The focus in this article is on the usefulness of spatial sequencing as a tactic for interpreting a map and organizing our memory of it. This skill is useful whenever some condition varies in a systematic way with distance. When students are asked whether they see a pattern on a map of a topic like wildfires or terrorist activity, some students…

This paper reflects on the classroom use of the "Star Trek" American science fiction television franchise to teach critical and emotional geographies to undergraduates specializing in science, technology, education, and mathematics (STEM). Both science fiction and STEM education are ambivalent and contradictory scenes of social…

The integrated status of Social Studies in the Norwegian "Curriculum for Knowledge Promotion in Primary and Secondary Education and Training 2020" reflects an international educational trend pertaining to a movement from knowledge and traditional disciplinary thinking to generic skills, competence and boundary crossing. This article…

To know a place, one must observe more than just the "conditions" there. It is also important to know about "connections" with other places, near and far. This article looks at research about geographic connections, with a specific focus on describing the area of influence (the aura) around a geographic feature like a lake,…

An "analogy" is a statement of relationship. A "spatial analogy" is an analogy based on a spatial relationship that is observed in a location. Spatial analogies can be based on any spatial relationship, including distance, direction, elevation, proximity, enclosure, or position in a pattern, region, or sequence - in short,…

Geospatial expertise draws on and recognizes a vast array of seemingly unrelated interconnections allowing the geographer to find solutions to otherwise incomprehensible problems. Geospatial thinking involves both time and space, acknowledges cause-and-effect relationships of geographic phenomena at multiple scales, and recognizes the impact of…

This is the fourth in a series of six articles about how research by psychologists, neuroscientists, robot engineers, and other scientists could help geography educators design better lessons. This article will focus on teaching about regions as narrowly defined: a region is a group of places that have something in common and are close to each…

Each location on earth has its own mix of climate, minerals, land cover, politics, religion, and other features. Geographic inquiry starts (but does not end) with careful observation of these conditions, because geographers assume that they can influence what happens in that place. Future articles in this series will look at different modes of…

This is the first in a series of six articles about how spatial reasoning can help children "read" maps, graphs, and geographic texts. Since the late 1900s, neuroscientists and psychologists have used new brain-scanning and eye-tracking technologies to do a "lot" of research about visual perception and spatial thinking. One key…

Scholars have become increasingly interested in identifying a more effective set of core teaching practices for developing teacher education and professional development programs. Although they have conducted many investigations within this realm over the past two decades, these efforts have focused mainly upon science, language arts, math, and…

Michael Young's concept of "powerful knowledge" has received widespread attention from many in geographical education. I use the claims Young has made about powerful knowledge as a starting point for considering how pedagogic practices could contribute to making geographical education powerful. I present three sets of pedagogic…

This article describes a data-driven approach to contextualize geography subject matter using student aspirations and workforce data. To test this teaching strategy, undergraduate students in two world geography courses taught at Texas State University were surveyed and interviewed about their career and life aspirations. Using this information,…

This research analyses the way in which the Lotus Blossom technique has been described and used worldwide, including Romania and it investigates several ways to apply it based on the geographic content. Based on analysing the way this technique was applied it has been found that it may be applied to various topics, both individually and in groups,…

There is growing interest in assessing the knowledge acquired by students. More often and in diverse disciplines it is necessary to know the level of the students through different types of testing. In the case of teaching of geography in Spain, there is a decrease and loss of such learning for various reasons. The aim of this research is to…

This paper is based on an experiment conducted in 2019 at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, as part of a post-graduate research course, that aimed to reflect on the methodologies used by geographers when (re)searching (for) emotions. This methodological question is crucial since it is partly because of the difficulty of finding relevant tools…