Learning "To Do" Geography

I recently returned from the annual Association of American Geographers conference, which took place this year in Los Angeles, California. This is a big event (over 8,000 people from around the planet), with hundreds of sessions, panels, workshops, and field trips to choose from. In addition to presenting my own, latest research, catching up with old friends, networking, and trying to make it to all of the "sponsored socials" that involved a free drink, the big challenge was choosing which sessions to attend. This year I focused on sessions that dealt with pedagogy and career preparation (for my students).

Here are some highlights that I picked up:

Field experience is crucial in the teaching of Geography - even for introductory or service courses.

Students (and teachers) need to constantly practice the art of seeing the real world landscape through a geographical perspective. Professor Herschel Stern of Miracosta College argued that "seeing landscape" means going out and learning how to describe and categorize features (understanding the concept of categories), identifying based on shared characteristics, and practicing how to describe location, orientation, neighborhood boundaries, etc. - basic skills for any Geographer. Professor William Selby of Santa Monica College argued that both cultural and physical Geographers need to practice taking field notes and recording their observations; basic skills for all researchers and another aspect of "seeing landscape."

Organized field experiences do not necessarily mean supervised, group trips in which the entire class has to be transported to some location at the same time (with all of the attendant expenses and logistical and liability headaches). Consider non-guided, independent fieldwork lessons. Professor Mark Hafen from the University of South Florida described how he manages to send students from his Wetland Environment class on a minimum of 4 field trips each semester. The key is that they go out independently or in small groups - on their own time. Before sending them out, he does in-class demonstrations of how to use equipment and record observations. In order to work well, field trips have to be very focused with specific objectives. For Hafen, data collection is qualitative to demonstrate understanding of concepts. Students graph the data they collect and then read their data to look for patterns and understand what they saw in the field and how the graph helps. Herschel and Selby asked us to consider sending students to museums, visitor centers, and self-guided nature walks, which many students have probably never seen.

"Spatial Thinking" is important across the college curriculum, but it still needs clarification.

With the publication of the National Research Council report Learning to Think Spatially, and the funding of a Spatial Intelligence Learning Center, there is growing interest in how to teach spatial thinking. There is now convincing evidence that spatial abilities are related to both success and participation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) disciplines. More generally, there is an increasing recognition of the importance of spatial thinking as a unifier of academic disciplines, including physical science, social sciences, arts and humanities. However, it is also widely acknowledged that spatial thinking is not fostered in our educational system. Professor Mary Hegarty of the University of California Santa Barbara gave a summary report from a specialist meeting convened in Santa Barbara in December 2012 which brought together geographers, cognitive scientists, and experts in a range of other disciplines (including architecture, astronomy, chemistry, geosciences, neuroscience, history and political science) to examine how to best educate spatial thinking at the college level. Hegarty asserted (quite provocatively) that "current attempts to teach spatial thinking are faith based." There is little objective evidence that attempts to teach spatial thinking are effective. She argued that we need to understand and articulate what we mean by "spatial thinking." What are the core concepts and skills? What are the varieties of spatial thinking? She explained that the only really well developed assessments of spatial skills come from cognitive psychology, and these have focused only on "mental rotation". We still need to know more ways to define and assess spatial thinking.

Not everyone is at a loss for a definition of spatial thinking. Diana Stinton from the University of Redlands offered her definition of spatial thinking as "the ability to visualize and interpret location, position, distance, direction, pattern, relationships, movement, and change through space (and time)." She made a point, however, of distinguishing between common understandings of "spatial skills" and "geography-based skills." Spatial skills, she explained, are those more typically associated with engineering skills (e.g. "mental rotation") and 3D visualization. By contrast, geography-based skills are those associated with maps and geospatial technology, and aimed at Geography students and educators. Regardless of origin, she argued that we should promote spatial literacy across all disciplines. Spatial literacy is the "confident and competent use of maps, mapping, and spatial thinking to address ideas, situations and problems in the real world." Stinton is a leader in this realm. I had the pleasure of seeing her speak before at the GIS conference at Bucknell. She recently launched a web resource for GIS educators - teachgis.org

Geoscience jobs are/will be booming, but Geography remains poorly understood by employers AND students

Heather Houlton from the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) and colleagues from the AAG discussed current trends in the geosciences job market and the challenges of aligning learning outcomes to workforce competencies. Houlton reported on a number of promising job trends for Geographers:

• There are over 260,000 geoscience jobs in the U.S. today
• Based on demographics, we can expect 130,000 of current geoscientists to retire in the next few years, opening up those positions to new people
• By 2021, up to 72,000 completely new geoscience jobs are expected to be created
• By 2021, the U.S. will see between 15,000 and 45,000 new graduates from the geosciences, leaving a big gap between job supply and demand (better for those demanding)

The less encouraging news is that Geography is "under-recognized" or poorly understood by employers, while Geography graduates continue to have a narrow conception of their career prospects. These observations are based on recent surveys by the AGI. As most job-seekers learn, there are VERY few jobs with the title "Geographer", but there A LOT of jobs that need geographic skills and perspectives. While Geography advocates need to work on educating employers and labor agencies, it is up to educational institutions and faculty to do a better job of educating students about the vast variety of career possibilities that a Geography education provides.