Many of the chapters in this book suggest that geospatial information and spatial technologies provide the discipline of geography with a widely recognized prominence in civic issues. Students in geography may be actively engaged in collecting, organizing, analyzing, and presenting the information of significance regarding issues of importance to individual citizens and their communities. Local participation in matters of civic importance is a basic element of citizenship. Citizens everywhere interact in their communities, regardless of where those communities are located on Earth. A persistent and compelling aspect of civilizations has been civic involvement, but not necessarily equal participation by all members. Within Greek civilization, there was a conscientious attention to engage communities in civic
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activities, but not everyone in Greek society was included and not everyone was a citizen. During the past 300 years, the preparation of young people for responsible citizenship and the promotion of civic values and attitudes has rested within the broader realm of formal education. Geography has been a relatively recent addition to the disciplines that are increasingly forging linkages to citizenship education. The chapters in this book clearly recognize that the powerful, disciplinary content of geography provides a means to understand the world and its dynamic social and physical systems. Applying that understanding to civic engagement has been enhanced by the introduction of geospatial technologies and information, both of which are increasingly available to citizens. It is possible for citizens to encounter situations or recognize issues, both large and small, and begin the process of inquiring about possible solutions using the content, skills, and values that comprise geography. The chapters in this book are a major step forward in disseminating the ways geographic knowledge and skills may enhance citizenship education. Joseph P. Stoltman
References Barker, W. (1927). Geography in education and citizenship. London: University of London. Carnegie Corporation of New York. (2003). The civic mission of schools. New York, NY: Carnegie Corporation of New York. Lambert, D., & Machon, P. (Eds.). (2001). Citizenship through secondary geography. London: Routledge Falmer. Stoltman, J. P. (1990). Geography education for citizenship. Bloomington, IN: Social Studies Development Center. Williams, M. (2001). Citizenship a democracy education. In D. Lambert & P. Machon (Eds.), Citizenship through secondary geography (p. 33). London: Routledge Falmouth.
1 CONCEPTUALIZING SPATIAL CITIZENSHIP Euikyung E. Shin and Sarah Witham Bednarz
The purpose of this book is to make the case for geography’s vital and necessary role in the preparation of citizens. We coin the phrase spatial citizenship to illustrate how we believe that geography can contribute to a new type of citizen—one with an enhanced understanding of the world as seen through the key concepts of geography: space, place, scale, power, and human-environment relationships. In this brief introduction to the book we describe what we mean by spatial citizenship, examine the ways that geography has (and has not) participated in the past in citizenship education, and preview how the authors whose work is collected here envision spatial citizenship. To be clear, we assert that citizenship, however defined, is inherently spatial and recognizing that relationship enables productive and positive engagement with important societal issues such as equity, justice, and environmental stewardship.
Space Geography studies the world from two perspectives: the spatial and the environmental (Heffron & Downs, 2012). The environmental perspective focuses on the complex interactions between the physical and human worlds in which we live. Infused in the exploration of these relationships is the primary tool of analysis geographers use, considering space. All events take place in space— Earth space—and the relations among people, places, and environments are spatial. They are also dynamic, constantly changing and evolving, influenced by a number of factors, including power and control. Geographers use space to conceptualize the patterns and processes we observe, including key contemporary processes such as urbanization and globalization, hence, the importance of the spatial in geography.
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Developing an understanding of space and taking a spatial perspective as a habit of mind contributes to the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that determine students’ views of the physical and social world (Anderson, 1983; Wade, 2001; Williams, 2001). This idea forms the core of The National Geography Standards (Heffron & Downs, 2012) which are the definitive statement on what geography should be taught and learned in the United States. Subtitled Geography for Life, the Standards assert that the goal of geography education is to help students become geographically informed people who can make important decisions about our well-being in regard to environmental, political, and societal issues (Heffron & Downs, 2012). Until the release of the Standards, some critics might argue that geography had only played a marginal and ambiguous role in citizenship education (see Stoltman’s Preface in this volume for an account of this observation). The Standards attempted to change that position by firmly making three points: that geography education’s goals aligned with the goals of citizenship education; that geography had something significant to contribute to citizenship education; and that a promising approach was through actively doing geography. Through geographic inquiry, encapsulated in five fundamental skills (asking geographic questions, collecting geographic information, organizing geographic information, analyzing geographic information, and answering geographic questions), young people could learn to make informed decisions in, for, and about society. So, the idea of spatialized (geographically enhanced) citizenship was born. These skills have since been revised and re-conceptualized as the practices of geography. The term practice better captures the complexity of the behaviors that comprise authentic geographic inquiry and problem solving (Road Map for 21st Century Geography Education, 2013). A central concern for geography educators, thus, is designing ways to support students in acquiring and exercising these practices to do geography in active and authentic ways to support sound citizenship. But what is “sound citizenship”?
Citizenship Because of our pluralistic, immigrant culture, the experience of a civil war, and ongoing perceived needs to create a unified, national identity, the United States has struggled with the issue of citizenship. One institution used to achieve the goal of identity formation has been public education. The creation of an informed citizenry, able to participate in democratic institutions, has always been a primary goal of America’s schools (Thornton, 2004). At the beginning of the 20th century, when immigration was at an all-time high, the stated purpose for social studies was to promote patriotism and citizenship in order to assimilate newcomers into “American” society. This concern has persisted into this century leading to a parochial view of citizenship focused solely on national identity and patriotism (Myers, 2006). This is mirrored in the views on amnesty for the
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thousands of Dreamers here in the United States. Critics on the right emphasize the illegal nature of their status and use this as justification for their immediate deportation rather than sympathizing with their plight and actual contribution to society. Typically, school curricula focus on citizenship in a formal, legal sense and its accompanying rights and duties, including the responsibility to participate in governance in appropriate ways. Political scientists and social studies educators have proposed several definitions and ways to frame the issue of citizenship (see Bednarz and Bednarz in this volume for a discussion of several) as a way to work toward clear goals. One well-accepted scheme identifies three versions of citizenship: the personally responsible citizen, the participatory citizen, and the justice-oriented citizen (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004). Another perspective of citizenship promotes self-interest and ways identity politics affect decisions about collective issues, especially issues that are not limited within spatial boundaries (Lambert & Machon, 2001). Critical geographers and social studies educators are examining the concept of citizenship and how to develop young people’s nuanced and empowered perspectives through critical spatial thinking ( Gordon, Elwood, & Mitchell, 2016). For the purposes of this book, we understand that the concept of citizenship is not “fixed” (Lambert & Machon, 2001, p. 4) and is highly contested. This book is grounded on a conceptual understanding of citizenship rather than on operational or procedural classifications and regulations related to obtaining citizenship.
Geospatial Technologies The geospatial revolution, the explosive and concurrent growth of geospatial technologies and location-based social media, has changed our world, how we live, and the discipline of geography, particularly how it is taught and learned. As Downs (2014) makes clear, the ubiquity of GIS, Remote Sensing, GPS, and associated technologies, particularly mapping technologies, has affected the relationships people have with each other and the world in which they live. Enormous amounts of geographic, spatial data are available digitally, in real time. We are tracked on closed circuit television systems; we check in to let friends know where we are through Facebook and Yelp; our smartphones track our physical activities and locations. We express our opinions on a range of issues frequently through Twitter, Instagram, and other sharing applications. We report on traffic patterns, complain about neighbors who don’t pick up their garbage, and alert authorities about suspicious activities through place-oriented social media. We use our smartphones to video and hold witness to events we encounter, to be shared on social media to make social and political statements. Who we are, where we are, what we do, and how we feel is shared in spatial contexts. The world is at everyone’s fingertips, all the time ( Downs, 2014).
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This new and evolving, hyper-connected world is changing society and individuals as members of society. It is also affecting our roles as citizens and at a range of scales. Geographers, leaders in the use of geospatial technologies, are thinking about the challenges and opportunities for educators to take a leadership role in preparing the next generation of geospatially literate citizens. This has led to new thinking about the contribution of geography education to citizenship education since the recent development of geospatial technologies, social media, and the increased availability of such technologies has enabled new ways to participate in democratic practices (Schulze, Gryl, & Kanwischer, 2014). While there has been a thin thread of ongoing conversations about promoting spatial citizenship using geospatial technologies, this book we hope will fill a long overdue gap in geography and social studies education by exploring ways to engage and promote citizenship through spatial and geographic perspectives, with and without the use of technologies.
A Guide to Spatial Citizenship The subtitle to this book is Citizenship through Geography. To outline the argument for this premise, we invited both geography and social studies educators to contribute, knowing that while these are two distinct intellectual groups, both would offer valuable perspectives and examples of spatial citizenship. The first three chapters following this one establish the context for spatial citizenship. We begin in Chapter 2 with an examination of geography as a social study provided by Stephen J. Thornton. He takes an historical perspective to trace the relationship between the social studies and citizenship education to ask: “What kind of geography will likely result in educating for civic competence?” He provides insights into what he terms, “the relative passivity” of geographers to account for the traditional lack of engagement with civic education and, in the process, comments on the marginal position of geography within the social studies. His deep knowledge of the history of geography brings him to illustrate the methods the pioneering geography educator Lucy Sprague Mitchell used to prepare young learners for life in society. To conclude, Thornton asks, “The great question still confronting us is what conditions will support it (civic education) more broadly and how can that knowledge be used to inform both curriculum policies and teacher education?” Chapter 3, written by the British geography educator David Lambert, takes a different, yet still foundational look at spatial citizenship through the lens of two ideas: geocapabilities and powerful knowledge. Building off the capabilities approach suggested by Nussbaum and Sen (1993), Lambert explains GeoCapabilities as the ways geography contributes to developing an educated person and to the “beings and doings of people, their agency and ultimately their freedom.” He links GeoCapabilities to spatial citizenship as a mechanism to frame geography curriculum, bringing in the idea proposed by Michael Young (2008)
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of powerful knowledge. Powerful knowledge is that disciplinary knowledge that affords its holder with useful and important understandings that generate further and deeper learning. Ultimately, Lambert makes the case for the role of geography in educating, “informed, autonomous, and critical citizens ready for the challenges of his day and age.” He positions traditional geography squarely in the realm of citizenship education. Sandra J. Schmidt, in Chapter 4, takes an equally philosophical and feministcritical tack to explore the role of space in citizenship education, explaining her stance that, “Critical theories in geography provide a framework and discourse for exploring citizenship as a spatial process, one shaped by and repeatedly shaping socio-political contexts.” She uses four case studies and the 2017 Women’s March to illustrate her central points about the spatial dimensions of citizenship and the ways that some individuals are marginalized and not involved in the processes of belonging that are a component of being a citizen. She concludes her powerful chapter by asking how the “spatial claims and renegotiations of spaces” can bring the voices of the underrepresented forward. In distinctive but very useful ways these three chapters build the argument for geography’s unique and important contribution to citizenship education. The next four chapters examine the ways that geospatial technologies can be used to support and extend spatial citizenship. Chapter 5 by Sarah Witham Bednarz and Robert S. Bednarz examines how citizenship education can be fostered in our current hyper-connected, Internet-focused world through geospatial technologies and social media. They root their comments in the call by Kahne, Hodgin, and Eidman-Aadahl (2016) to redesign civic education to respond to the changes in political life in the United States brought by digital technologies. They review several competing conceptualizations of citizenship and suggest ways to prepare young people for civic engagement through geography, maps, and spatial analysis. This chapter grounds the following chapters which capture very specific case studies of precisely this tactic. Todd W. Kenreich presents a fascinating case study of work in inner-city Baltimore in Chapter 6. He, colleagues, and teachers developed a community mapping project one year following the devastating riots in 2015 following the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. The teachers were introduced to Story Maps, a presentation template produced by ESRI, to spark their imaginations on ways to interest students spatially about their own communities. The chapter then follows a teacher and her fourth-grade students in their personal mapping project thinking geographically about the neighborhood in which they lived. The chapter concludes with a very useful guide to initiating a similar project. Chapter 7 echoes Kenreich’s initiative in Baltimore in encouraging young people to use spatial thinking and geospatial technologies for civic purposes. Schlemper and Stewart use the idea of critical pedagogy as a foundation to their work with high school-aged African American students in Toledo, Ohio. They
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developed a summer program to prepare students to understand their community and its challenges through a spatial lens. The intellectual framework for the project rested in a curriculum model they devised, influenced by the wellknown 5E model. The students learned how to develop inquiry projects and how to use geospatial tools to assist in their research. The results are explained in the chapter and like Kenreich’s, Schlemper and Stewart provide a detailed outline of how to use the experiential model and why, based on their research, it works to support student civic engagement. The final chapter in this section, Chapter 8, by Baker, Curtis, and Millsaps, explores the use of a range of geospatial technologies and provides a rich guide to how to use such technologies in school settings. The discussion in this chapter on teacher professional development is important because all of the endeavors described in the previous two chapters depend upon partnerships among educators, young people, and the university personnel who are committed to civic education. If Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are about why spatial citizenship is valuable, together, these last four chapters are about how to implement spatialized programs for civic education. The concluding three chapters focus on institutional and developmental issues related to citizenship education. Chapter 9 by Elizabeth R. Hinde considers the capabilities of young children and ways to support their geographic and spatial knowledge. The chapter acknowledges the many barriers to teaching geography and the social studies in elementary schools these days, including teachers’ poor preparation in geography, but suggests some work-arounds. The chapter makes us aware of how much work needs to be done to restore civic education to the mission of public education and concludes hopeful that innovative educators will find ways to subvert the system of high stakes testing and over-emphasis on language arts and mathematics. The following chapter, written by Injeong Jo, researches the presence of spatial citizenship in secondary geography curriculum. Jo conducted an exhaustive review of the literature to examine the status of spatial citizenship in teaching, with and without the use of geospatial technologies. She finds few instances in which the concept and core competencies of spatial citizenship exist currently. However, to conclude, she discusses the opportunities for more work in this arena arising from the adoption of the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies coming from the National Council for the Social Studies (2013). In the final chapter, Shin discusses the important link between teacher education and spatial citizenship. She asserts that teachers’ spatial knowledge and skills are the critical foundation for the infusion of spatial citizenship in their curriculum and practices. Teacher education, she claims, should provide opportunities to build the spatial knowledge and skills teachers need to enhance and direct their instruction to take this perspective. Lastly, Shin calls for elevating spatial citizenship by drawing more attention to it. This is the central way to foster teachers’ professional commitment to spatial citizenship because teachers’ epistemologies affect their practices and students’ learning.
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The Road Forward The Road Map for 21st Century Geography Education (Bednarz, Heffron, & Huynh, 2013), a foundational examination of the status of geography education funded by the National Science Foundation, suggested a way to build capacity in geography education was to develop a focused, concerted, systematic framework to guide research. To conclude this introduction, we suggest that geography and social studies educators need to craft such a research agenda focused on the intersection of civic education and spatial citizenship. The Road Map proposed four education-related research questions, each capturing a different aspect of geography education. These questions were thought to be applicable to geography learners of all ages and educational backgrounds, whether they were engaged through schools or informal communities, including pre-service students preparing to teach geography. We offer these as clear targets for future research in spatial citizenship, with some modifications.
Question 1: How Do Geographic Knowledge, Skills, and Practices Develop Across Individuals, Settings, and Time? This question considers three dimensions of learning: individual differences, settings, and time. Research about how individuals learn, how they learn at different timescales (e.g., during a single session, a course, or a sequence of courses), and how they learn across significant life transitions (e.g., from youth to adulthood) is needed. Settings refer to organized activities that offer participants the opportunity to learn knowledge and skills. Most importantly, research concerning how individuals in a range of contexts and socio-economic conditions develop the disposition to think spatially (and geographically) is important. In the context of citizenship education, research concerning this question should consider the knowledge and skills foundational to learning about civic life through geography as well as the learning progressions in the subject. Are there key concepts that must be addressed before a deep appreciation of larger scale issues can be grasped? Related to this is concerns that all young people have the opportunities to explore their communities with and without geospatial technologies. The digital divide exists and could work to privilege some learners over others. We need research focused on how individuals’ exposure to and experiences of civic decision-making processes, with or without geospatial technologies, influence their participation in society.
Question 2: How Do Geographic Knowledge, Skills, and Practices Develop Across the Different Elements of Geography? Geography is a varied discipline encompassing both physical and social sciences as well as the humanities. Each aspect of the discipline demands different
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cognitive processes to learn. Developing a concern about the presence of liquor stores in a community as Kenreich described in Chapter 6 may require different background knowledge and implies different approaches to mapping and problem solving than does a question about sustainability or developing an ability to practice ethical geographic reasoning. Research should illuminate the specific ways content shapes the skills, practices, and ways of thinking critical to the development of spatial citizenship in varied dimensions and applications.
Question 3: What Supports or Promotes the Development of Geographic Knowledge, Skills, and Practices? In the course of everyday activities, especially in our hyper-mediated world, young people develop forms of naïve geographical thinking and reasoning. They have an understanding of the community in which they live and their society gleaned from personal experience, television, and the Internet. However, such understandings may be rife with misconceptions, stereotypes, and biases. They will not serve well to make decisions in civil societies. More sophisticated patterns of reasoning require external support. Curriculum, instructional materials, and teaching strategies, both in classrooms and in realworld settings such as through fieldwork, create the foundation for learning. Geography and social studies educators must understand how learners acquire the core ideas of the relevant disciplines and how to support and nurture students’ intellectual growth. There is a concurrent need for research on the implementation and effects of various participatory pedagogies on spatial citizenship and civic education.
Question 4: What Is Necessary to Support the Effective and Broad Implementation of the Development of Geographic Knowledge, Skills, and Practices? To sustain new practices and new ways of shaping young people’s sense of civic engagement, we must simultaneously introduce and sustain strategies to support their implementation. This will require research concerning teacher preparation and professional development. Institutionalizing and supporting implementation of innovations in teacher preparation may require research about teacher knowledge and the beliefs that influence their approach to civic education (including their subject and pedagogical content knowledge). Finally, more research about the institutional forces and policies that shape the role and status of geography and the social studies in education systems is required. Together, these research questions may provide a starting place and an agenda and direction for geography education research on spatial citizenship.
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References Anderson, R. C. (1983). Geography’s role in promoting global citizenship. NASSA Bulletin, 67, 80–83. Bednarz, S., Heffron, S., & Huynh, N. (Eds.). (2013). A road map for 21st century geography education. Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers. Downs, R. M. (2014). Coming of age in the geospatial revolution: The geographic self re-defined. Human Development, 57, 35–57. Gordon, E., Elwood, S., & Mitchell, K. (2016). Critical spatial learning: Participatory mapping, spatial histories, and youth civic engagement. Children’s Geographies, 14 (5), 558–572, doi: 10.1080/14733285.2015.1136736 Heffron, S. M., & Downs, R. M. (2012). Geography for life: National geography standards. Washington, DC: National Council for Geographic Education. Kahne, J., Hodgin, E., & Eidman-Aadahl, E. (2016). Redesigning civic education for the digital age: Participatory politics and the pursuit of democratic engagement. Theory and Research in Social Education, 44 (1), 1–35. Lambert, D., & Machon, P. (Eds.). (2001). Citizenship through secondary geography. London: Routledge Falmer. Myers, J. P. (2006). Rethinking the social studies curriculum in the context of globalization: Education for global citizenship in the US. Theory & Research in Social Education, 34 (3), 370–394. National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) (2013). The college, career, and civic life (C3) framework for social studies state standards: Guidance for enhancing the rigor of K-12 civics, economics, geography, and history. Silver Spring, MD: NCSS. Nussbaum, M., & Sen, A. (1993). The quality of life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schulze, U., Gryl, I., & Kanwischer, D. (2014). Spatial citizenship: Creating a curriculum for teacher education. GI_Forum Conference Proceedings. doi: 10.1553/giscience2014s230 Thornton, S. J. (2004). Citizenship education and social studies curriculum change after 9/11. In Social education in the twentieth century: Curriculum and context for citizenship (pp. 210–220). New York: Peter Lang. Wade, R. (2001). Global citizenship: Choices and change. In D. Lambert & P. Machon (Eds.), Citizenship through secondary geography (pp. 161–181). London: Routledge Falmer. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 237–269. Williams, M. (2001). Citizenship and democracy education: Geography’s place, an international perspective. In D. Lambert & P. Machon (Eds.), Citizenship through secondary geography (pp. 31–41). London: Routledge Falmer. Young, M. (2008). Bringing knowledge back in. London: Routledge.
2 GEOGRAPHY AS A SOCIAL STUDY Its Significance for Civic Competence Stephen J. Thornton
Over a century ago John Dewey (1966) recommended teaching “geographical subject matter in its vital human bearings” (p. 211). The outcome of such instruction would be, he predicted, that “our doings gain in significant content” (p. 208). Since that time, however, limited progress has been made toward his vision. This chapter asks why and what it might look like if such a vision were realized. First I explore what it means to link geography to citizenship objectives. I next turn to how such an emphasis can inform school geography. Then, given the predominance of history, especially U.S. history, in American social studies programs, I examine how both it and geography may be profitably combined as studies in the service of citizenship education. Finally, I hypothesize how one aspect of teacher education, better preparing educators to teach the kind of curriculum described herein, might be approached. The geographer Jan O. M. Broek (1966) reminded us that the social sciences “stem from a common pool of knowledge” (p. 3; see also Barton, 2017; Thornton & Barton, 2010). He continued, “What distinguishes [geography] from the other[s] . . . is its concern with the character of ‘place,’ that is, the integrated whole of a people and its habitat, and the interrelations between places” (p. 3). For a century now, geography has in the United States and some other nations been combined with other social sciences (including history) to form a social studies curriculum. A key justification offered for this curriculum was that collectively the social sciences can contribute to the development of civic competence in children and adolescents. How does geography fit in this scheme? One answer can be found in Geographic approaches to social education (Kohn, 1948a), the only yearbook-treatment the National Council for the Social Studies, the leading professional association in social studies, ever afforded the relationship. In the foreword, the volume’s editor (Kohn, 1948b) pointed out “geographic
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knowledge and understanding” contributes to “insight into human problems” but adds as a caution that this academic exposure may not be enough for young people “to develop a point of view about life situations.” Developing such a point of view requires provision of “learning experiences which will give . . . opportunities to look at everyday affairs [emphasis added] from a geographic point of view” (p. vii). Proponents of connecting everyday affairs to the academic subject generally recommend instruction through themes or problems intended to invite active, intelligent student inquiry (Noddings, 2006; Watras, 2009). Dewey (1966) thought such an approach engages “a person in specific activities having an aim or purpose of moment or interest to him” (p. 132). Before proceeding, a note on “civic competence” which serves as an indicator of effective citizenship education. Citizenship education has traditionally been used to denote the public sphere more than the private sphere. But citizenship in a democracy involves more than “a form of government,” it is, Dewey (1966) memorably continued, “a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience” (p. 87). Thus I am using “citizenship” and “civic competence” in a broad way that includes, for instance, family and communal life as well as more traditional civics-study focused on politics and economics ( Crocco, Munro, & Weiler, 1999; Noddings, 2013). In the same manner I take into account the civic implications of the relationship between place and identity (Noddings, 2005). As Sandra Schmidt (2011) points out, “one of the identities common in the teaching of places is citizenship” (p. 107).
The Idea of Connecting Geography to Citizenship Education We should recognize that students are unlikely to learn what is not in the curriculum. Nonetheless, there is ample evidence that the mere presence of geography in the curriculum offers no guarantees for citizenship purposes. The subject must be marshaled to the task. Unlike civics, which was created as a school social study for purposes of citizenship education, geography exists as an academic subject independently of its uses in school or community programs, what we might call “disciplinary geography.” It may require adaptation to unlock its potential for citizenship education and therefore school geography can be, and sometimes has been, divergent from a simplification of the “grown-up” discipline. In a book directed at educators, the geographer Isaiah Bowman (1934) identified some reasons for this divergence: “Geography has an important place in the social studies not by ‘proving’ things about complex reality, but by introducing a point of view, by expertly handling specialized data, and by expressing generalizations with . . . caution” (p. 31). Pioneer social-studies curriculum maker Harold Rugg (1939) similarly warned that the social sciences approached merely as they are currently understood in higher education hold no special warrant as citizenship education.
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Consequently, consideration of advanced secondary-school courses intended to mimic college-level work such as in Advanced Placement Human Geography are beyond the scope of this chapter. Rather, I am interested here in the academic study of geography primarily for purposes of citizenship education. This approach, broadly understood, has a long history. In the aftermath of the American Revolution geographic writing was already being consciously employed to build national identity (Livingstone, 2005). While 19th-century school geography tended to emphasize physical geography via recitation of geographic terms and locations of natural features, it was nonetheless connected to issues of citizenship and national identity, albeit in baldly nationalistic form. For example, school geographies, as school geography textbooks were called, encouraged students’ pride in the American landscape by boasting of its “magnificent size and its future possibilities” (Elson, 1964, p. 37; see also Schulten, 2001). School geographies of the 19th and early 20th centuries, too, validated racial hierarchies ( Spearman, 2012) effectively legitimating only European Americans as deserving of full political citizenship. By 1900 the trend was for school geography to connect physical geography with the life of people (Bednarz & Bednarz, 1992; see also Barton, 2009). For example, Dewey (1966) declared that the “definition of geography as an account of the earth as the home of man expresses the educational reality” (p. 211). Growing acceptance of this viewpoint pushed geography in the American curriculum from a mostly natural-science study to a mostly social-science study. Eventually geography came—along with history and civics—to be considered a keystone of the new overarching field of social studies. Once having adopted a social perspective, geographers might then have reasonably been expected to settle into their subject’s role as part of a social studies framework. However, a lasting pattern was set in the early decades of the 20th century: geographers and geographic educators did not enter the curricular fray with anything like the energy and enthusiasm shown by proponents of U.S. history and civics. These proponents proceeded to lay claim to the lion’s share of the social studies curriculum for history and civics. This process was abetted by the appearance of history and civics textbooks that were attuned to the demands of educating citizens (Thornton, 2008). The relative passivity of geographers may help explain why a particularly robust discourse on just how geography served the citizenship objectives of social studies failed to emerge, or at least failed relative to history and civics. These circumstances effectively left geography as both part of social studies and to some degree its curricular rival. Indeed it should hardly be surprising that sometimes geographers and their allies did openly wonder whether geography should stand apart from social studies. But mostly they had to reconcile themselves to the fact that social studies was apparently a permanent part of the curriculum landscape. The bigger question became how substantial a slice of social studies programs geography could secure. Geographers’ quest
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for satisfactory answers to this question as well as to finding consensus among themselves about it has occupied them down to the present day (Bednarz, Heffron, & Solem, 2014). Nevertheless, whatever qualms geographers may have had—and admittedly to varying degrees from one curriculum situation to the next—from the outset geography was recognized as key to social studies programs. For instance, the report generally credited with popularizing the term “social studies” recommended considerable work in the seventh and eighth grades in geography, “which should be closely correlated with the history and civics” (Dunn, 1916, p. 14). Some years later a related approach was evident in the much more detailed curriculum materials constructed by Rugg (1941) to explicate “how people live together” (p. 194). These materials became an early archetype for the social studies field and hence the materials’ manner in coopting geography into a crossdisciplinary exploration of the problems of modern social life would be fitfully imitated thereafter. Rugg judged this method as exactly the way geography (and all the other social sciences) ought to be utilized in order to prepare children and adolescents for associated living. Indeed, he proudly announced that his method led to “the frequent obliteration of the lines between conventional ‘subjects’ such as history, geography, civics” (Rugg, 1939, p. 149). Geographers asked, however, whether his and related social-studies methods inherently short-changed specifically geographic knowledge and skills (Bednarz & Bednarz, 1992)? As Rugg’s case demonstrates, geographers and geographic educators (more frequently the same people then than now) often in practice left geography’s curricular fate in the hands of social studies educators. This did not entirely rule out curriculum initiatives specific to geography but these tended to occur only periodically (Fraser & Stoltman, 2001). One historian of geographic education characterized geographic educators as generally “distancing themselves from curriculum reform” as well as from “from schoolteachers” (Schulten, 2001, p. 124). Meanwhile, perhaps unsurprisingly, the geography that did find its way into school programs seldom seemed enough or of the right type to satisfy specialists in geographic education. For instance, sometimes geography played no more than an enabling role in social studies courses such as by naming or locating places in history lessons but without focus on spatial concerns ( Gregg & Leinhardt, 1993). Frequently “the same few geographic concepts,” education researchers Madeleine Gregg and Gaea Leinhardt (1994) discerned, “are taught over and over” when the subject is only taught in tandem with other social studies such as history or political science (p. 314). At times geography curriculum and instruction, an astute analyst (Muessig, 1987) once observed, became something of a see-saw between “brief, superficial factual information on . . . topics such as landforms, climate, vegetation . . . communication, and population” and “address[ing] significant personal and social concerns” (p. 522). Much of the time, the former method prevailed in classroom practice. Geographers were wont to complain such methods were a predictable outcome of teacher preparation that featured
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the broad range of subjects in the school social studies curriculum rather than intensive training in geography. Thus far, I have suggested that frequently school geography holds a weak connection to citizenship objectives even when curriculum policies demanded substantial linkage. In the next section, I take up how addressing such objectives might be advanced in geography curriculum and instruction.
Geography Taught for Citizenship Geography taught for citizenship suggests the selection of appropriate topics for study. Appropriateness is gauged by relevance to the demands of associated living. But as Nel Noddings (2003) insists, “Simply being about . . . associated life . . . is not sufficient justification for including a topic in the curriculum.” (p. 255) After all, just about any topic in geography is somehow related to associated life. Rather, she underscores, such curricular justification involves a “careful search” for “topics that may enhance” associated life (p. 255). What does this look like? No educator has better exemplified how this “enhancement” might be accomplished than Lucy Sprague Mitchell (1991). Here I will focus on geography in elementary education although these methods are readily adaptable for older students. Mitchell was concerned that schoolchildren live in a world of “end-products . . . removed from the forces which determine the functioning” of the environment they inhabit (p. 6). Mitchell saw active geographic inquiry as the remedy. By “endproducts” she meant, for example, that with the food they consumed schoolchildren lacked understanding of how food moved farm to table. The educational explorations Mitchell recommended might include visits to a local food distribution warehouse so children could “develop the habits of firsthand observation and experimentation and the attendant ‘relationship thinking’” (p. 7). Mitchell (1991) saw geographic relationships as key to understanding the broader world and not just the local area she emphasized with younger elementary-school children. For instance, she describes how older elementary children (12-year-olds) were introduced to the study of modern European history. The students began with an abstract (that is, without political maps or related information) discussion of how natural barriers and national political borders might be related. Drawing on their existing knowledge and surmises, the students decided that the two types of borders did not always coincide. They continued to deliberate about what modern nations needed to live such as natural resources and access to trade routes. Eventually the students were supplied with political maps showing the actual national borders of the day as well as the distribution of some important natural resources and transportation routes. They then proceeded to explore the hypotheses they had come up with earlier. They discussed how the Pyrenees and the Alps might cause transportation problems for the Iberian nations and Italy, respectively. They considered how the location
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of natural resources sometimes failed to coincide with the nation in which they were needed by industries. And so on. Notably, too, disciplinary boundaries were regularly crossed suggesting the artificiality of disciplinary boundaries in addressing real-world problems. The students were well-placed for and had already anticipated many key problems to come later in fuller form in their study of European history (pp. 20–21). Her biographer (Antler, 1987) summarized Mitchell’s approach to geographic relationships: “The essence of thinking meant seeing, understanding, and interpreting relationships—in this case [geography] between earth forces, social groups, cultural traditions, and work habits. Students could discover this interrelationship if they thought scientifically and experimentally, rather than vicariously” (p. 298). This conclusion about Mitchell’s approach to geography is echoed by more recent scholars (e.g., Downs, 2016; Vascellaro, 2011). A word is in order about instructional arrangements in Mitchell’s scheme. As valuable as the information identified was as an advance organizer for their study of European history, the information alone would have been insufficient for securing the kind of learning that occurred. The discovery exercise (possibly with some unobtrusive scaffolding from the teacher) was significantly an exercise in active student inquiry for which “telling” them the information could be no substitute. Mitchell, like others since (e.g., Slavin, 1992; Vascellaro, 2011), recognized in the group problem solving that the collaborative experience was in itself a major objective relevant to associated living. Scholar-practitioners like Mitchell make a convincing case for geography as citizenship education and recent scholars (e.g., Helfenbein, 2013) have bolstered the case through critical geography. Nonetheless, geography is these days often short-changed in elementary- and secondary-school curricula. For instance, Florida, the third most populous state, requires no geography courses at all in grades 6–12 while reading and mathematics have increasingly crowded out geography, or any social studies, in elementary schools. One possible place to turn is to look for more satisfactory inclusion of geographic perspectives in the flagship social studies course, U.S. History. Educators are periodically admonished to include geographic perspectives in history courses, but there is scant evidence that substantial knowledge of geography finds its way into business-as-usual history courses (Thornton, 2007). I now turn to how this situation might be improved.
Geography in U.S. History Courses Geography, of course, arises naturally in the subject matter of U.S. history ( Steinberg, 2002). When he was speaking of associated life, Dewey (1966) underscored that, “it takes place on the earth.” This “setting,” making sure the implication was not missed, “enters into the very make-up” of “history” (p. 211; see also Bednarz, 1997; Broek, 1941; Brown, 1948). No forced union is required.
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Rather, consider in the context of U.S. history the concept of “boundary” already touched on earlier in the form of national borders in European history. Boundaries are human constructs established for some human purpose; they often become taken-for-granted social knowledge ( Sinton, 2013). Think of how, for example, people have long sought to identify a physical boundary between Europe and Asia. What cultural markers does this quest reveal? How, when, and why were the Urals settled on as a boundary? In this scheme, is the Black Sea Republic of Georgia “European” as is often asserted? Georgia lies to the west of the Ural Mountains, yet it is east of Anatolia (i.e., Asia Minor). A further example, which has played a large role in U.S. history, is the idea of the globe’s Western Hemisphere. Unlike, say, the Equator or the South Pole the idea of a “western hemisphere” rests on no objective criterion for the location of a place or region of Earth. Its boundaries rest instead on arbitrary and vaguely defined meridians of longitude. Nonetheless, it has been used to justify a fundamental tenet of U.S. foreign policy, the Monroe Doctrine, and invoked in cases such as Franklin Roosevelt’s directions to the navy for “hemispheric” defense in World War II and the same for John Kennedy’s naval blockade at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis (Thornton, 2013). Perception of place and space is also to a significant extent socially determined. Perception—not just observation of physical phenomena—determines what one “sees” in a landscape. There is no better example than Americans’ perceptions of the Great Plains prior to the second half of the 19th century. As experienced teachers will recognize, students can find it confusing that the customary U.S. history textbook narrative of the westward movement is interrupted because settlement in the 1840s and 1850s leapfrogged the Great Plains for the Oregon Country and California. In fact parts of the American West such as Nevada were settled by an “eastward movement” from California (Billington, 1962). This seeming anomaly is explained by environmental perception. Before developments in technology, communications, and transportation afforded by the Industrial Revolution, which altered views of what kind of agricultural activity was possible on the plains, people from the eastern United States perceived the brown, treeless grasslands of the plains as a “desert.” They effectively defined arable land as green and nurtured by regular rainfall as in the states east of the Mississippi River (Thornton, 2007). An instructional unit on the settlement of the Great Plains also illustrates how history and geography are at a more general level intertwined, “complementary studies” as Dewey aptly dubbed them. It does not take a great deal of educational imagination to see the potential for integrating geography even within a history textbook designed to be basic (Nevins, 1965). This text included only three subtopics about the Great Plains: “Railroads and Settlements,” American “Indian Wars and Cattle Kingdom,” and “The End of the Buffalo” (pp. 188–193). How, specifically, might geography add significant content about associated life?
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Perhaps the most obvious way to integrate these subtopics and geography “without fancy footwork [is] by including mapwork” (Parker, 1991, p. vi). Nonetheless, maps are sometimes included in ways that fail to contribute to the thrust of a lesson. Ideally, mapwork would extend to tasks which involve thinking with maps, particularly in ways relevant to lesson objectives, not merely pointing to individual geographic features nor taking the form of disconnected skills exercises. For example, student thinking could be extended by comparing and contrasting maps showing the annual average rainfall, natural vegetation types, and where railroads were constructed. This exercise could be further extended in any number of significant ways to, say, maps documenting the steady diminution of land still in the hands of its original inhabitants. Many questions seem to be simultaneously historical and geographic, although a geographic prompt such as place, space, distance, elevation, and so forth might stimulate an inquiry activity: how was the relative location of the plains effectively changed by the coming of the railroads? Where did cities and towns develop along the railroads and why there? How common was it for mining towns to become depopulated and turn into ghost towns? Does that still happen? What happened to plants and other animals as a result of the extermination of the bison?
A Needed Step in Teacher Education However laudable teaching geography for citizenship may be, relatively few teachers receive the kind of preparation that would support such a pedagogical approach. My intention in this brief section is not to speak of teacher preparation overall, a task that I obviously cannot take on in a few paragraphs. Nor am I able to turn to empirical research to substantiate my argument about a vital element of teacher education because by and large it does not exist. Rather I want to suggest we have neglected what appears to be key to the situation. While it is possible some teachers may work out how to do what I have been writing about for themselves, this seems to be rare. Few available case studies of teaching geography for citizenship are available. And even those there are (e.g., Weber, 2013) seldom document in any useful depth how and why the teacher came to tend the curricular-instructional gate in such an uncommon manner. Some biographical investigations of such practitioners could be instructive. A key stumbling block, perhaps the key one it seems to me, is that teachers are not really prepared to teach the kind of curriculum I have been sketching (Thornton, 2005). Assuming teachers go through a preparatory program related to the profession, which cannot be taken for granted in recent years, teacher education programs separate subject-matter and pedagogy courses. To be sure, at the undergraduate level prospective social studies teachers do take a range of courses in the social sciences but the contents of these courses are seldom related in any systematic way (beyond titles such as “World Regional Geography”) to
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the school curriculum. Whereas other professional majors, say, nascent engineers take courses in mathematics and composition designed for their prospective career, no comparable opportunity is typically afforded education majors. But if, as Nel Noddings (2006) persuasively argues, “the school curriculum is the fundamental subject matter of teachers” (p. 284), then the social science courses they take ought to be closely related to that subject matter. Since the demise of the old teachers’ colleges this appears almost never to happen. The lack of articulation continues with teaching methods courses the rationale for which is to demonstrate how to organize subject matter for effective use in elementary or secondary classrooms. While it might be assumed these courses hold great importance for teachers, they are generally only one or two courses of the roughly 40 courses required for a bachelor’s degree in education. Even so, seldom do we hear of a methods course with a carefully articulated relationship to subject-matter courses or vice-versa (e.g., McKee & Day, 1992). The solution of simply adding more subject-matter courses, even it was feasible given other demands, often mandated, on time in teacher-education programs of study, does not alone seem to reliably produce the type of reflective teachers who would contribute to citizenship objectives (Barton & Levstik, 2003). More broadly, there seems good reason to think that teachers will not teach content in ways they have never encountered with profit themselves. Given this dim situation, even limited moves toward a union of subject matter and pedagogy seem steps in the right direction—for example, fieldwork in a methods course (e.g., Crocco & Marino, 2017) or microteaching (e.g., Harte & Reitano, 2015).
Conclusion The methods of Lucy Sprague Mitchell provide an image of the desirable. They demonstrate how geography can be taught for civic competence, indeed for life relevance ( Downs, 2016). Nevertheless, the utilization of such methods happens only sporadically in some places and with some teachers. The great question still confronting us is, what conditions will support it more broadly and how can that knowledge be used to inform both curriculum policies and teacher education?
References Antler, J. (1987). Lucy Sprague Mitchell: The making of a modern woman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Barton, K. C. (2009). Home Geography and the development of elementary social education, 1890–1930. Theory and Research in Social Education, 37, 484–514. Barton, K. C. (2017). Shared principles in history and social science education. In M. Carrertero, S. Berger, & M. Grever (Eds.), International handbook of research in historical culture and education (pp. 449–467). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (2003). Why don’t more teachers engage students in interpretation? Social Education, 67, 358–361. Bednarz, R. S., & Bednarz, S. W. (1992). School geography in the United States: Lessons learned and relearned. In A. D. Hill (Ed.), International perspectives on geographic education. Boulder, CO: Center for Geographic Education. Bednarz, S. W. (1997). Using the geographic perspective to enrich history. Social Education, 61, 139–145. Bednarz, S. W., Heffron, S. G., & Solem, M. (2014). Geography standards in the United States: Past influences and future prospects. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 23, 79–89. Billington, R. A. (1962). The far western frontier, 1830–1860. New York, NY: Harper Torchbooks. Bowman, I. (1934). Geography in relation to the social sciences. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Broek, J. O. M. (1941). The relations between history and geography. Pacific Historical Review, 10, 321–325. Broek, J. O. M. (1966). Compass of geography. Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill Books. Brown, R. H. (1948). The treatment of geographic knowledge and understanding in history courses, with special reference to American history. In C. F. Kohn (Ed.), Geographic approaches to social education (pp. 261–272). Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Crocco, M. S., & Marino, M. P. (2017). Promoting inquiry-oriented teacher preparation in social studies through the use of local history. The Journal of Social Studies Research, 41(1), 1–10. Crocco, M. S., Munro, P., & Weiler, K. (1999). Pedagogies of resistance: Women educator activists, 1880–1960. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Dewey, J. (1966). Democracy and education. New York, NY: The Free Press. Downs, R. M. (2016). Meeting the challenge of systemic change in geography education: Lucy Sprague Mitchell’s young geographers. Journal of Geography, 115, 3–11. Dunn, A. W. (1916). The social studies in secondary education. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Elson, R. M. (1964). Guardians of tradition: American schoolbooks of the nineteenth century. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Fraser, R., & Stoltman, J. P. (2001). Teaching methods in physical geography: Bridging tradition and technology. In J. Brophy (Ed.), Subject-specific instructional methods and activities (pp. 315–345). Amsterdam, Netherlands: JAI. Gregg, M., & Leinhardt, G. (1993). Geography in history: What is the where? Journal of Geography, 92, 56–65. Gregg, M., & Leinhardt, G. (1994). Mapping out geography: An example of epistemology and education. Review of Educational Research, 64, 311–361. Harte, W., & Reitano, P. (2015). Pre-service geography teachers’ confidence in geographical subject matter and teaching geographical skills. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 24, 223–236. Helfenbein, R. J. (2013). New meridians: Social education and citizenship in a critical geography. In T. W. Kenreich (Ed.), Geography and social justice in the classroom (pp. 150–160). New York, NY: Routledge. Kohn, C. F. (Ed.). (1948a). Geographic approaches to social education. Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies.
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Kohn, C. F. (1948b). Foreword. In C. F. Kohn (Ed.), Geographic approaches to social education (pp. vii–ix). Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Livingstone, D. N. (2005). ‘Risen into empire’: Moral geographies of the American republic. In D. N. Livingstone & C. W. J. Withers (Eds.), Geography and revolution (pp. 304–335). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. McKee, S. J., & Day, A. L. (1992). The social studies methods course: A collaborative approach. Social Education, 56, 183–184. Mitchell, L. S. (1991). Young geographers: How they explore the world and how they map the world (4th ed.). New York, NY: Bank Street College of Education. Muessig, R. H. (1987). An analysis of developments in geographic education. The Elementary School Journal, 87, 519–530. Nevins, A. (1965). A history of the American people since 1492. London and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Noddings, N. (2003). Happiness and education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Noddings, N. (2005). Place-based education to preserve the earth and its people. In N. Noddings (Ed.), Educating citizens for global awareness (pp. 57–68). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Noddings, N. (2006). Critical lessons: What our schools should teach. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Noddings, N. (2013). Education and democracy in the 21st century. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Parker, W. C. (1991). Renewing the social studies curriculum. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Rugg, H. (1939). Curriculum-design in the social sciences: What I believe. . . . In J. A. Michener (Ed.), The future of the social studies: Proposals for an experimental socialstudies curriculum (pp. 140–158). Cambridge, MA: National Council for the Social Studies. Rugg, H. (1941). That men may understand: An American in the long armistice. New York, NY: Doubleday, Doran, & Co. Schmidt, S. J. (2011). Making space for the citizen in geographic education. Journal of Geography, 110, 107–119. Schulten, S. (2001). The geographical imagination in America, 1880–1950. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Sinton, D. S. (2013). The people’s guide to spatial thinking. Washington, DC: National Council for Geographic Education. Slavin, R. E. (1992). Cooperative learning in the social studies: Balancing the social and the studies. In R. J. Stahl & R. L. VanSickle (Eds.), Cooperative learning in the social studies classroom: An invitation to social study (pp. 21–25). Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Spearman, M. (2012). Race in elementary geography textbooks: Examples from South Carolina, 1890–1927. In C. Woyshner & C. H. Bohan (Eds.), Histories of social studies and race: 1865–2000 (pp. 115–134). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Steinberg, T. (2002). Down to earth: Nature’s role in American history. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Thornton, S. J. (2005). Teaching social studies that matters: Curriculum for active learning. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Thornton, S. J. (2007). Geography in American history courses, Phi Delta Kappan, 88, 535–538.
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Thornton, S. J. (2008). Continuity and change in social studies curriculum. In L. S. Levstik & C. A. Tyson (Eds.), Handbook of research in social studies education (pp. 15–32). New York, NY: Routledge. Thornton, S. J. (2013). Borderlands of the Southwest: An exercise in geographical history. Social Education, 77, 19–22. Thornton, S. J., & Barton, K. C. (2010). ‘Can history stand alone?’ Drawbacks and blindspots of a ‘disciplinary’ curriculum. Teachers College Record, 112, 2471–2495. Vascellaro, S. (2011). Out of the classroom and into the world: Learning from field trips, educating from experience, and unlocking the potential of our students and teachers. New York, NY: The New Press. Watras, J. (2009). Social studies education. In C. Kridel (Ed.), Encyclopedia of curriculum studies (Vol. 2, pp. 795–798). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Weber, B. D. (2013). Geography for civic action in East Los Angeles. In T. W. Kenreich (Ed.), Geography and social justice in the classroom (pp. 103–113). New York, NY: Routledge.
3 GEOGRAPHY, CAPABILITIES, AND THE EDUCATED PERSON David Lambert1
Introduction This chapter introduces the GeoCapabilities project (www.geocapabilities.org) to explore school geography’s contribution to citizenship education. This was a three-year EU-funded project2 which finished its funded work in early 2017, although its ideas will continue to evolve because it has built considerable and widespread momentum internationally with associate partners across Europe, the United States, China, Japan, and Australasia. The project was oriented on developing leadership capacity in secondary school teachers of geography, focusing on the significance of teachers’ “curriculum making” responsibilities (Lambert & Biddulph, 2014; Lambert, 2016). Led from London (UCL Institute of Education), and with a U.S. partner (the American Association of Geographers [AAG]), it draws strongly from Anglo-American traditions of curriculum studies and school level curriculum “enactment” (Doyle & Rosemartin, 2012) but has gained substantially from north European traditions of subject didactics (see Hudson, 2016), working with the “didactic triangle” and heuristic of subject, teacher, and student. The GeoCapabilities project is not explicitly concerned with citizenship education, still less about “spatial citizenship”—a term first coined by Thomas Jekel and colleagues (Gryl & Jekel, 2012). Spatial citizenship captures the importance of using spatial representations to develop competence with Geographical Information (GI) technologies, in order to participate effectively in society (Jekel, Gryl, & Schulze, 2015; Schulze, Gryl, & Kanwischer, 2015). The focus of GeoCapabilities is fairly and squarely on the role and purpose of geographical knowledge in relation to conceptions of the educated person (Lambert, Solem, & Tani, 2015). The two key ideas, then, are geography and education; and capabilities
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acts as a device for bridging between the two. However, the capabilities approach (Nussbaum & Sen, 1993; Nussbaum, 2013), which encourages us to think about education in terms of its contribution to the “beings and doings” of people, their agency and ultimately their freedom, can readily be aligned with concepts of citizenship education in its broadest sense. Elsewhere (Lambert, 2013; Lambert, 2018) I have stressed the significance of geography education in developing global understanding, as a matter of human survival in the Anthropocene epoch.
We Live in Interesting Times The discussion offered in this chapter has been crafted in a manner that is highly conscious of the social, cultural, economic, and political context in which it is written: the fine-grained context of “this day and age.” The chapter is written in the UK in early 2017, shortly after the inauguration of a new President of the United States knowingly calling for “America First,” and the Brexit vote in the UK in 2016 won on the slogan “taking back control.” Several European elections, notably in France and Germany, have featured strong “anti-establishment” interests and the influence of various forms of alternative political voice. It is a period still less than a decade on from the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, the effects of which are still felt acutely by those at the sharp end of “austerity” (especially those reliant on public money), and which has convulsed politics with shock and unpredictability. The so-called Arab Spring, following the popular overthrow of the government of Tunisia in January 2011, the aftermath of western policies in the Middle East (especially the Iraq war of 2003–11) and conflicts elsewhere in northern Africa (not to mention the effects of climate change exacerbating drought in, for example, Somalia) have fueled enormous migration pressures in Europe which have clearly also shocked the system of open borders between EU states. As I write, headlines point to the rise in nationalism across Europe: for instance, the impact of an openly racist “Freedom Party” influencing the Dutch elections and shaking up the hitherto sturdy concept of Dutch liberalism with talk of banning the Koran and closing mosques. The possibility of Scotland seceding from the UK (the openly expressed goal of the devolved government in Edinburgh) is not based on racism and xenophobia but is nevertheless part of the trend to reassert national and regional identity which, as discussed by Painter (2008), began before the Euro crisis from which some countries such as Greece, Italy, and Spain have suffered so acutely. There is evidence to show that political instability and the rise in the appeal of strong or charismatic figures often resorting to tried and tested populism may be the result of a longer-term breakdown of trust in democratic processes. Indeed, recent global polling shows a decline in the belief that living in a democracy is thought to be essential ( Foa & Mounk, 2017). Such hesitancy, especially among the young, may have led to a “deconsolidation” of democracy in nations such as
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far apart as Venezuela and Poland. This trend has been coupled with a rise in the share of citizens wishing for a strong leader “who does not have to bother with elections” (ibid., p. 7). These are the circumstances that have been exploited by individuals, from Putin in Russia to his admirer in the United States the avowed non-politician Trump, both of whom have taken on the media and the judiciary and moved to consolidate power within the executive. And as Foa and Mounk observe, The success of Donald Trump and his fellow populists . . . is not a temporary or geographic aberration. Nor is it certain to trigger selfcorrecting mechanisms that will return the political system to the stability of a bygone era. (ibid., p. 8) Among the populations of democratic states, including those completing their formal education, there may be confusion about how representative democracy works in its many forms, as well of a lack of understanding about alternative forms of government. In addition, in the context of the Brexit fantasy that leaving the EU will enable the UK to “take back control,” and Trump’s nativist echo of the 1930s,3 the significance of post-1945 supra-national achievements may also be poorly understood today. This is the world of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United Nations (UN), World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the most ambitious example of shared sovereignty, the European Union (which did not really come into being until the 1992 Maastricht Treaty). In the global context of catastrophic species loss, climate change, pollution, weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), global corporations, vast money flows, intricate trade arrangements, and of course the mass movement of people and ideas, it seems that the populist appeal to retreat to national and even regional identities (defended by walls and fences) may be impossible to achieve—even if for some reason it was thought to be desirable. Theories abound as to the cause of this loss of faith in democracy and in international institutions such as the EU on the one hand, and the rise of populist and nationalist leaders on the other. For instance, some analysts (Heartfield, 2013) have suggested that rejection of the EU is a healthy re-assertion of democracy, a reaction to the perceived “soft coup” that put Brussels bureaucrats in a dictatorial position over member states (especially those with weaker economies such as Greece or Portugal). It seems even amongst geographers there are those who appear to fear the loss of “sovereignty” in the modern interconnected world and have difficulty embracing the notion of shared sovereignty. One such is Alex Standish who in 2007 wrote: The elevation and conflation of the local and the global in the proposition ‘think global, act local’ is implicitly a rejection of the national sphere. It
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represents a denial of the political system through which citizens currently express their collective will via political representatives: the national will as sovereign power in the international sphere. Therefore, not only is global citizenship disingenuous with regard to how the world currently operates (there is no world government, nor global body for citizens to hold to account), it is rejecting collective interest as a means through which politics is conducted while offering no democratic alternative. ( Standish, 2007, p. xx) We need carefully to consider this position, for later we read that global citizenship education “encourages deference to higher authority rather than independent political thought” (ibid., p. xx). A simple “definition” of citizenship is concerned with the individual’s relationship with the state. You are a citizen of a state, and citizenship is concerned with your relationship with the state and its legal, political, and economic structures. By this definition, you cannot be a citizen of the world (cf. Standish: “there is no world government, nor global body for citizens to hold to account”). It is this that appears to drive Standish’s instinct to reassert the significance of the nation: indeed, he has written two books on the subject ( Standish, 2009, 2013). However, although national boundaries in today’s world are without question important, to suggest that the nation is somehow the basic, “natural” unit, immutable and (ironically?) the receptacle for “independent political thought,” seems simply out of date and out of step with many geographical perspectives, from Doreen Massey’s insights on the global sense of place (Massey, 2014) to Peter Taylor’s theorizing political geography and in particular the state and the scale of ideology (Taylor, 1981, p. 27). Before we consider how geography in school can respond to these challenges and uncertainties, we should note another signal feature of our interesting times: the influence of technology. The Internet, social media, and other forms of computing power underpinning for example GI and GPS have all had extraordinary effects which can be judged to be at the same time enormously emancipating, and a tyranny. Everybody with access to a smartphone or computer and electricity has information at their fingertips and the power to communicate instantly. This may be a mixed blessing—enabling government by tweet, the spread of propaganda, falsehoods, and lies which can seriously undermine expert or specialist authority (including school teachers perhaps). Society has only just begun to get to grips with this technological revolution and schools, being part of society, are in no better position. But it is a challenge that cannot be ignored. There is now much hyperbole about the importance of “21st-century skills” and the replacement of obsolete school subjects with generic learning competences, much of which seems to be accepted without question. However, as Gert Biesta (2005, 2012, 2013) has explained so convincingly, the co-option of the school curriculum by mainly economic imperatives such as notions of “work-ready” have led to the widespread replacement of a moral language of education with the stultifying and narrow language of learning. It seems clear that taken together the
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forces of economics and technological change have undermined belief in traditional forms of schooling—the final death knell of traditional banking models of education based of transmission of a pre-decided, “given” knowledge canon. In itself, this is no bad thing—there have been great advances in our understanding of powerful, social pedagogies since the second half of the 20th century. But the weak epistemological foundations of teaching have appeared to allow the leaching away any principled resistance to relativism and naive forms of social constructivism divorced from disciplinary thinking (Firth, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2018). As well as undermining teaching, postmodern relativism has eroded faith in expert, scholarly knowledge, a trend even taken up cynically by some politicians who would rubbish experts encouraging the view that everyone’s opinion and judgments are of equal worth and that ignorance (see John Morgan, 2017, for an interesting discussion of geographical ignorance) is an acceptable basis for making decisions. To conclude this section, there is one final comment to make—as if we did not have enough to worry about. None of my introductory remarks, apart from a passing reference to the Anthropocene, have so far ventured anywhere close to the really big one—the bottom, bottom line so to speak—which is the environment. Despite remnants of climate change denial, including in the United States where the current President has characterized climate change to be a Chinese hoax and part of “fake news,”4 there is no denying the geographical challenges which face any young person growing up today. For instance, possibly hundreds of millions of people will be displaced as a result of rising sea levels and advancing desertification: can “we” in less vulnerable places live comfortably in this knowledge? But in addition, we know that the oceans are also being poisoned by plastic and urban air quality has been impaired to dangerous levels by the burning of fossil fuels in motor cars. Whether we can rely on technocratic fixes for these issues or not, these are global pressures which form the backdrop of growing up in this day and age. What are the educational implications? And what is the role of geography as a component of the school curriculum?
GeoCapabilities: Framing the Geography Curriculum The GeoCapabilities project begins with the question: Who are the young people we teach? This is the prior question to why we would teach them geography (and what we should teach them, and how). This question requires us to think about the circumstances in which young people are growing up. The question requires us to respond to the challenges discussed in the previous section and to say what young people need in order to face the future with some confidence. That is to say, in what ways do we think young people should be equipped with knowledge and an enhanced intellectual capacity to think and imagine their place in the world? There are many different ways to answer this, for the case can easily be made that young people need scientific knowledge, historical perspectives,
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artistic imagination, and access to many other forms and field of thought. GeoCapabilities simply makes the case that within the mix geographical knowledge and thought is a key component. The GeoCapabilities approach contrasts with other very influential trends in education (Hazel, 2017). For example, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has responded to internationally felt pressures to reform education by proposing to test a set of “global competences” in the next round of the Program of International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2019. Andreas Schleicher, the OECD’s director of education and skills, explained that such competences would encourage teachers in school to show children how to recognize “fake news” by testing their analytical and critical skills. These are posited as generic skills which, presumably, he believes are not currently taught effectively enough in schools today. However, the limitation of Schleicher’s position is its strong tendency to undermine the role of subjects in the school curriculum. The very origin of the subject disciplines was to question orthodoxies and sometimes superstitions about how the world works: the sciences, geography, history (and other subject specialisms) have developed through focusing analytical and critical thought. They have developed distinctive perspectives, methods, and ways of thinking (such as Susan Hanson (2004) has tried to identify in geography as the “geographic advantage”). In searching for better knowledge and more truthful accounts the disciplines are never static nor fixed, but dynamic and evolving. The capabilities approach is therefore quite distinctive from the OECD’s competence-based approach: it requires us to think about the purpose of subjects in schools and not dismiss them merely as given “contents” and by implication an impediment for what is valuable in the educative process (such as critical thinking). School subjects in the context of the specialist disciplines that produce them embody forms of critical thinking. In his final volume of work Basil Bernstein (2000) argued for the “pedagogic rights” of young people to individual enhancement, social inclusion, and political participation (see also McClean et al., 2013). These “rights” are expressed as outcomes of educational processes and are strikingly similar to the notion of capabilities as developed in the GeoCapabilities project ( Solem, Lambert, & Tani, 2013; Lambert, Solem, & Tani, 2015). For Bernstein, access to knowledge is the key educational contribution to fighting the inequalities of educational outcomes, or as we argue here, in preventing capabilities deprivation. It is for this reason that Michael Young’s development of the helpful concept of “powerful knowledge” (Young, 2008, 2013, 2014) has been conceptually significant in the GeoCapabilities project. In direct opposition to those who urge a skills-based curriculum based on imparting generic “competences” (often deemed especially appropriate to “less academic” students), Young and colleagues argue that it is a matter of social equity that all young people have the right to be introduced to powerful—or disciplinary—knowledge, for this provides the building blocks for a high quality general education. Young has developed a social realist position,
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usefully discussed by Roger Firth in the context of the geography curriculum in English schools ( Firth, 2011, 2013), which counters both the extreme relativist positioning of much “progressive” skills-led thought in education and those who propose ultra “traditionalist” knowledge-led perspectives, who see the contents of the school curriculum as a fairly fixed selection or canon of “core knowledge” (Hirsch, 1987, 2007). Hirschian “core knowledge” is limited. Whilst it appears to value the accumulation of facts, powerful knowledge stresses the systematicity of knowledge—how it links and builds, and how it can be tested and given warrant. The social realist position promotes a progressive knowledge-led curriculum. In an attempt to develop the idea of a progressive, knowledge-led curriculum, Young and Muller (2010, 2016) have introduced an extremely helpful “Three Futures” heuristic (see Figure 3.1). “Future 3” (F3), which is underpinned by powerful disciplinary knowledge, has become a key element in the GeoCapabilities project, the extent to which the project encourages the realization of an F3 geography curriculum. An essential element to this, and the debate which a capabilities perspective opens up, is to clarify ways in which geographical knowledge in the curriculum can be considered to be “powerful knowledge.” Following Alaric Maude’s analysis of Young’s writings (Maude, 2016), the power of knowledge depends mainly on what the knower can do with it: it resides in their enhanced capacities to think (see Figure 3.2). Putting the “geo” into GeoCapabilities, therefore, is concerned with specifying the essential contribution geographical knowledge makes to the education of all young people: to be able to think geographically (I have elsewhere [Lambert, 2017] opened up the meaning of this for practitioners, albeit mainly for a UK context). Or put another way, how the realization of an F3 curriculum, in which students interact effectively with powerful geographical knowledge, contributes in particular ways to enhancing their capabilities. It is important to realize the significance of F3—based upon the acquisition of powerful geographical knowledge. F3 is not some “middle way” combining the inadequacies of both F1 and F2. It is a way of thinking about the curriculum as experienced by the students in which epistemic quality—the quality of what is being taught—is paramount. It is not an overstatement to suggest that in both F1 and F2 teachers can abrogate responsibility for epistemic quality. Not so for F3.
The Place of Knowledge in Three Alternative Curriculum “Scenarios” F1 Subject “delivery”: this curriculum consists of knowledge for its own sake. It is organized by traditional subjects—as stable, enduring, and “given” bodies of core knowledge. This is under-socialized knowledge. It characterizes “schooling” in the popular imaginary and is indeed what many experience around the world to this day.
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F2 Skills, competences, and “learning to learn”: this curriculum, strongly influenced by social constructivism, sees traditional subject divisions to be artificial and arbitrary; integrated themes and or “issues” are the preferred content organizers. This is experiential and over-socialized knowledge. This is frequently the contemporary vision of progressive education promoted by OECD, the EU, and many national governments. F3 Engagement with powerful knowledge: a Future 3 approach agrees that subjects are not “given” (as in F1), but that they are not arbitrary either (as in F2)—knowledge development is led by the epistemic processes of specialist communities, to provide better ways to understand the world and to take pupils beyond their everyday experience. Excellent specialist teachers may have always achieved this, a curriculum marked by its “epistemic quality” (Hudson, 2016). FIGURE 3.1
Source: adapted from Young and Muller (2010). See also Young and Lambert (2014)
Geographical Knowledge and the Teacher Young people who do not have access to powerful geographical knowledge, maybe because geography is not even offered as part of the curriculum or because they are taught by ill-prepared teachers, are, according to the capabilities approach outlined earlier in this chapter, deprived or diminished in certain aspects of their human potential. GeoCapabilities argues that to deprive children access to powerful disciplinary knowledge (possibly children considered to be “less academic” or more suited to developing practical skills) undermines their capabilities as citizens and as human beings. If this sounds like an overreaching claim then remember that the capable citizen is not only a person armed with information, “competence” and a marketable skill-set. Capability is, we argue, also tied up in a person’s capacity to think (see Figure 3.2), to use, and to apply knowledge in their encounters with the world (its social, cultural, economic, environmental, and political dimensions). This is what the Geographical Association, in its 2009 “manifesto,” referred to as geography’s potential to enable autonomous thought and for young people to gain “a different view” of themselves in the world (GA, 2009). GeoCapability, then, is heavily reliant upon the acquisition and development of powerful geographical knowledge and the profound questions this raises for teachers have both a curriculum and pedagogic dimensions. What is it you are teaching, and in what manner are you teaching it, so that it contributes to your students’ acquisition of powerful geographical knowledge?
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Powerful Disciplinary Knowledge: What It Enables You to Do powerful knowledge refers to what the knowledge can do or what intellectual power it gives to those who have access to it. Powerful knowledge provides more reliable explanations and new ways of thinking about the world and acquiring it and can provide learners with a language for engaging in political, moral, and other kinds of debates. ( Young, 2008, p. 14) knowledge is powerful because it provides the best understanding of the natural and social worlds that we have and helps us go beyond our individual experiences. ( Young, 2013, p. 196) knowledge is “powerful ” if it predicts, if it explains, if it enables you to envisage alternatives. ( Young, 2014, p. 74) FIGURE 3.2
Source: summary based on Maude’s analysis of Young’s writings (Maude, 2016)
Powerful disciplinary knowledge (PDK) is thus specialized knowledge and exists beyond the everyday experience of people. It is often abstract, being theoretical or conceptual, but it is enabling. The GeoCapabilities project developed a method to engage teachers with the kind of thinking they must undertake in order to identify (and prioritize) the powerful disciplinary knowledge in what they teach. This method is to write PDK “vignettes,” several examples of which are found on a Story Map (also accessed through Module 1 of the GeoCapabilities website).5 An example of powerful geographical knowledge fully illustrated on the GeoCapabilities website is what Doreen Massey (2014) referred to as a “sense of the global,” not just in the everyday sense of mediated images through film, music, and fashion, but in the counterintuitive sense of the planet as a single entity or place, with all the physical and human interdependencies that make it so. Armed with a global conception of place—of places as meeting points with porous boundaries through which phenomena of all kinds flow (rather than discrete entities with firm boundaries than can be sealed)—we have the means at least to doubt simple nationalist political messages about “taking back control.” This global sense of place is illustrated by Massey in her “three-minute essay” shown in Figure 3.3 and featured in GeoCapabilities Module 1. A strong sense of the global is derived from powerful geographical knowledge that is available to all—if there are specialist teachers equipped and available to teach it.
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If a F3 geography curriculum as advocated here has any single metaphorical tone, it is “engagement,” not “delivery.” The key outcome then is not to transfer into the heads of young people a list of facts (or indeed theories or models presented and learned as if they were facts). Likewise, the key attribute of an educated person is not simply to recall such facts accurately in a quiz or test, for although this may well denote an impressive ability, it does not necessarily provide much evidence of a person’s capacity to think or reason. The knowledge-led curriculum proposed here is therefore not to be confused with some versions of knowledge orientation such as Hirsch’s well-known and influential promotion of core knowledge, which does indeed seem to reduce geography to a list of essential facts. An F3 curriculum certainly does not ignore facts, but, like Massey, places the facts into a conceptual frame that enables deeper understanding of their relationship. An F3 curriculum would not simply deliver Massey’s essay, but ask students to interrogate it.
Illustrating A Global Sense of Place Professor Doreen Massey (1944–2016) “There is an argument—about climate change—that goes like this.” • •
“the UK’s contribution to global emissions of greenhouse gas is only a small percentage.” “there’s not much point in taking responsibility for our own place when India and China are growing as they are.”
Now, I might have found that a comforting argument. But it seems it is a totally inadequate geography. What that “small percentage” counts, is the greenhouse gas emissions from the UK directly. In that sense, it treats the UK as an isolated entity. But it is not. Firstly, that calculation, it seems, misses out the effect of all the things we import from elsewhere (many of them indeed from China). We demand those goods but we do not count as our own the pollution of producing them. Secondly, that “small percentage” does not take account of the role UK companies in production around the world. It has been estimated, for instance, that something like 15 percent of global carbon emissions derives from companies listed on the London Stock exchange. Our economy is said to benefit from those companies. So what responsibilities do we, as UK citizens, have toward them? I could go on. The point is this. That “small percentage” is meaningless in an interconnected world. We cannot pretend that because all that greenhouse gas emission doesn’t happen here it doesn’t happen because of us . . . that we are in no way implicated.
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But surely, might come the reply, we are improving. The UK is on course to meet its Kyoto target. Indeed it is. But why? It is largely because: • • •
we have allowed our manufacturing to collapse; we closed the mines and dashed for gas; we opted for an economy based on services and, especially, finance.
It is not so much that we are behaving better, as that: • •
we have exported our pollution; and we have reshaped the UK’s role in the global economy.
That reshaping has also reshaped the geography of the UK itself, as • • •
manufacturing regions have declined; the north-south divide has widened; our economy revolves more and more around London’s financial sector.
“Forget that comforting geography of small percentages. These are some of the other geographies that lie behind responsibilities for climate change.” FIGURE 3.3
Source: First broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, 01.01.07. See also Lambert and Morgan (2010, pp. 43–45) To hear Massey read this go to www.geocapabilities.org/training-materials/module-1-the-capabilitiesapproach/into-practice/
Just as we have to be careful not to confuse a knowledge-led curriculum with the delivery of predetermined facts, we also have to exercise some care with the idea of engagement. “Learning by doing” has had a long history of thought and practice in western education systems and, although clearly very difficult to implement meaningfully, has reached the point of general orthodoxy amongst educationists and policymakers. Thus, today in the UK, teachers (who are under scrutiny as never before) are now castigated for talking too much in class; frequently, they are told that classrooms should be “active” instead. Pedagogy (how shall we teach this?) is therefore privileged to a degree that places it in an inappropriate relationship to curriculum, so that questions of “fitness for purpose” do not even get asked. This is the apotheosis of “learnification” (Biesta, 2012, 2013) where the acquisition of the predominantly soft skills of “learning to learn” becomes the vague and inadequate justification for sending children to school. My use of “engagement” therefore is not meant to conjure images simply of busy classrooms. Active learning can be meaningless unless the activity is fit for
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purpose—is enabling access to and the development of a powerful generalization, concept, or idea. A F3 “curriculum of engagement” is one in which both teachers and students are interested (perhaps for different reasons) in notions of better knowledge. To create better knowledge is what the disciplines are for, and in saying this we can quickly acknowledge that such knowledge is always open to contest, being contingent on new findings or fresh theoretical developments. Better knowledge is clearly always in a state of becoming; it is developing and dynamic, and for this reason teachers and their students need in some way to be engaged with it. For example, the human backstory of continental drift as a theory, and the subsequent development of plate tectonics (Hawley & Lyon, 2017) provides a fine example of specialist knowledge production: of how orthodox views can be overturned by argument, evidence, and imagination.
Capabilities, Geography, and the Educated Person I acknowledge that a capabilities approach may not at first glance suggest a knowledge-led curriculum (although the GeoCapabilities project bends over backwards to privilege specialist geographical knowledge). This is where Young and Muller’s “three futures” device (see Figure 3.1) is helpful in making some distinctions that not only show the place of knowledge, but the nature of knowledge in a progressive curriculum of engagement. This is one reason why Future 3 thinking has been taken up by the GeoCapabilities project as a means to support curriculum leadership in school geography internationally. It attempts to do this not by writing some kind of international charter or laying down an ideal curriculum, but by offering a framework to enable teachers to think about their work in enacting the curriculum, or as GeoCapabilities describes it, their curriculum making. Statements about educational outcomes, such as those we may wish for citizenship education, are frequently made in generic terms, as we have seen earlier in this chapter in the case of the OECD. Aims-led “grand designs” of the curriculum often encourage this too, undermining subjects and thus promoting an F2 curriculum. Of course, such curriculum thinking was and is a response to the widely acknowledged deficiencies of F1. Such outcomes-led curricula, though well-intentioned, are an inadequate response to the limitations of F1 owing to their seemingly careless disregard for knowledge as the foundational curriculum principle.6 This is akin to “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” This section attempts to show briefly how a capabilities approach to curriculum thinking has the potential to help “bring knowledge back in” (Young, 2008) and to develop a genuinely F3 curriculum. Capabilities are not the same as general competences or free-floating critical thinking skills. Recent writing on the transformative potential of education has shown that this is based on the individual’s acquisition of disciplinary knowledge: there is, for example, some empirical evidence from Higher Education to indicate that students value greatly the way such knowledge development enables them to think more broadly about the world (McLean, Abbas, & Ashwin, 2011,
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2013). Furthermore, induction into disciplinary knowledge or a specialism may provide aspects of what Martha Nussbaum calls the capability of “affiliation.” It is, according to Nussbaum (2000, p. 82), to “behave in an incompletely human way” if a person thinks about the world and their place in it as if only their views and experience mattered. Disciplines provide a way to enter complex forms of discourse and perspectives that have arisen in communities using procedures of argument and contestation. This includes abstract and theoretical knowledge which by definition is beyond the experience of the everyday. As we are initiated into disciplines we gain access to some of the excitement—and the significance— of knowledge creation (a combination of “knowing that” and “knowing how” in specialist communities or disciplines). We can become deeply committed to what it means to be, or to think like, a historian, a mathematician, a musician . . . or a geographer. Such initiation into disciplinary thought is of great value and, as we argued in the previous section, should be available to all young people (and not only those who go to university): all have the right to the capabilities offered through such “epistemic ascent” (Winch, 2013). The GeoCapabilties project explored the potential of the capabilities approach to express the “power” of geography as a school subject (Lambert et al., 2015). In doing this we hope to provide a deeper theoretical basis for teachers’ curriculum making and indeed, the part curriculum making should play in teachers’ work (see GeoCapabilities Module 2)7 Following Walker and Boni (2013), the project therefore argues that the capabilities approach can expand and deepen the conceptual language of teaching and curriculum at the high school level. The project purports to show that the notion of “GeoCapabilities” helps connect a progressive form of discipline-oriented geography teaching to the context of broad educational aims. In so doing it enables an F3 curriculum. As we saw earlier, the prominent geographer Doreen Massey has recently argued that geography is a discipline that helps us “take on the world” (2014, p. 202) by revealing the concept of the planet as a whole and the realization that every locality on Earth is connected to global processes. In a different way and in the context of understanding cities, Andrew Kirby (2014) has made a different case for geography as powerful knowledge, this time based on an idiographic understanding of place contexts (in preference to the roughshod application of nomothetic principles and processes). The two approaches are reconcilable and the relational understanding that results forms a substantial element of what it means to “think geographically.” Thus, powerful knowledge in geography (as in any subject) cannot be itemized in Hirschian lists which claim to embrace the geography that children “need to know.” Although a summary of powerful knowledge in geography may legitimately reference the importance of geographical “facts” (referred to metaphorically by the Geographical Association as the subject’s “vocabulary”; also, see Lambert, 2011a, p. 251), it should mainly emphasize the acquisition and development of systematic conceptual knowledge that informs geography’s “relational understanding”—that is, metaphorically, the subject’s “grammar.” Here we are
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referring to what are sometimes called geography’s “big ideas” or “key concepts” rather than a long list of substantive concepts such as city, river, industrial location, etc. Geographers argue about what these are and both Brooks (2013) and Taylor (2008) provide an introduction to some of the disputes. Even so, there is some international stability and agreement that geography is concerned principally with place, space, and environment (occasionally scale is added)—these are complex and dynamic ideas which have evolved markedly with the development of geography as a discipline, and which will continue to do so. In addition, powerful disciplinary knowledge should (crucially) include a third element, which we could refer to as “procedural knowledge,” referred to in Figure 3.1 as epistemic processes—how a discipline provides warrant. This may also include a range of skills used widely in geography such as how to analyze spatially referenced data using maps and GIS, for example. Such skills (which, of course, are not unique to geography) are not to be taught as ends in themselves: they are to be used self-consciously and critically, and within the intellectual context of searching for meaningful distinctions and applying defensible conclusions to geographical inquiries in real-world contexts. In schools, good teachers do this through the judicious use of powerful pedagogies ( Roberts, 2014). Margaret Roberts’s important book ( Roberts, 2013) on inquiry pedagogies in geography provides a theoretically robust but practical guide on how to engage students both with data and ideas. Expressed like this, “procedural knowledge” assumes particular significance, even providing a glimpse of how geographical knowledge has been (and continues to be) produced. One can imagine the power of introducing students—even young students—to disciplinary narratives: for example, of how the idea of continental drift was established; how environmental determinism was roundly rejected; how (and why) urban land use models have been produced; the attraction (and dangers) of simple demographic transition models or push-and-pull theories of migration, of stages-of-growth approaches to development . . . we could go on. But the general point to emphasize is that geography pulls on its “vocabulary and grammar” in order to make provisional and contingent sense of the world. This almost inevitably includes a futures dimension—a consideration of how the world may become. Thus, in the terms I have outlined here, teaching geography well (that is, with an F3 curriculum mindset) is a demanding task, and requires highly developed curriculum-making abilities. Effective curriculum making depends on a range of professional knowledges as we have seen, but especially a grasp on how geography can be thought of as powerful knowledge—plus the pedagogic skills to convey this. Through the GeoCapabilities project we have attempted to summarize powerful knowledge in geography as consisting of: •
the acquisition and development of deep descriptive and explanatory “world knowledge”; this may include (for example) countries, capitals, rivers, and mountains; also world wind patterns, distribution of population and energy
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•
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sources. The precise constituents and range of this substantive knowledge is delineated locally and influenced by national and regional cultural contexts. the development of the relational thinking that underpins geographical thought; this includes place and space (e.g., the local and the global), the human and the physical and notions of environmental interdependence and interaction. This knowledge component is arguably more independent of local circumstances and influences, being derived from the discipline: concepts like place, space, and environment are complex, evolving, and contested and, referring back to our earlier metaphor, can be thought of as fundamental components of geography’s syntax. They are sometimes referred to as geography’s “big ideas,” “key concepts,” or “second order” concepts (see Brooks, 2013 who refers to Taylor’s (2008) ground clearing work on concepts in school geography). a propensity to apply the analysis of alternative social, economic, and environmental futures to particular place contexts; this draws on a range of skills developed through appropriate pedagogic approaches such as decision-making exercises; in addition to intellectual skills such as analysis and evaluation this also encourages speculation, imagination, and argument (see Hicks, undated). If we accept that it is what students are then able to do (including, to think in new ways) that give geographical knowledge its “power,” then this category of what we might think of as “applied geography” is crucial (adapted and developed from Lambert, 2011a, 2011b, 2016; Solem, Lambert, & Tani, 2013)
Understanding geography in this way is not straightforward, for it is not easily derived from everyday experience and popular images of what is meant by the geographical. To organize teaching in a way that brings about powerful school geography requires what the GeoCapabilities project describes as specialist “curriculum leadership,” manifest through effective curriculum making. Module 28 of the project introduces the practical device of using carefully chosen curriculum “artifacts” as a way both to illustrate and enact curriculum-making principles. The main audience of the GeoCapabilities website are trainers and teacher educators, particularly of specialist teachers who are (or have been) engaged with geographic disciplinary thought and knowledge to first-degree level. A subsequent development of the project will be to develop the capabilities approach and the specific training devices (the powerful knowledge “vignettes” and the curriculum making “artifacts”) with non-specialist teachers of geography. The goal will remain the same—to improve the epistemic quality of geography taught in secondary schools
Conclusion In this chapter, which draws heavily from the GeoCapabilities project, I have attempted to make the case for the role of high quality geography teaching in educating informed, autonomous, and critical citizens ready for the challenges of this day and age. Unspoken along the way is my realization that there is in my discussion more than a hint of “liberal education” and a focus of the educated
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individual—possibly redolent of a previous age. I make no apologies for calling for something from the spirit of the Enlightenment that informed that previous age. Even though in this day and age—of fast capitalism and financial crisis; of environmental degradation and the threat of climate change; and of loss of trust in democracy and progress—we may seem to have different priorities from gentler times, I say the priorities remain constant. It is sometimes said, with some justification, that education provides no guarantees: as witnessed by the fact that the mid-20th century holocaust was propagated by the best-educated and most cultured European nation. But education is all we have. There were no gentler times. As the great English educationist Harold Rosen wrote, in his poem trying to situate himself in relation to the horrors of the Nazi genocide, “Are you too asking yourself Why is there no blood on these sheets? And how can we sleep with ghosts?”9 He is asking that we remain alert, ask questions, and perhaps, hone those intellectual skills that contribute to what Postman and Weingartner (1969) memorably called “crap detection.” Education has many purposes and teachers get pulled all which ways. But somewhere in the mix is the need to enable children and young people, to detect crap or, as Basil Bernstein put it perhaps more elegantly, “to think the unthinkable and the not yet thought” (Bernstein, 2000, p. 30). This refers to the Enlightenment idea that knowledge is the only real source of freedom. Unlike Postman and Weingartner, who were early Future 2-ists, the GeoCapabilities project has sought to show that informed, dynamic, critical thought can be accomplished when specialist subjects, including geography, are thought of in terms of their powerful knowledge and taught with appropriately powerful pedagogies. The capabilities approach encourages the claim that without powerful geographical knowledge an individual’s education is significantly impaired. This chapter has tried to show precisely how and in what way.
Acknowledgment The author would like to thank two anonymous readers of an earlier draft of this chapter. Their comments were most helpful, though of course any remaining deficiencies are all my own.
Notes 1. [email protected] 2. “GeoCap2 Teachers as Curriculum Leaders” 539079-LLP-1–2013–1-UK-COME NIUS-CMP/2013–3433 3. In Trump’s inaugural address he twice used the phrase “America First”—a phrase that has been considered toxic ever since its use by the 1930s movement, designed to accommodate Hitler and keep the U.S. out of the war against Nazi Germany.
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4. This is another phrase that seems consciously to take us back to the mid-20th century and that previous period of economic uncertainty and loss of faith in democracy. Hitler frequently referred to the Lügenpresse (lying press) in the 1930s, a part of the conspiracy that he convinced his followers he was fighting against on their behalf. 5. www.geocapabilities.org/training-materials/module-1-the-capabilities-approach/ into-practice/ 6. In the British context the Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) “Opening Minds” curriculum would be a good example: www.rsaopeningminds.org.uk/. 7. www.geocapabilities.org/training-materials/module-2-curriculum-making-byteachers/aims/ 8. www.geocapabilities.org/training-materials/module-2-curriculum-making-byteachers/into-practice/ 9. The final line of his poem “In the SS barracks, 1945.” Printed in full in Richmond (2017, p. 569).
References Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique (revised ed.). London: Rowman & Littlefield. Biesta, G. J. J. (2005). Against learning: Reclaiming a language for education in an age of learning. Nordisk Pedagogik, 25, 54–66. Biesta, G. J. J. (2012). Giving teaching back to education: Responding to the disappearance of the teacher. Phenomenology and Practice, 6 (2), 35–49. Biesta, G. J. J. (2013). Comment on Bill Boyle’s Blog: ‘The importance of teaching: Learnification part 2’. Educarenow. Retrieved from http://educarenow.wordpress. com/2013/03/09/the-importance-of-the-teacher-learnification-part-2/ Brooks, C. (2013). How do we understand conceptual development in school geography? In D. Lambert & M. Jones (Eds.), Debates in geography education (pp. 76–88). London: Routledge. Doyle, W., & Rosemartin, D. (2012). The ecology and curriculum enactment: Frame and task narratives. Interpersonal Relationships in Education, 3, 137–147. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-6091-939-8_9 Firth, R. (2011). Making geography visible as an object of study in the secondary school curriculum. Curriculum Journal, 22 (3), 289–316. Firth, R. (2013). What constitutes knowledge in geography? In D. Lambert & M. Jones (Eds.), Debates in geography education (pp. 59–74). London: Routledge. Firth, R. (2014). Constructing geographical knowledge. In B. Barratt & E. Rata (Eds.), Knowledge and the future of the curriculum (pp. 53–66). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Firth, R. (2018). Recontextualising geography as a school subject. In M. Jones & D. Lambert (Eds.), Debates in geography education (2nd ed.). Abingdon: Routledge. Foa, R. S., & Mounk, Y. (2017). The signs of deconsolidation. Journal of Democracy, 28 (1), 5–15. Retrieved 15 March 2017 from www.journalofdemocracy.org/sites/default/ files/02_28.1_Foa%20%26%20Mounk%20pp%205-15.pdf GA. (2009). A different view. Sheffield: Geographical Association. www.geography.org. uk/resources/adifferentview/ Gryl, I., & Jekel, T. (2012). Re-centring geoinformation in secondary education: Toward a spatial citizenship approach. Cartographica, 47(1), 18–28. Hanson, S. (2004). Who are ‘we’? An important question for geography’s future. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94 (4), 715–722.
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Hawley, D., & Lyon, J. (2017). Plate update: Refreshing ideas for teaching plate tectonics. Teaching Geography, 42 (1), 30–32. Hazel, W. (2017). Pisa boss: Pupils ‘should be taught to recognise fake news’. Times Educational Supplement, 18 March 2017. Retrieved 20 March 2017 from www.tes.com/news/ school-news/breaking-news/pisa-boss-pupils-should-be-taught-recognise-fake-news Heartfield, J. (2013). The European Union and the end of politics. Winchester: Zero Books. Hicks, D. (undated). Teaching for a better world: Learning for sustainability. Retrieved 21 March 2017 from www.teaching4abetterworld.co.uk/futures.html Hirsch, E. D. (1987). Cultural literacy: What every American needs to know. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin. Hirsch, E. D. (2007). The knowledge deficit: Closing the shocking education gap. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin. Hudson, B. (2016). Didactics. In D. Wyse, L. Hayward, & J. Pandya (Eds.), The Sage handbook of curriculum pedagogy and assessment. London: Sage. Jekel, T., Gryl, I., & Schulze, U. (2015). Education for spatial citizenship. In O. Muniz Solari et al. (Eds.), Geospatial technologies and geographical education in a changing world. Cham: Springer. Kirby, A. (2014). Geographic leadership, sustainability and urban education. Geography, 99 (1), 176–182. Lambert, D. (2011a). Reframing school geography. In G. Butt (Ed.), Geography, education and the future (pp. 127–140). London: Continuum. Lambert, D. (2011b). Reviewing the case for geography and the ‘knowledge turn’ in the English national curriculum. Curriculum Journal, 22 (2), 243–264. Lambert, D. (2013). Geography in schools and a curriculum of survival. Theory and Research in Education, 11(1), 85–98. Lambert, D. (2016). Chapter 25: Geography. In D. Wyse, L. Hayward, & J. Pandya (Eds.), The Sage handbook of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. London: Sage. Lambert, D. (2017). Thinking geographically. In M. Jones (Ed.), Secondary geography handbook. Sheffield: Geographical Association. Lambert, D. (2018). Towards a future 3 curriculum: The case of geography. In D. Guile, D. Lambert & M. Reiss (2017), Sociology, curriculum studies and professional knowledge: New perspectives on the work of Michael Young. London: Routledge. Lambert, D., & Biddulph, M. (2014). The dialogic space offered by curriculum making in the process of learning to teach, and the creation of a progressive knowledge led curriculum. Asia Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 43(3), 210–224. Lambert, D. & Morgan, J. (2010). Teaching Geography 11–18: A Conceptual Approach. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press. Lambert, D., Solem, M., & Tani, S. (2015). Achieving human potential through geography education: A capabilities approach to curriculum making in schools. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105(4), 723–735. Massey, D. (2014). Taking on the world. Geography, 99 (1), 202–205. Maude, A. (2016). What might powerful knowledge look like? Geography, 101(2), 70–76. McLean, M., Abbas, A., & Ashwin, P. (2011). Pedagogic rights and human capabilities. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Society for Research in Higher Education, Newport, Wales, 7–9 December 2011. McLean, M., Abbas, A., & Ashwin, P. (2013). University knowledge, human development and pedagogic rights. In A. Boni & M. Walker (Eds.), Human development and capabilities: Re-imagining the university of the twenty-first century (pp. 30–43). London: Routledge. Morgan, J. (2017). The making of geographical ignorance? Geography, 102 (1), 18–25.
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Nussbaum, M. (2000). Women and human development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2013). Creating capabilities: The human development approach. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, M., & Sen, A. (1993). The quality of life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Painter, J. (2008). European citizenship and the regions. European, Urban and Regional Studies, 15(1), 5–19. Postman, N., & Weingartner, C. (1969). Teaching as a subversive activity. New York, NY: Dell Publishing. Retrieved from http://kairosschool.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/ Teaching-as-a-Subversive-Activity.pdf Richmond, J. (2017). Harold Rosen: Writings on life, language and learning 1958–2008. London: UCL IoE Press. Roberts, M. (2013). Geography through enquiry. Sheffield: Geographical Association. Roberts, M. (2014). Powerful knowledge and geographical education. The Curriculum Journal, 25(2), 187–209. Schulze, U., Gryl, I., & Kanwischer, D. (2015). Spatial Citizenship education and digital geomedia: Composing competences for teacher education and training. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 39 (3), 369–385. doi:10.1080/03098265.2015.1048506 Solem, M., Lambert, D., & Tani, S. (2013). GeoCapabilities: Towards an international framework for researching the purposes and values of geography education. Review of International Geographical Education Online [RIGEO], 3(3), 204–209. Standish, A. (2007). Geography used to be about maps. In R. Whelan (Ed.), The corruption of the curriculum. London: Civitas. Standish, A. (2009). Global perspectives in the geography curriculum: Reviewing the moral case for geography. London: Routledge. Standish, A. (2013). The false promise of global learning: Why education needs boundaries. London: Continuum. Taylor, L. (2008). Key concepts and medium-term planning. Teaching Geography, 33(2), 50–54. Taylor, P. (1981). A materialist framework for political geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 7(1), 15–34. Walker, M., & Boni, A. (2013). Higher education and human development: Towards the public and social good. In A. Boni & M. Walker (Eds.), Human development and capabilities: Re-Imagining the university of the twenty-first century (pp. 15–29). London: Routledge. Winch, C. (2013). Curriculum design and epistemic ascent. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 47(1), 128–146. Young, M. (2008). Bringing knowledge back in. London: Routledge. Young, M. (2013). Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: A knowledge based approach. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(2), 101–118. Young, M. (2014). Powerful knowledge as a curriculum principle. In M. Young & D. Lambert (with Roberts, C. & Roberts, M.) (Eds.), Knowledge and the future school: Curriculum and social justice (pp. 65–88). London: Bloomsbury. Young, M., & Lambert, D. (with Roberts, C., & Roberts, M.) (Eds.). (2014). Knowledge and the future school: Curriculum and social justice. London: Bloomsbury. Young, M., & Muller, J. (2010). Three educational scenarios for the future: Lessons from the sociology of knowledge. European Journal of Education, 45(1), 11–27. Young, M., & Muller, J. (2016). Curriculum and the specialization of knowledge. Abingdon: Routledge.
4 THE SPATIAL PRODUCTION AND NAVIGATION OF VULNERABLE CITIZENS Sandra J. Schmidt
Introduction A 30-year-old democratically inclined Myanmarese woman, Maya, needs money to support herself and her child. She has been a political agitator but has not “done enough” to warrant refugee status. She has friends who have used trafficking networks to find employment in Los Angeles. An 18-year-old black man, Leroy, in rural Alabama in 2014 wants to activate the rights associated with his recent birthday by registering to vote. He wonders where he can get the necessary ID. A 23-year-old white male college graduate, Jacob, in 2011 is frustrated by his inability to find a job upon graduation and takes his tent to Zuccotti Park in New York City to join the Occupy Wall Street movement. A 40-year-old queer woman, Theresa, identifies herself as a relatively passive moderate but on January 21, 2017 finds herself driving from Madison, Wisconsin to Washington DC to participate in the Women’s March. These stories all reflect people whose civic attachments and rights are vulnerable because of spatial practices. Unequal access to space and distribution of resources coincide with juridical processes that privilege certain bodies and experiences. Citizenship is sometimes expressed as fundamental right of birth; we become a citizen of the place where we are born. The meaning and experience of citizenship is not universal; hence, Westheimer and Kahne (2004) ask “citizens of what” and “what kind of citizens?” The U.S. was founded on exclusionary citizenship. Black people, women, poor people, and indigenous peoples needed federal laws or constitutional amendments to be recognized as birthright citizens. The increasingly mobile world places pressure on nations to recognize the legal and social rights of people who cross international borders and take up multiple citizenships. Even with legal status conferred, certain citizen-groups
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struggle to access the civic, political, and social citizenship rights they are promised (Marshall, 1987). Citizenship too often appears as the disciplinary domain of political science or sociology. This chapter and the larger book situate citizenship as inherently spatial. Critical theories in geography provide a framework and discourse for exploring citizenship as a spatial process, one shaped by and repeatedly shaping socio-political contexts. Westheimer and Kahne (2004) remind educators that citizenship is attached to location. Spatial process including the drawing of boundaries, the regulation of bodies, and socially constructed senses of place shape both how we come to belong and how we act as citizens. These processes can invite or exclude bodies or engagements (Dikec, 2001). Ongoing interactions with spaces shape civic subjectivity. This chapter uses four stories to critically examine the spatial practices that create vulnerable citizenship and provide opportunity to resist disenfranchisement.
Spatial Unevenness and Civic Opportunity Social unevenness has long been explained spatially. Taken together, Said (1993) and Foucault (1997) manifest intersecting physical and discursive dimensions of inequality. Said (1993) argues that imperialism relied on geographic differences to alter access to resources, dictate the value of resources, reconfigure the processes of production, and shape the imagination of racial hierarchy that justified these decisions. Foucault long resisted directly addressing the spatiality others claimed as foundational to his genealogies/philosophies of power and knowledge. In Society Must be Defended, Foucault (1997) examines the transition from sovereign rule to regulation through biopower. Biopower refers to the manners in which governments regulate bodies. He extends Said’s argument to observe how lived practices of racial hierarchy and segregation take away the right of some to live or thrive so that others may. The technologies of biopower include a symbolic association of state imagination/identity and the application of the resultant differentiation to policies and practices that eliminate undesirable attributes or people. Said (1993) and Foucault (1997) contemplate the nefarious practices of geography that threaten universal access to citizenship. If the production of space simultaneously produces and relies on a grossly uneven world order, then its accompanying state-to-citizen or subject-to-subject practices produce a desperately vulnerable class of citizens whose disempowerment propels others to/in power. Spatial theorists/social geographers paint a similarly nihilistic landscape. But when they advance space as a social production, they also present opportunities for the social re-formation of space through the reclamation of the physical arrangements and symbolic associations of space. Herein lies opportunity to consider both the study of how vulnerable citizens are made and take advantage of space. In their deconstruction of the cityscape, Marxist geographers explore how dynamic interplay between perceptions, conceptions, and imaginations shape
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life in the city (Harvey, 2012; Lefebvre, 1991; Soja, 2009). Soja (2010) articulates geographic practices that make social experiences inherently different based on geographic relation to racial inequity (i.e., South African apartheid) or capitalist positions (cf. Massey, 2007). Central to this is the physical arrangement of urban areas which allocate space for certain activities and groups (Dikec, 2001). Civic activities, groups of people, and the means of production are physically separated from one another. Spaces acquire a narrow meaning that shapes their accessibility and use. The physical practices within a city are integrated into global concepts and flows of power and discourses ( Soja, 2010). These arrangements are not immune from social relationships and people’s imaginations of justice (Harvey, 2012). Lefebvre’s (1996) declaration of “the right to the city” has been widely adopted to encourage the reclamation of physical space or the accompanying symbols and imagination that have produced unjust geographies. Feminist geographers suggest that the interrelationship between human and spatial attributes/identities produce boundaries around participation and entrance (McDowell, 1999). A highly attended to matter of feminist geographers and historians is the division between public and private according to social and economic distinctions, ones that correlate private/home/woman to repeatedly perform and reproduce a social view of the proper place for women. The spatial-discursive interplay shapes the identity of both women and home associated with passivity and care-taking ( Schmidt, 2012). As Hubbard (2002) notes in his study of queer, engagement with spaces influences identity and agency. The particular ways of learning to be or imagine queer (or female or black) are intimately shaped by relating to or against how sexual identities are perceived in socio-spatial interactions. As women take the private into the public, they create overlapping spaces or borderlands wherein new/liberating narratives can be imagined and activated ( Friedman, 1998). These narratives may arise from grappling with the affective experience in space (Massey, 2005). Feminist geographies offer a spatial lens through which to evaluate how identities and attributes affect how/why people resist or reproduce the systems of inequality or mobility. The exercise of resistance positions the citizen in space. The spatial dimensions of citizenship involve processes of belonging and civic activities. Civics scholars recognize the unevenness of civic participation, marked by the cultural question of who is a citizen. Anthropologists contend that the efficacy to activate citizenship rests in a sense of belonging. Rosaldo (1994) uses the potential oxymoron cultural citizenship to critique forms of citizenship that privilege particular cultural identities or practices (cf. Foucault, 1997). He contributes to a set of scholarship that takes up belonging as foundational to being, becoming, or enacting citizenship. García-Sánchez (2013) posits that citizenship must incorporate cultural processes: “These models emphasize cultural citizenship and belonging as a process, as a set of practices, performed and contested at the intersection of social reproduction, human agency, and the production of new cultural spaces” (p. 481). The implication is that nations or other entities
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that grant citizenship are wary of narrow conceptions of the good citizen, lest people/groups feel excluded based on language, gender, attire, or religious display ( Glenn, 2011). The process of actualizing citizenship and civic identity begins with recognition of oneself, a sense of belonging to the “where” associated with that citizenship. Those not deemed “good” or who cannot identify with the cultural practices of citizenship constitute the domain of vulnerable citizenship. The activity of citizenship requires that people feel confident to act, have the formal knowledge of how to act, and imagine the change they can produce. This has been hampered by unequal access to the civic and political rights and knowledge required of citizens (Levinson, 2012). Within citizenship education, the language has shifted from articulating a civic engagement gap to a civic opportunity gap (Levinson, 2012). The language changes the onus of exclusion to recognize how the failures of education and inclusion limit people’s efficacy or feelings of empowerment to participate (Levinson, 2012). Verba, Schlozman, and Brady (1995) note, “Those who possess civic skills, the set of specific competencies germane to citizen political activity, are more likely to feel confident about exercising those skills in politics and to be effective . . . when they do” (p. 305). Shifts in measurement also reflect the more inclusive language of engaged citizenship which measures means of civic as well as formal political participation (Dalton, 2008). These include whether people act in ways that support the welfare of self and others. It is this social focus, marked by participation and opportunity gaps, that leads Levinson (2012) to advocate for education that recognizes the oppressions and exclusions inherent in citizenship and to redress these through broad forms of engagement and critical reflection with them. Geographers offer theories that allow us to conceive of belonging or the invitation to engage in citizenship as a spatial process. While they enable such investigation, they do not tend to how these theories shape the everyday practices of individuals. Political scientists and civic educators explore important aspects of the knowledge and cultural alignments that enable citizenship but do not explore how these are shaped by the regulation of boundaries or identifications of/with space. If we accept that citizens are vulnerable—whether through the juridical process of exclusion or the consequence of not being able to access civic rights—then their lived experience of that struggle rests in the interplay of theories of space and citizenship.
Vulnerable Citizens This section creates four fictitious but realistic stories to contemplate the vulnerable citizen as a spatial production and to envision her civic engagements as similarly spatial (Harvey, 2012; Soja, 2010). The stories utilize contemporary civic/ political events that seemingly frame both space and citizenship. The first story examines the challenges migration presents to who is juridically and socially allowed to claim citizenship. It takes up permeable borders and how women
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maneuver within localized discourses in advancing their subjectivity. The second explores how the raced arrangement of space impacts how legal citizens struggle to engage in formal citizenship activities. The third and fourth transition from how space acts on citizens to how people advance their citizenship. One examines civic engagement as the struggle for control of space, while the last explores how embodying space might expand the civic imagination. Across, I suggest that in this intersection, we see vulnerable as both a lived and discursive form that is integrated into landscapes. It is simultaneously through plays with space that people may be able to challenge/change their position as vulnerable.
Belonging and Citizenship of Coerced Migrants Maya’s is a story of the physical and rhetorical boundaries of good citizenship and belonging. Maya is a coerced migrant, a category that includes refugees, people who are trafficked, and others who are forcibly relocated across national borders. She stares at the limited choices facing many women because refugee is a status generally afforded men; trafficked is a position accessible to women ( Sharma, 2003). Her political affiliations in Myanamar curtail her civic rights. She juridically belongs to Myanmar but is un-belonged by her government because she does not act the good citizen. This places her in jeopardy for detention or worse. Furthermore, she needs money (and freedom) to support her daughter. Her activism as well as simply being a woman limits her opportunities in the formal economy. In search of economic sustainability, Maya offers herself to a trafficker. She realizes the risks, but is optimistic that the conditions of trafficking can be offset by the opportunities of/in a new place. Once in Los Angeles, she must confront that the United States does not warmly welcome her. Maya’s story belongs to many women who challenge the global celebration of mobility by visibly placing migrants within the discourse (Hyndman & Giles, 2011). If the (positively) mobile are embodied in a professional class that jetsets around the globe for economic benefit, then migrant is reserved for those who bring problems ( Castles, 2010). They remind the world of troubling conditions that cause migration and the struggle of many nations to incorporate their new plurality. Both groups are mobile and give pause for discussion about the relationship between boundaries and citizenship, between the attributes of people and how they come to/are invited to belong as citizens. These relationships are heavily gendered (and raced). In Maya’s case, even though she is un-belonged, she has different paths available to change her circumstances. For example, women have more difficulty becoming refugees, typically reliant on a husband for such access (Hyndman & Giles, 2011). To explore how the movement across space intersects with citizenship, I further explore the language used to depict these women and their paths to belonging. Trafficked women disrupt the patriarchy/masculinity that quietly rests behind civic structures. Trafficked women often find themselves in sex industries, a
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sector that is simultaneously taboo and acceptable, because it fulfills male needs. Societies support patriarchal systems of sex that demand prostitution and coerce women (Pickup, 1998). Thus, prostitution involves men and women but they are differently positioned/regarded by the law. Those who prostitute receive stronger social critiques of immorality and are vulnerable to losing their citizenship rights; few countries punish male clients or view prostitution as an act of violence ( Shifman, 2003). Trafficked women must determine how they want to take up their subject position within this frame of immorality. As long as trafficked or coerced modifies prostitution, the women occupy an acceptable form of citizenship—the victim in need of rescue (Andrijasevic, 2009). This characterization affords certain privileges in terms of a civic subject position. If women submit to the victim status, they potentially benefit from a state willing to protect vulnerable women, regardless of whether their border crossing was legal. The new nation may seek to reform these women and transform them into productive citizens. This view does not recognize the agency of women to use trafficking to penetrate porous borders or find economic reward (Doezema, 2002). Some women take advantage of dysfunctional patriarchy rather than submit to victimhood (Pickup, 1998). The resistors who claim to prostitute voluntarily run the risk of being beyond state protection. Instead, they embody a manner of being that is perceived as a threat. No matter her choice, she is caught in a patriarchal organization of space that makes women vulnerable within and across borders. Here is a narrative of power, activated through space, that confines movement, economic positions, and the possibilities for accessing citizenship. Residing within the tension about how mobile women can position themselves economically is how they build senses of belonging foundational to civic identity. Border controls—and the moral panics that drive them—have very little to do with stopping movements of people. Instead, they work to make those who do cross the line incredibly vulnerable within the spaces defined as ‘belonging’ to members of the ‘nation’ and protected by ‘their state.’ In other words, ever-increasing restrictive immigration policies do not work to restrict people’s movements but to create a group of people completely vulnerable to exploitation in the workplace; a population of workers that benefits employers by providing them a cheapened and weakened alternative to ‘legal’ workers. ( Sharma, 2003, pp. 56–57) As women cross borders and become vulnerable, Sharma suggests a need to consider where and how these women belong. The decision to identify as victim may be an avenue toward belonging in the secondary location, but a decision that requires the adaptation of corrective behavior to acquire and sustain this sense of belonging. There is sacrifice of self in order to comply with the regulations of
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citizenship that exist from taking advantage of porous borders. To return to the first location contains the vulnerabilities that led the women to migrate in the first place. In watching these women and considering how they make decisions about work and residence, we see the struggle over civic belonging. Citizenship is attached to location. Simultaneously, the conditions of that citizenship are not one’s own sense of belonging but the conditions and activities that make one visible and accepted in that space. In the circumstance of trafficking, women, even when agentive, are caught in patriarchal institutions that constrain their efforts to belong. Mobile women, particularly those engaged in trafficking-related activities, reveal many issues that unsettle people in a “global” world. Borders are more porous not just because people physically find ways through, but because they need to be in order to move labor across the globe. Women move and satiate demands that nations recognize, but want to make invisible. And yet, the women, by their own efforts or those of international organizations including the United Nations, help make these women visible. Thus, movement becomes intertwined with the sense attached to a place and whether mobile subjects adopt the identifiers that retain this normative sense of nation and society. Women, coerced to become migrants and potentially trafficked, are vulnerable to capitalist systems interlaced with patriarchy that limit income-generation to sex industries and the physical threats it entails. This system of selling oneself extends to their relationship with the state, in both homes. States make women vulnerable within and across borders by requiring “correct” ways of engaging economically and civically. To do otherwise holds potential to force them into the position of the un-belonged, a status that places them outside the social and likely juridical claims to citizenship.
Accessing Places of Engagement Leroy tells the story of how the relocation of resources prevent civic participation. Leroy lives in Livingston, Alabama, the county seat of Sumter County. He celebrated his 18th birthday on October 1, 2014 and was excited to be able to vote in the upcoming November elections. He knows that his state recently passed a voter ID law so he needs to obtain state ID. For some kids his age, this isn’t an issue; they can use their driver’s license. Leroy doesn’t have a driver’s license, choosing instead to bike in his small town given the costs of car ownership. In researching how to get to the DMV in Livingston, he learns that it is one of the closed locations. If he wants to vote in November, he must get a ride to the busy DMV an hour away in Tuscaloosa or the smaller one almost 90 minutes away in Selma. He wonders who has the time to take off work to drive him and wait at one of these centers and he is frustrated that there is no DMV in his county. He is struck by the fact that his county is predominantly African American while the neighboring counties that have DMVs still open have a larger White population.
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Theoretically, anyone with citizenship should be able to enjoy the rights and privileges associated with it. Leroy’s story suggests that these cannot be taken for granted; geography can be utilized to limit access to fundamental civic rights or responsibilities. Voting is supposed to be one of these fundamental rights and yet states relocate voter registration sites, polling places, and congressional office to limit accessibility. The issue of voter identification has been challenged legally, but those court cases did not address the ease with which citizens could acquire the necessary ID. Following Shelby County v. Holder (2013), Alabama no longer needed congressional approval to change voting laws. Alabama quickly implemented a voter ID law and months later, in order to save $11 million, closed 31 DMVs across the state (Marsh, 2015). It was quickly suggested that these closures were primarily in the “Black belt” or the swath of predominantly black counties across the state. The DMV provides many services, one of which is voter registration and identification. This was a problem for many reasons, but most importantly because African Americans, Latinx Americans, women, and college students are least likely to have requisite identification (Mock, 2015). Thus, in Alabama the groups suddenly needing IDs appeared to have the greatest difficulty obtaining them. The case was taken up by the Department of Transportation. It was not unlike a 2012 Department of Justice case regarding voter ID laws in Texas, ruled on prior to Shelby County v. Holder. In that case the DOJ wrote, Second, in 81 of the state’s 254 counties, there are no operational driver’s license offices. The disparity in the rates between Hispanics and nonHispanics with regard to the possession of either a driver’s license or personal identification card issued by the DPS is particularly stark in counties without driver’s license offices. According to the September 2011 data, 10.0 percent of Hispanics in counties without driver’s licenses offices do not have either form of identification, compared to 5.5 percent of non-Hispanics. (cited in Mock, 2015) Whitmire (2017) did a similar geographic analysis in Alabama. He mapped the closures and county demographics. He found that in the 10 counties with the highest black population, eight of the counties lost their DMV in 2014. The Department of Transportation determined that the closures were racially biased and they are reopening. The story may have a happy ending for Leroy who would have been able to actualize his voting rights when the DMV returned to his county. But the saga reminds us that spatial organization shapes civic involvement. Soja (2010) writes, The U.S. legal system also has built-in defenses against claims of spatial injustice. . . . It aims to supply justice to everyone equitable, at least in
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principle, and attempts to respond to demands of justice on egalitarian terms as well, but for the most part the law ignores the unfairness of the processes creating unjust outcomes in the first place. (p. 49) The U.S. legal system worked here but as Soja writes, not before reminding people how easily they can be excluded. People do not have equal access to the control of space and as such are vulnerable to the exclusionary acts of those in power. Leroy is a vulnerable citizen. The physical distribution of resources designed to regulate racial access has the potential to deny racial minorities and poor people the means to participate in the most basic activities of citizenship. The acts and the means of citizenship occur in real, lived places. Access is bound to the whims of the conceivers of space who may have interests that do not protect equal access to citizenship and the law.
Reclaiming Spatial Symbols Occupy Wall Street offers an opportunity to explore protest as participation toward controlling the symbols linking citizens and space. Jacob, a recent college graduate, finds himself congregating with others in Zuccotti Park rather than earning the big salary he expected after four years at a rigorous academic institution. He is one of many college graduates who literally returned home after college upon discovering that a degree did not guarantee a job. Jacob graduated soon after the 2008 economic collapse, one that ushered in years of hiring freezes and declining positions. Many blamed the collapse on unregulated speculations from Wall Street. Jacob learns of Occupy Wall Street, an encampment in Lower Manhattan, where people are resisting the power of Wall Street. Jacob is enticed and leaves his parents to join other occupiers. His visible and collective presence in the middle of the economic sector serves as a daily reminder to passersby about the plight of many young people. It is also a launching point for a form of participatory democracy that seeks to physically and symbolically occupy Wall Street and pressure the government to enact reforms. Occupy Wall Street was (rightfully) criticized for a lack of platform. This was placed alongside past political occupations such as the Bonus Army (Kennedy, 1999), General Motors sit-down strike (West, 1986), and American Indian Movement (Anderson, 1996) wherein occupation was accompanied by a clear demand for remittances, wages, and access. It is perhaps difficult to measure the success of a protest without such a platform. Maybe the organizers of OWS realized that what mobilized them could not be satiated without a complete reorganization of economic power. Perhaps, they did not really believe that without revolution they could separate the influence of corporations rather than the people on matters of governance. There was a not a clear endpoint that could quickly improve the lives of the “99%.” The structures of capitalism and corporatization were too
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strongly woven through society and politics. Instead, they engaged in a struggle over space rather than in space. Mitchell (2003) argues that protest is inherently a matter of geography as “rights have to be exercised somewhere, and sometimes that ‘where’ has itself to be actively produced by taking, by wresting, some space and transforming both its mean and use” (p. 81). The Occupy Wall Street occupiers never physically occupied Wall Street, but the visibility and accompanying discourse showed that re-imagining space (and its attributes) can change the lived practice of space and citizenship ( Lefebvre, 1996). The occupiers in New York City and locales across the globe simultaneously claimed their right to the city and their right to activism bound in spatiality. In New York City, Zuccotti Park was chosen because of its designation as a privately owned public space ( Németh, 2009) and its proximity to Wall Street, an area set off by barriers with ID-required entry. Zuccotti Park (at the time of the movement) was open and accessible 24 hours a day and posted few other regulations such as those about lying on benches that would later appear ( Foderaro, 2011). Occupiers in other cities chose similarly, seeking public areas with few ordinances and locations proximal to symbolic outposts of Wall Street/global capitalism and supporting government agencies. Occupy Wall Street movements were successful in their transformation of Wall Street as a socially constructed space. Occupiers transformed the meaning and attributes of Wall Street. They took the symbols of global finance and repositioned these as markers of gross inequality, criminality, and greed. Linking occupations around the world positioned Wall Street, lobbyists, ports, banks, and some mayors as co-conspirators in the effort to serve their interests over the good of the people. The laws may not have changed as a result, but the movement produced a lasting penetration into how people think about governance, corporations, and goodwill. Vulnerable citizens found that space afforded them access to power discourse. In the end, the struggle over space was also the movement’s demise, as the city governments took back control of physical space through control of its perception (symbols). They ultimately became embattled with coordinated efforts of city mayors (and federal legislators in Washington, DC) over the rights not to merely control the physical space but its associations ( Schmidt & Babits, 2013). Officials quickly realized that they lacked the physical means, due to law and public accord, to eradicate many of the occupations. Mayors joined together and changed their language about the protests. They turned occupiers into people at risk and producers of risk to rewrite the rules of space such that occupations could be dismantled. They cited health issues—fire hazards, rats, and garbage—as things that might endanger occupiers (Bloomberg, 2011). Bloomberg and others also cited the (potential) violence by homeless people against the unarmed occupiers. The discourse turned the protesters into vulnerable people. In their presentation as vulnerable to health issues or physical violence, they
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simultaneously re-acquired the status of vulnerable citizens, a status they originally claimed as indicative of their struggle to acquire economic resources or be heard in legislative halls. Dalton (2008) reminds us that a variety of activities comprise good citizenship. Mitchell (2003) sets this inside a framework of needing a public that agitates for rights when dispossessed. Most of the occupiers felt dispossessed even if they were raised in privileged race and/or class backgrounds. They found that the economic system was a common organizer or common oppressor across groups of people and utilized that in a movement. The form of protest and claims for justice necessitated a direct claim to physical space ( Soja, 2010). What makes OWS interesting is how it worked between the concrete and abstract elements of space. The vulnerable citizens did not have another means to access the spaces that needed changing and thus attempted to disrupt them from outside by negotiating symbols. These citizens are vulnerable because of their exclusions and yet use spatial practices begin processes of change.
The Experience of Citizenship The Women’s March presents a story of how collective embodiment produces civic efficacy. Theresa, the queer woman who made her way from Madison, WI to Washington, DC on January 21, 2017, wanted to have an impact. She took to the stands along Pennsylvania Avenue and brought the chants of the streets into the crowds lining the street: “No hate, no fear; immigrants are welcome here,” “We will not go away; welcome to your first day.” This was her first rally. She had the option of staying in Madison, but traveled to Washington with her sisters to be part of history. She was mobilized by the election. She felt it impossible to sit back and finally realized that protecting the rights of women and others required a stronger presence by women. As she moved from home to community organizations to DC, she engaged with space in a manner that was constructing her sense of citizenship. Her sexuality and gender created the possibility for vulnerable citizenship. But is the decision to activate her civic rights a means of disrupting the spatial margins of vulnerability? The spatiality of citizenship attends to the boundaries that construct and regulate who is a citizen and how this citizenship is activated. Doreen Massey (2005) argues for a spatiality that is freed from the confines of temporality and representation. She rejects the space/place distinction and brings them into one as she theorizes the “event of place” rather than representations of space: This is the event of place in part in the simple sense of the coming together of the previously unrelated, a constellation of processes rather than a thing. This is place as open and as internally multiple. Not capturable as a slice through time in the sense of an essential section. Not intrinsically coherent. (Massey, 2005, p. 141)
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Her thinking is useful here to draw attention away from the meaning of the march in historic terms and toward the embodied experience of the march as a component of citizenship. The Women’s March in Washington, DC was arguably the largest of its kind. The magnitude of the event was intensified by sister marches in hundreds of cities within and beyond the United States. In many cities, including Washington, DC, the course of the march was changed just prior to or during the march because organizers grossly underestimated the number of participants. New York City was able to respond based on advanced RSVPs and organize the day so that only 8000 people departed from Dag Hammarskjold Plaza every 15 minutes. In Chicago and Los Angeles, the area set aside for the march was simply insufficient. The event in Chicago was reclassified from march to rally as the downtown area was overtaken by people. In Washington, DC, the parade route had to be redesigned with multiple entry points toward the White House because there was simply no space to move along the original path. The march became historic and will likely be remembered and placed alongside and repeatedly compared to other marches. Scanning news articles, there are already claims about number, location, and number of arrests that make their way into the newspaper articles. Marches are embodied experiences of civic action. What does this mean for how the women who marched will be remembered or see themselves as citizens? The march created a sense of civic engagement and identity in people. It is too early upon writing this chapter to fully study all the ways participants continued or expanded their civic participation following the initial march. Early indicators show liberals and Democrats increasing the number of phone calls made to their representatives. In the city where I live, there were multiple protests planned in the weeks following in response to specific threats around a number of issues reflected in the platform of the Women’s March—women’s reproductive control, abortion, immigration, equal pay, representation, queer rights, trans rights, black lives matter, support for Muslims, and more. It is not clear the extent to which protests like the one(s) on January 21 shape change at the policy level. Reports suggest that the media was watching and sharing the message but few political leaders were in attendance. Some have suggested that marches of this timeframe (only three months in planning) do not have the capacity to build the networks and infrastructure to carry out its platform. Only time will tell. Certainly, impact is one measure of “effectiveness,” but perhaps not the best here. The march became a critical space in which to produce the possibility for citizenship. The march mobilized thousands of people and organized them into a collective public. People went for many reasons, but once there, people lived and energized the civic space they occupied with others. The energy of the march brought together many vulnerable voices—immigrants, women, trans people, queers, Muslims, black people—who felt attacked either by the agenda set by a new presidential administration or other recent attacks. The march offered an opportunity to move from vulnerable and thus silenced to visible and vocal.
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There was a collectivity that enabled this. This does not overlook moments when people might have been silenced by another march participant. The organizers understood vulnerability. They diversified the make-up of the organizing board and platform to invite a diverse experience of oppression, they published materials in advance that addressed the specific concerns of immigrants who were protesting and more vulnerable to arrest. But at least for this day, the march reduced the sense of vulnerability and produced an affective response of transformation. It reminds us of the power and impact of embodying citizenship.
Discussion When we speak of people living within a country’s borders, we often refer to them as citizens of that place. Unfortunately, the relationship between belonging and place has always been complicated. On the lands now called the United States, the most egregious examples are the dislocation of indigenous peoples and the enslavement and subsequent relocation of Africans. In the first case, people who “belonged” to the land were removed from it when land was usurped for private and public ownership. In the latter, enslaved Africans were displaced from humanity and have struggled ever since to establish their belonging. In many U.S. social studies books, these cases are presented as the past, distinct from harmonious pluralism today. The natural pairing of place and citizenship fails inside the United States and faces even greater challenge on a global scale. The displacement of people within and across borders produces a vulnerable classification of citizens. Their vulnerability is not merely an issue of enfranchisement, but a matter of being allocated the resources and accompanying recognition that are central to political, social, cultural, and economic belonging and justice in communities and countries ( Fraser, 2000; Said, 1993). Geographers and civics educators examine civic and social inequity. Through the preceding stories and discussions, I propose that the redress to vulnerability lies at the intersection of these literatures—both in fully conceiving how spatial organization produces a certain citizenship and how re-envisioning or reclaiming space is a significant form of civic engagement. At this intersection, we see that the drawing of borders determines juridical standing, the struggle for space shapes people’s need to access citizenship across national boundaries, the location of engagements shapes people’s ability to act politically and civically, the experiences and social relations in space shape how and whether people can and will feel a sense of belonging or be invited to belong. Belonging, connectivity to other members of a community, is increasingly evident in civics literature. The concept is not new but increasing transnational tensions and divided pluralities give renewed attention to this component of citizenship. If one does not belong, one does not feel and thus act the part of the citizen. Geographers (Dikec, 2001; Soja, 2010) note that the struggle over space is wrought with a struggle over boundaries. The drawing of boundaries solidifies
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the attributes of those inside while casting aside others ( Schmidt, 2011). Across the stories, there are varying plays with boundaries. Maya recognizes the permeability of boundaries, adopting a necessary identity to transgress boundaries that are supposedly closed to her. Within the United States, she may then find a new set of boundaries—those of a category that potentially give rise to her opportunity to adopt a new citizenship. The Alabama laws rely heavily on the boundaries between counties mapped against racial demographics in the state. People can physically move across the county boundaries. The state carefully and precisely moved the places of registry as far from communities that needed them to reproduce/maintain a race-based civic unevenness. The creators took advantage of the boundaries between counties and economics to produce exclusivity. Occupy Wall Street found ways to penetrate the wall that prevented people from accessing the street by noting that Wall Street is not only a physical space, but a conceptual one. Political scientists and civic educators have a long interest in formal and informal means of engagement or participation. Levinson (2012) notates an opportunity gap between young people based upon race. She advocates for increasing the opportunities young people have to join organizations and networks that can advocate for social change. Much of the related literature resides in Dalton’s (2008) distinction between the duty- and engaged-citizen. The forms of activism depicted in OWS and the Women’s March fall into the latter category, one that provides broader classification for what constitutes participation. A spatial understanding enhances this civic reading of the movements. The communities and relationships require a space of meeting. Collective ideas bring people together to envision change (Harvey, 2012). The strength of the relationships resides in their shared embodiment of a space or the collectively created vision of how to reshape the rhetoric of the sites of protest and power. The occupiers developed a strong sense of internal belonging that gave them the strength of resistance. The embodied citizenship of 2,000,000 people gathered in Washington, DC and across the globe on January 21, 2017 allowed a physical closeness that facilitated belonging on that day and possibly beyond. The pussyhats and shared platform were visible imagery of belonging. These belongings are more temporal than those depicted in social or cultural citizenship literature ( Glenn, 2011; Rosaldo, 1994). They reflect not merely a sense of belonging but how belonging can activate engagement. Social geographers align space and symbols as descriptive of the space, informing and aligning the identities of the people in their encounter. The stories highlight the discursive struggles to align spatial connotations with political identity (Verba et al., 1995). If engagement requires efficacy (Levinson, 2012; Verba et al., 1995), then the identification of self with the symbols of citizenship or the place of citizenship is significant for participation (Hubbard, 2002). The redress of the vulnerable citizenship must contend with the discourse that regulates her. Maya must decide whether she is an agent or victim. The subject position allows
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her to envision herself and demand to be recognized as a particular citizen ( Friedman, 1998). In the story, she is an active subject who crosses boundaries, exposes an uncomfortable socio-economic model, and demands the support and recognition in the United States she was denied in Myanmar. Her mobility shapes migration policy. OWS occupiers recognized the potential of spatial symbols in their struggle to claim their right in the city ( Harvey, 2012; Lefebvre, 1996). They strengthened the political positioning and efficacy as they wrestled with the language attached to self and space. Being able to connect the attributes of the citizen and space enable formation of belonging and its resultant forms of engagement. Civics (education) scholars note the need to expand how we think about civic activities or engagement (Dalton, 2008; Levinson, 2012). The argument arises from recognition that people have uneven access to socio-political space and institutions. Differences in opportunity to participate and learn arise from raced, classed, gendered, religious, and sexualized access to power and place (Abu El-Haj, 2007; Levinson, 2012). These differences are the constituencies that I refer to as vulnerable citizens. They have different opportunities to access and to become citizens and thus have uneven subject positions as citizens when it comes to activating power. This one-directional lens on understanding the spatial citizen reifies a marginal position. What the explanations attempt is a more robust and contested position regarding vulnerable citizenship positions. Embedded in the stories are a variety of forms of civic engagement that reposition or empower people in claiming space, physically or symbolically. Alabama shows the limitations and resultant public discourse that engages people. The spatial patterning allows an understanding and opportunity to disrupt. Maya in Myanmar exemplifies women claiming their right to citizenship and acting as such through the manipulation of space and disputed ideals. The final examples more fully illuminate spatial practices that speak back to unevenness. OWS was replete with teach-ins, community connectivity, marches, and the occupation of space, all embodied and symbolic means for penetrating dominance political position and making vulnerable positions and discourses available for public deliberation. The march itself is the ultimate embodiment and building of collective sense of citizenship and engagement. There is much to be learned about how this embodiment shapes further participation. Across the cases, opportunities to transcendence became available through space. In the end, the vulnerable citizen is produced through space and yet it is the struggle over space that simultaneously offers redress to exclusion.
Conclusion This chapter is written in a particular time, depicting examples that could but should not be conceived of as more temporal than spatial. The examples are not here to speak of a moment in time, but to propose that citizenship (both
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its deployment and access to it) are embedded in and enacted through claims and negotiations of space. Depicted here are issues of the use of space to exclude members, the struggles to belong in and across space, and forms of civic engagement enacted in and through space, particularly as they may evoke further participation or exclusion. Such concepts remain even as the contexts or specific movements change across time. Citizenship remains a spatial dilemma. Citizenship is an inherently political topic. It cannot, unfortunately, be presumed that all people in and across places have equitable access to the legal or socio-cultural aspects of citizenship. It is unlikely that Said (1993) is the first to recognize that the struggle for power and recognition are ultimately a struggle for geography. He does evoke not citizenship, but his colonial subjects recognize that their struggle for power and intimately bound in their ability to belong or at least to be recognized for the agentive subjects they are/should be. There may be strong forces acting against people ( Foucault, 1997). In the contemporary moment, we once again see global forces acting in multiscalar ways to shape the experience of the citizen. The global scales create great risk for vulnerable subjects who may fall between states. But the function of intersecting scales produces networks and multipoint protest that may ultimately give increasing resistive forces to people across the globe to enact their civic identities locally and globally. The struggle for geography will not go away and as such, we will remain a world where many people are at risk. The challenge for educators and policymakers is how to utilize spatial claims and renegotiations of spaces to combat the forces of erasure. There appear to be much potential here.
References Abu El-Haj, T. R. (2007). ‘I was born here, but my home, it’s not here’: Educating for democratic citizenship in an era of transnational migration and global conflict. Harvard Educational Review, 77(3), 285–316. Anderson, T. (1996). The movement and the sixties: Protest in American from Greensboro to Wounded Knee. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Andrijasevic, R. (2009). Sex on the move: Gender, subjectivity, and differential inclusion. Subjectivity, 29, 389–406. Bloomberg, M. R. (2011, November 15). Statement of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on clearing and re-opening of Zuccotti Park. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2011/nov/15/michael-bloomberg-statement-zuccotti-park Castles, S. (2010). Understanding global migration: A social transformation perspective. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36 (10), 1565–1586. Dalton, R. J. (2008). The good citizen: How a younger generation is reshaping American politics. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Dikec, M. (2001). Justice and the spatial imagination. Environment and Planning A, 33, 1785–1805. doi:10.1068/a3467 Doezema, J. (2002). Who gets to choose? Coercion, consent, and the UN Trafficking Protocol. Gender & Development, 10 (1), 20–27. Foderaro, L. W. (2011). Privately owned park, open to the public, may make its own rules. The New York Times.
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Foucault, M. (1997). Society must be defended. New York, NY: Picador. Fraser, N. (2000). Rethinking recognition. New Left Review, 3, 107. Friedman, S. S. (1998). Mappings: Feminism and the cultural geographies of encounter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. García-Sánchez, I. M. (2013). The everyday politics of ‘cultural citizenship’ among North African immigrant school children in Spain. Language & Communication, 33(4), 481–499. Glenn, E. N. (2011). Constructing citizenship exclusion, subordination, and resistance. American Sociological Review, 76 (1), 1–24. Harvey, D. (2012). Rebel cities. London: Verso. Hubbard, P. (2002). Sexing the self: Geographies of engagement and encounter. Social & Cultural Geography, 3(4), 365–381. Hyndman, J., & Giles, W. (2011). Waiting for what? The feminization of asylum in protracted situations. Gender, Place, and Culture, 18 (3), 361–379. Kennedy, D. (1999). Freedom from fear: The American people in depression and war. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell. Lefebvre, H. (1996). Writings on cities. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Levinson, M. (2012). No citizen left behind (Vol. 13). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Marsh, R. (2015, December 9). DOT launches investigation in Alabama over DMV closures. CNN. Retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/09/politics/alabamadmv-closures-voting-rights/ Marshall, T. H. (1987). Citizenship and social class. In T. H. Marshall & T. Bottomore (Eds.), Citizenship and social class (pp. 3–51). London: Pluto Press. Massey, D. (2005). Space, place and gender. Malden, MA: Polity. Massey, D. (2007). World city. Malden, MA: Polity. McDowell, L. (1999). Gender, identity and place: Understanding feminist geographies. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Mitchell, D. (2003). The right to the city: Social justice and the fight for public space. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. Mock, B. (2015, October 1). What effect will shuttering Alabama DMV offices have on black voters. CityLab. Retrieved from www.citylab.com/politics/2015/10/whateffect-will-shuttering-alabama-dmv-offices-have-on-black-voters/408571/ Németh, J. (2009). Defining a public: The management of privately owned public space. Urban Studies, 46 (11), 2463–2490. Pickup, F. (1998). More words but no action? Forced migration and trafficking of women. Gender & Development, 6 (1), 44–51. Rosaldo, R. (1994). Cultural citizenship and educational democracy. Cultural Anthropology, 9 (3), 402–411. Said, E. W. (1993). Culture and imperialism. New York, NY: Vintage. Schmidt, S. J. (2011). Who lives on the other side of that boundary: A model of geographic thinking. Social Education, 75(5), 250–255. Schmidt, S. J. (2012). Am I a woman?: The production of woman in U.S. History. Gender and Education, 24 (7), 707–724. Schmidt, S. J., & Babits, C. (2013). Occupy Wall Street as a curriculum of space. Journal of Social Studies Research, 38 (2), 79–89. Sharma, N. (2003). Travel agency: A critique of anti-trafficking campaigns. Global Movements for Refugee and Migrant Rights, 21(3), 53–65. Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 12–96 (2013).
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Shifman, P. (2003). Trafficking and women’s human rights in a globalised world. Gender & Development, 11(1), 125–132. Soja, E. W. (2009). The city and spatial justice. Spatial Justice, 1(1). Soja, E. W. (2010). Seeking spatial justice (Vol. 16). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Verba, S., Schlozman, K. L., & Brady, H. E. (1995). Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. West, K. (1986). On the line: Rank and file reminiscences of working conditions and the General Motors Sit-down Strike of 1936–37. Michigan Historical Review, 12 (1), 57–82. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 237–269. Whitmire, K. (2017, January 5). As it turns out . . . Bentley’s driver’s license closures were racial, afterall. AL.com. Retrieved from www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/01/as_ it_turns_out_bentleys_drive.html
5 CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION IN A SPATIALLY ENHANCED WORLD Sarah Witham Bednarz and Robert S. Bednarz
Kahne, Hodgin, and Eidman-Aadahl (2016) propose a redesign of civic education in the United States to respond to changes that “the digital revolution” has brought to political life in the United States. This revolution, they write, has enabled new forms of participation in democratic processes. However, their call disregards a significant aspect of “the digital revolution,” notably the geospatial revolution. The explosive and concurrent growth of geospatial technologies including geographic information systems (GIS), Remote Sensing, global positioning systems (GPS), and associated technologies, particularly mapping technologies, used in conjunction with social media, have changed how we live—and especially how we engage as citizens. Underpinning the use of these geospatial technologies are two forms of thinking: spatial thinking and geospatial thinking. Spatial thinking is defined as the use of spatial concepts, spatial representations, and processes of reasoning to conceptualize and solve problems (National Research Council, 2006). It involves the ability to visualize and interpret data about space that is encoded and stored in memory ( Sinton, 2011; Uttal, 2000). Geospatial thinking is a specialized form of spatial thinking that is Earth or environmental scale (Baker et al., 2015). Both forms of thinking are engaged concurrently and in a reciprocal fashion during the use of geospatial technologies. Using a technology such as a GIS can enhance spatial thinking abilities; at the same time, learning to think about the world through the mediated perspective that technologies provide may affect geospatial thinking and its development (Uttal, 2005). Our interaction with technologies is shaping the ways we see, think about, and understand the world in which we live. Geospatial technologies not only influence our ways of thinking but also affect the relationships people have with each other and with the world in which
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they live. Enormous quantities of digital geographic data are available in real time. We are monitored on closed circuit television systems; we check in to let friends know where we are through Facebook and Four Square; our smartphones track our physical activities and locations and tell us how to navigate in real space and in real time. We express our opinions on a range of issues frequently through Twitter, Instagram, and other sharing applications. We report on traffic patterns, complain about neighbors who do not pick up their garbage, and alert authorities about suspicious activities through place-based social media. Who we are, where we are, what we do, and how we feel is shared in geographic contexts. The world is at everyone’s fingertips, 24–7 (Downs, 2014). This chapter examines the roles spatial and geospatial thinking and geospatial technologies may play in citizenship education in the United States in the first decades of the 21st century, a time of uncertainty, disruption, and rapid change. It is obvious to the authors of this chapter that geography educators should examine how the affordances of geospatial technologies and social media may enrich citizenship education. We begin by briefly examining the role geography has traditionally played in citizenship education in the United States. We compare three models of citizenship proposed by Westheimer and Kahne (2004); Bennett, Wells, and Rank (2009) and Mayes, Mitra, and Serriere (2016) to situate geospatial technologies in citizenship formation. Next, we describe what geospatial technologies and spatial thinking can add to the development of educated and committed citizens using a model proposed by Watts and Flanagan (2007). We conclude with a call for further research on ways geospatial technologies can contribute to the development of citizens.
Citizenship in the 21st Century Conventional wisdom is that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (commonly referred to as “9/11”) made citizenship education a national imperative. Without a doubt, the event sparked debate about the nature of citizenship, the best ways to develop “good citizens,” and the appropriate responsibility of schools and society in this endeavor. Since that cataclysmic event at the beginning of the century, we have been confronted with new and ongoing concerns related to climate change, terrorism, armed conflict, racial and ethnic animosities, and globalization in its many manifestations. Most recently, the tenor and outcome of the presidential election of 2016, debates about immigration, and an overall move to nationalistic, local-scale approaches to policies raises concerns about appropriate roles for members of a civil society. While each generation perceives the times in which they live as uncertain, a convincing case can be made that we are living in a world with more uncertainty than ever before (Bednarz & Bednarz, 2008). Perceptions of vulnerability influence the way we view our society and our roles in it, in essence defining what it means to be a citizen. Some suggest that geospatial technologies and data can help us manage
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uncertainty. Certainly, as outlined in the beginning of this chapter, social media also can play a role in coping with our uncertain world. With a few exceptions (see the discussion which follows), U.S. geography educators have not participated actively in discussions about citizenship, leaving geographers vulnerable to charges that we are not concerned about citizenship education, and that we have ignored a significant educational issue ( Bednarz & Acheson, 2003). A lack of public engagement in formal discussions of citizenship does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that geography educators are not committed to civic education; nor does it mean that geography has failed to contribute to this key arena through our research and curriculum projects. This chapter and book is an attempt to remedy this situation. It is obvious to us that geography educators have moral and ethical responsibilities to examine the ways the affordances of geospatial technologies and social media can enrich citizenship education. But what is citizenship education in the United States today?
Citizenship Education in the United States The notion of citizenship has been important in the United States throughout its history. Because of our pluralistic, immigrant culture, we have struggled with the issue of creating a unified national identity. One institution used to achieve this goal has been public education. The creation of an informed citizenry, able to participate in democratic institutions, has always been a primary goal of America’s schools (Thornton, 2004). At the beginning of the 20th century, when immigration was at an all-time high, the stated purpose for the social studies (of which geography is a part) was to promote patriotism and citizenship in order to assimilate newcomers into “American” society (Murphy, 2002). This concern has persisted into this century leading to a parochial view of citizenship focused solely on national identity and patriotism (Myers, 2006). As interest in citizenship has grown, concern about young Americans’ understanding of core ideas and principles related to civics has arisen. The 2014 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) in Civics revealed disturbing gaps in students’ civic knowledge. Students in Grade 8 (roughly 14 years old) improved performance between the first administration in 1998 and 2010 but showed no significant change between 2010 and 2014. Only 23 percent of students performed at or above the proficient level, that is, were judged competent over the subject matter. The majority of students were not able to identify a belief shared by most people in the U.S., interpret a graph about voting behavior, or explain the benefits of international interactions (NAEP, 2015). A report from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) found that 57 percent of 15- to 25-year-olds are completely disengaged from civic life (Keeter, Zukin, Andolina, & Jenkins, 2002). This followed the enormously influential work of Robert Putnam (2000),
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the political scientist who chronicled the decline of civic engagement by identifying ways in which U.S. residents have withdrawn from normal forms of social interaction. It is widely accepted by many political and education leaders that the public schools have failed to engage students with citizenship. The events of 9/11 and the uncertainty highlighted previously have magnified these concerns. Both the lay public and professional educators acknowledge that traditional methods of civics education are not preparing students adequately (Rubin, 2015). Research indicates that young adults are now less likely to be involved in community activities such as belonging to a group, reading newspapers, working on community projects, or affiliating with a political party ( Flanagan & Levine, 2010). Only volunteering is on the rise, largely through school schemes emphasizing service learning (Parker, 2014). Although many are critical of descriptions of young people’s inadequate civic knowledge, citing that it fails to represent their own sense of civic participation, it still indicates the types of civic education that are privileged in U.S. classrooms. While citizenship is perceived as important and worthy of attention and promotion, it is not well defined. Among other things, citizenship denotes the enjoyment of rights, active participation with members of a community in a democratic form of government, and a legal status associated with nation-states. Conceptualizations of citizenship have changed over time in response to internal and external events such as shifts in political environments, societal understandings of multiculturalism, and increased immigration and globalization. They have further been shaped by changes in technology and the economy. Many argue that the definition of citizenship should be broadened from a national to an international scale (Myers, 2006). However, there is little will in the United States to move in this direction. Consider, for example, the policies promoted by President Trump. At the individual level, people have different underlying beliefs about what constitutes citizenship and thus, goals for citizenship education. Rationales for civic education are contested as well. Research conducted to answer the question “What kind of citizen do we need to support an effective democratic society?” finds Americans hold three different but not mutually exclusive visions of citizenship: the personally responsible citizen, the participatory citizen, and the justice-oriented citizen (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004). The personally responsible citizen acts conscientiously in his or her own community. Such a citizen engages in activities like paying taxes, obeying laws, volunteering to aid charitable causes, and helping out in times of community crisis. In contrast, the participatory citizen is an active participant in the civic affairs and social life of communities at different scales of involvement—local, national, and even international. Americans holding this view of citizenship believe that a good citizen works actively within established systems and structures to solve societal problems, to support democracy, and thus, to improve society. Such citizens are motivated to “fight the good fight” whatever it is.
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The third vision of citizenship, that of the good citizen as justice-oriented, is the least common conceptualization. The justice-oriented citizen questions authority, calls attention to matters of right and wrong, and works to pursue issues of social justice. The justice-oriented citizen is more cerebral than visceral and seeks to analyze and understand social movements and the connections between political, economic, and social forces in order to effect systemic change by improving society. The vision of the personally responsible citizen deflects attention away from the kinds of questions a justice-oriented citizen might ask about, for example, corporate responsibility. Both the justice-oriented and participatory citizens are active in civic affairs, but the emphasis on social problems and critical analysis of root causes differentiates the justice-oriented citizen. To summarize, a participatory citizen would organize a neighborhood recycling scheme, a personally responsible citizen would contribute recyclable goods, and the justice-oriented citizen would question why society recycles and reuses so little and then act to solve the root causes of resource misuse. New citizenship styles are evolving in response to changes in society and communication technologies, particularly in online and offline environments. Bennett et al. (2009) identified two paradigms of citizenship: the dutiful citizen and the actualizing citizen. The dutiful citizen joins social organizations, participates actively in political movements, stays informed through the news media, and votes. The actualizing citizen, in contrast, while not participating in traditional citizenship activities like voting or writing to his or her representative, is engaged in social activism and focuses on what has been termed lifestyle politics such as political consumerism, social activism, and concern with social issues like gay marriage and animal rights. The learning styles of each type of citizen are different; more young adults are actualizing citizens, the result of growing up in an information culture based on digital media and hyper-social networking. Mayes et al. (2016) suggest another conceptualization of types of citizenship: productive citizenship, compliant citizenship, and consumer citizenship. Traditionally young people have been prepared through their schooling and experiences to be compliant citizens, abiding by rules and norms without questioning authority or society’s structure. However, in the current hyper-globalized world where countries compete for economic dominance through performance on standardized tests like the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA www. oecd.org/pisa/) they see a new instrumentalist view of young people who are measured by their ability to contribute to the economy. This is termed productive citizenship. A third model of citizenship has arisen during a time in which the rise of the individual outweighs the collective responsibilities to contribute to a common good. Individuals choose how to spend their social and civic capital in order to garner the best possible outcome for themselves. Consumer citizens affect production and the economy through their “purchasing” decisions. The three competing typologies are a challenge to combine but all provide worthwhile and useful perspectives. Dutiful citizens are personally responsible,
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compliant, and participatory; actualizing citizens are more focused on their personal position in society, their ability to produce and consume, and lifestyle issues related to justice. How these types of citizens use geospatial technologies and social media will vary, as will the education programs aimed at each of them. Programs and curricula with the aim of producing personally responsible, dutiful and compliant citizens emphasize the development of character traits such as honesty, integrity, hard work, and self-reliance. Such programs promote student volunteer and service-learning activities so students learn to work for society. Education programs designed to prepare participatory (but dutiful) citizens emphasize understanding how organizations such as governments and charities work and provide students with practice in planning and participating in organized “good works.” Students learn to work in society. Justice-oriented, actualizing educational programs, in turn, teach students about social movements and strategies to change the system rather than encouraging them to volunteer or do good works. These programs prepare students to think critically about society. Each vision of citizenship aims to develop a different type of citizen and uses different educational means to accomplish the goals. It follows that educators and others concerned with creating a citizenry in a democracy like the United States should be aware of these competing views and means. Most citizenship education programs emphasize personal responsibility, particularly the components known as character education and service learning, while ignoring the other two visions. In fact, citizenship in the current conservative, globally attuned political and economic climate is limited and focused almost exclusively on “character education.” This entails “education” in which young people “learn” core values such as honesty, integrity, loyalty, obedience, and responsibility for one’s action, not civic engagement. Although these are admirable traits, they are not attributes or skills which enable an individual to participate in a representative democracy like the United States. Part of the reason that this rather narrow, conservative view of citizenship has proven to be so enduring is the attitude of teachers. When asked to characterize “good citizenship,” 66 percent of teachers responded “personally responsible.” Only 25 percent chose “participatory” while 4 percent chose “justice-oriented.” As Patterson, Doppen, and Misco (2012, p. 204) observe: teachers’ conceptualizations of citizenship education can have a tremendous impact on the sorts of citizenship learning experiences students receive. . . . Teachers’ perceived levels of citizen involvement, the value and usage of social studies content knowledge, and the location of citizenship education in the curriculum can limit them to a personally responsible stance. Participatory citizenship and justice-oriented citizenship are essential to a functioning democracy. An artful blend of dutiful and actualizing individuals is
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needed to prepare citizens skilled in all dimensions of civics. We need to understand how young citizens become active participants in developing their notions of citizenship as well (Mayes et al., 2016). The key question for geography educators, however, is what role geography and geospatial technologies can play in any of these conceptualizations of citizenship.
Geography and Citizenship Education Geography has historically played a small but important role in citizenship education in the United States ( Stoltman, 1990). Early in the 20th century, geography, as part of the social studies, served citizenship; it demonstrated “the interdependence of men while it shows their common dependence on nature” ( Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, 1918). In following decades, geography contributed to the development of citizenship by helping students understand local, national, and global environmental and civic issues and by providing a geographic context for historical events. Topics and instructional methods adapted to meet the needs of a changing society. By providing knowledge about people, places, environments and related political, economic, and social issues, geography assisted in the preparation of justice-oriented citizens. Traditionally, young Americans’ ignorance of critical world issues and lack of participation in global affairs has been blamed on poor geography education (Davis, 2002). The National Geography Standards: Geography for Life 1994 and its revision (2012) provided a rationale for geography’s inclusion in the curriculum stating, “With a strong grasp of geography, people are better equipped to solve issues at not only the local level but also the global level” (Heffron & Downs, 2012, p. 7). The Standards squarely placed geography in a new position: preparing participatory citizens. A report on the status of geography in the United States, A Road Map for Geography Education in the 21st Century (Bednarz, Heffron, & Huynh, 2013) argues the importance of geography education is first and foremost citizenship education. K-12 geography education is critical preparation for civic life and careers in the 21st century. . . . [I]n our democratic society, we all participate in societal decision making about public health, social welfare, environmental protection, and international affairs. . . . [G]eography education helps prepare people for these tasks. (Road Map for Geography Education 2013, p. 17) Yet another argument for the role of geography in citizenship preparation is the emancipatory role of mapping in young peoples’ lives and the way it affects their political formation (Mitchell & Elwood, 2012). One of the results of a year-long
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exploratory mapping project with children was the finding that, “the actual process of talking, writing, and mapping freely together about spatial and emotional encounters—with adults who were not parents or teachers—gave them a rare opportunity to publically articulate themselves in relation to a wider world” (p. 797). The emphasis on civic participation has led to the development of a number of geography-based lessons in which students role-play to practice civic participation. Geographers have been quick to adopt service learning, a growing aspect of citizenship education in the United States. Defined as community service integrated into curricula, a number of examples in which students have served their community through GIS-based projects exist (Demski, 2011). These projects typically support a participatory vision of citizenship by encouraging students to put into practice the knowledge and ideas learned in geography, helping to solve real community problems alongside other community members. The explosion of volunteered geographic information (VGI), crowd-sourced data shared across the Internet by individual citizens is a social practice with enormous implications for the development of both dutiful and actualizing citizens (Elwood, Goodchild, & Sui, 2012). The exciting work of the SPACIT project in Europe and its rich conceptualization of spatial citizenship ( Gryl & Jekel, 2012) offers many lessons for geographers with interests in citizenship in the United States. In conclusion, geography has played a role in serving visions of citizenship education in the United States and is now involved in developing personally responsible citizens through service learning. While valuable, these strategies do not necessarily involve geography educators in doing geography or developing in students the skills, practices, and perspectives mentioned in the Standards. Geography educators need a new way to contribute to citizenship education in a way that capitalizes on the strengths of the discipline and its core spatial and ecological perspectives. We suggest that geospatial technologies and enhanced spatial and geospatial thinking, in the context of web-based CyberGIS, a synthesis of cyberinfrastructure, geographic information science, spatial analysis, and spatial modeling (Wang, 2010), can play an important role in citizenship education. In the next section of this chapter we examine a model to prepare young people for civic engagement and suggest a few venues through which dutiful, productive, actualizing, participatory, consumer, and justice-oriented citizens can be developed. These venues fall into three categories: interactive mapping sites; volunteered geographic information (VGI) initiatives; and citizen science projects.
Preparing Young People for Civic Engagement: Geography, Maps, and Spatial Analysis Much of the discussion about citizenship education focuses on what young people do not know, cannot do, and do not care about. This emphasis on deficits does not provide guidance to educators about what to do to move students forward
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(Mayes et al., 2016) The psychologists Watts and Flanagan (2007) propose a model based on research in liberation psychology, developmental psychology, and youth activism that focuses on assets that promote socio-political development and hence, civic engagement (Figure 5.1). The four components of the model are worldview and social analysis; sense of agency; opportunity structure; and societal involvement behavior. Critical consciousness is central to worldview and social analysis. Developing in young people a sense of agency, empowerment, and efficacy is a second component of the model. Efficacy means a person feels that she or he can make a difference at a range of scales: personal, collective, and political. The settings, places, contexts, and resources available for action (opportunity structures) play a key role in presenting young people with the opportunities to learn how to engage with their communities. Mentors play a key role in these opportunity structures, helping youth who might not otherwise be involved. The outcome of socio-political development is engagement with society. Students who develop the assets of a critical consciousness and sense of agency in positive, supportive settings may develop the habit of mind to act in civically minded ways. This model does not specify the type of citizen developed, but clearly a young person who is critical, empowered, and conscious will be responsible, attuned to social justice issues, and participatory rather than compliant or consumer-oriented. We suggest here three ways that geospatial technologies can contribute to this model of socio-political development. Interactive Mapping Sites: When we completed a previous version of this chapter, the homicide of a young African American man in Baltimore, Maryland, and the catastrophic earthquake in Nepal provided a number of examples of ways that maps, social media, spatial analysis, and geography shaped the development of citizenship and political identity (see Chapter 6 in this volume). The demonstrations in Baltimore, peaceful at first, were organized through social media,
Societal Involvement --Commitment --Behavior
Worldview & Social Analysis
Sense of Agency FIGURE 5.1
2007)
Opportunity Structure
Model of Assets to Promote Civic Engagement (after Watts & Flanagan,
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primarily by high school students, aged 14–18. The ensuing confrontation with police garnered national attention. But the story of the poverty of Baltimore and the underlying economic, social, political, and structural factors contributing to this societal crisis are best told through maps. A number of U.S. newspapers and media providers, notably the Washington Post, the New York Times, and The Atlantic Magazine’s CityLab use powerful interactive maps to explore a range of spatial issues. In the hands of artful geography and social studies teachers, these CyberGIS resources could encourage young adults to examine significant political issues often focused on social justice and to develop knowledge, empathy, and key citizenship practices. In fact, young adults consult such resources routinely and rely on them for news, opinions, and analysis. The development of online, interactive resources by newspapers and magazines is testament to the growing importance of these information sources, especially to the younger generation. Such resources contribute to the development of informed worldviews through spatial analysis. “Location matters” is a key concept in geography and these resources provide an opportunity structure to enforce this. Voluntary Geographic Information (VGI) Initiatives : In Nepal the efforts of citizen cartographers are contributing VGI to serve humanitarian efforts using OpenStreetMap ( https://hotosm.org). Disaster relief has become a shared experience with individuals thousands of miles away able to help with relief efforts. The focus is not only on disasters but on community development as well. Mobile phone applications like SeeClickFix allow citizens to report nonemergency neighborhood issues such as trash accumulation or broken water pipes to local government. Once an issue is resolved, contributors and others in the area receive an update. This form of local community activism may attract young adults who prefer loose social networks, individual as opposed to collective actions, and who are avid mobile phone users. It is also an inviting opportunity to learn how to make a difference. A third example of VGI which contributes to peoples’ environmental awareness and can lead to both participatory and justice-oriented action are roadkill sites. These are online data collection points where people report of animals hit and killed by cars. California and Maine are two states with active websites collecting information on animal migrations through this mechanism. It is precisely the kind of project that geographers can engage in to interest students in threatened and endangered places and environments. The ability to access information and visualize conditions in real time can make young people critically cognizant of issues and conditions, the precursor to the formation of political identity and action. Finally, a fourth example appears in this volume in Chapter 7 where Schlemper and Stewart describe an ambitious project with urban high school students to map and critically envision their neighborhood. Their results have been shared with city officials and others to encourage changes in governance and participation. Initial findings of the project show greatly enhanced sense of efficacy in student participants.
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Citizen Science Projects: In many cases it is difficult to distinguish between VGI initiatives and Citizen Science projects; in both instances individuals are engaged in collecting data and sharing it using web-based services. However, Citizen Science projects tend to focus more on environmental issues and concerns, to recruit amateurs to work with professional scientists, and to emphasize doing science. The Citizen Science movement has been framed as a way to excite the general public about science and to demystify the processes of “discovery.” The Citizen Science project most close to geography and geography education is FieldScope, sponsored by the National Geographic Society. FieldScope’s tag line is online mapping for Citizen Science investigation and that is what it offers through projects that range from understanding water quality issues in a heavily urbanized watershed, Chesapeake Bay, to monitoring the arrival of spring in order to explore climate change. FieldScope incorporates a mobile phone application linked to a website and allows individuals, primarily students aged 12–16, to collect and contribute data that can be mapped. Some of the lessons designed for use by educators explicitly require students to make decisions and recommend policies based on their analyses of environmental data. These young adults participate in a group endeavor to improve their community; they are developing the critical and analytical skills essential to a justice orientation; and they are contributing to the solution of community problems. Thus, while Citizen Science projects are designed primarily to encourage young people to do science, the opportunity to address broader, systemic, and structural issues from a justice perspective and to develop socio-politically aware individuals is present.
Next Steps Research on the effectiveness of various citizenship education programs in the United States indicates mixed success (Mayes et al., 2016; Bennett et al., 2009; Westheimer & Kahne, 2004) and focuses more on deficits than assets. Programs that emphasize participation do not necessarily develop student abilities to analyze and think critically about the root causes of civic problems or move students to develop socio-politically. At the same time, educational initiatives aimed at character development do not create students interested in or possessing the skills to engage and participate in civic life. Geography educators should be committed to the development of wellrounded citizens with the personal characteristics, skills, and habits of mind required for citizenship in a democracy. While engaging in geospatial projects is not the only way that geography can participate more fully in citizenship education, we believe it is an effective and appropriate way for students to use the core spatial and ecological perspectives of geography and to contribute to their community, nation, and world. To this end we recommend that geographers embrace the ideals of citizenship education and marry it with our skills and practices in dynamic representations. Finally, we conclude with a call for careful and focused
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research to uncover the effects of these different types of geospatial technologies on young adults. What works, why, how, for whom, under what circumstances, and to what ends? How does working with geographic tools and perspectives contribute to the development of young people as citizens?
References Baker, T. R., Battersby, S., Bednarz, S. W., Bodzin, A. M., Kolvoord, B., Moore, S., . . . Uttal, D. (2015). A research agenda for geospatial technologies and learning. Journal of Geography, 114 (3), 118–130. Bednarz, R. S., & Bednarz, S. W. (2008). The importance of spatial thinking in an uncertain world. In D. Z. Sui & S. L. Cutter (Eds.), Geospatial technologies and homeland security (pp. 315–330). New York, NY: Springer. Bednarz, S. W., & Acheson, G. A. (2003). Learning to be a citizen in post 9/11 United States: What role for geography? Proceedings of the commission on geographic education, geography and citizenship education. Institute of Education, University of London. Bednarz, S. W., Heffron, S. M., & Huynh, N. T. (2013). A roadmap for 21st century geography education: Geography education research. Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers. Bennett, W. L., Wells, C., & Rank, A. (2009). Young citizens and civic learning: Two paradigms of citizenship in the digital age. Citizenship Studies, 13(2), 105–120. Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education. (1918). Cardinal principles of secondary education. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/cardinalprincipl00natiuoft Davis, M. R. (2002, November 27). Paige urges new focus on international education. Education Week, p. 20. Demski, J. (2011). Map quests. The Journal. Retrieved from http://thejournal.com/Articles/ 2011/09/12/Map-Quests.aspx?p=1 Downs, R. M. (2014). Coming of age in the geospatial revolution: The geographic self re-defined. Human Development, 57, 35–57. Elwood, S., Goodchild, M. F., & Sui, D. Z. (2012). Researching volunteered geographic information: Spatial data, geographic research, and new social practice. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102 (3), 571–590. Flanagan, C., & Levine, P. (2010). Civic engagement and the transition to adulthood. The Future of Children, 20 (1), 159–179. Gryl, I., & Jekel, T. (2012). Re-centring geoinformation in secondary education: Toward a spatial citizenship approach. Cartographica, 47(1), 18–28. Heffron, S. M., & Downs, R. M. (2012). Geography for life: National geography standards. Washington, DC: National Council for Geographic Education. Kahne, J., Hodgin, E., & Eidman-Aadahl, E. (2016). Redesigning civic education for the digital age: Participatory politics and the pursuit of democratic engagement. Theory and Research in Social Education, 44 (1), 1–35. Keeter, S., Zukin, C., Andolina, M., & Jenkins, K. (2002). The civic and political health of the nation: A generational portrait. Retrieved from www.civicyouth.org/research/products/ Civic_Political_Health.pdf Mayes, E., Mitra, D. L., & Serriere, S. C. (2016). Figuring world of citizenship: Examining differences made in ‘making a difference’ in an elementary school classroom. American Educational Research Journal, 53(3), 605–638.
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Mitchell, K., & Elwood, S. (2012). Mapping children’s politics: The promise of articulation and the limits or nonrepresentational theory. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30 (5), 788–804. Murphy, J. B. (2002, September 15). Good students and good citizens. The New York Times. Myers, J. P. (2006). Rethinking the social studies curriculum in the context of globalization: Education for global citizenship in the U.S. Theory and Research in Social Education, 34 (3), 370–394. NAEP. (2015). Retrieved from www.nationsreportcard.gov/hgc_2014/#civics/achievement National Research Council Committee on Spatial Thinking. (2006). Learning to think spatially. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Parker, W. C. (2014). Citizenship education in the United States: Regime type, foundational issues, and classroom practice. In L. P. Nucci, D. Narvaez, & T. Krettenauer (Eds.), The handbook of moral and character education (pp. 347–367). New York, NY: Routledge. Patterson, N., Doppen, F., & Misco, T. (2012). Beyond personally responsible: A study of teacher conceptualizations of citizenship education. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 7(2), 191–206. Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Rubin, B. C. (2015). A time for social studies: Talking with young people about Ferguson and Staten Island. Social Education, 79 (1), 22–29. Sinton, D. S. (2011). Spatial thinking. In J. Stoltman (Ed.), 21st century geography: A reference handbook (pp. 733–744). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Stoltman, J. P. (1990). Geography education for citizenship. Boulder, CO: Social Science Education Consortium. Thornton, S. J. (2004). Citizenship and social studies curriculum change after 9/11. In C. H. Woyshner, J. Vargas, & M. Crocco (Eds.), Social education in the 20th century (pp. 210–222). New York, NY: Peter Lang. Uttal, D. H. (2000). Seeing the big picture: Map use and the development of spatial cognition. Geospatial technology competency model. Developmental Science, 3(3), 247–264. Uttal, D. H. (2005). Spatial symbols and spatial thought: Cross cultural, developmental, and historical perspectives on the relation between map use and spatial cognition. In L. Namy (Ed.), Symbol use and symbolic representation: Developmental and comparative perspectives (pp. 2–23). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Wang, S. (2010). A cyberGIS framework for the synthesis of cyberinfrastructure, GIS, and spatial analysis. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100 (3), 535–557. Watts, R. J., & Flanagan, C. (2007). Pushing the envelope on youth civic engagement: A developmental, and liberation psychology perspective. Journal of Community Psychology, 35(6), 779–792. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 237–269.
6 REDISCOVERING THE LOCAL Collaborative, Community Maps for Civic Awareness Todd W. Kenreich
In April 2015, thousands of Baltimore, Maryland residents protested in response to the severe injury of Freddie Gray while he was in police custody. Several days later, Gray died from his injuries, and the world watched as parts of his city were set ablaze. The epicenter of the Baltimore uprising was the neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester. By all accounts, this particular neighborhood faced significant urban challenges such as high rates of poverty, crime, school attrition, unemployment, incarceration, drug addiction, food insecurity, abandoned housing, and homelessness (Jacob France Institute, 2016). The neighborhood was isolated geographically from major transportation links and socially isolated from the wider metropolitan area. In the wake of the uprising, city leaders offered suggestions for urban reform, but the voices of the city’s children were largely absent from the conversation. What if collaborative, community maps could provide a fresh opportunity for children to see themselves as emerging civic actors who have something to say about the community and its future? This chapter explores the unique power of geography to advance social justice aims within the broader project of citizenship education and what John Dewey described as “creative democracy.” The chapter begins with an introduction to education for social justice and then an explanation of the importance of local geography in the curriculum. To translate this theory into classroom practice, an example of a neighborhood mapping activity will be described. The chapter ends with suggestions and resources for geography educators who seek to promote spatial citizenship.
Education for Social Justice and Democracy For nearly a century, progressives have questioned the traditional aims of education in the United States. Writing at a time of enormous economic and social
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upheaval in the 1930s, George Counts (1978) challenged teachers and schools to take on greater responsibility for the improvement of society. For him, immediate contemporary issues like poverty were topics that belonged in the school curriculum. As such, schools needed to take on a leadership role in addressing the social ills of the day. Also, writing in the 1930s, education philosopher John Dewey noted that “for a long period, we acted as if our democracy perpetuated itself automatically” (1976, p. 225). While observing the rise of totalitarian states in Germany and elsewhere, he warned that the “powerful present enemies of democracy can be successfully met only by the creation of personal attitudes in individual human beings” (p. 226). For Dewey, the democratic values of equal opportunity and justice relied in part on a steadfast “faith in the capacity of human beings for intelligent judgment and action” (p. 227). Education, then, was the key for the cultivation of individuals who could think for themselves using democratic values. Dewey went further to explain that “the task of democracy is forever that of creation of a freer and more humane experience in which all share and to which all contribute” (p. 300). Together, Counts and Dewey remind us that progressive teaching and learning should not only develop the individual but also serve the common good.
Local Geography in the Curriculum Fieldwork in geography education has long been imbued with the larger aims of moral and civic development. In the early 20th century, short walks around a school’s vicinity, known as school surveys, were common in the UK. These were designed not only to introduce important local physical and human features but also to “foster civic awareness and promote popular participation in local policy decisions” (Ploszajska, 1998, p. 762). In Germany, heimatkunde (study of home environment) fulfilled a similar aim as teachers and children observed and explored the local community (Barton, 2009). In early 20th-century Japan, noted educator Tsunesaburo Makiguchi pointed to the value of geography fieldwork on students’ daily living in order to promote character development (Gebert & Joffee, 2007). Today in the United States, the expanding horizons approach to the K-12 social studies curriculum begins with a study of the family and community in the earliest grades, followed by an exploration of the state often in fourth grade, and of the nation and world in middle and high school. The curriculum seeks to prepare young people for active citizenship in a democratic society. By high school, though, the expanding horizons approach marginalizes the local community because the nation-state becomes the de facto frame of reference for learning. Traditional high school courses in U.S. history, world history, and American government often fail to make immediate connections to the community. As a result, the expanding horizons approach inadvertently short-circuits a vital component for active citizenship—namely a critical understanding of the
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community and one’s role in it—at the very time when older students are taking on new rights and responsibilities. Rediscovering the local, though, can be a remedy to this problem. There is a burgeoning interest in the use of digital geography by laypeople and children. Participatory mapping often involves the public using geospatial tools to address immediate, real-world concerns such as emergency response (Wridt, Seley, Fisher, & DuBois, 2014). Now new attention has been paid to local mapping initiatives as a vehicle for students to develop a range of knowledge, skills, and dispositions for spatial citizenship. Such initiatives promote an understanding of local history (Alibrandi, Beal, Thompson, & Wilson, 2000), a knowledge of the spatial expression of inclusion and exclusion ( Schmidt & Kenreich, 2015), a deeper sense of place (Bartos, 2013; den Besten, 2010; Wood, 2013), the skill of geographic reasoning (Alibrandi, Milson, & Shin, 2010; Bednarz, Acheson, & Bednarz, 2006; Bednarz & Bednarz, 2008; Shin, 2007; Sobel, 1998), the skills of data analysis and visualization ( Rubel, Hall-Wieckert, & Lim, 2016), and a disposition for civic awareness and action (Elwood & Mitchell, 2013; Gordon, Elwood, & Mitchell, 2016; Mitchell & Elwood, 2012a, 2012b; Taylor & Rogers, 2013; Weber, 2013; Wridt, 2005, 2010). For example, Taylor and Rogers (2013) describe the practice of “counter-mapping” where youth create their own maps as a way to challenge dominant narratives and existing power relations. In their study, six non-driving teenagers explored mobility for bicyclists in a city, created interactive maps of the uneven mobility for bicyclists, and ultimately they recommended a new bike lane to city officials. This demonstrates that students’ emerging sense of place and sense of belonging are important in youth conceptions of citizenship (Hall, Coffey, & Williamson, 1999; Osler & Starkey, 2005). One way to promote spatial citizenship is through inquiry-based learning. Recent priorities in geography education support inquiry-based learning (Heffron & Downs, 2012; National Academies of Science, 2006; Schell, Roth, & Mohan, 2013). These priorities dovetail closely with the Common Core’s emphases on disciplinary literacy and critical thinking skills ( Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010) as well as with the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework’s emphasis on inquiry learning (National Council for the Social Studies, 2013). As such, geography teachers are well positioned to connect a local mapping project to existing curriculum standards. Such a project deepens disciplinary literacy through the use of geographic concepts and tools. At the same time, the project promotes problem-solving and critical thinking through what Scheurman and Newmann (1998) describe as “authentic intellectual work,” namely learning tasks with value outside of a traditional academic setting. While inquiry-based learning is an important aim in and of itself, a local mapping project can go further by challenging students to venture beyond the classroom to conduct geographic fieldwork in a real-world setting and consider themselves as civic actors. By promoting spatial citizenship, geography inquiry can be a powerful tool for students to develop a critical understanding of themselves in
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relation to their community, state, nation, and world (Kenreich, 2013). What follows is a description of a community map project, as well as a set of steps to implement a similar project in the classroom.
“My Neighborhood, Our Baltimore”: A Community Mapping Project To commemorate the one-year anniversary of the 2015 uprising in Baltimore, the Maryland Geographic Alliance offered a special workshop for Baltimore city teachers. The workshop focused on geography as a tool to rediscover the local community. Inspired by curriculum reform efforts to anchor the community within a larger context (American Association of Geographers, 2002; Woyach & Remy, 1982), this workshop provided teachers with the opportunity to learn more about the urban geography of Baltimore. The teachers examined the University of Baltimore Jacob France Institute’s (2016) set of highly interactive maps that trace key quality of life indicators in the city’s neighborhoods. Then, teachers were introduced to ESRI’s mapping template known as Story Map. The tool allows users to build a web-based series of slides that include maps, text, and images with options for multimedia features. A Teacher Consultant modeled the steps to design a Story Map, and then the teachers worked in pairs to create a short Story Map of their own. This activity was designed to spark teachers’ imagination for the instructional application of this tool with their students. As we discussed the upcoming anniversary of the 2015 uprising, teachers anticipated instructional challenges and opportunities. One teacher mentioned that little would be said by teachers in her school because “we have students related to the family of Freddie Gray and we have students related to the police officers charged in this case. We have to walk a fine line with this issue.” Another teacher explained that “there is an air of despair that comes over kids at my school. When tough times strike, they shrug and say ‘that’s the way it is in Baltimore.’” However, another teacher suggested that “if my classroom isn’t a safe space to discuss current issues, I don’t know where my kids will find the support they need to ask the hard questions and make sense of what’s happening in our neighborhood. Isn’t that part of the job of being a good teacher?” Multiple perspectives from teachers revealed the complexity of bringing community issues into the classroom. After participating in the workshop, Mrs. Washington (pseudonym), a lifelong resident of Baltimore and teacher in the 26th year of her career, planned for a five-week “My Neighborhood, Our Baltimore” project that would promote the spatial citizenship of her students (see Table 6.1). During Week 1, she began a local mapping project by asking her fourth-grade students to brainstorm problems in their Baltimore neighborhood. To open the discussion, a girl paused and sternly stated, “I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for, but I’m gonna say it. It’s way too dangerous. I don’t feel safe walking
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Table 6.1 Mapping Project Sequence
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5
Project Purpose and Brainstorming Topic of Inquiry Internet Research of Locations Design of Interview Questions Conducting Two Interviews Transcription of Interviews Selection of Key Quotations from Interviews Collaborating on Story Map Design In-Class Rehearsal of Story Map Presentation Story Map Presentation for Community Group Written Reflection on Project
in the park.” Mrs. Washington replied, “Thank you. We want to know more about that, but let’s start by putting down ‘unsafe’ on our list. Let’s hear from some others.” Then the list of problems quickly expanded: drugs, shootings, theft, garbage, and the police. A boy explained that the “police don’t step up when there’s trouble and that’s a problem.” His comment shifted the discussion briefly to the lack of trust between the community and the police. The teacher took this moment to mention that crime was up since the uprising. Rather than discussing this further, though, she returned to the list of problems and said, “How about a few more ideas? I want to hear from everyone.” A girl quietly called out, “Can’t get jobs,” and another girl followed up with “Too many [men] go to jail.” Taking the discussion in a different direction, a boy grinned and said, “Seems like everybody lit.” The teacher asked what the student meant by “lit,” and the student explained “people drinking more than they should, you know, all drunk.” Several students nodded in agreement. “I’m not just talking about my uncle drinkin’ all weekend. I’m talking about what I smell in the morning . . . when I pass by the homies standing around in front of the carry-out and the guys sitting on the park benches. Just sippin’ from bottles in paper bags. I mean, who they foolin’ with the paper bag?” Seizing a teachable moment, Mrs. Washington asked her class to begin to think geographically by considering the many neighborhood sites where alcohol was available. To the teacher’s surprise, her young students readily named several local bars and carry-outs where alcohol was sold. Mrs. Washington then explained that the students were going to create a “living map” of sites where alcohol was served and use it to tell the story of alcohol as a problem in the neighborhood. In this case, the students’ research did not involve visiting any of the sites even though many of the students walk past more than one establishment on their way to school. Instead, the students used Google Maps to identify the addresses of local sites and recorded these on a graphic organizer. During Week 2, the students moved into the fieldwork stage of the project. This took the form of interviewing two adults in the community for their opinions about the high density of local establishments that sell alcohol. To prepare
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for the interview, the students worked in groups of three to draft two sample questions. Circulating throughout the classroom, Mrs. Washington provided support as students wrestled with what one student said, “getting the words just right.” As groups shared their questions on the front board, the teacher invited the students to walk up and put a star next to the top three questions. After some lively discussion, Mrs. Washington announced that the interview questions would be: (1) where is alcohol sold in our neighborhood, and what is the busiest place that sells it?, (2) why are there so many places that sell alcohol in our neighborhood?, and 3) what can be done to address the problem of alcohol abuse in our neighborhood? The next day, the students received interview graphic organizers that included a short scripted introduction, a request to record the interview, each question with room for hand-written notes, and finally a reminder to say “thank you” to the interviewee. After students had conducted their interviews, they described the challenges of transcribing the responses. This alone was far more difficult than most students anticipated. One student observed, “My aunt talks so fast that it’s hard to write it all down.” Another mentioned that “I used my mom’s iPhone to record both interviews, and I felt pretty important asking my questions. I didn’t even try to take notes during the interview. . . . But when I played back the interviews, it took me forever to write everything out.” During Week 3, Mrs. Washington led a powerful in-class discussion about the interview responses and worked closely with students as they selected excerpts from key quotations that could illustrate patterns of responses. For example, in response to the first question about where alcohol is sold, a number of interviewees mentioned the same four places. Along two blocks of the main north-south artery, there is a bar, a small restaurant, a liquor store, and corner carry-out. While students pointed to the names of a few additional sites in the neighborhood, they noted that the carry-out was most often identified as the busiest place that sold alcohol. One boy shared a part of his interview with his grandmother: “Hmm. It’s been problem here for long, long time. Ever since . . . [carry-out #1] opened in the 90s, there have been a lot of men congregating at all hours on the street corner. It’s even busier than . . . [bar #1] because . . . [carry-out #1] never closes—open day and night.” It was clear that the students’ varied evidence had answered the first question about where alcohol is sold and the busiest vendor. Students struggled a bit to make sense of the responses for the more powerful question: why are there so many places selling it here in our neighborhood? To help students further tackle this complex question that addressed what Soja (2010) calls spatial justice, the students learned about the concepts of zoning and land use as well as the supply and demand for alcohol. For Week 4, the students worked in the computer lab to collaborate on their Story Map. First, Mrs. Washington walked the students through a sample from the ESRI Story Map gallery, and they discussed which design features made the Story Map more appealing to the reader. “Less is more,” repeated
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Mrs. Washington in an attempt to steer the design process, but a few students expressed earlier frustration from Week 3 that they “had way more quotes from the interviews” that were now not included in the Story Map. Mrs. Washington reassured the students that their hard work with transcribing was necessary in order to reveal larger patterns of responses to the interview questions, and she carefully explained that selecting excerpts of key quotations inevitably means that not all interview responses were included in the Story Map. Still, the work moved forward as students used their graphic organizer for the interview in order to structure the slides of their Story Map to address each of the three questions. The final version of the Story Map included five slides: (1) an introduction to the topic and methods of inquiry, (2) a neighborhood map with green dots to indicate places that sell alcohol, a red dot for the busiest place, and three text boxes with supporting quotations from interviews, (3) bullet points of two major explanations for the density of alcohol vendors with two text boxes, (4) a list of three recommendations to address the issue, and (5) a map with a class photo at the location of the school that includes the caption, “Today’s presenters are . . . [names] from Mrs. Washington’s 4th grade class.” With Mrs. Washington’s help, her students found an opportunity to attend a community meeting the following week. Two students volunteered and a third was selected by the teacher to be the spokespersons for the presentation of the Story Map. As a class, the students suggested important “big ideas” to include in the presentation. The presenters practiced their lines for homework one night and returned the next day for a dress rehearsal with their classmates. In Week 5, they presented their Story Map and reported their findings about the community’s easy access to alcohol. Pointing to their map of alcohol vendors, they used their knowledge of zoning to offer explanations for the local density of vendors. As a part of their recommendations, they explained the need to scrutinize when and where new establishments might seek to sell alcohol. In addition, the students recommended that the community do a better job of sharing information about where and when meetings are held to help those who struggle with alcohol abuse. By the end of Week 5, the teacher and her students reflected on the value of the mapping activity. Mrs. Washington stated, “I was so proud to watch my kids speak in front of a room full of adults. Listen, the map wasn’t my attempt to bring back Prohibition. It’s my kids learning to identify alcohol as a real issue and bringing in geography to see it better. The map got them thinking about what needs changing around here.” One of the student presenters reflected on the experience by saying, “Getting up in front of everybody, well, I loved that. What felt the best was seeing the adults listen to us, I mean, really listening to us. Our Story Map looked legit, so they had to listen up. We had info to back up our ideas.” Another student wrote that “It’s the first time that I’m thinking about how you can map almost anything . . . even places that sell alcohol. The project showed me that maps can help you look at a problem up close . . . right here . . . and start to figure it out.”
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At the same time, the project was not without its challenges. Mrs. Washington explained that she found it difficult to draw the line between teacherled and student-led inquiry. She was concerned that she may have done too much to shape the mapping project when she intended to allow the students to guide more of the initial direction and topic selection. Mrs. Washington raised an important point because inquiry learning by itself does not necessarily lead to spatial citizenship unless the teacher intentionally helps to foster students’ civic identity and their capacity as civic actors along the way. Mrs. Washington went on explain that she “kept saying the name of the project, ‘My Neighborhood, Our Baltimore’ and exaggerating ‘my’ and ‘our’ to give them a sense of belonging.” Also, one student’s ref lection cast doubt on the effectiveness of the project in terms of its value for the community. She wrote, “I learned about telling a story with maps, and that’s interesting. So, it [project] was a good idea, but was it enough to fix the problem? I’m still wondering about that and what else we should do.” Perhaps this perspective demonstrates the complexity of the project in that some students may interpret positive first steps in civic action as falling short of their goals. Yet, it also reminds us that even fourth-graders can see that civic action must be more than a one-time event in one place. At its best, spatial citizenship develops students’ capacity to see themselves as civic actors in multiple settings and scales over space and time. Viewing the process and product of this project together, Mrs. Washington’s class illustrates the power of a collaborative, community map to activate students’ spatial citizenship by engaging and empowering them to work together for a stronger community.
Getting Started With Collaborative, Community Mapping To promote spatial citizenship, inquiry-based mapping projects require careful planning and structure. From the outset, the educator frames the project with a clear emphasis on inquiry that can lead to greater civic awareness and action. Such inquiry needs a purpose greater than merely “earning an A.” The power of the project lies in taking up an issue that has meaning to students and to other stakeholders in the community. Here are seven steps to follow in the creation of a collaborative community map. 1.
Collaborate with geographers. Reach out to local geographers before conducting the project. The Network of Alliances for Geographic Education (http://alliances.nationalgeographic.com/) is a great resource to help identify geographers at a local university, government office, or private firm. Professional geographers are often interested in collaborating with a local school to help students develop an interest in geography as a career. For students, an embodied geographer can bring the field to life as they observe a geographer in action, using her expertise to solve important problems. Also,
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geographers can provide technical support for teachers and students as they use Story Map or other web-based mapping tools. Brainstorm with students. The teacher’s job here is to set the stage for a productive and lively exchange of ideas. Using an initial writing prompt can promote greater student participation in the brainstorming sessions. Ask students what places in the community are important to them. Why are these places important? How might the students create a map that highlights places of interest? What audience would be interested in the students’ perceptions of the community? What sources of data could be gathered to add details to the map? This is an exciting step where the students begin to see themselves as spatial citizens by taking ownership of the project and thus greater responsibility for their learning. Select mapping tool. The teacher chooses a web-based mapping tool that allows students to upload content to a map of the local community. There are a number of tools including Story Map, MapMe, Scribble Maps, and Google Maps. To expedite the project, the teacher should make three important decisions at the very beginning. First, use the web-based mapping tool to establish the boundaries of the community map. This sets the geographic context for the entire project. Second, make decisions about whether the access to the map is restricted to students or available to the wider public. If the map is made available to the public, then be sure to protect the identity of all students by using initials or pseudonyms for any student-created text or comment. Third, identify which layers (or themes of data) may be added to the map. Keep in mind that more than two layers may distract students as they create their map. For more information about this, consult Alibrandi’s (2011) guide for teachers. For advanced students, they can also read Chapter 1 from Brewer’s (2006) Designing Better Maps as a way to learn about cartographic design concepts like visual hierarchy. Gather data. Based on brainstorming, students work in teams or pairs to gather data. This involves students in doing authentic intellectual work. For example, one group conducts fieldwork beyond the school to photograph landmarks of interest. Another group interviews classmates or community members to capture people’s thoughts and opinions about the community. Yet another group uses the Internet to conduct research on the historical and economic development of the community. In each case, the groups are responsible for collecting, editing, formatting, and storing their data so that it can be uploaded to the community map. Upload data. Working with a set of laptops or other devices, the teacher leads students in the use of the web-based mapping tool to upload their data to a common map. The success of this step depends in part on the digital savvy of the students and the ability of the teacher to quickly field student questions. Begin by demonstrating how to upload data (text or photo) to a precise point on the map. For most mapping tools, this is a straightforward
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task as long as the data is in the proper file format. After the data has been uploaded to the map, students review and proofread their contribution to the map. Analyze map. Maps should be used to ask and answer geographic questions. While some answers may prove elusive, the practice of using maps to ask questions can help students to develop critical thinking skills necessary for spatial citizenship. What geographic patterns emerge from our map? What does our map tell us about our community and ourselves? What is missing from our map? What additional data could be gathered to improve the map? How might our map bring attention to important issues in the community? How might we take collective action based on new conclusions from the map? What did we learn from the process of creating a community map? Powerful questions like these can build the habit of mind needed for spatial citizenship. Share map. Showcase the students’ map by proudly sharing it (online or in print) with key stakeholders in the community. Parents, school administrators, community leaders, and local government officials may enjoy viewing the work of the students. A concise, well-crafted press release can alert local media to the importance the students’ work. In addition, the local state geographic alliance can provide additional visibility for teachers and students.
Teacher Resources Beyond the preceding steps, here are four resources that can help teachers further conceptualize, design, and implement a local mapping project.
Baltimore Green Map (www.baltogreenmap.org/) Thousands of cities throughout the world now host an interactive open map where residents can use the signature icons of the international Green Map System to identify local sites in relation to sustainable living, nature, and community resources. This Baltimore map is a powerful example of how participatory mapping can “crowdsource” local geographic knowledge of green spaces and the natural environment. The website includes regional, neighborhood, and thematic maps such as one that focuses on recycling sites throughout the city. With a user-friendly interface, local green maps like these invite students to contribute to the map in order to promote a more sustainable community.
Center for Understanding the Built Environment (http://cubekc.org/) For more than four decades, this Kansas City organization has promoted community-based learning. Here educators can find instructional materials for
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the Walk Around the Block and Box City projects that involve students mapping their community.
Child Friendly Spaces (http://childfriendlyplaces.org/) Pamela Wridt and her colleagues in the Children’s Environments Resource Group at the City University of New York have developed a comprehensive set of instructional materials including an educator’s toolkit for launching a collaborative exploration of the community. The toolkit provides assessments and strategies for planning, advocacy, and civic action related to six topics: (1) play and recreation, (2) nature and ecology, (3) safety and protection, (4) health and social services, (5) participation, and (6) housing and learning environments. Not only are the materials available in English and Spanish, but also the materials include well-designed icons and graphics to support younger students and those who may struggle with reading.
My Community, Our Earth: Geographic Learning for Sustainable Development (http://meridian.aag.org/mycoe/index.htm) Sponsored by the leading organization of professional geographers in the United States, this website introduces the concept of sustainable development as an aim for education. It provides an instructional resource toolkit for teachers who seek to start a class project. The gallery section documents a number of curriculum projects related to issues such as: biodiversity, climate change, deforestation, epidemics, erosion, land use, natural disasters, natural resources, pollution, poverty, recycling, transportation infrastructure, urbanization, and water. Here teachers can find powerful examples of inquiry-based projects that effectively anchor global issues within a local context.
Conclusion Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan eloquently described geography as “the study of earth as the home of people” (1991, p. 99), and this chapter foregrounds the concept of “home” by rediscovering the local in order to promote spatial citizenship. Developing a deeper sense of place goes hand-in-hand with the larger social justice aim of making the world a better place. Without a deeper sense of place, it can be difficult for students to see themselves as spatial citizens who belong and take a growing responsibility for themselves and their community. In an affluent community, some students take their community for granted because the community consistently meets the basic needs of its members and provides for the common good. Ironically, in this view, students see little need to take an interest in the common good because the community operates effectively without the students’ input or contribution. In an underserved community, though, some
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students see an unsafe place where the need for self-preservation outweighs any interest in the common good. The challenge, then, for social justice educators is to meet students where they are, and the study of local geography does just that. In an increasingly mobile society where many people move every several years, we need to help students rediscover their local community by fostering: (1) a greater appreciation of the community as a foundation for a communal identity and sense of belonging, (2) an understanding of the community as a dynamic microcosm of larger social and spatial forces, and (3) a vision of the community as a site for civic action. In the “My Neighborhood, Our Baltimore” project, Mrs. Washington’s students began to articulate a greater sense of belonging in the community as they explored the local issue of alcohol. One student wrote that In my neighborhood, I know that lot of people drink too much. . . . My family lives here, and I got to say that this is our problem, it’s everybody’s problem—whether you drink too much or not. I’m learning that growing up means looking straight at problems and not making excuses to look away. The students’ reference to “our problem” is evidence of a young person’s evolving civic identity that includes a greater responsibility for the community. Mrs. Washington’s students placed their community within a larger context when they explained that zoning rules informed where alcohol is sold in their neighborhood. During the community presentation, one of the students explained that “Zoning rules tell people where they can set up certain businesses and where they can’t. The city sets the rules, and that shapes our neighborhood and other neighborhoods.” Here the students began to situate the local geography of alcohol vendors within a broader context that included the city of Baltimore. While more could have been done to strengthen students’ understanding of the neighborhood’s ties beyond the city, this nonetheless represents an important first step for fourth-grade students’ spatial citizenship. This step lays an important foundation for enhancing students’ spatial citizenship in the middle and high school grades with more sophisticated connections between the community and the world. A deeper sense of place and an understanding of the ties between places are necessary but not sufficient for promoting spatial citizenship. In the end, viewing the community as a site for civic action is the linchpin of spatial citizenship. By honoring her students’ lived experiences and perceptions of the community, Mrs. Washington empowered her students to see themselves as civic actors who can take collective action toward a shared goal. Along with the mantra that “geography matters” was the idea that the students matter. Mrs. Washington pointed out that the project was “about more than maps—it was about maturity, trust, and putting my kids on the map with dignity.” For Mrs. Washington, larger core values informed a robust spatial citizenship.
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Rediscovering the local requires a savvy teacher like Mrs. Washington who creatively and strategically brings local geography into the curriculum. Yet, this can be challenging for teachers who find that their school curriculum has narrowed to align with the demands of standardized tests. At its worst, a simplistic study of the local context could lead to a provincialism where students see their community as superior to the world, inferior to the world, or separate from the world. With such a distorted view of the local, there would be little reason to learn and explore beyond the boundaries of the community. However, a rich study of the local can spark students’ curiosity to examine the community’s ties with the wider world. Making these connections can further enhance students’ civic competence (Kirshner, 2015; Parker, 2003) as well as their worldmindedness (Banks et al., 2005; Fitchett & Goodman, 2012; Gaudelli & Heilman, 2009; Kenreich, 2010; Pike, 2007). As teachers and teacher educators, we need to pause and ask ourselves what is the larger purpose of geographic inquiry in schools? Learning place-name location and fundamental geographic concepts is an essential starting point, but geographic inquiry can offer much more. Now, more than ever, digital geography enables us to analyze the community in fresh new ways. By democratizing geospatial information, digital geography offers unprecedented public access to geospatial data and increasingly user-friendly mapping tools so that even students can design a map that looks, in the words of one student, “legit.” With the authority that maps convey, the students of the Baltimore mapping project began to develop a sense of empowerment as spatial citizens who can marshal evidence to persuade an audience. Digital community maps can help students cultivate a deeper sense of place ( Gruenewald, 2003) and a civic awareness by enabling students to explore local issues that matter to the community. The example of a local mapping project in this chapter demonstrates that students can engage in authentic intellectual work ( Scheurman & Newmann, 1998) that has meaning beyond the classroom. With planning, teachers can promote collaborative, community maps as a powerful tool to promote spatial citizenship for all students.
References Alibrandi, M. (2011). GIS in the classroom: Using geographic information systems in social studies and environmental science. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Alibrandi, M., Beal, C., Thompson, A., & Wilson, A. (2000). Reconstructing a school’s past using oral histories and GIS mapping. Social Education, 64 (3), 134–140. Alibrandi, M., Milson, A., & Shin, E. (2010). Where we’ve been; where we are; where we’re going: Geospatial technologies and social studies. In R. Diem & M. Berson (Eds.), Technology in retrospect: Social studies in the information age 1984–2009 (pp. 109–132). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Press. American Association of Geographers. (2002). My community, our earth: Geographic learning for sustainable development. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved 1 September 2017 from http://meridian.aag.org/mycoe/index.htm
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Banks, J. A., McGee Banks, C. A., Cortes, C. E., Hahn, C. L., Merryfield, M. M., Moodley, K. A., . . . Parker, W. C. (2005). Democracy and diversity: Principles and concepts for educating citizens in a global age. Seattle, WA: Center for Multicultural Education, University of Washington. Barton, K. C. (2009). Home geography and the development of elementary social education, 1890–1930. Theory & Research in Social Education, 37(4), 484–514. Bartos, A. E. (2013). Children sensing place. Emotion, Sense, and Society, 9, 89–98. Bednarz, S. W., Acheson, G., & Bednarz, R. S. (2006). Maps and map learning in social studies. Social Education, 70 (7), 398–404. Bednarz, S. W., & Bednarz, R. S. (2008). Spatial thinking: The key to success in using geospatial technologies in the social studies classroom. In A. J. Milson & M. Alibrandi (Eds.), Digital geography: Geospatial technologies in the social studies classroom (pp. 249–270). New York, NY: Information Age Press. Brewer, C. A. (2006). Designing better maps: A guide for GIS users. Redlands, CA: ESRI Press. Council of Chief State School Officers. (2010). Common core state standards for English/ language arts. Washington, DC: Author. Counts, G. (1978). Dare the school build a new social order? Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press (Original work published in 1932). den Besten, O. (2010). Local belonging and ‘geographies of emotions’: Immigrant children’s experience of their local neighbourhoods in Paris and Berlin. Childhood, 17(2), 181–196. Dewey, J. (1976). Creative democracy: The task before us. In J. Boydston (Ed.), John Dewey: The later works, 1925–1953 (pp. 224–230). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press (Original work published in 1939). Elwood, S. A., & Mitchell, K. (2013, December). Another politics is possible: Neographies, visual spatial tactics, and political formation. Cartographica, 48 (4), 275–292. Fitchett, P. G., & Goodman, A. J. (2012). Teaching genocide through GIS: A transformative approach. The Clearing House, 85(3), 87–92. Gaudelli, W., & Heilman, E. (2009). Reconceptualizing geography as democratic global citizenship education. Teachers College Record, 111(11), 2647–2677. Gebert, A., & Joffee, M. (2007). Value creation as the aim of education: Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and soka education. In D. Hansen (Ed.), Ethical visions of education: Philosophies in practice (pp. 65–82). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Gordon, E., Elwood, S., & Mitchell, K. (2016). Critical spatial learning: Participatory mapping, spatial histories, and youth civic engagement. Children’s Geographies, 14 (5), 558–574. Gruenewald, D. A. (2003, Fall). Foundations of place: A multidisciplinary framework for place-conscious education. American Educational Research Journal, 40 (3), 619–654. Hall, T., Coffey, A., & Williamson, H. (1999). Self, space, and place: Youth identities and citizenship. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20 (4), 501–513. Heffron, S. G., & Downs, R. M. (Eds.). (2012). Geography for life: National geography standards (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: National Council for Geographic Education. Jacob France Institute. (2016). Baltimore neighborhood indicators alliance: Vital signs 14. Baltimore, MD: University of Baltimore. Retrieved 1 September 2017 from http://bnia jfi.org/ Kenreich, T. W. (2010). Power, space, and geographies of difference: Mapping the world with a critical global perspective. In B. Subedi (Ed.), Critical global perspectives: Rethinking knowledge about global societies (pp. 57–75). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Press.
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Kenreich, T. W. (2013). The future of critical geographic literacy. In Geography and social justice in the classroom (pp. 161–163). New York, NY: Routledge. Kirshner, B. (2015). Youth activism in an era of education inequality. New York, NY: New York University Press. Mitchell, K., & Elwood, S. (2012a). Engaging students through mapping local history. Journal of Geography, 111(4), 148–157. Mitchell, K., & Elwood, S. (2012b). From redlining to benevolent societies: The emancipatory power of spatial thinking. Theory & Research in Social Education, 40 (2), 134–163. National Academies of Science. (2006). Learning to think spatially: GIS as a support system in the K-12 curriculum. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. National Council for the Social Studies. (2013). The college, career, and civic life (C3) framework for social studies state standards: Guidance for enhancing the rigor of k-12 civics, economics, geography, and history. Silver Spring, MD: Author. Osler, A., & Starkey, H. (2005). Changing citizenship: Democracy and inclusion in education. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press. Parker, W. C. (2003). Teaching democracy: Unity and diversity in public life. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Pike, G. (2007). Citizenship education in a global context. Brock Education, 17, 38–49. Ploszajska, T. (1998). Down to earth? Geography fieldwork in English schools, 1970– 1944. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 16, 757–774. Rubel, L. H., Hall-Wieckert, M., & Lim, V. Y. (2016, Winter). Teaching mathematics for spatial justice: Beyond a victory narrative. Harvard Educational Review, 86 (4), 556–579. Schell, E. M., Roth, K. J., & Mohan, A. (Eds.). (2013). A road map for 21st century geography education: Instructional materials and professional development. Washington, DC: National Council for Geographic Education. Scheurman, G., & Newmann, F. M. (1998). Authentic intellectual work in social studies: Putting performance before pedagogy. Social Education, 62 (1), 23–25. Schmidt, S. J., & Kenreich, T. W. (2015). In a space, but not of it: Uncovering racial narratives through geography. In P. Chandler (Ed.), Doing race in the social studies (pp. 225–248). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Press. Shin, E. (2007). Using Geographic Information System (GIS) technology to enhance elementary students’ geographic understanding. Theory & Research in Social Education, 35(2), 231–255. Sobel, D. (1998). Mapmaking with children: Sense of place education for the elementary years. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Soja, E. W. (2010). Seeking spatial justice. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Taylor, K. T., & Rogers, H. (2013, July). Counter-mapping the neighborhood on bicycles: Mobilizing youth to reimagine the city. Technology, Knowledge and Learning, 18 (1–2), 65–93. Tuan, Y.-F. (1991, January). A view of geography. The Geographical Review, 81(1), 99–107. Weber, B. D. (2013). Geography for civic action in east Los Angeles. In T. W. Kenreich (Ed.), Geography for social justice in the classroom (pp. 103–113). New York, NY: Routledge. Wood, B. E. (2013). Young people’s emotional geographies of citizenship participation: Spatial and relational insights. Emotion, Space, and Society, 9, 50–58. Woyach, R. B., & Remy, R. C. (1982, Summer). A community-based approach to global education. Theory Into Practice, 21, 177–183. Wridt, P. (2005). The neighborhood atlas project: An example of participatory action research in geography education. Research in Geographic Education, 5, 25–47.
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Wridt, P. (2010). A qualitative GIS approach to mapping urban neighborhoods with children to promote physical activity and child-friendly community planning. Environment and Planning B : Planning and Design, 37, 129–147. Wridt, P., Seley, J. E., Fisher, S., & DuBois, B. (2014). Participatory mapping approaches to coordinate the emergency response of spontaneous volunteers after hurricane sandy. International Journal of E-Planning Research, 3(3), 1–19.
7 CULTIVATING STUDENT CITIZENS Using Critical Pedagogy of Place Curriculum to Enhance Spatial Thinking, Civic Engagement, and Inquiry Through Student-Generated Topics M. Beth Schlemper and Victoria C. Stewart
Think globally, act locally (Figure 7.1). Although there is some debate regarding when, and by whom, this phrase was introduced, it has been applied to environmental, political, and socio-economic challenges faced by people in the 20th and 21st centuries. One of the earliest mentions of it appeared in an April 1978 interview of René Dubos, a French-born American microbiologist, in the EPA Journal (Temple, 1978). In response to a question about the meaning of Voltaire’s “Let us cultivate our garden,” he remarked: When I talk at universities to students, they always want to discuss saving the globe, and I am all in favor of that of course. But I always answer, “It’s very good to think about problems in a global way, I think it is a good intellectual exercise, but the only way where you can do something is in your own locality. So think globally, but act locally. If you cannot do something about that stream or those lovely marshlands in your town, then how do you think you are going to save the globe?” ( Temple, 1978, p. 7) Indeed, cultivating our garden has a local-global, spatial dimension, as well as a calling to all of us to be actively engaged citizens in our communities. In the 21st century there are many global issues that students can explore, including but not limited to, climate change, poverty, civil unrest, epidemics, and shortages of resources. However, these challenges are quite overwhelming and difficult to grasp, especially for students who tend to live their lives at the local scale early in life and later expand their activity spaces to places beyond their neighborhoods. Furthermore, researchers (Atkins & Hart, 2003; Rubin,
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Think Globally, Act Locally Bumper Sticker
Source: www.peaceproject.com/stickers/fullsize/think-globally-act-locally-bumper-sticker
2007; Youniss, 2011) have suggested that engagement in and connection to the local community is important for developing civic competence. In short, students must first think and act locally, and then apply their knowledge and skills to addressing global needs. The statement, think locally, act globally, also served as a metaphor for our approach to curriculum development, in our understanding of learners and their interactions with content and their environment. When developing curriculum, thinking locally translated to beginning with the learner for us. Aligning with Dewey’s (1897) constructivist views, we considered curriculum as originating from the experience and interest of the learner. Additionally, curriculum should engage learners in social and collaborative activities that support students making connections to new ideas, engendering new learning, and expanding into the world around them, akin to acting globally. While constructivism was a starting point for our curricular model, we recognized the power of student participation in real-world problems to “promote a sense of their own agency and collective capacity to alter their neighbourhoods or communities for the better” ( Smith, 2007, p. 192). Accordingly, we used critical pedagogy of place ( Gruenewald, 2008) as a framework to guide our work. Critical pedagogy of place is derived from the theories of place-based education and critical pedagogy. Place-based education can be distinguished from conventional education due to the “attention its practitioners direct toward both social and natural environments” ( Smith, 2007, p. 191) and the emphasis on educational experiences “aimed at developing in young people a sense of affiliation with the places where they live” (p. 192). Both aspects described by Smith are evident in our work, in the focus topics and the cross-disciplinary approach to curriculum development and engagement activities. Furthermore, critical pedagogy contends that education is inherently political and the ultimate goal of education is political and social transformation (Freire, 2000; Giroux, 1988; McLaren, 2003). Essential to critical pedagogy is the development of critical consciousness, which supports students’ ability to identify and question the injustice and oppression in society that affects their lives (Freire, 2000). Considering the role of place from the perspective of citizenship extending from the local to global, Gruenewald (2008) explained that “Place . . . foregrounds a narrative of local and regional politics that is attuned to the particularities of where people actually live, and that is connected to global development trends that impact local places” (p. 308).
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Concepts described as essential to critical pedagogy are also those important to civic engagement and active citizenship. There are numerous definitions for civic engagement (Adler & Goggin, 2005; Gibson, 2000) ranging from individual, informal, private activities (e.g., helping a neighbor) to those that are formal, collective, and public (e.g., community volunteering). We elected to define civic engagement with that described by Adler and Goggin (2005) as “how an active citizen participates in the life of a community in order to improve conditions for others or to help shape the community’s future” (p. 241). Accordingly, our research team developed an interdisciplinary, inquiry-based research study fostering students’ use of spatial thinking, geospatial technologies, and citizen mapping to enhance their knowledge of and engagement in the community surrounding their school. Specifically, our project was designed around ideas of promoting civic engagement among students of traditionally underrepresented groups, who live in neighborhoods with a variety of environmental and social challenges. One goal of this work was to introduce students to the value of spatial thinking and technologies for addressing these issues, and empowering them to make a difference in their neighborhoods. To prepare students to grasp local challenges using a spatial lens, we introduced students to spatial thinking and how geographers analyze the arrangement of points, lines, and areas across the earth’s surface as well as connections across space and at various geographic scales. “Spatial thinking includes spatial knowledge—of symmetry, orientation, scale, distance decay, and other concepts” ( Schultz, Kerski, & Patterson, 2008, p. 27). Further, spatial thinking involves a particular way of framing and examining questions, and often includes the use of geospatial tools to analyze data and illustrate results. The National Research Council (NRC, 2006) suggested, Given the need for increased scientific and technological literacy in the workforce and in everyday life, we must equip K-12 graduates with skills that will enable them to think spatially and to take advantage of tools and technologies—such as GIS (geographic information systems) for supporting spatial thinking. (p. 13) A spatial perspective will enable students to extrapolate local issues to an understanding of connections to regional, national, and global scales, and promote spatial citizenship. Increasingly, geography is being recognized in the scientific community and in the general public for its contributions to understanding and confronting pressing human and physical concerns facing the earth in the 21st century. As emphasized in a report to the National Academies: Geographical ideas and information have become increasingly central to science, as well as to planning, environmental management, and policy
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making. Dynamic maps and imagery of Earth’s surface are now essential tools for emergency responders, transportation workers, and urban planners, and new user-friendly geographical technologies, such as Global Positioning System (GPS) tools and online maps, are becoming a part of daily life. (Murphy et al., 2010, p. 1) Indeed, the use of geospatial technology has become commonplace among citizens in navigating and understanding the world around them. Moreover, with the growth in the use of the Internet and the ability of citizens to contribute to its content, we are seeing the transformation of geospatial technology and the expansion of its use by average citizens. Sui (2008) described this phenomenon as “a wikification of GIS” (p. 1). In other words, what was once traditionally performed by professionals using GIS computer software on desktop computers can now be completed in a simpler, and perhaps more accessible, form through volunteered geographic information and the Internet. Volunteered geographic information (VGI) is defined as “geographic information acquired and made available to others through the voluntary activity of individuals or groups, with the intent of providing information about the geographic world” (Elwood, Goodchild, & Sui, 2012, p. 575). This type of data collected by individuals in the context of their communities can be considered as a form of citizen science, or citizen mapping in the case of spatial data. It is now possible to use numerous devices and programs for VGI and citizen mapping. “VGI is often made possible through the use of geographically enabled ‘smartphones,’ personal digital assistants or PDAs (i.e., handheld computers), digital cameras, and vehicle navigation systems” (Murphy et al., 2010, p. 107). This is an exciting time for teachers and students because there are so many options that provide opportunities for teaching and learning outside of the classroom. With citizen mapping, we can empower students with the tools to engage actively in fieldwork and make contributions in their communities. Goodchild (2007) suggested, the most important value of VGI may lie in what it can tell about local activities in various geographic locations that go unnoticed by the world’s media, and about life at a local level. It is in that area that VGI may offer the most interesting, lasting, and compelling value to geographers. (pp. 220–221) We contend that introducing students to spatial thinking and geospatial technology in the context of their communities through VGI and citizen mapping is an effective approach to place-based learning. Citizen, or community, mapping tends to be a localized activity, but it is linked also to global, universal issues. It is assumed that people who live in these communities are the most informed about their own neighborhoods. Citizen
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mapping can empower people and raise awareness of issues in their communities and beyond. Furthermore, Parker (2006) suggests “Community authorship can help make the map more credible or accountable to local community members as the knowledge is derived from those familiar with and presumably knowledgeable about a place” (pp. 475–476). Flanagin and Metzger (2008) concur that “individuals are in many cases in the best position to provide information that requires indigenous experience, esoteric understanding of a particular physical environment, and current information about local conditions” (p. 139). However, individuals may have differing perspectives about the same community. In her research on Chicago, Elwood (2008) notes that contrasting views of the same neighborhood are offered by the Latino residents who see it “as a vibrant center of economic activity” and by real estate agents (mostly white) who perceive it “as gang-ridden, dangerous, and dilapidated” (p. 179). Thus, integrating citizen mapping into the curriculum enables students, who are familiar with their neighborhoods, to have a sense of contribution in their communities, while learning important concepts, skills, and technologies.
An Overview of Student Workshops In our work, students engaged in citizen mapping using geospatial technology, fieldwork, and analysis of secondary data to identify challenges and assets, evaluate and choose among alternatives, and suggest solutions to community needs over the course of two summer workshops. This approach aligns with recent research on career aspirations that suggests having an opportunity to give back and make a difference in their communities was an important consideration in career planning, particularly for traditionally underrepresented students ( Schlemper & Monk, 2011). The primary participants were students in grades 9–12 at Jesup W. Scott High School, a United Way Schools as Community Hubs center in Toledo, Ohio, where 94 percent of the students are black and 86 percent are considered economically disadvantaged ( Ohio School Report Card, 2016). We used an inquiry learning process to engage students in their community, to support skill development using geospatial technologies, and to encourage critical thinking. Student participants used prior and acquired knowledge of a bounded geographic area around their high school to identify topics of interest and formulate their research questions. The process aligned with NRC (2006) proposed inquiry practices that included opportunities for students developing questions, acquiring data relevant to these questions, observing and exploring patterns within the data, analyzing and drawing inferences from observed patterns and relations, and generating possible answers to act upon their new understanding (p. 176). To support student-led inquiry as proposed by the NRC, we employed a four-level inquiry approach (Banchi & Bell, 2008; Bell, Smetana, & Binns, 2005; Rezba, Auldridge, & Rhea, 1999). The four levels describe the
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transfer of responsibility for inquiry from the teacher to the student and include: (1) confirmation inquiry (confirming a known principle); (2) structured inquiry (teacher presents a question and students follow a given procedure); (3) guided inquiry (teacher presents a question, students design/select procedures); and (4) open inquiry (students formulate questions and design/select procedures) (Banchi & Bell, 2008, p. 27). In our work we moved between the levels, depending on the prior knowledge and needs of the students. As the leaders of the workshops, we facilitated the student research process by brainstorming with them, using an initial inquiry activity inspired by the KWL ( Ogle, 1986) to identify topics of interest to them. Similar to the traditional KWL, our approach focused on uncovering students’ prior knowledge by asking them to reflect on, “K” what do I know, and “W” what do I want to know. In an effort to scaffold the development of researchable questions and students’ abilities to support their claims, we moved beyond the traditional K and W by asking students to identify and communicate questions they had and could ask about their topic, where they might find answers, and why their ideas were important. The “L” what I learned in the KWL method was addressed daily through exit slips, and in the final student projects. Using information from the brainstorming sessions, students constructed research questions, and later narrowed them after conducting initial research in the neighborhood. For example, one student group in summer 2015 began by asking why there seemed to be an increase in “open space” (abandoned houses and neglected vacant lots) in the neighborhood surrounding the school. After their initial research and fieldwork, they decided to narrow their question to “Can the abandoned lots and buildings be made into youth centers?” They suggested that this question was important to them because they knew youth in the community needed a safe place to go and to have fun. Further, they argued, “We believe that if the youth have nothing to do they will find negative things to do in the street such as joining gangs. This will increase the crime rates and deaths of young teens.” Other student-generated topics included crime, community assets and needs, parks and community gardens, youth employment, open space, and housing. For each topic explored, students collected both primary data (e.g., GPS data, photos, and observational notes) while conducting fieldwork and secondary data (e.g., local land bank data, county GIS database, census records, and ArcGIS online maps). Using a presentation template created by the research team to scaffold organization of their research process, findings, and recommendations, students presented their research to key community stakeholders. Specifically, students presented their questions (including why this was important to them), the data they collected (photos, maps, statistics), what they learned, and what they recommended to the Mayor of the city, community officials, neighborhood organizations, school administrators, and their families. Figure 7.2 includes two slides from the presentation created by the students, who proposed using open space for a new youth center in the neighborhood.
What Students Learned and Recommended About Open Space and Youth Centers
you do not have to apply for a special permit, unlike an active recreational use permit where you have to go through all sorts of hoops and mazes just to get the actual permit to build the building.
FIGURE 7.2
• It is easier to use an open lot for passive recreational use because
be used for a potential youth center. • there could be a longer process for approval if we propose a indoor recreation facility in a residential area.
active activities such as indoor basketball, ski ball, swimming and indoor gaming.
• Indoor recreational facilities, for example buildings, can be used for
open fields that we have shown can be passive recreational areas such as places for lying on the grass, playing football, or even grilling.
• We observed indoor and outdoor potential recreational areas. The
Community Needs - Recommendations
• by walking around that there were many vacant lots that could
within the neighborhood itself.
• but at the same time there is a lot of concern about what is going on
• We learned that: • a lot of sidewalks/streets need to be fixed in the community. • there are many open spaces not being used or maintained in the community. • there are not enough safe and convenient places for youth to gather and feel that they are being protected. • there is a relatively high level of crime in the community,
Community Needs - Results
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As a result of the students’ presentations and an interest in their suggestions, students were invited to give their presentations two more times outside of the context of the formal workshops, first by the Mayor who wanted them to present to the Department of Neighborhoods, and later by a nonprofit community organization in their neighborhood. Ultimately, these students recognized and appreciated the use of spatial thinking and technology for not only enhancing their community, but also in the variety of related career paths they could pursue after high school. The workshops provided us with a better understanding of how students learn geospatial thinking and technologies in the context of being civically engaged in their community, and how to connect those experiences with further education and careers. This approach to introducing students to spatial thinking and mapping neighborhood topics is described in more detail here to provide a curricular example that can be adapted by teachers in other communities.
Constructing Curriculum for Spatial Approaches to Citizenship Curriculum construction began collaboratively among an interdisciplinary team of researchers, teacher advisors in the physical sciences and social studies, and an external project evaluator, nine months prior to the first workshop and was iterative, building on new information for our research and feedback from stakeholders. We developed design criteria for constructing curriculum based on best practices in teaching and learning as well as our project goals of integrating geospatial technology, the application of skills to careers, and promoting citizenship through citizen mapping of community assets and challenges (Table 7.1). The criteria reflects an inquiry-focused learning cycle related to the objectives of our research project, which are designed to engage students effectively with technology in the context of their neighborhoods and increase their interest in pursuing careers in geography, geospatial technology, and related fields. In order to implement these goals, place-based and inquiry learning are utilized to focus teaching and learning activities. These design criteria were used to guide the planning and implementation of the two summer workshops and subsequently in constructing related curriculum for broader dissemination to teachers. Using our experience and lessons learned from the summer workshops, feedback from teacher advisors, and research findings, we have constructed and piloted a curricular model to be used in teaching and learning in grades 9–12, integrating “big questions” (ideas), linking to standards, supporting research and problem-solving skills, connecting to career paths, using technology, and providing opportunities for civic action ( Figure 7.3). The design criteria (Table 7.1), and a modified version of the experiential learning approach are integrated into the model (see, for example, “Experiential Learning Cycles”).
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Table 7.1 Curriculum Design Criteria Criteria
Description
Reveal what students know and understand
Pre- and then frequent opportunities for student reflection and discourse, thinking aloud and writing about what they think they know and how they know it to engage schemata and address possible misconceptions Regular opportunity to engage in disciplinary reflection and discourse by students on the value, purpose, or interest in what they are doing, what questions they have, who might be interested in their work, and why that work is important Through case studies, applications of skills to careers, and interactions with professionals to promote connections between skills, content, and careers Activities are tied to appropriate disciplinary standards that include target content and skills and are introduced in increasingly complex ways
Reveal what students want to know and why Engage students authentically with careers Integrate disciplinary standards for key concepts and skills Employ a multidisciplinary approach Require geospatial tools Support student research and problem solving
Students address real-world content through multi-disciplinary perspectives The use of geospatial data, tools, and technology are integral to the activities Student centered inquiry, where they identify, research, and suggest solutions to problems of interest to them
Big Question
Overview
Standards
Explore
Explain
Apply
FIGURE 7.3
Learning Targets
Connect
Background
Engage
Extend
Sources
Experiential Learning Curricular Model
Our model was influenced by the 5E model (Bybee, 2002) as it promotes active, collaborative inquiry and is common to science education. The 5E model has been modified over time to address varied needs of a learning environment, including the inclusion of technology (Chessin & Moore, 2004), extension to 7E (adding Elicitation and Extension; Eisenkraft, 2003), and a 4E by 2 model,
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addressing assessment and metacognition (Marshall, Horton, & Smart, 2008), among others. The core of our curriculum model is highlighted in Figure 7.3, represented by four E’s: Engage, Explore, and Explain, adding Apply and Connect based on our learning objectives and research as described. The remainder of the model includes stages that are designed to scaffold the teaching and learning that occurs in the core by providing a focus question, overview, links to standards, learning targets, background information, and practical sources for potential enhancements. Using topics that emerged from students’ interests at the summer workshops (and through questionnaires administered in a few of our teacher advisors’ classrooms and by teachers at the target school prior to the workshops), we created curriculum modules to be disseminated broadly to teachers. Each module has been developed following an inquiry learning cycle to promote learning of geographic content and skills to prepare students to actively engage in their communities, and make connections to career paths. The next section of the chapter provides a practical example of one module that can be adapted for use by teachers in a variety of settings. This example, focusing on open/green space, evolved from interaction with students during the summer workshops and from suggestions made by our interdisciplinary teacher advisory committee, who also evaluated and piloted emerging curriculum modules. This module illustrates the components of the curricular model as well as the ways students can make a difference in their neighborhoods by thinking spatially and becoming active citizens in their communities.
Cultivating Our Neighborhoods Through Open/Green Space Referring back to Voltaire’s quote to cultivate our gardens (as cited in Temple, 1978) and the call to take action in our communities, one of the student groups in the summer 2015 workshop was interested in blight and abandoned or neglected properties. The impetus for the module was students’ prior knowledge of the neighborhood and issues relevant to their position as teenagers. In particular, they had concerns about blight, crime, and the lack of safe, social spaces for youth. Before conducting research and finalizing their inquiry question, the students discussed what they knew about two existing youth centers in relatively close proximity to their school, noting problems with them in terms of distance to one and the lack of supervision and overcrowding at the other. From their observations, the group concluded that there were not enough safe and convenient places for youth to gather and to feel that they are protected in the neighborhood. As described earlier, combined with their fieldwork examining properties and open (sometimes “green”) space in the neighborhood surrounding their school, the students in this group refined their research interests by focusing on converting open spaces to parks and youth centers. They wanted to know if there were abandoned structures and/
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or empty lots in the neighborhood that could be used for youth centers or outdoor recreational sites. To explore this question, during fieldwork the group used GPS units and geo-referenced capable cameras to collect data of their observations, identifying existing parks, neglected infrastructure (damaged sidewalks and potholes), and abandoned or neglected properties. After collecting their primary data, students imported the data points into ArcGIS to produce maps of the neighborhood to make their case for a youth center. To further investigate their question, students considered demographics, researched median age and crime in the area, and identified or produced overlay maps using ArcGIS on-line ( Figure 7.4). This map, produced by students who were using ArcGIS online for the first time, includes their choice of symbols in the legend to represent the data they collected with GPS units in the neighborhood, including potential sites for a youth center (soccer and basketball symbol), damaged sidewalks (orange cones symbol), potholes (open circle symbol), existing parks (picnic table and tree symbol), and stray animals (deer symbol). Because their original inquiry question related to community needs in general, they tagged properties that they assumed were vacant as well as damaged infrastructure (sidewalks and potholes), and stray animals that they suggested posed a threat to the community. Even after narrowing their question to focus on potential sites for a new youth center, they wanted to integrate all of their original data into the map. As a direct result of their fieldwork, students found that while the crime level in the neighborhood around the school was relatively high in comparison to other parts of the country (2–4 times higher than the national average as seen in Figure 7.4), people in the neighborhood seemed to be engaged and concerned. For example, while students conducted fieldwork in the neighborhood with the assistance of the project staff, a number of residents stopped to talk to them about what they were doing and to express their concerns about the community. Through citizen mapping and integrating images, maps, and statistics into their findings, they were able to make a convincing case to community officials for the need for a new youth center and to offer suggestions for potential locations. What follows is an expanded version of their topic that can be adapted to other neighborhoods (urban, suburban, or rural) and used by teachers to explore neighborhood change, population, remote sensing, and land use. This learning module on open (or green) space was piloted, modified, and used by a teacher advisor in her classroom during spring 2016 and her version is accessible through http://spaceinthecity.weebly.com. This example illustrates how the model in Figure 7.3 and the design criteria in Table 7.1 have been applied to develop learning experiences for students on the topic of open space (which is sometimes green but not always). The open space module may be used in its entirety, but it also includes a variety of options for teacher adaption. Starting with the Big Question (BQ), which is meant to serve as a guide for inquiry and learning, students are asked to consider “How do human activities
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impact the environment and how can we respond to it?” The BQ aligns with and represents learning standards (see Table 7.3). Additionally, the BQ is structured as an open-ended, divergent question to support multiple perspectives. In this example, we address the BQ, explaining that understanding land use and the impact of human activity is important when learning about the environment and biodiversity. The Overview, provides a summary of the module for teachers, describing content and skills being addressed. Table 7.2 includes the elements of this component and its application to the open space example. In short, the overview is designed to provide the teachers and students with a basic understanding of what the module is all about and what is needed to make it happen. Because our model addresses inquiry using a multi-disciplinary approach, this curriculum module integrates a variety of applicable Standards, including the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), College, Career, and Civic Life (C-3; NCSS, 2013) standards, and the Geography for Life National Standards. Both “Focus Standards” (those that will be addressed in this lesson) and “Prior Standards” (anticipated prior knowledge) are outlined. For the open space module, Table 7.3 provides an overview of the “Focus Standards.”
Table 7.2 Overview Applied to the Green/Open Space Module Element
Application
Learning Goals
Students will use inquiry place-based learning to examine their communities. They will engage in the process of interpreting and extrapolating information from remotely sensed images of their neighborhood, including comparing and contrasting historical and contemporary images, validating the images, examining secondary data. Students will evaluate land use decisions to make informed recommendations about land use in the community for a variety of stakeholders. Earth science, geography, people-environment, urban planning, demography Interpretation, remote sensing, fieldwork and observation, data analysis Guided Inquiry and Open Inquiry Environmental impact, urbanization, vegetation cover, green space, remote sensing 9th to 12th grades 4–7 days (depending on teacher’s choice of activities to include) Remotely sensed images of the community (historical and contemporary), Internet access (to search for secondary data), worksheets for writing prompts, comparing and contrasting, and others
Content Focus Skill Focus Level of Inquiry Key Concepts Grade Level Duration Materials
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Table 7.3 Focus Standards for Open/Green Space Module NGSS C-3
Geography
HS-LS2–7. Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity. D2.Geo.2.9–12. Use maps, satellite images, photographs, and other representations to explain relationships between the locations of places and regions and their political, cultural, and economic dynamics. Standard 14. Know and understand how human actions modify the physical environment
Standards were selected based on their connections to the anticipated content, alignment across disciplines, and curriculum development criteria. In this example, each of the standards focuses on how human decisions or interactions impact place. We further considered how the NGSS disciplinary core ideas emphasized for this standard more fully illustrate connections between standards. One clear example is the emphasis on political, cultural, and economic factors seen in both the C3 above, and this NGSS exemplar: “When evaluating solutions it is important to take into account a range of constraints including cost, safety, reliability and aesthetics and to consider social, cultural and environmental impacts” (HSLS2–7: ETS1.B). As for Geography Standard 14, a more specific focus, listed among the expectations for students in 12th grade, is having students “describe and evaluate scenarios for mitigating and/or adapting to environmental changes caused by human modifications” which is most evident in the application stage of this module (Heffron & Downs, 2012, p. 77). To support teacher evaluation of the applicability of the module for their specific students and classroom situations, Prior Standards provide information regarding anticipated prior knowledge (Table 7.4). In the case of the open space module, students are expected to have prior knowledge of creating maps and explaining spatial patterns (C-3, D2.Geo.1.9–12) before they progress to this lesson using technology to explain “relationships between places and regions and their political, cultural, and economic dynamics” (C-3 Focus Standard D2.Geo.2.9–12). For the national geography standards, prior standards can be gleaned from those listed in previous grades, such as the eighth-grade learning objective in Table 7.4 Prior Standards for Open/Green Space Module NGSS C-3
Geography
MS-ESS3–3. Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment. D2.Geo.1.9–12. Use geospatial and related technologies to create maps to display and explain the spatial patterns of cultural and environmental characteristics. Standard 14. Know and understand how human actions modify the physical environment
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Standard 14 that suggests students should be able to “analyze the proportion of built area to vegetation land cover around a community and identify possible consequences in changes to that proportion” (Heffron & Downs, 2012, p. 77). Thus, the “Prior Standards” are designed to guide the Learning Targets, what students will learn by the end of the lesson. For this example, the learning target suggests students will be able to recommend different uses for open spaces in the neighborhood that could benefit the community and the environment by the end of the module. They will do this through identifying locations and measuring sizes of open spaces by comparing current and historical remote sensing images. The Background provides content essential to the topic and is intended to set up the learning segment, providing a brief synopsis of relevant content and concepts related to the topic. In this example, the background consists of a discussion of urbanization and population density, with a county level map, population statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, and the environmental impact formula that can be used as a tool for teaching and learning. A summary of the relevant background is provided here, along with its relationship to peopleenvironmental interaction at the local scale. According to the 2015 World Population Data Sheet, 81 percent of people in the United States live in urban areas (World Population Data Sheet, 2015, p. 12). However, some counties within the country are more crowded than others because population density varies by county. In addition to population density, the physical and human geography of each county is different. For example, some counties are more urban than others. Figure 7.5 shows population density by county in the United States in 2010. Maps of population density make it obvious to students that urban regions have higher densities than rural areas. Asking students to hypothesize which regions of the country they think are more urbanized serves as a starting point for thinking about how urban areas might impact the amount of green/open space in these areas. This activity promotes spatial thinking about the patterns of human settlement and the relationships between people and places. Students will recognize that over time people have used the land in changing ways and their impact on the environment can be seen in the landscapes of local communities. One way to measure the impact of human activities on the environment is to use the environmental impact formula, developed by Ehrlich and Holdren in the 1970s, but still commonly found in geography textbooks: I (Impact on the Environment) = P (Population) X A (Affluence) X T (Technology) (Ehrlich & Holdren, 1972, p. 20) Population can be determined by examining population density, while affluence (or standard of living) could be measured using a variable such as income per
Population Density by County in 2010
Source: United States Census Bureau
FIGURE 7.5
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capita. A potential measure for technology is access to the Internet or the availability of Wi-Fi networks. The impact of technology is more difficult to assess, however. In many cases, people suggest that the increasing use of technology has a negative impact on the environment, but this is not always the case. In fact, new advances in technology, such as alternative energy sources, can improve human’s impact on the environment. For this lesson, students will focus on urbanization and land cover. Using remote sensing and spatial thinking, students will examine the changing landscapes of their communities over time. Engage includes activities designed to increase student interest and involvement with the content, in the current example, introducing students to the concepts of green vs. open spaces. Using remotely sensed images of the local area (see Figure 7.6), students in the summer program were asked to make guesses about the content of each image using prior knowledge of the area, which both introduces them to the concept (open space) and to one of the technological tools that will be used throughout the module (remote sensing). At this stage, we chose nearby places that students were likely to be familiar with, such as parks, shopping malls, or famous landmarks, and those with recognizable shapes. For example, Figure 7.6 includes aerial photos from Google Earth of Franklin Park shopping mall (Image A) and the Mudhen’s Minor League baseball field (Image B) both in Toledo, Ohio. These are places students have visited or seen, so they are useful starting points for thinking spatially and interpreting remotely sensed images. Students worked individually and then shared their guesses, indicating what features were important to them when making their deductions. Image A, Franklin Park Mall, was the more difficult of the two for the students to identify. Those guessing correctly pointed out features such as the parking lot, and the “diagonal” street near the top of the image. The Fifth Third Field Mudhen’s Stadium (Image B) was easier due to the unique shape of a baseball diamond. Nevertheless, other features were described by students as important, including the Maumee River, a park along the river, and other city landmarks. A follow-up discussion related to the use of “space” in this urban area reinforced important concepts.
FIGURE 7.6
Franklin Park Mall (A) and Fifth Third Field (B) in Toledo, Ohio
Source: Google Earth, 2014
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To replicate this module in the classroom, after engaging students in the introductory activity with images of the local community, students will work to draft a definition of green space in this second activity. Individually, students will write two to three sentences in response to the following writing prompt: Currently, the word “green” is used to mean more than just a color. In our case, we are going to consider how the word green is associated with the environment, and more specifically with land use. Compose a personal definition for ‘green space’ and be prepared to share your definition with the class. Next, students compare and discuss their definitions in small groups and then compose a class consensus definition. The class definition is compared to the definition offered by the Environmental Protection Agency (n.d.): “Green space (land that is partly or completely covered with grass, trees, shrubs, or other vegetation. Green space includes parks, community gardens, and cemeteries” (paragraph 1). Finally, students are asked to refer back to the aerial images used in Activity 1 and identify green spaces applying the various definitions. A third Engage activity asks students to compare and contrast definitions of open vs. green space, and the significance of having green space in the community. While green spaces are abundant in suburban and rural areas, they are often spread out in urban areas. At times, especially in shrinking cities that have been faced with population decline since WWII, open spaces can be a source of blight in communities. Open spaces could be public parks or playgrounds, but they could also be abandoned parking lots, neglected and abandoned private properties, or railroads that are no longer in use. Through this activity, students will consider the differences and similarities between green and open spaces. This step could also be in the form of a challenge in which students search for definitions of “open space” and create Venn diagrams to illustrate the similarities and differences between green and open spaces. As with green space, a class definition of open space could be created. Finally, students participate in a formative assessment consisting of a list of features (e.g., streets, parking lots, parks, basketball courts, community gardens, or vacant, grassy lots) and/or RS images that ask them to indicate whether each is open space, green space, or both. With an introduction to remotely sensed images and the concepts of green/ open space, students are prepared to examine these ideas in the context of their neighborhood in the Explore stage. For this example, first provide students remotely sensed images of a predetermined area surrounding the school, and ask them to circle three locations they consider to be green space, supporting their choices with a brief description of each space including its condition and use. Second, students compare and contrast two RS images of the same neighborhood area at the same scale for two different time periods (historical and current).1 Figure 7.7 is an example of two images in the neighborhood near the high
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FIGURE 7.7
Images of the Same Area in 2006 and 2014, Google Earth
Source: Google Earth
school where the summer workshops were held, and changes are quite dramatic between 2006 and 2014. For this activity it is important to select an area that has clearly changed over time in terms of land use to allow students to apply document analysis skills effectively, beginning with a description of what they see in the images. To scaffold observation skills required for analysis of photographs, students may be provided analysis guides (see Library of Congress, Primary Document Analysis Guides in Sources for an example). Students are then guided through a series of steps to estimate changes in the amount of area used as open space and explain their estimates (Appendix A). Students also describe the changes qualitatively in writing to scaffold use of disciplinary appropriate language, such as using cardinal direction, location, and other geographic terms. As a challenge, students will conduct research on the causes of these changes, and reflect on the positive or negative impacts on the neighborhood. Once foundational content knowledge and skills have been introduced, students engage in fieldwork to ground-truth the data in the current RS image to see if the image is an accurate reflection of present conditions. Where possible, teachers may choose to organize students into groups to walk around the neighborhood with a current map and assign each group a section (a city block, for example) to check for accuracy of the RS images and to make updates on the map to reflect any recent changes. This activity engages students in thinking and visualizing spatially, as they analyze, translate, and evaluate the 2D aerial view, compared to the live 3D perspective (façade) view. As a result, students are able to explore the human impact on the environment through the lens of neighborhood change. Explain, aligns with the conception of traditional instructional content to scaffold student learning, building on the previous stages. In this case, students are asked to explain the human activities impacting green and open spaces in the context of their neighborhood. The initial inquiry is teacher led through the use of various secondary data sources that serve as proxies for the elements of the environmental impact equation (e.g., exploring statistics on population density, median income, and access to the Internet). This stage could be constructed as another challenge or as an extension to the module, where students are asked to
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search for related data in local and county databases, the American Community Survey, or the Population Reference Bureau (Appendix A). Further, teachers may have students respond to the following prompts: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Compare the datasets and identify changes that would impact community land use. Determine whether the dataset represents changes related to “population,” “affluence,” or “technology.” Explain your answer. Assess the impact the changes would have on the neighborhood, using data to support the assessment. Propose questions that remain or that arose as a result of this activity.
In summary, this stage provides students additional context and data to help them explain neighborhood changes, particularly in regards to land use. The Explain stage is followed by students expanding the investigation into content through guided inquiry, in which students are asked to Apply what they have discovered about human impact on the environment to potential solutions and real-world issues. In the Apply stage students are asked to imagine that they have been asked to serve as liaisons between neighborhood residents and the city’s planning department. Their task is to determine how the green space in the neighborhood has been used in the past, how it is used currently, and create a proposal for the future use of one location to present to the class from the perspective of a community stakeholder (e.g., urban planners, developers, government officials, school officials, residents, and others). To complete the investigation, students develop questions to guide their inquiry, identify, analyze, and use information from remotely sensed images to determine open/green spaces and geographic features, and conduct secondary research to obtain facts to support their recommendations. While career connections are integrated throughout the module, they are more explicit in the Apply and Connect stages. In fact, Connect was conceptualized and designed as a method to explicitly illustrate connections between the content and skills being learned to educational and career pathways, which may take the form of role-playing activities, videos, discussions, and visits from community members who are employed in business, government, and nonprofit sectors. For example, in the open/green space module, students, who assumed the roles of different community stakeholders in regards to an actual green space challenge in the neighborhood, might interview professionals in a similar career in the community. Alternatively, they could create skits to illustrate how different stakeholders conceptualize these neighborhood challenges to compare and contrast land use in the community. In our work, professionals in careers requiring geographic knowledge, spatial thinking, and use of related geospatial technologies shared their work and how they used geographic knowledge and skills to address community challenges and opportunities in their jobs. For instance, city planners visited with students during the summer workshops and discussed
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the potential development strategies of a large open space that had been a shopping mall but is now vacant. Students were able to see how the planners used spatial thinking and geospatial technologies in their careers. The Extend section was developed to offer suggestions for taking content and skills to the next level. This stage provides opportunities to broaden student learning, and offers deeper understanding of content and technology as well as engagement with the larger community. Again, referring to the example of open/green spaces, one component of Extend is for students to participate in the civic process by sharing their findings with community stakeholders. In addition, students could engage with others beyond the classroom virtually by sharing their research and findings across the Internet. Finally, Sources offers suggestions for and links to specific resources and examples that facilitate implementation of this module. These are distinct from a list of references or bibliography as they are meant to provide inspiration for additional classroom activities or further insight into relevant topics and skills. Table 7.5 includes examples related to the open/green space module. These are a few examples of sources that can be used to not only facilitate teaching and learning of skills and topics related to open/green spaces, but also in the development of adaptations of the module for different community settings. Table 7.5 Teaching and Learning Sources for Open/Green Space Module Item Type
URL
Purpose
Definition
www3.epa.gov/region1/eco/ uep/openspace.html
Data
www.census.gov/ programs-surveys/acs/
Application
www.google.com/earth/ download/ge/agree.html
Skills Game
http://americaview.org/ remote-sensing-memorygame.html www.youtube.com/ watch?v=otpDq8CAano
EPA discussion of the differences and similarities of green space and open space, especially for the “Engage” stage. American Community Survey demographic data to facilitate the “Explain” stage. Google Earth, a free, downloadable program, useful in this module for viewing places remotely. AmericaView Remote Sensing memory game uses Landsat satellite images, and is helpful in introducing RS. Geospatial Revolution video on urbanization and geospatial technologies is one alternative to support “Connecting” to careers. Library of Congress Analysis Tool student observations, reflections, and questions of primary sources. ArcGIS online is a virtual mapping tool that allows users to customize maps with primary data and shares secondary data.
Video
Analysis
Mapping
www.loc.gov/teachers/ primary-source-analysistool/ www.arcgis.com/features/
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Alternatives for Making a Difference in Your Neighborhood Examining changing land use patterns and the impact on their communities integrates spatial thinking with civic engagement to empower students to make a difference in their neighborhoods. This specific module can be adapted by teachers depending on their geographic setting, and activities can be modified based on the amount and type of green/open space as well as land use patterns in the community. Every community has unique qualities, whether urban, suburban, or rural, but the basic concepts of exploring people-environmental interaction and associated impacts can be explored asking geographic questions and using geospatial tools, such as those described in the module. The following section provides suggestions for adapting the model for use in alternative contexts, addressing other academic content and skills (especially writing) and requiring less reliance on geospatial technologies using the open/ green space example. Consequently, the basic focus of the learning cycle does not change (e.g., Big Question, Overview, Standards, Learning Targets, and Content Background). Rather, we focus our examples for possible modifications on the sections Engage, Explore, Explain, and Apply. Engage. Students begin by identifying locations in the community with which they are familiar and feel an attachment, such as their neighborhood. Next, they draw and label a map (or Google Earth image) of the location as well as write a descriptive paragraph about the location and the meaning it holds for them. Students share their maps during a gallery walk or in a small group sharing session during class. While sharing, student observers make lists of terms used to describe the location and their peers’ connectedness to it. As a debriefing of the activity, the class compares the geographic (e.g., density, proximity, direction, etc.) and affective terms (e.g., pretty, empty, demolished, etc.), and the teacher directs focus to the importance of space and understanding of place to individuals followed by a discussion of open/ green space and human interaction with the environment. This activity provides useful information about the perspective of students in the classroom. For instance, if the class does not recognize open/green space in their descriptions, this offers an opportunity for promoting students “re-seeing” of a space. Additionally, it supports students’ abilities to articulate how “they first characterized the existing sense of place” (Schmidt, 2011, p. 114) prior to making connections to the place as citizens. The discussion of open/green space and definitions proceeds as in the original example, with the exception that students are using examples from their personal experience to support their definitions. In this case, students are encouraged to reflect back to the prior activity, and use what they learned to support their statements. Similarly, the formative assessment activity, asking students to identify various examples of open/green space, relies on student-generated texts, their descriptive paragraphs and maps rather than teacher-supplied images. Explore. With the student-centered approach and focus on areas known to students, the Explore stage takes an open-inquiry approach. Building on the
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Engage activity, students begin to more deeply investigate (explore) the content by first brainstorming to develop questions related to their identified areas, focusing on human impact and land use with an emphasis on open/green space. For example, students might compare public versus private land use, or in agricultural communities, arable land versus pastoral or residential land. Next, students participate in a peer feedback session to help them narrow their ideas to a researchable topic and develop questions. The Explore stage might also cross into the Connect stage to include discussions with community members in an effort to help students determine if their focus is pragmatic and meaningful. To investigate the area, students conduct fieldwork, if possible, and secondary research concentrating on the history of the area, search local county records to determine land ownership over time to investigate how ownership impacts land use, or interview community members to learn about other’s perspectives related to their questions. Explain. As stated previously, students are asked to explain the human activities impacting green and open spaces in the context of their neighborhood. With the change to student-directed open inquiry, they become responsible for content related to their topic. To begin the inquiry, the teacher may want to provide a list of appropriate websites, or sample secondary data sources to scaffold student research skills. During the Apply stage students discern how to best communicate what they learned from this information and create appropriate maps, pictures, graphic organizers, and narratives. In addition, they could devise and defend any recommendations for changes to community open spaces that will benefit the community and the environment in a PowerPoint/Keynote proposal. For dissemination beyond the classroom, students could develop flyers using the style of an infographic, requiring them to present their information concisely and in both narrative and graphic forms.
Conclusion Understanding the geographic realities of a place, such as the physical environment, resources, and the impact of the people living there, supports civic praxis. As such, experience in a place is important in academic settings because it influences the way students interact with academic content and in academic contexts. Kirshner, Strobel, and Fernandez (2003) suggested that “Understanding how young people think about their neighborhoods, schools, and communities is critical to supporting their capacity to help build, shape or challenge the institutions in those settings” (p. 2). Through our experience, we recognize the importance of engaging students in the local community and providing them opportunities to challenge their perceptions. Agreeing with the impact of experiences across place and time in the development of civic agency, we argue that the inclusion of geographic knowledge is essential to the development of civic knowledge and
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engagement as it “helps students understand, participate in, and make informed decisions about the world around them” ( Schultz et al., 2008, p. 33). While this chapter was designed to provide a practical example of how to use an experiential learning approach to promote both guided and open inquiry and to enhance students’ spatial, civic understanding, a sample of our research findings will help bridge the link between theory and practice. More specifically, we highlight a few examples here of what students learned during the workshops about their community and the value of spatial thinking and technologies. During the second summer workshop in 2016, there were twice the number of participants (n = 17) as the initial workshop in 2015 (n = 8). It is important to note, however, that while the two summer workshops enrolled a small number of students due to challenges of recruiting students, our goal was to utilize these experiences as a testing ground for effective practices that could later be disseminated more widely and adapted to other geographic settings. Subsequently, curriculum developed based on these workshops has been piloted in other teachers’ classrooms. With this in mind, interviews with students during summer 2016 indicated changes in both what they learned about the community as well as the way they viewed it. We asked the students what they learned about the community that they didn’t know before the workshop. Their responses were coded by what they indicated they had learned, which was linked primarily to the student-suggested topics they explored in their groups during the workshop, including abandoned properties, blight, parks and community gardens, crime, and community needs. For example, one student group inquired if abandoned houses impacted the value of neighboring houses and the overall quality of life in the neighborhood. As a result of this engagement in the neighborhood investigating the question, one ninth-grade male student remarked, “I really learned that there are a lot of abandoned houses and that this community needs a lot of work but it still has great potential.” Similarly, a second group wanted to identify and map the community gardens and parks in the neighborhood. As citizens of the neighborhood, an important aspect of their investigation illustrated their “critical consciousness” ( Freire, 2000) as they determined what amenities the parks and gardens had to offer in comparison to parks in other neighborhoods in the city for equity reasons. They revealed that while their district had more parks than others in the metropolitan area, there were fewer amenities (e.g., tennis courts, basketball courts, grills, picnic shelters, etc.) afforded them. This group consisted of older students, a female who had just completed 12th grade, explained, “What I learned about my community is that all the various parks that are around Scott High School because I didn’t know none of them or the gardens. I learned what those parks and gardens had to offer.” Two other topics were addressed by students during Summer 2016, including crime and community needs (youth employment more specifically), which are reflected in what students learned about the community also.
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Students also recognized the value of spatial thinking in understanding their community. A ninth-grade male student highlighted the use of maps in improving the community. He noted, “I learned that mapping and rating of different crimes in the community is very important. It’s good to have also when we want to figure out where they are and how to stop it.” Perhaps most encouraging was the response a female 11th-grade student made recognizing the connections among all four groups’ topics when she said, “All of our topics like the parks and gardens, housing, crime, and community assets and needs, it all runs together like in our presentations. We will have a piece of each of these topics in our presentations.” She also suggested, “I will always remember ARCGIS because it was a new way of mapping instead of just looking up stuffs on Google maps. I can actually put different buffers or layers on to actually see and compare things in the community.” We also asked the students if the experience (the summer workshop) changed the way they viewed their community, and if so, in what way. Their responses to this question were thoughtful and sophisticated. An 11th-grade female explained: Yes the experience did change how I feel because from the different people we had come and talk, the majority of them said it’s not that the people in the community don’t care. It’s just that the different aspect of trying to pay for a house or what’s around the neighborhood makes it hard for people to take care of a house, a park or a garden. A female, who had just graduated, added “This experience taught me that I actually care more about my community. It made me care more about my community.” A 9th-grade male student said, “Well, I mean it didn’t really change the way I view the community but it also did. It’s just like it changed my view a little bit because I didn’t really know that there were so many people interacting with the community trying to change it.” These admissions of increased amounts of caring, and understanding the complexity of the neighborhood conditions as well as the fact that there are people trying to make a difference are indicative of enhanced awareness and preparedness to be engaged and active citizens. Geography affords teachers opportunities to engage students with civic education authentically through investigation and interaction with real-world problems. Kahne, Hodgins, and Eidman-Aadahl (2016) described the challenge for civic educators to “avoid controversy and not push any particular agenda,” while also offering students opportunities to be active in their communities in ways that engender civic engagement in a democratic society (p. 23). Using studentdriven inquiry related to their understandings of and interests in their neighborhoods addresses such concerns. By cultivating their local “gardens,” we set the stage for this group of students to understand and address challenges faced at the regional, national, and global scales.
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Acknowledgments This project was supported by an Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) grant from the National Science Foundation (DRL1433574). We would like to thank the students and teachers, who participated in this project. Without them, it would not have been possible to explore the effectiveness of the curriculum design and approach. We especially appreciate our teacher advisors, who evaluated and piloted curriculum modules in their classrooms. In addition, we value the help provided by our graduate student assistants, Brinda Athreya and Owusua Yamoah, in facilitating the study. Two other co-PIs, Kevin Czajkowski and Sujata Shetty (both in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toledo), were instrumental to the project. Finally, our external evaluator, Hilarie Davis, has been a critical friend to us throughout every stage of the project.
Note 1. Assuming Google Earth is installed on your computer, enter the address of the school. If not, this is a free program that can be downloaded (See Table 7.5). In the menu above the map, select the icon with the clock that notes “Show Historical Imagery.” A timeline will appear in the upper left hand corner of the map that indicates how far back Google Earth has images. Starting from the far left, click on the right arrow to proceed through the images. Some considerations in choosing images for your activities include: • Are the images in color or black and white? Which do you prefer for your purposes? • At what time of the year were the images taken? In spring, summer, fall, or winter? If you are going to compare two images, you might want them to be from the same season? Or perhaps it would work better to have less tree cover? • Are the dates and images accurate? In other words, are they labeled accurately in Google Earth?
References Adler, R. P., & Goggin, J. (2005). What do we mean by ‘civic engagement?’ Journal of Transformative Education, 3, 236–253. doi:10.1177/1541344605276792 Atkins, R., & Hart, D. (2003). Neighborhoods, adults, and the development of civic identity in urban youth. Applied Developmental Science, 7, 156–164. doi:10.1207/ s1532480xads0703_6 Banchi, H., & Bell, R. (2008). The many levels of inquiry. Science and Children, 46 (2), 26–29. Retrieved June 2017 from http://static.nsta.org/files/sc0810_26.pdf Bell, R. L., Smetana, L., & Binns, I. (2005). Simplifying inquiry instruction: Accessing the inquiry level of classroom activities. The Science Teacher, 72 (7), 30–33. Bybee, R. W. (2002). Scientific inquiry, student learning, and the science curriculum. In R. W. Bybee (Ed.), Learning science and the science of learning: Science educators' essay collection (pp. 25–35). Arlington, VA: NSTA Press. doi:10.2505/9780873552080. Chessin, D. A., & Moore, V. J. (2004). The 6-E learning model. Science & Children, 42 (3), 47–49.
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Dewey, J. (1897). My pedagogic creed. The School Journal, 54 (3), 77–80. Ehrlich, P. R., & Holdren, J. P. (1972). A bulletin dialogue on ‘the closing circle’: Critique. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 28 (5), 16–27. Eisenkraft, A. (2003). Expanding the 5E model. The Science Teacher, 70 (6), 56–59. Elwood, S. (2008). Volunteered geographic information: Future research directions motivated by critical, participatory, and feminist GIS. GeoJournal, 72, 173–183. Elwood, S., Goodchild, M. F., & Sui, D. Z. (2012). Researching volunteer geographic information: Spatial data, geographic research, and new social practice. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102(3), 571–590. doi:10.1080/00045608.2011.595657 EPA. (n.d.). What is open Space/Green Space ? Retrieved September 2017 from www3.epa. gov/region1/eco/uep/openspace.html Experiential Learning Cycles. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.experientiallearning.ucdavis. edu/module1/el1_40-5step-definitions.pdf Flanagin, A. J., & Metzger, M. J. (2008). The credibility of volunteered geographic information. GeoJournal, 72, 137–148. doi:10.1007/s10708-008-9188-y Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th ed.). New York, NY: Continuum. Gibson, C. (2000). From inspiration to participation: A review of perspectives on youth civic engagement. New York, NY: Carnegie Corporation of New York. Giroux, H. (1988). Teachers as intellectuals: Toward a critical pedagogy of learning. South Hadley, MA: Bergin. Goodchild, M. F. (2007). Citizens as sensors: The world of volunteered geography. GeoJournal, 69, 211–221. doi:10.1002/9780470979587.ch48 Gruenewald, D. A. (2008). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place. Environmental Education Research, 14 (3), 308–324. doi:10.3102/0013189x032004002 Heffron, S. G., & Downs, R. M. (Eds.). (2012). Geography for life: National geography standards (2nd ed.). Geography Education National Implementation Project (GENIP). Washington, DC: National Council for Geographic Education. Kahne, J., Hodgins, E., & Eidman-Aadahl, E. (2016). Redesigning civic education for the digital age: Participatory politics and the pursuit of democratic engagement. Theory & Research in Social Education, 44 (1), 1–35. doi.10.1080/00933104.2015.1132646 Kirshner, B., Strobel, K., & Fernandez, M. (2003). Critical civic engagement among urban youth. PennGse Perspectives on Urban Education, 2 (1), 1–20. Marshall, J. C., Horton, B., & Smart, J. (2008). 4E × 2 instructional model: Uniting three learning constructs to improve praxis in science and mathematics classrooms. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 20, 501–516. doi:10.1007/s10972-008-9114-7 McLaren, P. (2003). Life in schools (4th ed.). New York, NY: Allyn and Bacon. Murphy, A. B., Colleton, N., Downs, R. M., Goodchild, M. F., Hanson, S., Lawson, V., . . . Yee, T. F. (2010). Understanding the changing planet: Strategic directions for the geographical sciences. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. National Council for the Social Studies. (2013). College, career, and civic life (C3) framework for social studies state standards: Guidance for enhancing the rigor of K-12 civics, economics, geography, and history. Silver Spring, MD: NCSS. National Research Council. (2006). Learning to think spatially: GIS as a support system in the K-12 curriculum. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. doi:10.17226/11019 Ogle, D. M. (1986). K-W-L: A teaching model that develops active reading of expository text. Reading Teacher, 39, 564–570. Ohio School Report Card. (2016). Retrieved from http://reportcard.education.ohio.gov/ Pages/School-Report.aspx?SchoolIRN=008262
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Parker, B. (2006). Constructing community through maps? Power and praxis in community mapping. The Professional Geographer, 58 (4), 470–484. doi:10.1111/j..1467-9272. 2006.00 Rezba, R. J., Auldridge, T., & Rhea, L. (1999). Teaching & learning the basic science skills. Retrieved June 2017 from www.pen.k12.va.us/VDOE/instruction/TLBSSGuide.doc as cited online at www.nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=50983 Rubin, B. (2007). ‘There’s still not justice’: Youth civic identity development amid distinct school and community contexts. Teachers College Record, 109 (2), 449–481. Schlemper, M. B., & Monk, J. (2011). Discourses on ‘diversity’: Perspectives from graduate programs in geography in the United States. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 35(1), 23–46. doi:10.1080/03098265.2010.499564 Schmidt, S. J. (2011). Making space for the citizen in geographic education. Journal of Geography, 110 (3), 107–119. doi:10.1080/00221341.2011.537671 Schultz, R. B., Kerski, J. J., & Patterson, T. C. (2008). The use of virtual globes as a spatial teaching tool with suggestions for metadata standards. Journal of Geography, 107(1), 27–34. doi:10.1080/00221340802049844 Smith, G. A. (2007). Place-based education: Breaking through the constraining regularities of public school. Environmental Education Research, 13(2), 189–207. doi:10.1080/ 13504620701285180 Sui, D. Z. (2008). The wikification of GIS and its consequences: Or Angelina Jolie’s new tattoo and the future of GIS. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 32, 1–5. doi:10.106/j.compenvurbsys.2001.12.001 Temple, T. (1978, April). Think globally, act locally: An interview with Dr. Rene Dubos. EPA Journal, (4), 4–11. United States Census Bureau. (2010). Population density by county. Retrieved December 2016 from www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/maps-data/maps/thematic/us_popdensity_2010 map.pdf World Population Data Sheet. (2015). Population Reference Bureau. Retrieved September 2017 from www.prb.org/pdf15/2015-world-population-data-sheet_eng.pdf Youniss, J. (2011). Civic education: What schools can do to encourage civic identity and action. Applied Developmental Science, 15(2), 98–103. doi:10.1080/10888691.2011.560814
Appendix A Resources for Teachers to Use in the Classroom
Instructions for Students in Exploring Historical and Current Images Estimate the proportion of the image allocated to the following land uses in remotely sensed image of the current photo (RSI One) and the historical photo (RSI Two). Proportion of land (RSI One)
Proportion of land (RSI Two)
Changes (RSI 1–2)
Land Use Green space Buildings Roads Water Parking Lots Other ________
Putting Observations into Perspective through Data Analysis Year of RSI One Population Density Housing Values Median Income Other Variable Other Variable
Year of RSI Two
Data Source
8 GEOTECHNOLOGIES AND THE SPATIAL CITIZEN Tom Baker, Mary Curtis, and Lisa Millsaps
Introduction A spatially literate citizenry must begin with young, spatially literate learners capable of using technical and non-technical approaches to identify, explore, and solve real problems in thoughtful, critical ways. A spatially and geographically literate populace can make a wide range of good decisions that benefit self, community, and society. This chapter argues that geotechnologies, like Geographic Information Systems (GIS), GPS, digital globes, and related locationbased technologies, help to expedite and improve critical elements of spatial decision making.
The Spatial Citizen The 21st-century citizen is more spatially aware, commonly engaging geotechnologies to think spatially about daily practices (e.g., finding a location using a smartphone) to more complex global issues (e.g., pollution and immigration). Ideally, this sophistication gives rise to a more engaged public and a realized notion of spatial citizenship. Gryl and Jekel (2012) describe a competent spatial citizen as one who uses knowledge and skills to “access and make sense of (geo-) information in order to participate in democratic processes and to make decisions, taking into account the situations and circumstances encountered daily” (p. 24). Sbicca and Perdue (2014) assert that spatial citizens are not passive, rather they are engaged and active members of society pursuing democracy. Citizenship can now be more participatory and justice oriented, fluid rather than static. Globalization pushes its boundaries beyond the border of the nation-state to address international issues and interdependency.
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Many great discoveries and careers in modern society are rooted in spatial thinking ( National Research Council [NRC], 2006). Spatial thinking is the “set of abilities to visualize and interpret location, position, distance, direction, relationships, movement, and change through space” ( Sinton, 2011, p. 733); it is crucial to supporting the role and expectations of citizens while simultaneously helping to expand the concept of “citizen” beyond national borders by way of virtual communities and international communities (e.g., “citizen of the world”). Citizenship education is empowered through spatial awareness and accessibility to geotechnology as data collection and representation encourage community and participatory democracy. In addition, elements of spatial literacy, spatial knowledge, spatial thinking, and spatial capabilities form the foundation for authentic problem solving ( NRC, 2006). Recognizing the role of geotechnologies to support spatial thinking and the development of the spatial citizen is largely dependent upon the well-trained educator and tailored curriculum. One of the key functions of the social sciences is citizenship education, the acquisition of information and skills to positively interact with others, value different perspectives, and contribute to a democratic society (Daas, ten Dam, & Dijkstra, 2016). Living in a time when information is fast, free, abundant, and multi-sourced ( Curtis, 2015; De Freitas & Conole, 2010), young people create and consume information at a rapid rate albeit often shallow. Honing their tendencies, expanding their geotechnology skills, and teaching students to think critically through a spatial lens is vital for developing responsible, contributing spatial citizens. Today, educators must learn what this entails in order to prepare youth for the future. Yurt and Tünkler (2016) contend that spatial thinking, a core human skill, can be learned, and, thus, be included in the curricula along with appropriate technologies. As such, educator preparation needs to include strategies for how to connect spatial thinking and the use of geotechnologies to address real-world circumstances. Schulze, Gryl, and Kanwischer (2015) contend that the learning constructs of a spatial citizen are formulated as individual knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are needed to participate in fluent communities of society and to challenge dominant discourses by producing, communicating, and negotiating alternative spatial constructions using digital geomedia and web 2.0 applications in a reflected and reflective manner. (p. 374) In other words, cultivating insightful spatial citizens through spatial thinking and geotechnologies is germane for successful maneuvering in the physical, social, and political world and to the democratic process.
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Geotechnologies Geotechnologies are a suite of location-based tools that may include geographic information systems (GIS), the global positioning system (GPS), remote sensing, digital globes, and other location-enabled technologies. Today, geotechnologies are embedded and miniaturized such that they are often included in many consumer devices, from smartphones and automobiles to drones and cameras. In recent years, geospatial technologies have become more accessible through a host of web and mobile tools—usable by nearly anyone, anywhere, anytime. The technology landscape able to support learning has grown dramatically. These tools are more powerful than ever before, largely because they are linked through common online platforms, where data, analytics, and maps are created in real time and can change to reflect new information contributed from across a community. This is one way in which geotechnologies support citizenship education through the lens of geography, often engendering community or national interests and values. Today, geotechnologies can run in a web browser, require no software installation, and can be used without logging in to a system. The geotechnology platform can run on desktops, tablets, and mobile devices, and empower the geo-enabled learner and citizen to discover phenomena by exploring others’ data or collecting their own. The ability for various community members to collect and report data to a common web application and map is the technological essence of community mapping (also known as participatory mapping, volunteered geographic information, citizen science, or crowd-sourced data). When linked through a common geographic location, community-reported data can be viewed and analyzed with other professionally collected data. Finally, rich narrative, with photos, and videos, can be shared with interactive maps to tell the story in visually expressive ways that weren’t possible just a few years ago. The following sections explore some of the broad categories of geotechnologies that are commonly used in learning environments to support spatially enabled citizen education through local projects (Figure 8.1). Mobile apps are often used to collect and share data, replacing traditional GPS receivers or other data collection devices in most classrooms. Mobile apps are also used to review completed maps, data, or analysis by community members. Mobile apps and tablets are nearly ubiquitous today and most support some form of location services. Desktop geotechnologies are used by educators and students to create or reformulate data. These powerful tools are often used for analyses as well, prior to publishing data for community use in an online format. Webmapping may include data collection or analysis or visualization; it may be used in local investigative projects designed by students (e.g., water quality mapping from nearby streams) or support pre-built learning activities around some aspect of a community (e.g., legislative apportionment). Story mapping builds on Webmapping by adding
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FIGURE 8.1
Geotechnology Tools for Geo-Enabled Community Investigation
additional information from photos, video, or extended narrative. Story maps often present information in a linear format to better organize the content.
Mobile Devices and Apps Like webmapping, mobile devices (phones or tablets) and apps can allow the spatial citizen to collect or explore existing data, such as demographic, economic, scientific, agricultural, environmental, or other data. Moreover, mobile apps can also allow the spatial citizen to contribute, query, or analyze communitysubmitted data in real time based on the mobile device’s current position. This easy access to the time and place aspects of data make the mobile device ideal for rapidly screening nearby relevant data from trying to find a restaurant to proximity-based advertising, now being used in some retail outlets. Privacy issues aside, the ability to know (and share) a location via mobile phone opens a world of possibilities to changing the way a spatial citizen lives. The Uber ride transportation service uses your phone’s GPS to send a driver to you on request. Numerous social apps can also turn your phone into a virtual beacon, allowing any friends in your network to discover that you are nearby and call or text for a quick coffee. The combination of location-based technologies in mobile devices are now a part of daily lives. How many young people today could use a paper map to find a destination? Most would call up the mapping application on their phone without a pause. In spite of the proliferation of commercial and social apps available on mobile devices, there is still great potential for the role of technologies in more serious benefits to the spatial citizen. For instance, 411 apps allow an informed community member to report data beneficial to the community. Many metropolitan areas have “My street light is out” or “My sidewalk needs repair” apps that instantly report data to the city. Similarly, educators can use free apps like ESRI’s Survey123 to create geo-enabled inventories that students can contribute to from their mobile phones.
Desktop Tools Desktop geotechnology tools assist the spatial citizen in making good decisions through rich data analysis. These tools can be divided into GIS-based
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tools or digital globes. Desktop GIS can be ideal for the geo-enabled learner as the tools are powerful and f lexible, allowing for seemingly limitless combinations of discovery and sharing. Students and teachers engaged in local projects with authentic questions typically find the power of desktop tools to be an ideal pairing with their classroom work. While most desktop tools have a relatively steep learning curve, the capacity to engage in geographic inquiry, explore geospatial data, perform spatial analyses, and share maps is unparalleled. Consider the student teams collecting water quality, in a desktop tools, a theme-based analysis can tell spatial citizens what zoning commonalities exist in reported areas of high dissolved oxygen. Similarly, the stream sampling location could be traced upstream, identifying upstream surface water that contributes to the reading. Digital or virtual globes display data on an apparent globe covered in highresolution imagery; the globes extrude data from the map surface to create a three-dimensional effect. These globes have the ability to easily change base maps and support place markers for indicating instructionally relevant places around the globe. Digital globes typically have a simple interface and are intended for general use by the consumer or citizen to find and explore geographic information. Aside from using these tools to explore the landscape and historical, natural, or cultural landmarks, these tools can be used to tell compelling stories about travel or journals. Many consider digital globes to be the best way for exploring multi-scale high-resolution imagery. This can be imperative in understanding numerous community inquiries about landscape, changing urbanization patterns, surface water depletion, or more.
Webmapping Powerful and versatile webmapping tools are web-based, interactive maps capable of displaying data or analyses of a geographic area. Typically, Webmapping supports layers of data, identification of features, measurement, and more. Webmaps are used by consumers, professionals, and learners alike—working in nearly any discipline. Webmapping has been well received in the education community for supporting teaching and learning in approachable and powerful ways (Baker, 2015b; Bodzin & Anastasio, 2006). Webmapping platforms like ArcGIS Online are often freely available to schools (public, private, and home) across the United States for instructional use. The trend toward adoption and use has been growing globally with more countries adding webmapping to their curricula with each passing year (e.g., Milson, Demirci, & Kerski, 2012). Webmapping platforms (like ArcGIS Online) allow schools to add hundreds of teacher and student accounts for data, map, and application creation or publishing. Students can create a map containing a pre-loaded high-resolution base map of their community on which they can draw map notes to indicate areas where green spaces have been built. Students can then add operational data like population
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density, school location, or traffic patterns and comment on the relevance of the green space. These maps can then easily be shared internally to the school or publicly for sharing with the community or town council. Students can also add their own data that they collect with a mobile phone GPS—or using a mobile app like Survey123 to indicate locations in town where additional parks, exercise facilities, or green space can be found. This step is particularly important for empowering the students to contribute directly to the research process and potential solutions, which in turn prepares them better to be active, spatial citizens. When teachers have “administrator” capacities in the tool, they have complete read and write permissions over student work, allowing them to see work as it progresses, redirecting the new geo-enabled learner as it becomes necessary. The benefits of webmapping to support positive teaching and learning can be extensive. Research suggests that webmapping can improve data analysis (Baker & White, 2003, Bodzin & Anastasio, 2006) while increasing cultural awareness (Milson, 2011). Researchers have also explored the positive effects of webmapping on improved spatial thinking (Manson et al., 2013). It has been argued that webmapping tools can decrease teacher-training time by using customized data and map interfaces (Henry & Semple, 2012; Huang, 2011). Finally, when webmapping is used within inquiry or project-based learning, the results have also demonstrated effectiveness (King, 2008; Huang, 2011).
Story Maps Story maps blend text, photography, video, graphs, and interactive mapping in organized ways that more extensively communicate a story—analytical or anecdotal. While a variety of story map forms exist through different layouts and templates, the basic mechanism is the same. Narrative and imagery linearly presents information to a learner in the context of place. More than just bouncing from one marker to the next on a globe, story maps weave the story of relationships between places, synthesizing, comparing, calculating, visualizing, and communicating. Perhaps the greatest value of story maps lay in the ability of the author to craft a storyline while simultaneously presenting data and encouraging the geo-enabled learner to explore, to verify the narrative, or perhaps even create their own. The ability to understand others’ geo-enabled stories must also be a hallmark of the spatial citizen. Independent of the software, the geo-enabled learner must see the value of spatial data and the representation of that data in storytelling. Early indications suggest that this approach is an effective tool for classroom instruction ( Strachan, 2014). This approach should be nearly as basic to the spatial citizen as considering the spatiality of data in the first place. As the cornerstone of a story map is data gathering and representation; sharing story maps is
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fundamentally about understanding the value and relevance of location and place in the relationships told by the story. One example from the tens of thousands of story maps is “Climate Migrants,” the story of how climate change and sea level rise are displacing thousands of people today (Figure 8.2). From Alaskan villages to Bangladesh, Darfur, and Syria, this story map shows how interactive maps, photography, and powerful narrative convey the plight of these migrants. (see http://esriurl.com/sCit1).
Curriculum as a Learning Solution Properly designed classroom instructional materials supporting teaching with or about geotechnologies are critical. Teaching with geotechnologies, while far more commonplace, tends to focus on standards-based content delivered efficiently but effectively. Teaching with geotechnology uses the geotechnologies to support and sometime drive the learning—but the technology is often lightly used. Conversely, teaching about geotechnologies can be valid pedagogically in at least two situations: (1) Career and Technical Education programs (or similar) or (2) as an embedded component of project work (e.g., a student needs to learn how to create a hot spot analysis to understand data they have collected). Both approaches (with vs. about) to designing learning materials are appropriate and both have strengths and challenges, but functionally they represent two different points along a geo-enabled curricular spectrum.
FIGURE 8.2
An Example Story Map
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Geo-Enabled Instructional Materials Historically, project-based (local investigations) approaches to using geotechnologies in classrooms have only been marginally adopted. These time and resource intensive pedagogies have minimized geo-enabled learning for the majority of U.S. school students. The historical adoption of the technology over the past 20 years reflects this trend. Arguably, materials like Mapping Our World broke this usage trend, departing from a project-based approach to using a more pedestrian (worksheet driven) approach to geo-enabling curriculum and experiencing one of the highest use rates of GIS instructional materials developed for schools (Malone, Palmer, & Voigt, 2002). Thus, a democratization of geotechnologies in schools can be achieved by identifying known and anticipated barriers and designing instruction that uses technology to overcomes those barriers. In this way, democratization begins with accessible software, devices, and instructional materials and includes critical elements such as ties to standards, textbooks, and pedagogical methods while leveraging basic existing, in-classroom technologies (Baker, 2015a). The democratization occurs in the widespread or mainstream use of geotechnologies in regular classroom instruction, even if that use is initially punctuated. A prime example of new geo-enabled instructional materials today is GeoInquiries (www.esri.com/geoinquiries) for ArcGIS Online. These instructional materials are free, scripted for the teacher, require no software installation or login and are subject-focused. As a teacher delivers instruction with GeoInquiries, over time the classroom builds its understanding of GIS specifically.
Guided or Scripted Projects: Crowds to Classrooms Using pre-built, web-based projects can guide student learning quite effectively. These scripted projects, unlike simple geo-enabled instructional materials, often rely on a project structure, asking students to collect and assess geographically relevant data following a line of inquiry. Elements of a guided or scripted project are typically online and collaborative—allowing students to work with other schools across town or the globe. The advantage for the new or time-pressed educator is that the project, technology, and instructional materials are preconstructed and need only be delivered in the classroom. The drawbacks to this approach include a lack of student voice in determining the project and/or possible local relevancy. Today, these guided projects can go by many names including crowd-sourced projects, citizen science, volunteered geographic information, or participatory geography. Popular projects in the United States over the last two decades include the GLOBE program, eBird, Historypin, and Journey North. Guided projects like these typically require a classroom to register and then begin collecting data, following the prescribed protocol and reporting procedures.
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Teachers can also create guided projects for learners. While there may be fewer students participating in these scripted activities, the efforts are often more locally relevant to learners. The challenge is that a teacher must have the technical expertise and project design savvy to effectively create the guiding questions, data collection protocol, and a data reporting or analysis method. Toolkits like Ushahidi, Survey123, or the Open Data Kit can be appropriate for this task.
Unscripted, Local Research Projects Geotechnologies can be a powerful ally in student-directed projects or research. When webmapping is used within inquiry-learning models, the results can be effective (King, 2008; Huang, 2011). To understand how geotechnologies can enhance student-directed projects, teachers and learners need to know the typical stages and activities associated with the scientific inquiry model or the geographic inquiry model. A common first step in student-directed projects, field studies, or service learning is to frame learning around a question that relates to a community challenge. Asking a good question that is realistic and answerable can be difficult, especially the first few times. It often helps to have a mentor. A variety of pedagogical models can be used to implement a scripted or unscripted project-based approach to learning, from inquiry instructional models like the 5E model (Biological Sciences Curriculum Study) or the geographic inquiry model, or the Howard Burrows’ project-based learning model. A projectbased approach typically includes active student learning that integrates new knowledge with real-world experiences in a progressive process—leveraging the student voice in building competence and skill. One such approach, is geographic inquiry with the following five stages of development (ESRI, 2003).
Ask In student-directed projects, learners become investigators. Investigators, like good detectives, need to acquire as much information about a topic as possible before acting. Good investigators learn about factors that affect the question or problem. They remain unbiased and good investigators must be willing to change their mind, as more is learned. This often means investigators change their question or problem statement—making it better or more aligned to the needs of a community. In this model, asking a question is central to the inquiry process.
Acquire Acquire knowledge or information about the context or background of the issue. This background must help discern the strategy for answering the question posed. What is known or unknown? What can be known? What are other
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closely related issues? Is there a geographic or temporal range of interest? At this stage remotely sensed imagery or demographic data are often used to understand the context of the problem. Creating maps of what is known almost always helps to frame the problem and potentially revise the question.
Explore Explore existing data or collect new data about the question or problem, building on newly acquired knowledge. It is important to use or design a method for collecting information in a consistent manner and format, so that data can be comparable. Without summarizing data, it will be very difficult to make accurate statements about what the data mean.
Analyze After acquiring and collecting data, students analyze the information. Analysis of data can be simple or complex. As a starting point, make a map of findings. Use map markers to show where data were collected. Using an ArcGIS Organizational account, use analysis tools to discover the best approach for understanding the data.
Act To act on the results of a study, present the findings to stakeholders such as a town council or parent-teacher association. It may also mean doing something that mitigates or helps to correct the problem. A teacher, adviser, or GeoMentor can help determine what the best course of action may be. Geotechnologies can be used at various stages of a project. Consider making maps describing the problem statement (study), analyzing or visualizing secondary data and maps related to the problem, and making maps to report findings or actions. Maps can often be used to discover a discrepant event, which leads to the project’s question.
Teacher Professional Development For wide-scale changes to learning for a spatial citizenry, supporting educators with geospatial technologies during their pre-service preparation programs and in-service professional development experiences must be considered and carefully planned with respect to research, best practice, and certification standards. There has been much investigation, practice, and creation of materials, guidelines, and frameworks for extending and sustaining geospatial technologies into in-service, pre-service, and informal teacher education. In recent years special volumes specifically about geospatial technology in teacher education have been
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produced (Langran & Baker, 2016; MaKinster, Trautmann, & Barnett, 2014); however, the bulk of the work in this space is still sparse with recommended methods and relatively isolated studies (Hammond, Langran, & Baker, 2014; Hohnle, Fogele, Mehren, & Schubert, 2016; Hong & Stonier, 2015; Jo, 2016; Millsaps & Harrington, 2017; Rubino-Hare et al., 2016). Not surprisingly, the data seem to show use of geospatial technology and data in teacher education are not the norm. Recent research in GIS in teacher professional development has led to a series of lessons learned in leading successful professional development experiences. These lessons included providing opportunities to network and establish supportive relationships among educators, making training discipline and standards relevant, and including post-training support ( Tabor & Harrington, 2014). The idea of being f lexibly adaptive was suggested as a need for professional development, emphasizing time for teachers to create activities for their own curriculum and instructors to provide scaffold ( Trautmann & MaKinster, 2014). Empirical studies have further documented the use of geospatial tools in teacher preparation and professional development. In an online survey of how geotechnologies are used in teacher preparation programs, it was found that use continues to be low (Hammond et al., 2014). A study recognized the need to determine characteristics of learning experiences for pre-service teachers that promote a positive disposition toward teaching with geotechnology (Jo, 2016). The results showed a positive increase in disposition for pre-service teachers who participated in online web-GIS activities and self-reflection activities, with the pre-service teachers identifying GIS as helpful for achieving physical and human geography learning objectives because of the rich information available from the GIS. Teacher persistence of newly learned geospatial and project-based learning practices and skills were studied in Rubino-Hare et al. (2016). It was found that context and technological skill level were factors in the participating teachers’ continuation of using geotechnology and project-based learning in their classrooms. Select methods and procedures lead to successful teacher training, whether it be by tailoring the content to the specific audience (Tabor & Harrington, 2014), being flexibly adaptive with teachers (Trautmann & MaKinster, 2014), or using time as a guide (Hohnle et al., 2016; Millsaps & Harrington, 2017). The identification of teacher specific factors have also enhanced this knowledge and suggests teacher training take into account dispositions towards geotechnology (Jo, 2016) and technology comfort and skill level (Rubino-Hare et al., 2016). While these studies provide some guidance about teacher education and training, significantly more work is needed to clarify most of the elements of geotechnology in the professional development process. For a substantive review of the ongoing needs, see the agenda, A Research Agenda for Geospatial Technologies and Learning (Baker et al., 2015).
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Exemplar: Using Geotechnologies to Teach Climate Change Climate change as an exemplar is a contemporary and relevant topic for informed spatial citizens. However, climate change education is not routine in the classroom, yet scientists, educators, and societal members want to better integrate the topic into the curriculum (Leiserowitz, Smith, & Marlon, 2011; Schreiner, Henriksen, & Kirkeby Hansen, 2005). The instructional purpose of this project was to provide the students with a basic understanding of weather, climate, and climate change, and then use regional, state, and local climate change data with the goal of making local climate change personally relevant to the student, hoping that this would enable them to make better decisions about climate change throughout their lifetime. The overarching instructional question was: what does climate change in the Great Plains mean to you as a citizen of the region? The learning activities promoted spatial citizenship for both the teachers and students by increasing their know-how on accessing, acquiring, and using spatial data, using geospatial technology in an applied manner, and putting these skills together to ask and answer real life questions about climate change. An exploratory mixed methods research design was used to document the use of a GIS and the local perspective for teaching climate change (Tabor, 2016). A two-part intervention was used: (1) teacher training, and (2) classroom implementation. Student, teacher, and classroom-centered data were collected to address student knowledge and dispositions, teacher perceptions of GIS use in teaching climate change, and both students’ and teachers’ perceptions of challenges and successes of using GIS in the classroom. Students showed an overall positive growth in knowledge and a positive dispositional interest in climate change, particularly local climate change as important to them. Teachers shared a positive perception regarding the use of GIS to teach climate change. Successes and challenges were observed in classrooms, recognizing the benefits of enhanced student engagement and learning while using the GIS, as well as the challenges of using technology and supporting student needs in learning new content and a new skill simultaneously. The learning activities promoted spatial citizenship for both the teachers and students by increasing their know-how on accessing, acquiring, and using spatial data, using geospatial technology in an applied manner, and putting these skills together to ask and answer real life questions about climate change. This exploratory research is one exemplar supporting the premise that using geotechnologies to teach topics related to spatial citizenship is practical and reproducible for teacher education and effective for student learning.
Conclusion The development of the spatial learner and citizen can be fostered through the application of geospatial technologies in a variety of disciplines. The integration
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of web, mobile, desktop, or other geotechnology tools and data for learning are increasingly well documented, but more research is needed. Whether scripted or project-focused—a continuum of spatially enabled instructional materials can serve the development of spatial learners. When place becomes a critical element to a topic of study, it offers a new linkage to the learner, a connection that allows for a spatial understanding to form— supporting learners’ growth across subject boundaries and grade levels with a common frame of reference. The use of geotechnologies to enhance learning must considered and planned for in the context of teacher education, especially pre-service teacher education. Given the prominence and seemingly exponential growth of geotechnologies and data among professionals and citizens, it would seem that spatial has already become foundational to the role of citizen.
References Baker, T. R. (2015a). GeoInquiries: Maps and data for everyone. The Geography Teacher, 12 (3), 128–131. Baker, T. R. (2015b). Web GIS in education. In O. Muñiz Solari, A. Demirci, & J. van der Schee (Eds.), Geospatial technologies and geography education in a changing world. Tokyo, Japan: Springer. Baker, T. R., Battersby, S., Bednarz, S. W., Bodzin, A. M., Kolvoord, B., Moore, S., . . . Uttal, D. (2015). A research agenda for geospatial technologies and learning. Journal of Geography, 114 (3), 118–130. Baker, T. R., & White, S. H. (2003). The effects of Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies on students’ attitudes, self-efficacy, and achievement in middle school science classrooms. The Journal of Geography, 102 (6), 243–254. Bodzin, A. M., & Anastasio, D. (2006). Using web-based GIS for earth and environmental systems education. Journal of Geoscience Education, 54 (3), 295–295. Curtis, M. D. (2015). Analyzing the diffusion of geospatial technologies as instructional tools in high school geography education. Doctoral Dissertation, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX. Daas, R., ten Dam, G., & Dijkstra, A. B. (2016). Contemplating modes of assessing citizenship competences. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 51, 88–95. De Freitas, S., & Conole, G. (2010). The inf luence of pervasive and integrative tools on learners’ experiences and expectations of study. In Rethinking learning for a digital age: How learners are shaping their own experiences (pp. 15–30). New York, NY: Routledge. Esri, Inc. (2003). Geographic inquiry: Thinking geographically. Retrieved June 2017 from www.esri.com/industries/k-12/education/~/media/files/pdfs/industries/k-12/pdfs/ geoginquiry.pdf Gryl, I., & Jekel, T. (2012). Re-centring geoinformation in secondary education: Toward a spatial citizenship approach. Cartographica, 47, 18–28. Hammond, T. C., Langran, E., & Baker, T. R. (2014). Survey of geospatial information technologies in teacher education. In Proceedings of society for information technology & teacher education international conference 2014 (pp. 873–881). Chesapeake, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
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Henry, P., & Semple, H. (2012). Integrating online GIS into the K—12 curricula: Lessons from the development of a collaborative GIS in Michigan. The Journal of Geography, 111(1), 3–14. Hohnle, S., Fogele, J., Mehren, R., & Schubert, J. C. (2016). GIS teacher training: Empirically-based indicators of effectiveness. Journal of Geography, 115(1), 12–23. Hong, J. E., & Stonier, F. (2015). GIS in-service teacher training based on TPACK. Journal of Geography, 114 (3), 108–117. Huang, K. H. (2011). A GIS-interface web site: Exploratory learning for geography curriculum. The Journal of Geography, 110 (4), 158–165. Jo, I. (2016). Future teachers’ dispositions toward teaching with geospatial technologies. The CITE Journal, 16 (3). Retrieved 1 January 2016 from www.citejournal.org/ publication/volume-16/issue-3-16/ King, E. (2008). Can PBL-GIS work online? The Journal of Geography, 107(2), 43–51. Langran, E., & Baker, T. R. (2016). Special issue: Geospatial technologies in teacher education: A brief overview. Contemporary Issues in Technology & Teacher Education, 16 (3). Retrieved 1 January 2017 from www.citejournal.org/volume-16/issue-3-16/editorial/ geospatial-technologies-in-teacher-education-a-brief-overview Leiserowitz, A., Smith, N., & Marlon, J. R. (2011). American teens’ knowledge of climate change. In Yale project on climate change communication. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Retrieved 1 April 2015 from http://environment.yale.edu/uploads/ american-teens-knowledge-of-climate-change.pdf Rubino-Hare, L. A., Whitworth, B. A., Bloom, N. E., Claesgens, J. M., Fredrickson, K. M., Henderson-Dahms, C., & Sample, J. C. (2016). Persistent teaching practices after geospatial technology professional development. Contemporary Issues in Technology & Teacher Education, 16 (3). Retrieved 1 January 2016 from www.cite journal.org/volume-16/issue-3-16/science/persistent-teaching-practices-aftergeospatial-technology-professional-development/ Malone, L., Palmer, A., & Voigt, C. (2002). Mapping our world: GIS lessons for educators. Redlands, CA: ESRI Press. MaKinster, J. G., Trautmann, N., & Barnett, M. (2014). Teaching science and investigating environmental issues with geospatial technology: Designing effective professional development for teachers. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Manson, S., Shannon, J., Eria, S., Kne, L., Dyke, K., Nelson, S., Batra, L., Bonsal, D., Kernik, M., Immich, J., & Matson, L. (2014). Resource needs and pedagogical value of web mapping for spatial thinking. Journal of Geography, 113(3), 107–117. doi: 10.1080/00221341.2013.790915 Millsaps, L. T., & Harrington, J. A. (2017). A time-sensitive framework for including Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in professional development activities for classroom teachers. Journal of Geography, 116 (4), 152–164. Milson, A. J. (2011). The cultivation of spatial-civic decision-making through web GIS. In T. Jekel, A. Koller, K. Donert, & R. Vogler (Eds.), Learning with geoinformation: Implementing digital earth in education (pp. 12–18). Berlin: Wichmann. Milson, A., Demirci, A., & Kerski, J. J. (Eds.). (2012). International perspectives on teaching and learning with GIS in secondary schools. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. National Research Council (NRC). (2006). Learning to think spatially. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Schreiner, C., Henriksen, E. K., & Kirkeby Hansen, P. J. (2005). Climate education: Empowering today’s youth to meet tomorrow’s challenges. Studies in Science Education, 41, 3–50.
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Sinton, D. S. (2011). Spatial thinking. In J. Stoltman (Ed.), 21st century geography: A reference handbook (pp. 733–744). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Strachan, C. (2014). Teacher’s perceptions of Esri story maps as effective teaching tools. Master’s Thesis, University of South Carolina. Sbicca, J., & Perdue, R. T. (2014). Protest through presence: Spatial citizenship and identity formation in contestations of neoliberal crises. Social Movement Studies, 13(3), 309–327. Schulze, U., Gryl, I., & Kanwischer, D. (2015). Spatial Citizenship education and digital geomedia: Composing competences for teacher education and training. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 39 (3), 369–385. Tabor, L. (2016). Using a GIS-based framework to teach climate change in Kansas. Doctoral Dissertation. Available from K-Rex (2016-04-22T14:03:45Z), Retrieved 24 January 2017 from http://hdl.handle.net/2097/32602 Tabor, L. K., & Harrington, J. A. (2014). Lessons learned from professional development workshops on using GIS to teach geography and history in the K-12 classroom. The Geography Teacher, 11(2), 47–54. Trautmann, N., & MaKinster, J. (2014). Meeting teachers where they are and helping them achieve their goals. In J. MaKinster, N. Trautmann, & M. Barnett (Eds.), Teaching science and investigating environmental issues with geospatial technology: Designing effective professional development for teachers. New York, NY: Springer. Yurt, E., & Tünkler, V. (2016). A study on the spatial abilities of prospective social studies teachers: A Mixed Method Research. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 16 (3), 965–986.
9 INFORMED CITIZENRY STARTS IN THE PRESCHOOL AND ELEMENTARY GRADES—AND WITH GEOGRAPHY Elizabeth R. Hinde
Parker (2012) notes, “Without historical understanding, there can be no wisdom. Without geographical understanding there can be no social or environmental intelligence. Without civic understanding, there can be no democratic citizens, and, therefore, no democracy” (p. 3). That is, history, geography, and civics are integrally tied together in the education of an informed citizenry. Although, as de Blij (2012) acknowledged, there is no “single, snappy answer” (p. 6) to the question of what is geography like to other content areas, it is clear that geographic knowledge and perspective are vital features of an informed citizenry in any country. Geographic knowledge and perspective help interpret the past, understand current events, and provide a framework for forecasting some future events. (For instance, the flooding of New Orleans that occurred as a result of Hurricane Katrina was predicted well before the event. See www.pbs.org/wgbh/ nova/earth/predicting-katrina.html.) Importantly, geographic thinking is essential for a range of decisions including personal decisions, such as where to live; to matters of global importance, like where and how to dispose of toxic waste, for instance. As noted in the Roadmap for 21st Century Geography Education, the dismal state of K-12 geography education in America is “a threat to our country’s well-being, and by extension, the well-being of the global community” (Edelson, Shavelson, & Wertheim, 2013, p. 17). This chapter argues that geography education is vital for not only providing accurate answers on a test or finding places on a map; geography is vital in the development of informed citizens— and that geography education must start in the early years. There is a mistaken assumption that young children are unable to learn geographical and historical concepts because they do not yet have the intellectual capacity to learn such things (Hinde & Perry, 2007). Some even argue that children cannot learn geography (and other subjects) until they learn how to read
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and write. Both assertions are mistaken. Young children certainly can learn geographic concepts, and, indeed, already come to school with some geographic knowledge (Barton, 2009; Blaut, 1997; Ekiss, Trapido-Lurie, Phillips, & Hinde, 2007). Young children may not yet have the linguistic skills to articulate their knowledge to others, but they have a fund of knowledge of the world that can provide the basis for the development of fundamental geographic concepts. From the landscapes and other physical features outside their windows, to the cultures at home and in the media to which they have been exposed, children come to school with a large fund of knowledge of geography on which teachers can build. Indeed, early childhood and elementary classrooms are places where rich and engaging geography lessons can and should be taught.
Importance of Geography in the Curriculum One of the most difficult challenges of teaching (of any ages) is to motivate students to learn the content that the teacher deems important. When the curriculum reflects or revolves around children’s lived experience, and the teacher is a proficient instructor, the motivation for children to continue to learn is inherent. When the curriculum, enacted through a skilled teacher, provides clarity to students’ curiosities, or inspires more questions about the world around them, motivation for future learning is no longer a challenge. When taught well, geography provides such motivation, and it could—and should—begin at a very young age. Since the earliest days of American schooling, geography was considered a vital part of the curriculum and was intended to hold a prominent place in it, since it is through geography that children first experience the world around them (Parker, 1894). The early American curriculum was influenced by European thinkers, notably Rousseau and Pestalozzi, who recommended that the teaching of geography begin in the town and home in which children live (Barton, 2009). Rousseau and Pestalozzi both emphasized the importance of placing the child at the center of the curriculum and that all curricula should revolve around the child’s experiences. Importantly, both regarded geography as a natural starting point for learning in young children. Their ideas of centering the curriculum around the child were adopted by such influencers of American educational thought as F. W. Parker (1837–1902), John Dewey (1859–1952), Lucy Sprague Mitchell (1878–1967), and others whose influence still reverberates in American curricula. They understood that children come to school with a rudimentary understanding of the world that should be developed through geography education. Setting geography aside briefly, throughout history a commonly stated purpose of schooling has been to prepare youth for informed citizenry. Although education for effective citizenship is not uniquely American, early American educators and leaders embraced this purpose for schooling as ardently as educators and philosophers from around the world had for centuries. Indeed, Thomas
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Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison noted early in America’s history that a free society relies on the “knowledge, skills, and virtues of its citizens and those they elect to public office” (Campaign to Promote Civic Education, n.d., para. 1). Although it is vital that Americans possess the knowledge, skills, and virtues needed to sustain democratic principles, it is equally vital that they possess these characteristics as citizens of a global society. Understanding the roles of citizens in a national and global society is the point at which geography and citizenship education intersect. Along the way, though, geography lost its prominence in the American curriculum, and with it, a vital facet of citizenship education. Although Americans’ lack of geographic knowledge has been a subject of many jokes and criticisms (Hinde, 2014a), it is becoming an increasingly serious concern to the future of the country. With the proliferation of information systems and growing global interdependence, the ability to think geographically and perform geographic skills are becoming an increasingly important aspect of effective citizenship in a democratic society and interdependent world (Bednarz, Heffron, & Huynh, 2013; de Blij, 2012; Hinde, 2014b). Schools must play a significant role in educating students in geography in order to fulfill their undisputed mission, which is to prepare students for civic life. As Macedo (2000) points out, it is the civic purpose of public schools to ensure that, “Children must at the very least be provided with the intellectual tools necessary to understand the world around them, formulate their own convictions, and make their way in life” (p. 238). Geographic education provides many of the vital intellectual tools that children need in order to make their ways in life and become the types of citizens that parents, teachers, and other members of society aspire them to become. Geography in Preschool through Grade 12 involves coming to understand the world from a spatial perspective. A spatial perspective provides learners with a distinct advantage that is found in no other curricular source and is vital to the development of effective citizens (Heffron & Downs, 2012). As Hanson (2004) describes, this “geographic advantage” (p. 720) provides an understanding of: 1.
2.
3.
4.
the relationships between people and the environment. Geography is the only field that focuses on the interactions between the social and physical sciences; the importance of spatial variability. That is, only in geography can one learn the unique methodologies and practices for gaining an understanding of the ways phenomena vary according to place; processes operating at multiple and interlocking geographic scales. Geography is the only curricular means by which one learns techniques that help gain an understanding of phenomena at multiple scales, and the integration of spatial and temporal analysis. Geography’s spatial perspective adds another vital dimension to temporal variability (how things change over time). Geography offers techniques for analyzing variations over time
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and space. How places change over time is a significant aspect of understanding the world, and falls squarely in the domain of geography. These unique advantages that geography offer allow people to intelligently address issues that have global implications (such as immigration and environmental policies), or simply involve their local communities (such as where or if to place a traffic light in the neighborhood), and even personal decisions (such as where to go on vacation). In addition, the advantages of geography also provide a perspective of past events, such as why major battles took place where they did, from where and why people migrated from one place to another, and the lasting impact of major geologic events on the land and the cultures that were affected. As Kaplan (2012) points out, “[t]he more we remain preoccupied with current events, the more that individuals and their choices matter: but the more we look out over the span of the centuries, the more that geography plays a role” (p. xx). The importance of geography in helping prepare citizens for life is clear, and it must begin in the early grades, preschool even, as the next section describes.
Geography for Young Learners Since the 17th and 18th centuries, during the lifetimes of Pestalozzi and Rousseau, through the earliest years of American schooling, geography held a consistent place in the schooling of young children. When reviewing the history of the development of elementary curricula, two things appear to have been tacitly understood in the early days: the purpose of schooling was for the preparation of citizens, and children’s observations of the world can best be explained by geography. That is, children experience the content of geography first, and the curriculum can start there. As an example of the long-standing history of geography in the curriculum for young children, Home Geography was an integral part of the curriculum through the early 20th century (Barton, 2009). The fundamental principles of Home Geography were the observation of the local environment and build geographic concepts around those observations. That is, students were to “use observable elements of the local vicinity to develop geographic concepts” (Barton, 2009, p. 496). The idea behind Home Geography was to build knowledge around children’s lived experiences.1 Geography was and still is the means by which teachers can build a bridge between children’s world and the knowledge they want the children to attain about the world. Although young children might not have the vocabulary of geography yet, they do have—or could have—an elementary understanding of the geographical concepts behind the vocabulary. Clearly, today’s children have a broader range of experiences than the children of the early 20th century when Home Geography was a part of the curriculum. Today’s children experience a much bigger world than any prior generation.
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They see a world beyond their neighborhoods and families at a much younger age, thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet and media, and modern transportation with its advanced geographic tools. One thing that has not changed, though, is children’s curiosity about the world around them. Today’s children are as curious as were children in past generations, and they can understand the geography behind their observations when it is taught appropriately. There is a mistaken notion that geography is best taught in later grades; that young children do not have the capacity to learn geography or they should relegate their intellectual energies to learning how to read and write. The idea that geography is not for young children is not only unsupported by evidence, it is harmful to future learning. There is ample evidence of children’s capabilities of learning geography at an early age. For instance, although understanding maps is only one aspect of geographic learning, Wiegand (2006) reports that there is more research evidence relating to preschool and primary age children’s thinking with maps than there is for secondary school children, and that young children are very proficient users of maps when taught appropriately. In fact, young children are capable of being very good creators of rudimentary maps. Furthermore, it has been found that children as young as three years old can read a map aligned to a room (Bluestein & Acredolo, 1979 as cited in Ekiss et al., 2007). That is, young children are able to discern that symbols on a map or other graph represent something in real life. The ability to picture or imagine what places are like is a vital skill in geographic understanding, and very young children are capable of doing just that. Perhaps one of the most common misconceptions concerning young children’s learning of geography is that much of geography is not developmentally appropriate for young learners. In a study of teachers’ objections to proposed new state standards in Arizona, Hinde and Perry (2007) uncovered a number of misconceptions that teachers held about children’s capabilities to learn history and other social studies content. The root of their erroneous conclusions was their misunderstanding of Piaget’s developmental theories (Piaget, 1965, 1972). While there is ample evidence of young children’s capabilities to learn even the most abstract concepts when teachers use developmentally appropriate practices in their teaching, teachers and other education advocates still argue against teaching historic and geographic content to young children based on erroneous understanding of children’s cognitive development. In their article, Hinde and Perry (2007) conclude “the art of applying Piaget’s theories to any social studies content depends on the teacher’s ability to make students’ experiences both active and social” (p. 71). In other words, there is no evidence to suggest that children are incapable of learning geographic concepts when teachers use appropriate methods and tie students’ learning to their lived experiences. Teachers often bemoan the fact that they do not have time to teach geography, and their complaints are justified. That elementary teachers are pressured to teach only those areas that are tested, particularly reading, is well documented
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at this point. However, less well known is the positive affect geography knowledge has on reading comprehension. As early as 1917, E. L. Thorndike (Moore, Readence, & Rickelman, 1983; Thorndike, 2005/1917) noted that, “perhaps it is in their outside reading of stories and in their study of geography, history, and the like that many school children really learn to read” (Thorndike, 2005, p. 97). In the decades since Thorndike, others have found that social studies, science, and the arts enhance reading comprehension, and reducing the teaching of these areas negatively impacts reading achievement. Duffy et al. (2003) noted: If the goal is to improve students’ reading achievement, not teaching these subjects will limit students’ background knowledge of many topics about which they may read. Because having adequate background knowledge is necessary if one is to comprehend or understand what one is reading, lack of instruction in these subjects may ultimately affect students’ reading achievement negatively. (p. 685) Knowledge of content areas enhances reading comprehension, and indeed, without knowledge of content areas (like geography) reading comprehension suffers. As a discipline, geography helps students understand the world from a spatial perspective. Learners are able to make sense of the world around them and make connections among the areas taught in schools and in their experiences from the lens of place and time that geography offers. This lens not only helps them understand the world, when integrated effectively with language arts, it can also improve students’ reading comprehension (Hinde et al., 2007; Hinde, Osborn Popp, Jimenez-Silva, & Dorn, 2011). Therefore, despite the lack of time early childhood and elementary teachers have to teach geography in order to teach reading and other tested subjects, the preponderance of evidence indicates that teaching geography actually enhances reading comprehension. Geography in the early grades helps children make sense of the world they see, and lays a strong foundation for future learning. The geographic advantage (Hanson, 2004) mentioned earlier is as true for children as it is for adults, and geography can enhance young children’s reading comprehension, as studies have shown. Simply put, there is no sound argument for excluding geography from elementary curriculum, and children need the perspective and content that geography offers in order for them to become the effective citizens all schools want their students to become.
Early Childhood Geography: A Primer Geography for young learners should help them build the lens for interpreting the world spatially. That is, help children interpret what they see and experience in terms of place—where are things and why they are there. For instance, help children
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understand where buildings, rivers, fences, cultures, animals (etc.) are, and why they are there. Learning the “why” in geography is as important as the “where” and is the foundation for powerful geographic understanding. Teaching the “why” also differentiates great geography teaching from mediocre or poor teaching. As this chapter purports, geography education in the early grades not only builds the foundation for future learning; it is also essential for civic efficacy. Geography helps children interpret the world and navigate through it. As a practical example, a common lesson that is taught by primary teachers worldwide involves children creating a map of a particular route. For example, teachers teach lessons that involve the children planning a route around their own classrooms, or between their classroom and the playground, or between home and school, or between home and a friend’s house, or between school and their nanny. In order to plan a route, children must form a mental image. (Of course, an actual excursion would be most helpful as well.) Mental imagery is an essential geographic skill. At some point, the child’s mental imagery can then be translated into a map that they make themselves. This type of lesson requires that children become careful observers of their world—observation is another key fundamental aspect of geography. They need to remember important features of their route and know when to turn and for what to watch. The directions children provide can simply be “right” or “left” and not necessarily the cardinal directions of North, South, East, and West. (Children should be taught left and right before the cardinal directions.) As children observe then remember their route, they will need to demonstrate (write, draw, or say) what they see and where to turn, for instance, “turn right at the yellow house but then cross the street because of the big dog in the yard.” Children will often describe things that adults do not notice, but are equally valid. Children should express their observations, what is prominent in their minds about their world. Their observations provide opportunities for teachers to not only learn about the world from the student’s perspective, but also to clear up misconceptions or inappropriate ideas they might have, giving the teacher an opportunity to teach them appropriate information. The mental images and planned routes children create are the basis for future geographic learning and help them understand the community around them. Another practical example concerns cultural geography. Cultural geography begins at home and in children’s communities. Focusing the curriculum around such things as where students’ families came from and how they ended up in their town or community is rich geographic learning, and engenders a deeper understanding of their own place in the community. However, it is important to keep in mind, though, that today’s children are exposed to many cultures and ideas that are not directly related to their own families or communities. The point is that young children’s exposure to cultures, from wherever they experience them, are effective starting points for teaching the fundamentals of cultural geography.
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Even young children can understand the interaction between humans and the environment, another key aspect of geography. Children can learn, for instance, about the best places to plant a tree, where to put their trash and why there, their own addresses and features of their street and other immediate surroundings, and many other things that connect their lives to the curriculum. The upshot is that children need to be provided with experiences to interpret their world from a spatial perspective so that they can move around safely and responsibly, as well as make informed decisions—a key facet of effective citizenship. There is no shortage of lesson ideas and other resources for teachers of primary grades for teaching geography, similar to those already described. (See Appendix for examples of resources available on the Internet.) A number of professional organizations exist for teachers and teacher educators to promote and support geography education. The National Council for the Social Studies, The National Council for Geographic Education, and the National Geographic Education Foundation are three such organizations. In addition, the National Geographic Society’s networks of state geographic alliances provide resources and training to teachers and teacher educators in geography education. Their conferences and websites provide materials and ideas that enrich geography teaching for every grade level and throughout the curriculum. In addition, geographic Internet applications, such as Google Earth, along with the GPS systems that are easily accessible today, literally put geography at students’ fingertips inside and outside of classrooms. Teachers can utilize these media and technologies to enhance any content area, especially geography. Despite the importance of geography in the early years and the vast array of resources available to teachers, effective geography education in the early grades faces a number of obstacles.
Obstacles in Teaching Elementary Geography Perhaps the biggest obstacle to teaching geography in elementary schools is teachers’ lack of knowledge of geography. American education has created a vicious cycle of poor geographic teaching. Students do not learn geography in schools, many of whom then become teachers who do not teach geography. The result is that Americans are renowned for their lack of geographic knowledge, and American students continue to perform poorly on tests measuring geographic knowledge (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011). Throughout this chapter, references are made to the importance of teachers’ ability to teach geography (i.e., “skilled teachers” and “when taught appropriately”). Therein lies the main problem in teaching elementary geography. Teachers generally do not possess the geographic content knowledge needed to help children understand the geographic concepts underlying their observations of the world. In its report to the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, the U. S.
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Government Accountability Office (2015) reported that “many teachers who teach geography do not have any educational background in the subject and take few, if any, geography courses in college” (p. 17). Although this report specifically concerned eighth graders’ knowledge of geography, the report makes clear that geographic education is limited in the years leading up to eighth grade in the U.S., partially due to teachers’ lack of geographic knowledge. Bolstering the assertion that elementary teachers are not prepared to teach geography, Womac (2014) found that approximately 87 percent of the 1078 teacher education programs that were included in his study do not require undergraduate elementary education students to take a geography course. Teachers who do not know geographic content, do not teach it. It is as simple as that. Teachers who lack geographic understanding rely heavily on textbooks when they do teach geography. Reliance on textbooks to provide the geographic content blurs the connection between students’ observations of the world and geographic concepts. Children’s observations and experiences are uniquely theirs, and the geographic concepts should be uniquely applied to create the most powerful learning experiences. In addition, textbooks are of no use to children who cannot yet read. It is clear that children do not need to read in order to start understanding their worlds, but teachers’ reliance on textbooks to teach important content lends credibility to the mistaken belief that children need to learn to read before they can learn geography (and other geographic and civics concepts). Another major obstacle in the teaching of geography is that elementary teachers are pressured to spend the majority of their time on the teaching of literacy and mathematics, especially reading, as described earlier. The false idea that children must learn to read before they can learn geography or history has gained a foothold in American education. It is true that reading is vital for effective citizenship, and that reading is necessary for future success in school. However, denying children the opportunity to understand the world around them as explained through geography and history until they can read is unnecessary. In fact, as many studies have shown, and literacy as well as social studies researchers have decried, children who have rich experiences in the content areas, such as history and geography, become better readers ( Duffy et al., 2003; McKenna & Robinson, 2005; Thorndike, 2005/1917). In fact, there is no research-justified reason to cut geography and other social studies from the elementary curriculum in order to spend more time on reading to increase test scores (cf. Hinde et al., 2007). The combination of teachers’ lack of geographic knowledge and pressures to teach only subjects that are tested (that typically exclude geography) continues to marginalize geography in the elementary curriculum. However, the obstacles to geography education are not insurmountable. In a recent study gauging teachers’ thoughts on geography, Hinde (2014b) found that preschool through 12thgrade teachers are generally dismayed about their own and their students’ lack of geographic understanding. But, they also passionately expressed the need for
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students and themselves to know more geography, and that it should be a bigger part of the curriculum. The fact that teachers agree on the importance of geography education and that there are plenty of resources for teachers to learn and teach it, suggest that there is hope for geography in American schools.
Conclusion The mission of schools has always been to prepare students for citizenship, and understanding even the fundamentals of geography is a vital part of that mission. Without the information, perspective, and spatial awareness that geography provides, civic efficacy cannot be fully attained. Learning to interpret the world through a geographic lens starts early, in the years prior to formal schooling even. The skills of observation, forming mental images of places, and starting to understand how humans and the environment interact are the fundamentals of elementary geography. The teacher’s role is to connect the child’s images and experiences with geographic concepts, then build knowledge from there. A curriculum that involves connecting geographic concepts to children’s lived experiences dates back centuries and was adopted by early American educators. Although through the centuries people have acknowledged the importance of geographic understanding in developing citizens, geography has struggled to gain a foothold in the curriculum of American schools. Thanks to the Internet and media, as well as advancements in transportation, children today have a broader range of experiences from which to draw than ever before. The Internet and various media provide opportunities for exposure to a variety of cultures, landscapes, languages, information, and much more than ever before in history. Providing children with a geographical framework from which they can interpret their experiences is not only appropriate, but it is also a key to effective citizenship, and even our youngest learners can learn this perspective. There is hope for geography education in early childhood and elementary classrooms, though. The ubiquity of social media and internet applications are connecting people, including children, all over the globe. Children are coming to school with a broader understanding (or misunderstanding) of the world than ever before. Geography is the means through which teachers can connect the experiences of children to the content they are learning in schools like never before. As the title of de Blij’s book (2012) points out, “Geography Matters— More Than Ever” and young children need it now more than ever.
Note 1. Readers may note the similarities between Home Geography and the widely adopted elementary social studies curriculum framework known as Expanding Communities or Expanding Horizons. Although both paradigms focus on the child as the starting point for the curriculum, Home Geography predated Expanding Communities, and
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both have their roots in the philosophies of 17th- and 18th-century European thinkers, such as Rousseau and Pestalozzi.
References Barton, K. C. (2009). Home geography and the development of elementary social education, 1890–1930. Theory & Research in Social Education, 37(4), 484–514. Bednarz, S. W., Heffron, S., & Huynh, N. T. (2013). A road map for 21st century geography education: Geography education research. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society. Blaut, J. M. (1997). The mapping abilities of young children: Children can. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 87(1), 152–158. Bluestein, N., & Acredolo, L. (1979). Developmental changes in map-reading skills. Child Development, 79 (50), 691–697. Campaign to Promote Civic Education. (n.d.). Rationale. Retrieved from www.civiced. org/promote-rationale de Blij, H. (2012). Why geography matters: More than ever. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Duffy, A. M., Anderson, J., Durham, C. M., Erickson, A., Guion, C., Ingram, M. H., . . . Sink, W. (2003). Responding to the rhetoric: Perspectives on reading instruction. The Reading Teacher, 56 (7), 684–686. Edelson, D. C., Shavelson, R. J., & Wertheim, J. A. (2013). A road map for 21st century geography education: Assessment. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society. Ekiss, G., Trapido-Lurie, B., Phillips, J., & Hinde, E. (2007). The world in spatial terms: Mapmaking and map reading. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 20 (2), 7–9. Hanson, S. (2004). Who are ‘we’? An important question for geography’s future. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94 (4), 720. Heffron, S. G., & Downs, R. M. (Eds.). (2012). Geography for life: National geography standards (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: National Council for Geographic Education. Hinde, E. R. (2014a). Geography and the common core: Teaching mathematics and language arts from a spatial perspective. Social Studies Review, 53, 47–51. Hinde, E. R. (2014b). Geography matters: Teacher beliefs about geography in today’s schools. The Journal of Social Studies Research, 39(2015), 55–62. doi:10.1016/j.jssr.2014.07.003 Hinde, E. R., Osborn Popp, S. E., Dorn, R. I., Ekiss, G. O., Mater, M., Smith, C. B., & Libbee, M. (2007). The integration of literacy and geography: The Arizona GeoLiteracy program’s effect on reading comprehension. Theory and Research in Social Education, 35(3), 343–365. Hinde, E. R., Osborn Popp, S. E., Jimenez-Silva, M., & Dorn, R. I. (2011). Linking geography to reading and English language learners’ achievement in U.S. elementary and middle school classrooms. International Research in Geographical & Environmental Education, 20 (1), 47–63. Hinde, E. R., & Perry, N. (2007). Elementary teachers’ application of Jean Piaget’s theories of cognitive development during social studies curriculum debates in Arizona. The Elementary School Journal, 108 (1), 63–79. Kaplan, R. D. (2012). The revenge of geography. New York, NY: Random House. Macedo, S. (2000). Diversity and distrust: Civic education in a multicultural democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McKenna, M. C., & Robinson, R. D. (2005). Content literacy: A definition and implications. In R. D. Robinson (Ed.), Readings in reading instruction: Its history, theory, and development. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
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Moore, D. W., Readence, J. E., & Rickelman, R. J. (1983). An historical exploration of content area reading instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 18 (4), 419–438. National Center for Education Statistics. (2011). The nation’s report card: Geography 2010. Washington, DC: Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Parker, F. W. (1894). Talks on pedagogics. New York, NY: Robert Drummond. Parker, W. (2012). Social studies in elementary education (14th ed.). Columbus, OH: Prentice Hall. Piaget, J. (1965). The child’s conception of the world. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams. Piaget, J. (1972). The psychology of intelligence (M. Perry & D. E. Berltyne, Trans.). Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams (Original work published 1947). Thorndike, E. L. (2005/1917). Reading as reasoning: A study of mistakes in paragraph reading. In R. D. Robinson (Ed.), Readings in reading instruction: Its history, theory, and development. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2015). Most eight grade students are not proficient in geography. Retrieved from www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-7 Wiegand, P. (2006). Learning and teaching with maps. London: Routledge. Womac, P. (2014). The unfortunate status of geography in elementary teacher education: A call for discourse. Research in Geographic Education, 16 (2), 46–60.
APPENDIX
A simple Internet search will reveal countless geography lesson plans and resources for preschool and elementary students. Although this is not an exhaustive list, below is a sampling of such sites. This list includes only those sites that offer free materials and do not require membership. • •
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The Arizona Geographic Alliance website provides hundreds of lessons for grades PreK-12 written primarily by teachers at https://geoalliance.asu.edu/. The Michigan Geographic Alliance website also offers ideas and lessons created mostly by teachers: www.cmich.edu/colleges/cst/MGA/Pages/ resources.aspx The National Geographic Society offers a number of lessons and other resources for teachers, such as the activities found here: http://nationalgeographic.org/ education/map-skills-elementary-students/ and http://kids.nationalgeographic. com/. The National Education Association provides links to numerous lesson plans and other activities at www.nea.org/tools/lessons/teaching-with-maps.html.
10 SPATIAL CITIZENSHIP IN SECONDARY GEOGRAPHY CURRICULUM Injeong Jo
Introduction Spatial citizenship is defined as the ability of a citizen “to access and make sense of geo-information in order to participate in democratic processes and make decisions, taking into account the situations and circumstances [an individual] encounters on a daily basis” ( Gryl & Jekel, 2012, p. 8). What characterizes spatial citizenship, as compared to the other types of citizenships, is the ability to use various geo-media, such as digital maps, GPS-based mobile devices, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and other spatial representations in a reflective and reflexive way in order to participate in society ( Carlos & Gryl, 2013; Schulze, Gryl, & Kanwischer, 2014). The increased use and influence of geo-media, combined with the rise of the Web 2.0 applications as a widely used instruments for the production and communication of information as well as for the participation in civic decision-making processes, strongly support the argument for the importance of spatial citizenship education in contemporary society. Research on spatial citizenship identifies specific sets of core competences, with which a spatial citizen should be equipped, and which provide focus for spatial citizenship education. Competence can be defined as “a complex combination of knowledge, skills, understanding, values, attitudes and desire which lead to effective, embodied human action in the world in a particular domain” ( Print, 2013, p. 154). Competences have become an important prerequisite for one’s life-long education, employability, as well as citizenship. Developing the students’ competences is not merely about enabling them to acquire knowledge and skills but is also about helping the students develop integrated and performance-oriented abilities that are necessary to deal with various problems in a particular context (Biemans et al., 2009). Spatial citizenship involves three
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complementary competence areas: (1) Technology and methodology, (2) Reflection and ref lexivity, and (3) Communication, participation, and negotiation ( Gryl & Jekel, 2012 ; Gryl, Schulze, & Kanwischer, 2013; Jekel, Gryl, & Schulze, 2015; Kanwischer, Schulze, & Gryl, 2012 ; Schulze, Gryl, & Kanwischer, 2015). Becoming a spatial citizen requires the students to acquire technical competences to use geo-media and handle spatial information, including map reading and interpretation skills, and the ability to analyze various types of spatial representations and visualize the data. The second set of competences, reflection, and ref lexivity, concerns the awareness of and critical attitude towards spatial representations. Students should understand that spatial representations are socially constructed and develop strategies to critically evaluate them. Students should also be capable of identifying the intentions of the use of spatial representations in discourses by deconstructing the meanings of the representations and ref lecting on them from multiple perspectives. Lastly, the students need to learn how to communicate spatial information and use the spatial representations for effectively conveying ideas and meanings with others. Students should be able to formulate and negotiate alternative spatial scenarios and should also be able to use geo-media to communicate those scenarios. In other words, the ability to use geo-media to engage and participate in democratic negotiation and decisionmaking processes at the local, national, and/or global levels is the key aspect of these competences. Little attention has been paid to spatial citizenship in secondary geography education, although the role of geography in the development of citizenship, in a general sense is well stated in the National Geography Standards (Downs & Heffron, 2012) as in the following: The overarching goal of these National Geography Standards is to ensure that students become geographically informed citizens. Becoming an informed citizen requires going beyond only knowing the disciplinary content of geography. Students must also be able to use geographic reasoning and do geography. . . . Geographic education enables students to use geographic perspectives, knowledge, and skills to engage in ethical action with regard to self, other people, other species, and Earth’s diverse cultures and natural environments. (Downs & Heffron, 2012, p. 13) Knowing geography is a key to nations, peoples, and individuals being able to develop a coherent understanding of the causes, meanings, and effects of the physical and human events that occur—and are likely to occur in the future—on Earth. Consequently, the practical application of geography empowers students to participate as responsible citizens and leaders of tomorrow. (Downs & Heffron, 2012, p. 91)
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The Standards also recognize the power of geospatial technologies to help solve a variety of problems encountered by individuals and societies. They suggest that the students effectively and critically use geospatial technologies to make decisions and take actions as an informed citizen. The Standards state: As a consequence of the increasing availability of high-quality data, geospatial technologies are changing our capacity to understand the world, enhancing geography’s role as practical problem-solving tool for individuals and societies. (Downs & Heffron, 2012, p. 10) Nevertheless, the extent to which citizenship and spatial citizenship, in particular, is addressed in the curriculum of school geography is unclear. Despite the recognition of the importance of geographic knowledge, skills, and perspectives in citizenship required in the 21st century, very little is known about whether and how the three core competences of spatial citizenship are implemented in secondary geography education. Through a review of the literature, this chapter examines the current status of spatial citizenship education in secondary geography, particularly as it appears in the curriculum. Considering the rapid expansion of GIS in secondary schools around the world during the last decade (Kerski, Demirci, & Milson, 2013), a special focus has been given to the degree to which spatial citizenship is incorporated into the teaching and learning about, and with GIS. This review does not intend to conduct a meta-analysis or systematic review synthesizing prior research findings about GIS education, but rather aims to find case studies or examples that describe the current practice and which can model future curriculum implementation of spatial citizenship in secondary geography classrooms.
Finding and Selecting Studies for Review To begin the review, an initial search using the keywords of “GIS education” through EBSCO host research database returned 286 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 1983 and September 2016. Articles published in the 1980s focus mainly on the introduction of GIS as an innovative technology and curriculum development for teaching GIS in higher education. The first article about GIS in K-12 settings, including teacher preparation, appeared in the late 1990s; many of the articles in these days focus on instructional strategies and pedagogical considerations related to GIS education. A rapid proliferation of research studies on the use of GIS as an instructional tool to facilitate the students’ critical thinking, problem solving, and spatial thinking skills in geography as well as other subject areas happened in the last two decades, accounting for about 86 percent (245 out of 286) of the search results. All abstracts of these articles were carefully read and studies on teaching with GIS at secondary schools were selected. In the
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review of the selected studies, the words “citizenship,” “reflection,” “participation,” and similar terms were targeted to find the cases where each of the three core competences of spatial citizenship (i.e., Technology/methodology, Reflection and reflexivity, and Communication, participation, and negotiation) are addressed in the curriculum for GIS education in secondary geography. This search returned a very few connections to the core competences. Many studies report the current status of GIS implementation in secondary classrooms and are generally based on the surveys of teachers or curriculum analyses in the context of a specific country (e.g., Lam, Lai, & Wong, 2009; Schubert & Uphues, 2009; Wang & Chen, 2013; Wheeler, Gordon-Brown, Peterson, & Ward, 2010 ; Yap, Chin, Tan, Zhu, & Wettasinghe, 2008). The lack of prior research related to spatial citizenship education with GIS at the secondary level is somewhat expected. According to Gryl and Jekel (2012), the contributions of recent studies on secondary level GIS education have concentrated on how the students learn GIS or how the uses of GIS support spatial thinking, geographic inquiry, and other geographic learning and thinking skills. Few studies focused on the uses of GIS for everyday civic life. Kerski et al. (2013) identified the benefits of using GIS in education for “scholarship (developing skills in thinking and communicating), artisanship (gaining key skills), and citizenship (becoming thoughtful citizens)” (p. 237). Most of the studies on GIS in secondary education deal with “scholarship” aspect, where GIS is used mainly for learning critical thinking and problem solving, or “artisanship” aspect, where the focus is on developing key workforce skills. Few studies have explored the “citizenship” aspect of GIS education, which requires the students to develop reflective and critical attitudes toward GIS as well as the ability to use GIS and other geospatial technologies for active participation in the society. From the perspective of spatial citizenship, however, scholarship and artisanship, which concern the cognitive and technical aspects of learning and using GIS, are not necessarily exclusive from citizenship. A certain level of understanding of this type of technology will help the students actively engage in a variety of GIS-enhanced decision making. As Hoskins (2013) points out, knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values are complexly tied together in the concept of citizenship. It is “not really possible to extract knowledge and skills from the values and attitudes contained within them” (Hoskins, 2013, p. 31). Therefore, in this review, all the studies about GIS education in secondary schools that focus on the scholarship and artisanship aspects were included as they are considered to be informative for spatial citizenship education, particularly for the component of technology and methodology competences. Relatively fewer research studies on spatial citizenship education with GIS exist in the secondary level, and there are a very few peer-reviewed articles that can be reviewed to make cases for education regarding two competence areas of spatial citizenship—Reflection and Participation. Therefore, all the studies that acknowledge the importance of reflective and critical perspectives in GIS
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education were included for this review even though they focus on other grade levels (i.e., middle school or college students). For the same reason, all articles examining the potential and pedagogical strategies in GIS education to enhance civic engagement and participation were included, regardless of the targeted grade level in an effort to glean information in order to inform of the implementation of spatial citizenship into secondary geography. With these new parameters, a total of 48 articles were selected and categorized by its focus into Technology and methodology (26 articles), Reflection and reflexivity (6 articles), and Communication and participation (16 articles). The following sections discuss the selected case studies that can inform the future development and implementation of spatial citizenship components into the secondary geography curriculum.
Technology and Methodology Competences to Handle Spatial Information According to Jekel et al. (2015), technology and methodology competences are concerned with: (1) the consumption of spatial information, such as reading maps and being able to navigate using maps; (2) the analysis of spatial information using basic analytical tools; (3) the prosumption of spatial information, which refers to producing spatial information while consuming the information that already exists (e.g., manipulating and visualizing data using the labeling, marking, and commenting tools); (4) the contribution of own ideas and data by producing spatial representations and spatial data; and (5) the ability to use social network to make and negotiate a decision. The existing research about classroom implementation of GIS in secondary geography provides a great deal of information regarding how these competences have been taught in a variety of contexts. However, the breadth and depth of competences required for students in each case varies depending on the purpose in using GIS in the classroom, that is, whether it is to teach about GIS or to teach with GIS. Several cases exemplify the teaching about GIS approach, which concentrates on GIS technology itself with an instructional focus on training ( Sui, 1995). In these cases, GIS is part of the official curriculum for high school students to learn knowledge and skills needed for the future geospatial workforce. In China, for example, GIS is one of the National Geography Standards for senior students with a specific focus on its applications for urban management (Ministry of Education, 2003). In an elective course on GIS, which is available at the senior level, students are expected to acquire knowledge of general GIS functionality with examples of application and the skills to digitize maps, create attribute tables, change symbols on map layers, and to fulfill basic queries (Dong & Lin, 2012). In Serbia, geography is a compulsory subject for several areas of concentration in vocational schools, and GIS and cartography are taught in geography
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with a specific focus on: (1) the concept and characteristics of geographic information, (2) geospatial technologies including global positioning systems (GPS) and remote sensing, and (3) the uses of information on the Web. Students are expected to know what GIS is and how to use it (Komlenović, Manić, & Malinić, 2013). In both cases, however, most GIS knowledge and skills are taught through lectures and teacher demonstrations with limited hands-on exercises for students to practice the knowledge and skills. The major reason behind this is the lack of available resources and qualified teachers. More hands-on activities and student practices are found in the implementation of GIS in the Finnish curriculum. The acquisition of basic GIS skills has recently been included in the renewal of the Finnish curriculum for basic compulsory education (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2010). In Finland, all students are expected to have an introductory level of knowledge of GIS. In the new curriculum, all the upper secondary schools are obligated to offer elective GIS courses (Riihelä & Mäki, 2015). The PaikkaOppi Project is an exemplary effort to minimize the technical learning curve of GIS so as to promote its use in schools. The project aimed to provide an online GIS learning environment, an online mapping application, as well as appropriate pedagogical models of teaching and learning GIS for all the Finnish schools. Targeted GIS skills for students to learn in the model courses include finding locations, mapping physical and human features, creating paths with GPS devices, attaching images and other information to the map, map overlaying, performing the basic queries, and presentation of the findings (Riihelä & Mäki, 2015). As shown in the preceding examples, curriculum implementation of teaching about GIS in secondary geography education focuses on some of the basic GIS functions at an introductory level. The purpose is mainly to respond to the needs of students developing workforce skills. Little connection has been made to spatial citizenship education. The idea of teaching with GIS is grounded on the perceived benefits of GIS to support various types of educational goals, such as spatial thinking, higher-order thinking, inquiry-based learning, and problem-based learning. The main focus is being given to applications of GIS with an instructional tool for education ( Sui, 1995). Placing GIS education in the framework of teaching with GIS has been the dominant picture in secondary-school classrooms around the world (Kerski et al., 2013; Riihelä & Mäki, 2015). GIS is perceived as an instructional tool that both the teachers and students may opt to use in order to enhance their learning. Often, if not all the studies included this review, GIS is not part of the required curriculum content. In most of the case studies, the use of GIS techniques and functions are minimized, and the focus is given to the disciplinary thinking and inquiry processes that the students are expected to practice while using GIS as a tool to support the thinking processes. Therefore, there is no ubiquitous GIS technique or function that students must learn in this approach. Nevertheless, several technology and methodology competences, which are required for the students to complete the given tasks, can be identified within the
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existing research; however, the types and the level of technical competences vary widely, depending on the knowledge, skills, and practices that GIS is expected to support. For example, in Favier and Van der Schee’s (2009, 2012) studies, the students conducted research projects that combined fieldwork with GIS. They entered field data using GIS, visualized the data by loading them onto the GIS software, changed the symbology, and applied a data analysis tool to create new map layers. In Liu, Bui, Chang, and Lossman (2010) study of problem-based activities designed to promote higher-level thinking skills, the students generated population distribution and density maps, conducted data-based queries, and produced spatially interactive charts and graphs using geographic datasets given to them as the basic resources. Overlaying data layers to examine spatial relationships, viewing and visualizing data via GIS to evaluate the reliability of the data, and conducting basic spatial analysis to investigate “what-if” questions are also a few examples of the GIS techniques and competences featured in an urban environmental education program for high school students (Barnett, Vaughn, Strauss, & Cotter, 2011). In addition, increasing interests in the applications of online mapping and Web-based GIS technologies are observed in recent studies on GIS education in schools.
Reflection and Reflexivity of Spatial Representations The Reflection and reflectivity component of spatial citizenship is associated more with the “consumption aspect” of spatial representations (Jekel et al., 2015, p. 42). It is required for the students to be able to not only read and interpret maps, which are the classical consumption skills, but also to understand maps and other geo-media as socially constructed representations and be aware of the influences that they can have on the actions of people ( Jekel et al., 2015; Schulze et al., 2015). Competences of reflection include: (1) knowing about the naturalization of spaces in spatial representations; (2) comparing spatial information with own prior knowledge and other information sources; (3) identifying the hidden and missing information in the spatial representation; and (4) considering alternative attachment of meanings and spatial scenarios. Reflexivity competences refer to the students’ knowledge about and awareness of their own interest, hypothesis, consumption process, and spatial scenarios that affect understanding and using spatial representations. National Geography Standard 1: How to use maps and other geographic representations, geospatial technologies, and spatial thinking to understand and communicate information (Downs & Heffron, 2012) implies the aspects of the reflection and reflexivity component of spatial citizenship. It expects students, by the 12th grade, to understand the “appropriate and ethical uses of geospatial data and geospatial technologies in constructing geographic representations,” and to be able to “evaluate the appropriate and ethical uses of different geospatial technologies and methods for acquiring, producing, and displaying geospatial data”
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(Downs & Heffron, 2012, p. 24). However, little research in the United States and around the world puts an explicit and strong focus on the reflective and critical thinking regarding GIS in secondary geography. The examples found in higher education might inform the future development and implementation of aspects of reflection and reflexivity into secondary geography education. The GIS Body of Knowledge (DiBiase et al., 2006), a reference for GIS curriculum developers at all levels of higher and continuing education, defines a set of the key knowledge domains in GIS and provides detailed descriptions of the knowledge that characterizes the educated and experienced GIS professionals. Some of the design aspects identified in the book, such as “faith of representation,” “justifying the mission,” and “constraints or opportunities of the social or cultural context,” are closely related to the reflection and reflexivity competences of using GIS. There are several studies that focus on developing the undergraduate students’ critical attitudes and perspectives while they are taking GIS courses. For example, Kim and Bednarz (2013) show that GIS learning supports critical spatial thinking, which is characterized by the “ability to assess data reliability, use sound spatial reasoning, and evaluate problem-solving validity” (p. 362). The authors argue that the nature of GIS and the current format of most of the undergraduate GIS courses promote critical spatial thinking by requiring the students to think about the reliability of the data that they use, in order to engage in activities using spatial reasoning skills, and to apply the GIS skills acquired to a wider range of contexts. Laboratory assignments also help the students to develop abilities that can help them critically evaluate the spatial representations and the results of spatial analyses. It is because when the students create maps, they have to appraise whether the selected data categories, unit areas, or the spatial analysis tools they applied to the data for the maps are appropriate to achieve the purpose (Kim & Bednarz, 2013). Other studies focus specifically on the issues of ethics in GIS and the ways to teach it in the classrooms. Huff (2014) stresses the importance of ethics education in GIS and tries to conceptualize the ethical expertise and characterize moral skills that the students need to acquire in the domain of GIS. The ultimate goal is to provide insights into the development of an ethics curriculum for professionals working with geospatial information. Based on a review of literature on moral psychology, critical GIS, and other related fields, Huff (2014) suggests that practice with case studies should help future GIS professionals to develop domain-specific moral knowledge and skills. Students should have opportunities to practice the ethical sensitivity, creative problem solving, planning, and implementation strategies through case practice and simply making the students become aware of the ethical issues in the case can never be sufficient. The incorporation of ethical issues (e.g., informed consent, locational privacy, etc.) across a broader array of skills taught in the course curriculum and other program elements is also recommended as a way to help the students enhance expertise in the ethics in GIS.
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Meanwhile, Davis (2014) offers a framework to develop a detailed curriculum for teaching GIS ethics by identifying the three major objectives—“ethical sensitivity, ethical knowledge, and ethical judgment” (473)—and the relevant pedagogical strategies to promote each of them. The ultimate purpose is to enhance the students’ “ethical commitment” (p. 478) in learning and using GIS. In general, however, not much time is devoted to the issues of privacy and ethics in GIS classrooms in higher education even if most of the instructors believe that it is important to teach about those issues ( Scull, Burnett, Dolfi, Goldfarb, & Baum, 2016). This is because the focus of GIS courses in undergraduate geography programs are mostly on learning “a new set of vocabulary, technical skills and analyses frameworks” (Barcus & Muehlenhaus, 2010, p. 363) with little emphasis on critical perspectives on spatial representations and geospatial technologies. Viewing from a spatial citizenship education perspective, the issues of ethics in GIS can be a relevant topic to the production aspects of spatial representations.
Communication, Participation, and Negotiation With Spatial Information The last competency area of spatial citizenship refers to the active communication and participation strategies regarding the uses of spatial information and representations (Jekel et al., 2015). Students should be able to: (1) use and create spatial representations to express ideas and meanings; (2) share ideas and persuade others using various communication paths, especially using Web 2.0 technology; and (3) engage in discussions to reach compatible meanings in democratic negotiation that can be acceptable for all the communication partners (Jekel et al., 2015). How is this component featured in the curriculum of secondary geography? The importance of active engagement in problem-solving and decision-making processes using GIS has been already recognized and emphasized in the GIS education literature. Synthesis reports on spatial thinking education, such as Learning to Think Spatially (National Research Council, 2006) and People’s Guide to Spatial Thinking ( Sinton, Bednarz, Gersmehl, Kolvoord, & Uttal, 2013), make the case that one’s ability to use spatial representations and technologies, like GIS, to share and communicate ideas with others is critical to the society in the 21st century. Community-based learning, place-based learning, service learning, participatory GIS (PGIS), and public participation GIS (PPGIS) are approaches often used to incorporate citizenship education into teaching and learning GIS. There are few examples of this work in secondary education; most of the found studies were conducted in the context of higher education with a few examples in middleschool geography classrooms. Many of the community-based and service-learning examples in higher education focus on the real-world problem-solving skills that students need as part of the future workforce and do not necessarily focus on the students as
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thoughtful citizens of the future. For example, Barcus and Muehlenhaus (2010) point out a challenge of the undergraduate GIS programs “to meet an increasing demand by students for skills that can be immediately marketable upon graduation, particularly real-world project management skills and strong GIS technical and cartographic communication skills” (Barcus & Muehlenhaus, 2010, p. 363). Incorporating university-community partnerships and aspects of service learning are to facilitate the “development of additional GIS skills and mastery of conceptual issues, while engaging students in real-world decision making and report-writing consistent with the types of tasks they will potentially face in future employment” (Barcus & Muehlenhaus, 2010, p. 377). Middle-school examples focus more on citizenship education. For instance, Mitchell and Elwood (2012) worked with middle-school students to enhance their critical spatial awareness and interests in the geography and history of own community. A Web-based mapping project was developed and implemented in a seventh grade classroom in six one- or two-hour, sessions over two weeks. The students were engaged in a counter mapping project where they created maps with understanding of “the fundamental premise that maps are never neutral or objective but rather reflect existing and or previous power relations in society” (Mitchell & Elwood, 2012, p. 136). Students collaborated to produce cultural history maps of their own city that included the key historical sites, photographs, sketches, comments, and general reflections. The authors found that the mapping exercises that adopted a participatory action research helped the students to: (1) inform themselves about both the geography and history of their own city and neighborhoods; (2) see the relationships between places and understand the “socially contextualized” nature of spaces and places; and finally (3) develop shared concerns and a sense of collective responsibility for the spaces and people in their neighborhoods. According to the authors, collectively visualizing and mapping information of their own community using Web-based GIS is powerful. Students learned about “new spatial narratives of the city” and became “political actors in their own right” ((Mitchell & Elwood, 2012, p. 158). Another example in the middle-school context is Andersen’s (2011) study using the Community Mapping Program for community-based projects with a service-learning approach. The teachers and students asked questions, such as: what are some social, economic, or ecological issues in my local area? What individuals or organizations may help investigate and address those issues? How will geospatial technologies help investigate the issues? Using GIS and other geospatial technologies, the students not only responded to community’s needs but were also “empowered with the knowledge, skills, and desire to make a difference in their community” (Andersen, 2011, p. 9).
Conclusion As shown in this review, the concept and core competences of spatial citizenship have not become an explicit part of the secondary geography curriculum in most
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of the countries where GIS education is taking place. This is especially true in the case of the United States. Research on spatial citizenship education has rarely examined how geospatial technologies like GIS can contribute to its development in secondary schools. However, the importance of spatial thinking and ability to use spatial representations and geospatial technologies for learning, problem solving, and decision making has been widely accepted in the secondary geography around the world, thus providing ample opportunity to the study spatial citizenship more extensively. As a result, the environment for students to learn about, and with, geospatial technologies has greatly improved over the last decade. It is observed that the various aspects of technical competences of spatial citizenship have been implemented in a number of secondary classrooms, and these cases will form a solid knowledge base for the future development and implementation of technical competences of spatial citizenship into the curriculum. In addition, the increasing awareness among the public, educators, and government officials about the importance of spatial information and representations in problem solving, as well as about the potential that interactive mapping technologies and volunteered geographic information (VGI) have for them to participate in the decision-making process, are an important opportunity for geography to contribute to the spatial citizenship education. Despite the important role that geography has played and will play for citizenship education (Bednarz & Bednarz, 2015), there are challenges that should not and cannot be overlooked. The lack of understanding about spatial citizenship and its relationship to geography education is definitely an obstacle to the implementation of the idea into classrooms. Insufficient research on appropriate pedagogies for spatial citizenship education is another challenge. Few research studies exist at the secondary level regarding how to embrace the second and third components of spatial citizenship—the reflection and participation competences—in the curriculum. The Spatial Citizenship (SPACIT) project provides insights into addressing some of these challenges, providing a sound model for the development of curriculum for spatial citizenship in secondary education. First, the project puts an explicit emphasis on the development of the students’ competences in the areas of the reflection, communication, and participation using geo-media, going beyond the education of technical competences. The ultimate goal is to enable the students to successfully participate in the geo-information society by targeting to promote reflection and communication skills in using geo-media. Under the wide partnership among institutions and organizations across various European countries, SPACIT developed four teacher training modules to help the teachers, and eventually the students, to become “aware of the power of spatial thinking, geo-information and the use of the web as a communicative and participatory tool for citizens to engage with” ( Strobl, 2013, p. 7). Each module covers one of the four topical areas—concepts of space, geo-media technology and methodology, concepts of citizenship education, and geo-media communication and
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reflection—carefully designed for the teachers to build their spatial citizenship competences throughout the training (www.spatialcitizenship.org/course-en/). The module activities offer explicit opportunities to learn about geo-media as powerful communication instruments, the consequences of geo-information technology applications in everyday life, ways to express construction of meanings and alternative spatial scenarios, and strategies to question and critically reflect on the use of geo-media. Although the general audience of the SPACIT project is teachers and students in Europe, its spatial citizenship curriculum, which is based on the competence model, should be informative at a global level. Opportunities are also seen in the increased adoption of College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards (National Council for the Social Studies, 2013) in the United States, in which explicit citizenship education is to be included not only in the subjects of civics but also in economics, history, and geography. Explicit emphasis on the importance of helping students develop capability of evaluating information sources and using evidence in disciplinary ways can be linked to the education of the competences in reflection on the uses of geo-media. In the framework, the importance of promoting students skills in communication and informed decision making has also been stressed. This can certainly serve as a basis for incorporating the communication competences of spatial citizenship.
References Andersen, D. (2011). Community mapping: Putting the pieces together. The Geography Teacher, 8 (1), 4–9. Barcus, H. R., & Muehlenhaus, B. (2010). Bridging the academic—public divide in GIS and cartography: A framework for integrating community partnerships in the classroom. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 34 (3), 363–378. Barnett, M., Vaughn, M. H., Strauss, E., & Cotter, L. (2011). Urban environmental education: Leveraging technology and ecology to engage students in studying the environment. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 20(3), 199–214. Bednarz, S. W., & Bednarz, R. S. (2015). Brave new world: Citizenship in geospatially enriched environments. In T. Jekel, A. Car, J. Strobl, & G. Griesebner (Eds.), GI_ Forum 2015 (pp. 230–240). Berlin: Wichmann. Biemans, H., Wesselink, R., Gulikers, J., Schaafsma, S., Verstegen, J., & Mulder, M. (2009). Towards competence-based VET: Dealing with the pitfalls. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 61(3), 267–286. Carlos, V., & Gryl, I. (2013). Where do critical thinking and spatial citizenship meet? Proposing a framework of intersections. In T. Jekel, A. Car, J. Strobl, & G. Griesebner (Eds.), GI_Forum 2013 (pp. 306–316). Berlin: Wichmann. Davis, D. (2014). What to consider when preparing a model core curriculum for GIS ethics: Objectives, methods, and a sketch of content. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 38 (4), 471–480. DiBiase, D., DeMers, M., Johnson, A., Kemp, K., Luck, A. T., Plewe, B., & Elizabeth, W. (2006). Geographic information science and technology body of knowledge. Washington, DC: University Consortium for Geographic Information Science.
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Dong, P., & Lin, P. (2012). China: Teacher preparation for GIS in the National Geography Curriculum. In A. J. Milson, A. Demirci, & J. J. Kerski (Eds.), International perspectives on teaching and learning with GIS in secondary schools (pp. 59–64). New York, NY: Springer. Downs, R. M., & Heffron, S. G. (2012). National geography standards: Geography for life (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: National Council for Geographic Education. Favier, T. T., & Van der Schee, J. A. (2009). Learning geography by combining fieldwork with GIS. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 18 (4), 261–274. Favier, T. T., & Van der Schee, J. A. (2012). Exploring the characteristics of an optimal design for inquiry-based geography education with Geographic Information Systems. Computers & Education, 58 (1), 666–677. Gryl, I., & Jekel, T. (2012). Re-centering geoinformation in secondary education: Toward a spatial citizenship approach. Cartographica, 47(1), 18–28. Gryl, I., Schulze, U., & Kanwischer, D. (2013). Spatial citizenship: The concept of competence. In T. Jekel, A. Car, J. Strobl, & G. Griesebner (Eds.), GI_Forum 2013 (pp. 282–293). Berlin: Wichmann. Hoskins, B. (2013). What does democracy need from its citizens? Identifying the qualities needed for active citizenship and making the values explicit. In D. Lange & M. Print (Eds.), Civic education and competences for engaging citizens in democracies (pp. 23–35). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Huff, C. (2014). From meaning well to doing well: Ethical expertise in the GIS domain. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 38 (4), 455–470. Jekel, T., Gryl, I., & Schulze, U. (2015). Education for spatial citizenship. In O. MuñizSolari, A. Demirci, & J. van der Schee (Eds.), Geospatial technologies and geography education in a changing world (pp. 35–49). Tokyo: Springer. Kanwischer, D., Schulze, U., & Gryl, I. (2012). Spatial citizenship: Dimensions of a curriculum. In T. Jekel, A. Car, J. Strobl, & G. Griesebner (Eds.), GI_Forum 2012 (pp. 172–181). Berlin: Wichmann. Kerski, J. J., Demirci, A., & Milson, A. J. (2013). The global landscape of GIS in secondary education. Journal of Geography, 112 (6), 232–247. Kim, M., & Bednarz, R. (2013). Development of critical spatial thinking through GIS learning. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 37(3), 350–366. Komlenović, D., Manić, E., & Malinić, D. (2013). The Geographic Information System (GIS) in secondary education in Serbia. Perspectives in Education, 31(1), 96–104. Lam, C.-C., Lai, E., & Wong, J. (2009). Implementation of Geographic Information System (GIS) in secondary geography curriculum in Hong Kong: Current situations and future directions. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 18 (1), 57–74. Liu, Y., Bui, E. N., Chang, C.-H., & Lossman, H. G. (2010). PBL-GIS in secondary geography education: Does it result in higher-order learning outcomes? Journal of Geography, 109 (4), 150–158. Ministry of Education. (2003). The People's Republic of China. Geography curriculum standards for full-time compulsory education (experimental) (in Chinese). Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press. Ministry of Education and Culture. (2010). Basic education 2020: The national general objectives and distribution of lesson hours. Helsinki: Ministry of Education and Culture. Mitchell, K., & Elwood, S. (2012). From redlining to benevolent societies: The emancipatory power of spatial thinking. Theory & Research in Social Education, 40 (2), 134–163.
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National Council for the Social Studies. (2013). The college, career, and civic life (C3) framework for social studies state standards: Guidance for enhancing the rigor of K-12 civics, economics, geography, and history. Silver Spring, MD: NCSS. National Research Council. (2006). Learning to think spatially. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Print, M. (2013). Conceptualizing competences for democratic citizenship: A Delphi approach. In D. Lange & M. Print (Eds.), Civic education and competences for engaging citizens in democracies (pp. 149–162). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Riihelä, J., & Mäki, S. (2015). Designing and implementing an online GIS tool for schools: The Finnish case of the PaikkaOppi Project. Journal of Geography, 114 (1), 15–25. Schubert, J. C., & Uphues, R. (2009). Learning with geoinformation in German schools: Systematic integration with a GIS competency model. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 18 (4), 275–286. Schulze, U., Gryl, I., & Kanwischer, D. (2014). Spatial citizenship: Creating a curriculum for teacher education. In R. Vogler, A. Car, J. Strobl, & G. Griesebner (Eds.), GI_Forum 2014 (pp. 230–241). Berlin: Wichmann. Schulze, U., Gryl, I., & Kanwischer, D. (2015). Spatial Citizenship education and digital geomedia: Composing competences for teacher education and training. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 39 (3), 369–385. Scull, P., Burnett, A., Dolfi, E., Goldfarb, A., & Baum, P. (2016). Privacy and ethics in undergraduate GIS curricula. Journal of Geography, 115, 24–34. Sinton, D., Bednarz, S., Gersmehl, P., Kolvoord, R., & Uttal, D. (2013). The people’s guide to spatial thinking. Washington, DC: National Council for Geographic Education. Strobl, J. (2013). SPACIT: Spatial citizenship (Project NO. 517908-LLP-1-2011-1-ATCOMENIUS-CMP), Education, Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency, Brussels. Sui, D. Z. (1995). A pedagogic framework to link GIS to the intellectual core of geography. Journal of Geography, 94 (6), 578–591. Wang, Y.-H., & Chen, C.-M. (2013). GIS education in Taiwanese senior high schools: A national survey among geography teachers. Journal of Geography, 112 (2), 75–84. Wheeler, P., Gordon-Brown, L., Peterson, J., & Ward, M. (2010). Geographical information systems in Victorian secondary schools: Current constraints and opportunities. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 19 (2), 155–170. Yap, L. Y., Chin, G., Tan, I., Zhu, X., & Wettasinghe, M. C. (2008). An Assessment of the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in teaching geography in Singapore schools. Journal of Geography, 107(2), 52–60.
11 SPATIAL CITIZENSHIP IN GEOGRAPHY/SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER EDUCATION Euikyung E. Shin
Introduction Teachers are agents for changes ( Fullan, 1993). What teachers do or do not do in their classrooms has a significant bearing since teachers are the most impactful factor on students’ learning (Bransford, Darling-Hammond, & LePage, 2005; Ferguson, 1991; Rockoff, 2004). Considering the importance of teacher effectiveness for students’ learning, a meaningful discussion of spatial citizenship cannot be deliberated without reviewing how educators are being prepared for a teaching career and their overall professional development. Therefore, this chapter focuses on the conceptual understanding of spatial citizenship education in conjunction with teacher education, especially geography and/or social studies teacher preparation and professional development. This chapter includes discussions on what is needed to assist pre-service and in-service teachers in learning about spatial citizenship education. More specifically, this chapter attempts to make the case for the importance of teachers’ professional commitment to advocate for spatial citizenship in their day-to-day practices. Since “geography is primarily taught by teachers with history, social studies, or elementary generalist certification,” ( Schell, Roth, & Mohan, 2013, p. 31), discussions included in this chapter apply to both geography and social studies teacher preparation.
Spatial Citizenship Education As Tyler in his book Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (1949) confirmed, the primary purpose of American education has been to inspire students on the road to becoming independent and critical thinking citizens. Thus, citizenship
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education has always been a primary goal of America’s schools (Thornton, 2004). It has often been exemplified as participating in democratic practices and implanting democratic values (see Savage & Armstrong, 2004; Parker, 1997; Parker & Beck, 2017). When citizenship education is operationalized in school curriculum, particularly social studies curriculum, much emphasis has been given to the notion of citizens’ rights and responsibilities in the context of patriotism rather than the nature and conceptual understanding of citizenship (Thornton, 2005). In geography, there has been a thin thread of discussion of that discipline’s contribution to citizenship education and the topic has never been a center of attention in the field ( Segall & Helfenbein, 2008; William, 2001). Nonetheless, the goal of geography education as well as social studies education is to help students become informed citizens who can make important decisions about our well-being (Heffron & Downs, 2012 ; National Council for Social Studies, 2013). Because geography studies the world from a spatial perspective (Heffron & Downs, 2012), development of a geographic perspective contributes to the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that determine students’ views of the physical and social world (Anderson, 1983; Wade, 2001; Williams, 2001). Recently, increased accessibility and usability of geospatial technology has altered the landscape of teachers’ use of spatial (geographic) data in their classrooms (Baker, 2005; Shin, 2008). This development has introduced a new domain of discussion that focuses on the use of spatial information for citizenry participation, which has been termed spatial citizenship (Gryl & Jekel, 2018; Gryl & Jekel, 2012). While Gryl and Jekel (2012) defined spatial citizenship centered around the use of spatial information with geospatial technologies, the concept of spatial citizenship as used in this chapter has been widened to all deliberations that engage spatial and geographic perspectives in fostering citizenship regardless of the use of spatial technology. For instance, spatial inquiries that do not necessarily utilize geospatial technologies may contribute to spatial citizenship with the understanding that such inquiries promote discourse about citizenship. From this standpoint, I argue that geography education and related fields have contributed to spatial citizenship education by conducting research, developing curriculum, and creating instructional materials to improve students’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes so that students can become geographically informed (Heffron & Downs, 2012). Thus, this chapter aims to provide a reflection of and vision for spatial citizenship education by connecting geography and social studies teacher education with the acknowledgment that teachers play a vital role in helping students develop the practices of spatial citizenship.
Understanding Teacher Education How teachers are being prepared for the teaching profession is important because teachers are gate keepers of students’ learning (Thornton, 1991). Hence, what
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teachers think is worth teaching and what they believe students should be able to do matters a great deal (Thornton, 2005). Although the importance of teacher quality is generally agreed upon, there is a range of perspectives related to what teacher quality means and which teacher characteristics are connected to desirable results (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005). Despite the array of perspectives, research confirms that teachers are a critical influence on how, what, and how much students learn; the evidence for this suggests that teachers’ abilities are especially crucial contributors to students’ learning (Darling-Hammond, 2016; Bransford, Darling-Hammond, & LePage, 2005) In understanding teacher education, it should be noted that teachers are lifelong learners. While teachers enter the classroom having mastered a set of predetermined knowledge and skills for initial certification, they continue to develop their teaching skills and to update their knowledge as they go through years of experience working with students (Bransford, Darling-Hammond, & LePage, 2005). During their careers, teachers encounter strong demands to continuously update their knowledge, skills, and practices to respond to changes in curricula, educational technology, the learning needs of students, and in the light of new research on teaching and learning processes. Professional development provides opportunities for geography teachers to enhance their skills and increase their confidence to adapt to new situations when necessary (Kolnik, 2010). Consequently, professional development is an important part of teacher education, and the goals for teacher education are to help teachers construct their own knowledge and thinking so that they can maximize their learning throughout their careers ( Schell et al., 2013). In our rapidly changing contemporary society, the importance of preparing teachers to make instructional decisions based on strong disciplinary knowledge is increasingly important. Learning standards are now higher than they have ever been as it is perceived that citizens need greater knowledge and skills to be prepared for and successful in their post-secondary and career experiences. In current geography and social studies standards, much emphasis has been on developing students’ critical thinking through inquiry (Heffron & Downs, 2012; National Council for the Social Studies, 2013). Therefore, teachers need to be prepared to go beyond “covering the curriculum” (Bransford, Darling-Hammond, & LePage, 2005, p. 2) and to be enabled to help their students become well-informed decision makers. In summarizing the goals for preparing teachers, Bransford, Darling-Hammond, and LePage (2005) proposed three important questions: 1.
2.
What kinds of knowledge do effective teachers need to have about their subject matter and about the learning processes and development of their students? What skills do teachers need in order to provide productive learning experiences for a diverse set of students, to offer informative feedback on students’
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ideas, and to critically evaluate their own teaching practices and improve them? What professional commitments do teachers need to help every child succeed and to continue to develop their own knowledge and skills, both as individual and as members of a collective profession? (pp. 2–3)
Accordingly, this chapter is organized around the three essential traits of teacher education: teachers’ knowledge, skills, and professional commitments. Traditionally, the emphasis has been given to what teachers need to know about the nature of curriculum decision making and the curricular planning process as these are informed by social contexts and purposes for education. A social perspective on curriculum questions is important because of the broad social purposes of public education, that is, the preparation of a citizenry for life in a democracy, which should be considered as the foundation for teachers’ decision making about what is taught and how it is taught (Darling-Hammond et al., 2005).
What Geography and Social Studies Should Teachers Know and Be Able to Do? Historically, the discipline of geography education has been perceived as a stale, fact-based subject that focuses on rote memorization of place names, locations, and geography terminologies. This notion of geography has hindered the advancement of the discipline that is fundamentally lively and inquiry-based ( Schell et al., 2013). Consequently, recent geography education reform projects such as the revision of the National Standards For Geography Education (Heffron & Downs, 2012) and the Road Map Project ( Schell et al., 2013) have advocated three pillars to advance geography education: (1) student development of a geographic perspective referred to as the “geographic lens” in Geography for Life (Heffron & Downs, 2012, p. 13); (2) an emphasis on core geographic concepts and principles; and (3) increased focus on geographic practices, defined as the complex processes of inquiry geographers use in problem solving and decision making ( Schell et al., 2013).
Geographic Perspective A perspective is a framework of mind that can be used to process the meanings of experiences, affairs, habitations, individuals, society, and environments. Having a perspective means looking at our world through a lens shaped by personal experience, selective information, and subjective evaluation. In geography, a perspective provides a frame of reference for asking and answering geographic questions, identifying and solving geographic problems, and evaluating the consequences of alternative actions in geographic context. Although the field of
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geography can include many different disciplinary perspectives, the National Geography Standards Geography for life highlights two fundamental perspectives in geography—the spatial perspective and the ecological (or environmental) perspective (Heffron & Downs, 2012). Geography for life explains the spatial perspective and the ecological perspective in detail. The spatial perspective asks, “Where is it? Why is it there?” and is concerned with spatial patterns of both human and physical phenomena. The ecological perspective views the world as a web of relationships between living and non-living features and is concerned with these connections and relationships among and between complex systems such as human societies and ecosystems (Heffron & Downs, 2012; National Geographic, n.d.). Developing geographic perspectives helps students to enhance their ability to “acquire and use spatial and ecological perspectives to develop an informed world-views” (Heffron & Downs, 2012, p. 13). Geographic perspectives are the foundation for building geographic knowledge and skills and the essence of the discipline. In order to become an informed citizen, people not only need to know some geographic content and to use geographic skills such as the ability to read and interpret maps, but also they should be able to reason geographically, that is, spatially and ecologically. Teachers need to be familiar with the perspectives of geography so that they can teach their students; if they do not know what it means to think geographically, neither will their students.
Big Ideas: Core Geography Principles and Concepts The subject matter knowledge and/or pedagogical content knowledge for teaching is different from subject knowledge itself. Teachers learn and develop their subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in their teacher preparation and professional development programs ( Grossman, Schoenfeld, & Lee, 2005). Teachers, however, need to understand that subject matter knowledge as presented in curriculum evolves and changes to reflect to changes in disciplinary knowledge as well as progressive transformations in our society which influence the curriculum (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005; DarlingHammond et al., 2005). Teacher’s geographic subject matter knowledge should focus on the fundamental principles and concepts of geography, which is captured in the term “big ideas” not on factual information. The term “big idea” was used by the Instructional Materials and Professional Development Committee of a Road Map Project to represent the “broader explanatory power” of geography ( Schell et al., 2013, p. 39); this idea was explained symbolically by an illustration, “not to lose the forest for all trees” (p. 38). The big ideas were organized around six elements in the National Geography Standards: (1) the world in spatial terms, (2) places and regions, (3) physical systems, (4) human systems, (5) environments and society, and (6) the uses of geography (Heffron & Downs, 2012). Unfortunately in
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most teacher preparation programs, if (many social studies pre-service programs do not offer the opportunity) students are exposed to formal geography coursework, it rarely will emphasize “big ideas” but instead be a specialized topical class such as physical or human geography or a regional study. For spatial citizenship education, Kanwischer, Schulze, and Gryl (2012) proposed three areas for building competences, which include (1) technology/ methodology to handle spatial information, (2) ref lection/ref lexivity regarding geo-media, and (3) communication, participation, and negotiation with spatial representations. I, however, argue that all three competences are critical in building spatial citizenship and that they could be learned without the use of geospatial technologies, although it is true that geospatial technologies have made access to spatial data much easier than ever before. Reflection, communication, participation, and negotiation with spatial information especially are valueadded components that have not been extensively emphasized in geography/social studies teacher education. At the same time, I acknowledge that understanding and properly using geospatial technologies is important in developing spatial citizenship in a sense that expectations and uses of new technology play a significant role to support curriculum (Darling-Hammond et al., 2005).
Geographic Practices: Doing Geography Teacher preparation and professional development programs should be grounded in content-specific strategies that can enhance teachers’ effectiveness. As geographic subject matter has changed with the introduction of geospatial technologies and with the advent of a focus on spatial citizenship, modifications in learning goals and assessment methods must follow, while adjustments in curricular goals require alterations in teaching and learning strategies (Bransford, Darling-Hammond, & LePage, 2005). For geography and social studies teachers, knowing geography’s big ideas and spatial citizenship competencies is not enough. Teachers need to learn how students best learn about the big ideas and spatial citizenship competencies; that is, they need to develop their pedagogical content knowledge. Geography for Life (Heffron & Downs, 2012) suggested five geographic skills that can be used by students to perform systematic geographic investigations. These five stills are: (1) asking geographic questions; (2) acquiring geographic information; (3) organizing geographic information; (4) analyzing geographic information; and (5) answering geographic questions. Furthermore, the Instructional Materials and Professional Development Committee of the Road Map Project proposed “geographic practices” as a representation of geographic skills or processes. They use the term “practices” to capture the comprehensiveness of doing geography ( Schell et al., 2013, p. 39). This committee’s report listed six geographic practices, which are similar to the five geographic skills suggested in Geography for Life (Heffron & Downs, 2012).
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They advanced the conceptualization of geographic skills by adding two practices: designing solutions to problems and communicating geographic information. These are critical attributes to developing spatial citizens. Without a doubt, Geography for Life and the Road Map Project both promote “doing geography” as the best geographic practice. One of the most powerful instructional tools is a curriculum organized around the big ideas in geography and best geographic practices. Teachers need to know how to develop such curriculum and how to use them to plan their own instruction. Only then will teachers be able to understand the vision and purpose for teaching the subject matter embedded within the curriculum.
What Professional Commitment Do Teachers Need? A Vision for Spatial Citizenship How teachers define subject matter and its central concepts and processes relates to epistemological issues ( Grossman et al., 2005). For instance, how teachers define a discipline influences how they organize their curriculum and instruction. Personal epistemologies are complex in nature and develop over a lifetime through a range of processes. As Schommer-Aikins (2004) emphasized in evaluating the impact of epistemic beliefs that teachers frequently negotiate and personally interpret the views of learning that are influential in education. In defining the role of personal epistemology in teaching, Feucht (2010) explained that a teacher’s personal epistemology affects the climate of a classroom and that delineates the norm for students’ learning as well as students’ personal epistemology (De Corte, Eynde, Depaepe, & Verschaffel, 2010). According to Brownlee, Schraw, and Berthelsen (2011), “teachers with sophisticated personal epistemologies are more likely to be able to engage in ill-structured problem solving and argue based on evidence for a ‘best’ solution” (p. 7). Like other professions, the teaching profession has key criteria that define what it means to be a teacher, starting with an ethical commitment to help enhance all students’ well-being and success. Moreover, teachers need to think about the subject matter they teach in a broader context that includes an understanding of the social purpose of education. In a democratic society, teachers must also evaluate their teaching decisions against the goals of preparing students to be civic participants in a society that relies on interdependence (Bransford, Darling-Hammond, & LePage, 2005). Members of the geography education community consider that their mission is to educate youngsters in meeting their personal needs and fulfilling civic responsibilities (Bednarz, Heffron, & Huynh, 2013). Despite many challenges the discipline faces such as its lower status as a discipline in the United States, a lack of resources, and limited presence in social studies curricula, geography education has continuously worked to reform its role in schools, so that all learners can benefit from knowing its perspectives with the belief that this knowledge
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will enable students to make import contributions to society at a range of scales, from their local community to global communities ( Schell et al., 2013). While there are commonly shared desirable teachers’ epistemologies in geography and/or social studies education, the effort to operationalize them in teacher education has not been evident. Thus, research on geography and/or social studies teachers’ epistemologies in their discipline is limited. If the goal for geography education is to help students become geographically informed decision makers, teachers need to view the discipline as such. Teachers’ recognition of the goal of geography education can have a long-term effect on students’ perception of the geography as well. Teacher preparation and professional development programs have a great potential for serving as thresholds to acquire these understandings. Geography/social studies teachers should be able to answer when they are asked why students need to learn about geography/social studies. Teacher education programs for geography and social studies, especially in methodology courses, should be able to provide opportunities for teachers (or pre-service teachers) to think about what they are trying to accomplish in geography/social studies. I suggest that geography/social studies methodology courses start with a reflection on the nature of geography/social studies, why geography/social studies are taught, and what it means to teach geography/social studies. This discourse will lead pre-service students to think about what is worth knowing in geography for students. According to Darling-Hammond et al. (2005), these kinds of iterative questions and reflection teach a habit of mind that focuses teachers on their goals for their own and their students’ learning. Hammerness et al. (2005) asserted that there are three principles for facilitating teacher development in general. I believe that these can also be applied to hone teachers’ awareness of their epistemologies. These three principles are: (1) engage teachers’ preconceptions that were formed by an “apprenticeship of observation” (Lortie, 1975); (2) acquire a deep foundation of knowledge to enable teachers to “enact” what they know; and (3) foster “metacognitive” approaches to instruction. Through these three principles, teacher education programs, pre-service and in-service teachers will be able to build in educators the habit of mediating “why I am teaching what I am teaching.” This should assist them to build a personal epistemology centered around the goal for teaching geography/social studies, which may facilitate a disposition to enact spatial citizenship education.
Conclusion: Moving Forward The Road Map Project, which is the most notable recent reform movement in geography education, made an effort to establish a “destination” (Bednarz et. al., 2013, p. 22) for geography education: to help all learners become geographically informed persons through understanding the big ideas in geography and by conducting geographic practices applying a geographic lens.
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In order to foster spatial citizenship, teachers, both pre-service and in-service, need to understand the shared vision of spatial citizenship and learn how that vision can guide their efforts by being clear and purposeful about what and how they teach. Thus, considering that teachers’ epistemologies have a significant impact on students’ understanding of a disciple, teacher preparation and professional development efforts should provide opportunities to adopt this vision and instill desirable epistemological beliefs regarding goals for geography education. I acknowledge that the concept of citizenship is complex and fluent. Accordingly, spatial citizenship can be translated into many different shapes and forms while theorizing and operationalizing it in educational settings. Spatial citizenship is, in essence, about being active and engaging with the lively, dynamic field of geography (Yarwood, 2014).
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CONTRIBUTORS
Tom Baker serves on the Education Outreach at ESRI, where he specializes in curriculum design, teacher education, and educational research. His areas of interest include computational thinking, inquiry-based learning processes, and instructional change. His current work can be found at http://tbaker.com. Robert S. Bednarz is Professor Emeritus of Geography at Texas A&M University. At present, he serves as North American Commissioning Editor of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education. He is a past president of the National Council for Geographic Education and past editor of the Journal of Geography. Sarah Witham Bednarz is Professor Emerita of Geography at Texas A&M University. Bednarz co-authored the national geography standards, Geography for Life (1994 and 2012), served on the Committee on Spatial Thinking (2004–2006), and co-chaired the Geography Education Research Committee (GERC) of the 21st Century Road Map for 21st Century Geography Education Project. Mary Curtis is an Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the Uni-
versity of Texas at Arlington, teaching social studies pedagogy, diversity, and research. She leads the Social Studies/History and Middle Level teacher preparation programs. Her research focuses on geography education, technological pedagogical content knowledge, and K-12 geospatial technology integration. Elizabeth R. Hinde is Professor and Dean of the School of Education at Met-
ropolitan State University of Denver. Previously, she was Director of Teacher Preparation at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University.
Contributors 171
An elementary teacher for 20 years, she has also authored numerous publications concerning social studies. Injeong Jo is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Texas State
University. Her research focuses on geography education, development of spatial thinking, and teacher preparation and curriculum development in these areas. She is also interested in ways geospatial technologies, such as GIS, support teaching and learning geography. Todd W. Kenreich is Professor of Secondary and Middle School Education at
Towson University where he co-directs the Maryland Geographic Alliance. His research interests focus on geography education, global education, and teacher learning. David Lambert is Professor of Geography Education in the Department of Cur-
riculum, Pedagogy and Assessment at the UCL Institute of Education (IOE). He is a former secondary-school teacher, teacher educator, and chief executive of the Geographical Association (GA). Lisa Millsaps’ research interests focus on geography and GIS education, climate
change education, social science and STEM teacher education, and Latin American studies. M. Beth Schlemper’s teaching is in the area of human geography, research
methods, and geography education. Her research focus is in geography education and historical geography. Sandra J. Schmidt is an Associate Professor in the Program in Social Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her scholarship brings spatiality into K-12 social studies education and research. She explores how school geography and everyday spatial practices deal with social unevenness. Her research utilizes feminist and visual methodologies. Euikyung E. Shin is a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction
at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois where she teaches curriculum studies and social studies education. Her research interests include incorporation of spatial perspectives for global citizenship education and integration of geospatial technology to social studies curriculum. Victoria C. Stewart is Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at
the University of Toledo. Her research interests include: Teaching and research focuses on promoting interest, meaningfulness, and authentic connections to
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academic content; developing methods to advance learning, relevance, and civic action across student’s lives, in communities, and beyond. Stephen J. Thornton is Professor of Social Studies Education at the Univer-
sity of South Florida, Tampa. He has published over 100 scholarly articles and books, including Teaching Social Studies That Matters which received the American Library Association’s Choice Award for published scholarship. His current writing focuses on the integration of geography and history in social studies programs.
INDEX
Page numbers in italic indicate figures; those in bold indicate tables. actualizing citizen 63, 64 Adams, John 134 Advanced Placement Human Geography 12 “America First” 23, 37n3 American Association of Geographers (AAG) 22 American Indian Movement 49 American Revolution 12 American West 16 apps 119, 120 Arab Spring 23 ArcGIS 98, 99, 112, 121, 124, 126 Arizona Geographic Alliance 144 Athreya, Brinda 113 Atlantic Magazine’s CityLab 68 Baker, Tom 6, 117 Baltimore Green Map 81 Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (Tyler) 159 Bednarz, Robert S. 5, 59 Bednarz, Sarah Witham 1, 5, 59 Bernstein, Basil 27, 37 Biesta, Gert 25 Bonus Army 49 Bowman, Isaiah 11 Brexit vote 23 Broek, Jan O. M. 10 Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) 61
Center for Understanding the Built Environment 81–82 character education 64 child friendly spaces 82 children: geographical understanding 132–133; geography for young learners 135–137; geography in Preschool through Grade 12 134–135; importance of geography in curriculum 133–135 Children’s Environments Resource Group 82 citizen(s): accessing places of engagement 47–49; experience of citizenship 51–53; justice-oriented 63, 64; participatory 62, 64; personally responsible 62, 64; reclaiming spatial symbols 49–51; spatial 117–118; stories of vulnerable 44–53; story of coerced migrants 45–47; voting rights of 47–49 Citizen Science projects 69 citizenship 2–3; in 21st century 60–61; access to 55–56; activity of 44; civic opportunity of 42–44; curriculum for spatial approaches to 95–97; definition of 25; experience of 41–42, 51–53; meaning of 41–42; paradigms of 63; patriotism and 2, 61; relationship between space and 53–55; spatial dimensions of 42–44; stories of vulnerable citizens 44–53; symbols of 54–55; teaching geography for 14–15; women in Myanmar 45–47, 55
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citizenship education: Citizen Science projects 69; connecting geography to 11–14; emphasis on deficits 66– 67; focus on assets 67; geography and 65– 66; interactive mapping sites 67– 68; language in 44; middle-school examples 154; preparing young people for civic engagement 66– 69; social sciences 118; spatial 159–160; of spatial citizen 118; in United States 61– 65; voluntary geographic information (VGI) 66, 68 City University of New York 82 civic engagement: definitions for 90; model of assets promoting 67; preparing young people for 66– 69 class consensus, definition 105 climate change, geotechnologies for teaching 128 College, Career and Civil Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies 6, 100–101, 101, 156 Community Mapping Program 154 community mapping project: analyzing map 81; Baltimore Green Map 81; brainstorming with students 80; collaborating with geographers 79–80; digital geography 74–75; gathering data 80; getting started with 79–82; “My Neighborhood, Our Baltimore” 75–79, 83–84; selecting mapping tool 80; sequence 76; sharing map 81; teacher resources 81–82; uploading data 80 –81 community service, integration into curricula 66 compliant citizenship 63 consumer citizens 63 consumer citizenship 63 Counts, George 73 creative democracy 72 critical pedagogy 5; concepts of 90; curriculum design criteria 96; curriculum for spatial approaches to citizenship 95–97; experiential learning curricular model 95, 96 ; place-based education 99; preparing students for local challenges 90 critical spatial thinking 3 Cuban Missile Crisis 16 cultural citizenship 43 curriculum: early childhood geography 137–139; geo-enabled instructional materials 124; GIS in the Finnish 150; guided or scripted projects 124–125;
importance of geography in 133–135; knowledge in 28–29; as learning solution 123–127; spatial approaches to citizenship 95–97; teaching GIS ethics 153; unscripted, local research projects 125–126 Curtis, Mary 6, 117 CyberGIS 66, 68 Czajkowski, Kevin 113 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza 52 Davis, Hilarie 113 democracy, education for 72–73 Designing Better Maps (Brewer) 80 desktop tools 120 –121 developmental psychology 67 Dewey, John 10, 12, 15, 16, 72, 73, 133 digital globes 117 digital revolution 59 Dreamers 3 Dubos, René 88 Dutch liberalism, concept 23 dutiful citizen 63, 64 eBird 124 education: language of 25; social justice and democracy 72–73; see also citizenship education Enlightenment 37 environmental impact formula 102 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 105 EPA Journal (journal) 88 European Union (EU) 24, 29 Facebook 3, 60 fake news 26, 38n4 FieldScope 69 Fifth Third Field, aerial photograph 104 Finnish curriculum, GIS implementation 150 Firth, Roger 28 Four Square 60 Franklin Park Mall, aerial photograph 104 “Freedom Party” 23 General Motors sit-down strike 49 GeoCapabilities 4; capabilities approach 33–35; framing geography curriculum 26–28; geographical knowledge and teacher 29–33; powerful knowledge in geography 35–36; procedural knowledge 35; project 22–23, 34–36 Geographical Association 29, 34
Index
Geographical Information (GI) technologies 22, 25 geographically informed people 2 geographic knowledge, questions about 7–8 geography: citizenship education and 65–66; connecting to citizenship education 11–14; core principles and concepts 163–164; cultural 138; definition of 12; early childhood 137–139; importance in curriculum 133–135; obstacles in teaching elementary 139–141; perspective of teachers 162–163; practices 164–165; Preschool through Grade 12 134–135; space in 1–2; teacher education 17–18; teaching 10; teaching for citizenship 14–15; in U.S. History courses 15–17; for young learners 135–137 geography curriculum: GeoCapabilities project 26–28; local geography in 73–75 Geography for Life (Heffron & Downs) 2, 163, 164–165 Geography for Life National Standards 100 –101, 101 geospatial technologies 3–4, 59– 60 geospatial thinking 59 geotechnologies: desktop tools 120–121; geo-enabled instructional materials 124; guided or scripted projects 124–125; handling spatial information 149–151; mobile devices and apps 119, 120; spatial citizen 119–123; spatial thinking and ability 155; story maps 122–123; teacher professional development for 126–127; teaching climate change 128; tools 120 ; unscripted, local research projects 125–126; webmapping 119, 121–122 GIS (geographic information systems) 3, 35, 59, 66, 91, 93, 117, 119; handling spatial information 149–151; PaikkaOppi Project 150; participatory GIS (PGIS) 153; public participation GIS (PPGIS) 153; secondary geography education 147–149; Web-based GIS 154 GIS Body of Knowledge (DiBiase et al) 152 Global Financial Crisis of 2008 23 GLOBE program 124 Google Earth 104, 104, 106, 113n1, 139 Google Maps 76, 80 GPS (global positioning systems) 3, 25, 59, 91, 93, 117, 119, 139, 150 Gray, Freddie 5, 72, 75
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Great Plains 16, 128 Green Map System 81 green/open space module for communities: aerial photos 104 ; alternatives for making a difference 109–110; apply stage 107; big question (BQ) guiding inquiry and learning 98, 100; connect stage 107–108; crime level 98; cultivating neighborhoods 97–108; engage stage in 104–105; environmental impact formula 102; explain stage 106–107; explore stage 105–106; extend section 108; focus standards for 101; learning module design 98; map of needs 99; overview 100 ; population density by county 103; prior standards for 101; sources 106, 108; teaching and learning sources 108 Gregg, Madeleine 13 Hanson, Susan 27 Hinde, Elizabeth R. 6, 132 Historypin 124 Hitler, Adolf 38n4 home, women and 43 Home Geography 135, 141–142n1 Hurricane Katrina 132 Industrial Revolution 16 Innovation Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) 113 Instagram 3, 60 interactive mapping sites 67– 68 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 24 Jacob France Institute 75 Jefferson, Thomas 133–134 Jekel, Thomas 22 Jesup W. Scott High School 92 Jo, Injeong 6, 145 Journey North 124 justice-oriented citizen 63, 64 Kennedy, John 16 Kenreich, Todd W. 5, 72 knowledge: core 28; curriculum “scenarios” 28–29; geographical, and teacher 29–33; powerful 28, 29; powerful disciplinary 30; procedural 35 Lambert, David 4, 22 learning, language of 25 Learning to Thank Spatially (National Research Council) 153
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Leinhardt, Gaea 13 liberation psychology 67 Maastricht Treaty (1992) 24 Madison, James 134 Makiguchi, Tsunesaburo 73 MapMe 80 mapping, student workshops 92–95 Mapping Our World (Malone et al) 124 Maryland Geographic Alliance 75 Massey, Doreen 25, 30, 31–32, 34, 51 Maude, Alaric 28 mentors 67 Michigan Geographic Alliance 144 Millsaps, Lisa 6, 117 Mitchell, Lucy Sprague 4, 14, 18, 133 mobile devices 120 Monroe Doctrine 16 Morgan, John 26 Mudhen’s Stadium (Toledo), aerial photograph 104 multiculturalism 62 My Community, Our Earth: Geographic Learning for Sustainable Development 82 “My Neighborhood, Our Baltimore” Community Mapping project 75–79, 83–84 National Academies 90 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) 61 National Council for Geographic Education 139 National Council for the Social Studies 6, 10, 139 National Education Association 144 National Geographic Education Foundation 139 National Geographic Society 69, 139, 144 National Geography Standards 146–147, 149, 151 National Geography Standards, The (Heffron and Downs) 2, 65 National Research Council (NRC) 90, 92 National Science Foundation 7, 113 National Standards for Geography Education 162 Nazi genocide 37 neighborhoods: alternatives for making a difference 109–110; see also green/open space module for communities Network of Alliances for Geographic Education 79 New York Times (newspaper) 68
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) 100 –101, 101 Noddings, Nel 14, 18 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 24 Nussbaum, Martha 34 Occupy Wall Street (OWS) 49–51, 54, 55 OpenStreetMap 68 Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 27, 29, 33, 63 PaikkaOppi Project 150 Parker, F. W. 133 participatory citizen 62, 64 patriotism, citizenship and 2, 61, 160 People’s Guide to Spatial Thinking (Sinton et al.) 153 personally responsible citizen 62, 64 place, perception of 16 powerful disciplinary knowledge (PDK) 30 powerful knowledge 5; concept of 27 practice, term 2 productive citizenship 63 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 27, 63 Puerto Rico, population density by county 103 Putin, Vladimir 24 Putnam, Robert 61 Remote Sensing 3, 59, 119, 150 Research Agenda for Geospatial Technologies and Learning (Baker et al) 127 Road Map for 21st Century Geography Education (Bednarz, Heffron & Huynh) 7, 65, 132 Road Map Project 7, 162, 163, 164, 166 Roberts, Margaret 35 Roosevelt, Franklin 16 Rosen, Harold 37 Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) 38n6 Rugg, Harold 11 Schleicher, Andreas 27 Schlemper M. Beth 5– 6, 88 Schmidt, Sandra J. 5, 41 Scribble Maps 80 secondary geography education: spatial citizenship in 146–147; studies for review 147–149 SeeClickFix 68 September 11, 2001 attacks 60, 62
Index
service learning 64 Shelby County v Holder (2013) 48 Shetty, Sujata 113 Shin, Euikyung E. 1, 6, 159 social education geographic approaches to 10 –11 social justice, education for 72–73 social media 3, 60 social production space as 42 social studies, term 13 Society Must be Defended (Foucault) 42 space: citizenship and 53–55; in geography 1–2; perception of 16; as social production 42; women and home 43 SPACIT (Spatial Citizenship) project 66, 155–156 spatial citizen 117–118; curriculum as learning solution 123–127; geotechnologies and 119–123; teacher professional development for 126–127 spatial citizenship: communication participation and negotiation 153–154; concept and core competences 154–155; definition 145; education 159–160; guide to 4–6; phrase 1; reflection and reflexivity of representations 151–153; research on 145–146; in secondary geography education 146–147; term 160 spatial thinking 59 Standish, Alex 24 Stewart, Victoria C. 5– 6, 88 Story Map 5, 30, 80; example of 123; geotechnologies 122–123; “My Neighborhood, Our Baltimore” project 75–79 student citizens: curriculum design criteria 95, 96; curriculum for spatial approaches to citizenship 95–97; experiential learning curricular model 95, 96 ; geography for 90 –91; geospatial technology 91; global issues 88–89; mapping 91–92; overview of student workshops 92–95; preparing for local challenges 90; workshop learning of community 110 –112; see also critical pedagogy; green/open space module for communities; neighborhoods student engagement 6 teacher education: core geography principles and concepts 163–164; doing geography 164–165; geographic perspective of 162–163; geography
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for citizenship 17–18; goals for 161–162; moving forward 166–167; professional commitment of 165–166; understanding 160 –162 terror attacks of 9/11 60, 62 “think globally, act locally” 88–89; bumper sticker 89 Thorndike, E. L. 137 Thornton, Stephen J. 4, 10 trafficked women, story of coerced migrants 45–47 Trump, Donald 24, 37n3, 62 Tuan, Yi–Fu 82 Twitter 3, 60 Uber ride transportation service 120 UCL Institute of Education 22 United Nations (UN) 24, 47 United States: citizenship 2–3; citizenship education in 61– 65; history in social studies 10; political life in 5; population density by county 103 University of Baltimore 75 U.S. Census Bureau 102, 103 U.S. History: geography in courses 15–17; social studies course 15 Voltaire 88, 97 volunteered geographic information (VGI) 66, 68, 91, 155 voting rights, accessing 47–49 Wall Street, symbol of 49 Washington Post (newspaper) 68 weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) 24 webmapping 119, 121–122 women: Myanmar treatment of 45–47, 55; place for 43; story of trafficked women 45–47 Women’s March (2017) 5, 41, 51–52, 54 workshops: community needs 94 ; geospatial technology 93, 95; KWL approach 93; mapping in student 92–95 World Bank 24 World Population Data Sheet 102 World Trade Organization (WTO) 24 Wridt, Pamela 82 Yamoah, Owusua 113 Yelp 3 Young, Michael 4, 27 youth activism 67 Zuccotti Park 50