Geography Education and GIS
In the workshop discussions summarized in chapter 1, teachers saw GIS as having a potential impact in a wide variety of courses at the secondary level. They noted, however, that the most obvious place to introduce GIS concepts and use the software as a teaching tool would be in geography. An investigation of the status of this discipline and its potential receptivity to GIS based learning activities is necessary to help verify the hypothesis that GIS has a role in the secondary schools. This chapter examines the status of geography education in the schools. The historical weakness of U.S. geography education is reviewed and compared with the geography education curricula in other countries. The recent re-invigoration of geography in the U.S. schools is noted. Building on this foundation, the roles that GIS may play in geography education are discussed. Before concentrating on the situation of secondary school geography, the general relationship between GIS and geography is explored.
GIS in Geography
At the higher education level, Kemp, Goodchild, and Dodson (1992, p181) make a case for teaching GIS within the discipline of geography. This case rests on four arguments: "geography as the home discipline for GIS; GIS as a collection of marketable skills; GIS as an enabling technology for science; and geographic information as an intellectual theme within geography." Some of these arguments can be applied to the secondary level as well.
They note that GIS "has developed as a multidisciplinary field with no single home", but they go on to argue that for the purposes of teaching GIS there would be a benefit of a "home discipline", namely geography. They agree with Morrison (1991) that geography has a unique spatial perspective that allows it to interface with a variety of other disciplines, thus partially preserving the interdisciplinary characteristics of GIS. At the secondary level, the breadth of disciplines is much more limited. Many of the sub-disciplines listed by these authors as the multidisciplinary pool from which GIS developed would be subsumed under the heading of geography at the secondary level (e.g., photogrammetry, cartography, remote sensing, spatial analysis.) Though computer science has played a major role in the development of GIS, the initial face of GIS that should be presented to secondary school students is that of a spatial analysis tool rather than that of an implementation of graphical computing routines and relational databases. Although in time, GIS may also serve as an example and interesting expression of computer science theory and practice for advanced computer studies students in some secondary schools.
GIS is also mentioned as another of the skills taught in the undergraduate geography curriculum that are marketable for the new graduate seeking employment (Kemp, et al., 1992). At the secondary level, few if any students will be trained and educated in GIS, but the use of GIS to enhance established studies will increase awareness of GIS as a potential career and may lead to tertiary studies or entry level employment that includes GIS. Again, the most common discipline for this type of exposure to GIS will be geography. (This statement is not intended to negate the potential contributions by science and computing courses in GIS awareness, but discussion of geography based careers in a geography course should include discussion of those careers involving the use of GIS.)
The role of GIS as an enabling technology for scientific research may not be as important at the secondary level, since much of the scientific learning and analysis at that level is not cutting-edge but rather foundational. In fact, rather than even foundational "research" activities, almost all use of GIS in a secondary setting may have an inherent general education purpose. These uses of GIS will not be primarily to create new knowledge, but rather to reinforce learning of established concepts, refine skills in analyzing existing data, and practice the basic methods of scientific enquiry. GIS should, however, allow for a more sophisticated form of enquiry in secondary school geography (and in other subjects). This enhanced ability to stimulate critical thinking and problem solving is one of the great promotions for the use of GIS in the secondary schools, but GIS may still mainly serve in the role of the reinforcer rather than the enabler. As students use GIS to access and analyze information for either role, they will be working with spatial data, therefore it is reasonable to expect to see much of the exploration of that form of data in its "home", geography.
The last argument mentioned by Kemp, et al. is that of geographic information as an intellectual theme which at the secondary level is synonymous with learning in the context of a geography course or lesson. In fact, it is this underlying theme of geographical information and analysis that transcends the issues of software type or discipline which a particular GIS analysis serves. This core of geographical reasoning is just what the emerging geography in the nation's schools is beginning to emphasize.
It is this geographical questioning that sets geography apart from other disciplines and gives it power to help us understand our world -- both the natural and man-made manifestations. Francis Slater (1982) demonstrates the use of geographical questions (Where is it? Why is it there? Where else could it be?) in geography lessons. Simon Jenkins (1992), the editor of The Times newspaper in London, eloquently points out how the new geography being promoted in the United Kingdom is more attractive through its use of this type of questioning. His son, who like many in his generation is concerned with the fate of the environment, could find the basic foundations for dealing with these issues in the type of geographical question-based learning being emphasized in the modern geography curriculum. GIS is inherently an excellent medium for exploring these type of questions. As we will see in the remainder of this chapter, that is one of the main reasons GIS is being included in the new geography curricula.
Status of Geography in the United States
In order to evaluate the ability of geography in the nation's schools to incorporate GIS activities, a reflection on the status of geography in the United States is given below. First there is a short summary of classical trends in geography education, then the status of geography in the United States in this century is highlighted.
A Short History of Geography Education
An account of geography through the ages can be found
in the Librarian of Congress, Daniel Boorstin's The
Discoverers (Boorstin, 1991). He highlights the geographic
inquiries of early Greeks such as Eratosthenes and
Ptolemy with their estimation of the Earth's circumference
and other geographical writings. Another early geographer
was Aristotle who analyzed data on the habits and settlement
patterns of the various peoples conquered by his pupil,
Alexander the Great. (Mahony, 1988) From the second
century until the fifteenth the science of geography
was neglected due to ecclesiastical pressure. Boorstin
(1991) laments the medieval absence of geography from
the list of learned arts which included topics such
as astronomy, geometry, grammar, and dialectic. A
term such as geography was not even in common usage
during this time.
With the republishing of Ptolemy's works and the voyages of discovery by the Portuguese and Spanish at the end of the 15th century, geography began to resurface as an intellectual activity. Despite geography's re-emergence during the Renaissance, Greek and Latin were still the core subjects in education. This classical education was reflected in the courses of study on both sides of the Atlantic. It took dissenting voices like that of Rousseau to break the dominance of the classical subjects. Rousseau included geography as one of the subjects that should be a part of a complete education. "By the end of the eighteenth century, Europe was about to witness a change which was tantamount to a revolution. Education was about to become the concern of the state, the prerogative of the individual, and the salvation of nations. Geography, and particularly field activities, was to be a major part of a new age in which scientific utility was an intrinsic element." (Mahony, 1988, p21) Nevertheless, Jenkins (1992) suggests that the hegemony of the classics continues up to the present in many of the United Kingdom schools. As they share the throne with math and the sciences, they create a pressure on the full curriculum that results in a neglect of geography.
Geography Education in the United States
As geography began to be established as a field of study
in Europe, it would have seemed natural for schools
in the new nation on the other side of the Atlantic
to embrace geography as part of a well-rounded education;
however, without the top-down control mechanism in
society that was common in Europe, geography education
in the United States was very inconsistent. (Mahony,
1988) Even before national independence, Harvard University
had instituted map and globe study. School teachers
had students practice rote memorization of geographical
facts for college admissions tests. (Libbee and Stoltman,
1988) Most geography texts were written from a British
perspective which did not go over well in the newly
free nation. (Mahony, 1988) In 1784, Jedidiah Morse
published the first American geography texts which
unfortunately reinforced the rote method of memorization.
These texts were more literary guides to the geographical
wonders of the new nation than true curricular materials.
(Libbee and Stoltman, 1988; Mahony, 1988) These popular
geographies distracted from a more intellectual geographical
approach and may have contributed to the demise of
geography as an academic subject in the American colleges
by the end of the 19th century. (Mahony, 1988)
In 19th century secondary schools, some of the European educational techniques began to replace rote learning. William Morris Davis, an eminent physical geographer and promoter of geography in the schools, was influenced by a European "philosophy that geography should seek explanations and attempt to predict effects, consequences, and conditions." (Libbee and Stoltman, 1988, p23) Davis was influential in developing a tradition of physical geography in the schools. By the turn of the century, physical geography was established as the geography in the secondary curriculum. In the new century, however, professional geographers began to favor regional geography. Physical geography's domain was being absorbed into the sciences. A curriculum review by the National Education Association in 1911 concluded that the social aspects of geography could be lumped into the umbrella topic, social studies. (Libbee and Stoltman, 1988; Mahony, 1988) Academic geographers had the opportunity to help define the social studies curriculum, but because many were aligned with the physical side of the discipline they would not recognize geography as part of the social studies. This allowed non-geographers, often historians, to define the geography portion of the new, integrated subject. (Libbee and Stoltman, 1988) Mahony notes that World War I also distracted the attention of the professional geographic community.
The vague status of geography in pre-collegiate education continued through the Depression and World War II. (Mahony, 1988) When geography began to be strengthened in the social studies in the 1940s, it was predominantly regional and human in emphasis. (Libbee and Stoltman, 1988) Mid-century up to recent times some of the dismal characteristics of geography in the secondary schools were: "physical geography has been neglected almost completely"; "geography is not given equal time with history or the other social sciences"; "geography does not extend into the senior high school except rarely, and it is even left out in the junior high school to a large extent"; "there is ... lack of preparation of the teacher whose background is usually primarily in history courses"; and "the chronological approach inherent to history wins out over the spatial or geographical approach." (Mayo, 1965) Libbee and Stoltman (1988, p28) suggest "the problem of a less-than-clear definition of geography as a subject has resulted in three major issues for geographical education. The inadequate definition of geography for curriculum purposes results in confusion by teachers. Second, academic geographers are not aware of the content needs of prospective teachers, so that introductory college courses have not covered material appropriate to the elementary curriculum. Third, geographers have not taken the initiative in participating in national curriculum movements [e.g., environmental education, global studies], which, like social studies, rely to a large extent upon geographic content and information."
The one bright spot in this dismal history of geography education was the High School Geography Project (HSGP) of the 1960s which began to develop geography materials specifically for the high schools. Unfortunately, since the HSGP instituted a new methodology that was "designed to engage students in analysis, evaluation, and problem-solving" rather than using the regional and rote memorization approach, "teachers were often threatened by it or did not understand it" and very few effective in-services were developed to support the HSGP materials. (Marran, 1992, p140) From that time until the late-1980s, geography curriculum developments were very limited and predominantly focussed on the college level. (Hill, 1989) With this type of geography environment, the logical "home" for GIS would seem to be quite unprepared to absorb and benefit from potential pedagogic and content enhancements available in GIS-based activities. In the 1980s, however, the trend of weak or nonexistent geography began to reverse, improving the likelihood that geography could serve as the logical entry point for GIS.
Status of Geography in Foreign Countries
Before examining the current status of geography in the United States, an international review of geography education and its potential inclusion of GIS in the classroom will provide a useful comparison when considering the role of GIS in the U.S. schools. This short overview of geography in a few other countries understandably focuses on the more developed nations, since they are nearer in their ability to adopt GIS into their teaching.
United Kingdom
Unlike the U.S. schools, those in the United Kingdom
have maintained a clearly visible geography presence
in their curriculum throughout the twentieth century.
This does not imply that there have not been difficulties
ensuring a strong position for geography. In the 1970s
the rank of geography fell among the O and A level
course offerings (our upper secondary grades). During
this period, the "Great Debate" raged on
the quality of education in the schools and the appropriate
role for the national government in curriculum determination.
"Because of the poor economic performance of
the United Kingdom, government decided that what was
taught in the schools was the concern of the government."
(King, 1989, p.128) As the debate continued, geography
was often not mentioned or under-represented in the
core curricula suggested. In the 1980s, the specter
of geography being left behind in the development of
the impending national curriculum led to a vocal campaign
by the Geographical Association and individuals to
rectify the situation. (King, 1989) They were successful,
so that in 1988 with the passage of the Education Reform
Act creating a national curriculum, geography was listed
as a core subject. (Lambert, 1990; Cassettari, 1991)
Not only does the National Curriculum solidly establish geography as one of the key areas of study, but it also, in the outline of the Geography Curriculum, mentions GIS explicitly in the section on Information Technology and Geography. For example in Attainment Level 10 of the skills attainment target, students are to "construct a composite map for a specified purpose by overlaying separate distributions of thematic data and evaluate its effectiveness as a Geographical Information System". (DES, 1990) In addition to listing GIS along side remote sensing and other computer use in geography, many of the educational objectives listed under the various Attainment Targets and Levels could be effectively achieved with the use of GIS. Another way in which GIS might help accomplish the aims of the National Curriculum is as a vehicle to implement the strong cross-disciplinary theme present in the curriculum. (Wood and Cassettari, 1992)
With GIS in the curriculum, it is not surprising that there have been efforts to identify the issues related to the use of GIS in the schools. Wood and Cassettari list priorities in education and training for GIS in the schools including: an approach of personal outreach over articles and advertising to reach educators, an acceptance of a common and more simplified GIS vocabulary to aid educators' attempts to communicate to their students, and a few priorities relating to the implementation or development of GIS software that meets the technological requirements of the schools. Freeman (1991) notes the potentials for GIS, in addition to the geography portion of the curriculum, as a part of the Information Technology (IT) strand of the national curriculum. Since IT integrates with many of the subjects, including math, history, and science, GIS in this context may have a broad impact in the schools.
Recognizing the need for a GIS software package that could meet the needs of the curriculum, the National Curriculum Software Scheme has led to the development of an educational GIS (AEGIS) designed for use in the schools. AEGIS allows for "map creation and editing, data importing, interrogation and display of combinations of maps and data and exemplar maps and data for the National Curriculum." (Freeman, 1991, p3.6.3) It has been noted that the AEGIS software may not implement many of the analytical and data handling functions found in a common GIS package, thus making its status as "GIS software" questionable. Nevertheless, this software does appear to be pedagogically useful and at minimum a reasonable introduction to the base concepts and technologies underlying GIS.
Prior to the development of the National Curriculum and the AEGIS software, there were already some movements towards GIS-like technology in the schools. The BBC produced an interactive video disk full of data collected by students around the country. This video disk was run by software that would allow users to access and manipulate the data which was tied to maps. (Maguire, 1989) Despite these developments, GIS in the U.K. schools is still in its infancy, as it is elsewhere. It will be interesting to follow its development considering the support it has both in the text of the Curriculum and in a school oriented software package.
Canada
Canada is another country with a strong tradition of
geography teaching in this century, especially compared
with the United States. "For a long time it has
been an independent high school subject in most Canadian
provinces, is usually taught by well-trained specialists,
and has a solid content that academic geographers would
recognize as respectable, if not rigorous." (Wolforth,
1986, p18) Back in 1921, however, a survey of Canadian
geography texts led to the conclusion that they were
"not worth the paper they were printed on."
(Chapman, 1921, p52) This strong statement was based
on the perceived over-emphasis on memorization, which
mirrored arguments in the United States (which have
raged throughout the century) on the role of place/name
memory work in geography instruction. (see Bednarz,
1992) In the 1930s, the social studies movement in
the United States began to influence the curriculum
in Canada, but despite the fact that many Canadian
geography courses were found under the umbrella of
social studies, they tended to maintain their integrity.
Often physiography (physical geography) remained as
a distinct course unlike in the U.S. where these concepts
were, at best, vaguely recognizable in earth science
or general science courses. (Wolford, 1986). In the
1950s, the Canadian Association of Geographers called
for a separation of geography from the social studies.
This was accomplished in part through the pressure
of the many social studies teachers who were trained
geographers.
In 1936, the Australian geographer Griffith Taylor who is known as "the father of Canadian school geography" founded the first academic geography department in Canada at the University of Toronto. Taylor and a few colleagues inspired a generation of geography students to become geography educators. This was especially true of World War II veterans. Their travels and multicultural war experience made them tangibly aware of the need for geography literacy. These new geography educators found positions in school and college geography departments and in educational administration thus providing a well-integrated support to geography instruction as a whole In the 1960s there was a great demand for teachers which was supplied by the growing number of geography departments in the Canadian institutions of higher learning. (Wolford, 1986)
As noted above, a high level of vertical integration of academically trained geographers at all levels of the education establishment was developed in the decades following World War II. In the U.S., on the other hand, the post-war interest in geography played out in a horizontal integration at the university level. (Thomas, 1992) In the future in the U.S., this important example of vigorous college and university geography programs that produce trained geographers who after entering the schools, school administration, and education departments push for geography in the schools should not be ignored. These individuals will be more likely to incorporate (or recommend) modern geographical techniques such as GIS in their teaching. It is interesting to note, that in the U.S. just as the importance of a vertically integrated geography education to the health of the discipline (and ultimately to society at large) is being recognized, the situation in Canada is reversing. The key geographers in education departments and academic geographers that actively prepared geography educators have been retiring or passing away and are not being replaced by younger geographers. (Thomas, 1990)
Unlike the U.K. where curriculum is now set on a national level, geography curriculum in Canada is set at the provincial level. This leads to a great variety of course offerings between each province, but most offer Geography of Canada, World Geography, and Physical Geography. (Baine, 1991) Geography is a requirement in most provinces in the lower secondary grades, but is usually an elective for the older students. The control of curriculum at the provincial level "tends to result in the production of first-rate, highly professional course designs," though some argue that this stifles creativity at the local level. (Wolforth, 1986, p23) This might not bode well for GIS use in the schools, since initial activities with GIS might be somewhat experimental. On the other hand, the provincial bureaucracies include developers of curriculum aids including those for the use of computer software. (Wolforth, 1986) For example, the Ontario Curriculum Guideline for Geography, while not mentioning GIS explicitly, includes a section on the use of computers that emphasizes their use for digital cartography, simulation and modelling, data base display, and analysis of "relationships, patterns, and trends." It also mentions the importance of communicating to students the use of computers in the contemporary world, which for careers related to geography includes GIS. (Ontario, 1988)
Since curriculum is determined at the provincial level, the quality and quantity of geography can vary greatly between provinces. For example, in British Columbia, there is very little student interest in geography and even a majority of the social studies teachers seem disinterested. (Thomas, 1992) Thomas argues that inattention to the maintenance of the vertical integration of trained geographers at all levels in education and administration is leading to a demise in the status in geography in Canada. This may not bode well for GIS and other peripheral techniques or on the other hand GIS-based activities could help spur a resurgence of interest in geography. For example, academic geographers (not surprisingly from Ontario) have been partnering with school boards to expose both students and teachers to GIS (see Chapter 4). This will undoubtedly lead to the eventual inclusion of GIS in the curriculum guides and more widespread use of GIS in the Ontario schools. It will be interesting to see how Thomas' perceived down-turn in geography education effects the use of GIS concepts and software in the various provinces.
A more abbreviated view of some other nations' geography education environments and the prospective for GIS in their schools follows.
Chinese Speaking Countries
In the Peoples Republic of China and in Hong Kong, their
curricula include many physical geography topics.
(Fung, 1992) GIS may play an important role in the
instruction of these topics as well as the human and
regional topics found in their schools. In China and
Taiwan, there are educational goals that lend a hand
to the introduction of GIS-based activities. Taiwan
emphasizes "some important geographic methods,
for the purpose of sharpening the students' ability
to creatively discern and solve problems, and for creating
an appreciation for sciences and an interest in learning."
(Lu, 1992, p65) In China, "guiding ideologies"
include goals of giving students technical skills training
and "paying attention to the continuum between
theories and practices, between textbook contents and
practical products, and between the student's life
and the real world." (Lu, 1992, p66) Lu sees
the essence of Chinese geography instruction in Taiwan
and on the mainland as being very similar, despite
the enmity between the governments. Lu lists one of
the specific educational purposes in these countries
as using basic geographic tools and techniques including
"developing and applying geographic information
systems to establish a geo-statistical databank, which
can facilitate decision making and regional development."
(Lu, 1992, p67) While Lu's representation of the
use of GIS in the schools is somewhat narrow and perhaps
misinformed, it does show that modern techniques such
as GIS are recognized as having a role to play in modern
geographic education. Fung, however, raised the important
point that the relative economic prosperity of Hong
Kong renders personal computers much more common in
the Hong Kong schools than in mainland China, thus
increasing the likelihood that the use of GIS software
will be common sooner in Hong Kong schools.
Japan
In Japan, another country with a national curriculum,
revised courses of study for social studies will be
implemented in 1994. World history will become a compulsory
course, which has created some concern among geography
teachers that this will erode the role of geography
in the social studies. In both the current and future
systems, only one year-long geography course is typically
offered and it is an elective. Teachers are looking
for ways to strengthen the perception of geography's
usefulness, which includes literacy in geographic skills
(such as GIS). The national geography curriculum states
that one of the objectives of the geography course
is "to cultivate the skills for geographical observation
and analysis." This objective coupled with one
of the main content elements of the course, "Geographical
Information and Maps", could provide an adequate
argument for the use of GIS to meet these aims. (Nakayama,
1992, p85)
Germany
Germany has a well established geography education program
that would be the envy of American geography teachers.
Education in Germany is the responsibility of the
state governments, however, the structure of schools
at the secondary level is the same throughout the country.
(At the secondary level students are tracked by having
to attend either a Hauptschule, Realschule, or Gymnasium
depending on intended educational path: basic education,
vocational training, or university, respectively).
(DES, 1990, 103) Geography is a major component of
the secondary education curriculum throughout Germany.
Although secondary school geography departments are
rare, the geography courses have remained distinct
and intact even through an effort in the late sixties
to integrate them with history and political science.
Geography teachers at all levels are specifically
educated to teach geography, with secondary teachers
often completing five to seven years of geography in
the university. (Trüper, 1990)
Following his glowing report on geography as an established subject in the German schools, Trüper does note some problems facing geography in Germany (which are somewhat reminiscent of those of Canada as noted by Thomas). These are budget cuts, lack of university enrollment in geography education, vague public support and understanding of geography's role in modern life, a lack of a good lobbying mechanism, and the inadequate support of computer use in geography instruction. In this last problem area, Trüper seems to idealize the U.S. situation, since there is a perception that the U.S. is well endowed with hardware and software. He also perceives the U.S. schools as having access to "various databanks." While his characterization of the technological advantage may not be unrealistic, the pedagogic use of these technologies in geography probably falls below his expectations. He laments that the "newest technologies" have not become available in their schools, which would indicate that GIS use would be limited until this situation is remedied; however, the ample offering of geography courses across the grades can serve as an excellent environment from which to introduce GIS concepts, discuss GIS applications and use in the work place, and even, with the technological improvements desired, host the use of GIS software. An example of the potential is the project week featured in the Realschule curriculum. (DES, 1990, 104) Geography project work is an excellent mode for the use of GIS in the schools.
Although these summaries do not represent a complete review of the geography curricula and the potential for GIS in the worlds schools, they help set the stage for comparisons with the current situation in the U.S. schools. The next section reviews the exciting developments in geographic instruction in the U.S. over the last decade. It also discusses how GIS use in the schools might be incorporated in geography instruction as a result of these changes.
New Directions in U.S. Geography Education
Despite the innovative efforts of the High School Geography Project, the geography learning of U.S. students continued to suffer. Although this low ability level was apparent to professional and academic geographers, it took a while for the public to take note and become vocal in support of increasing geographic literacy. (Natoli, 1988) During the 1980s the media began to publish the results of various polls, surveys, and other assessments that demonstrated the dismal performance of the U.S. student in the subject of geography. A 1983 Dallas Times Herald international study of student performance in geography and other subjects showed that over 20% of the tested twelve-year olds could not even identify the United States on a world map. (Joint Committee on Geographic Education, 1984) Also in 1983 the federal government's National Commission on Excellence in Education reported that "secondary school curricula have been homogenized, diluted, and diffused to the point that they no longer have a central purpose." This pattern is especially apparent for geography where "in 1960-1961, only 14 percent of America's 7-12 graders were enrolled in geography courses" and in a worsening trend "by the mid-1970s ... the figure had dropped to 9 percent." (Gardner, 1986, p2)
In 1988 the Education Testing Service, was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Geographic Society to produced a National Report Card to assess the geographic understanding of high school seniors. The results showed that as a group the seniors were, as Gilbert Grosvenor, the President of the National Geographic Society, put it, "geographically illiterate." This assessment also asked the students to report the amount of geography instruction they had received in their compulsory education. It is not surprising that the seniors claimed to have had little geography in their thirteen years of schooling. (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 1990) Tests of the geography knowledge of university seniors showed similar lackluster performance. (Natoli, 1988) To complete the circle, it is not surprising that a study of the educational backgrounds of social studies and geography teachers found that most of these teachers had inadequate formal preparation in geography. (Cirrincione, 1988)
This dismal status of geography education came to light at a time of increasing global awareness stimulated by the media (e.g., the end of the cold war, increased economic interdependence, and border-crossing environmental issues). This led to a public outcry supplying the political pressure which added state and federal officials to the ranks of the professional and academic geographers attempting improve geography education. In the last decade there have been a series of significant developments in this effort: The Guidelines for Geographic Education and its five fundamental themes in geography, the Geographic Education National Implementation Project (GENIP), the National Geographic Society Geography Education Program and its Geographic Alliance Network, the National Assessment of Educational Progress for geography, and the Geography Standards Project. Accompanying these frameworks and institutional movements have been "many new geography curriculum requirements, new national geography guidelines, new continuing ('in-service') training, and new and revised textbooks." (Hill, 1989, p592)
Guidelines and Five Themes
Even though the public became aware of the need for
educational reform in geography, many out of their
own ignorance thought the answer would be to return
to the rote learning of places and their major characteristics.
Geographers and geography teachers "realized
that the task of erasing geographical illiteracy was
twofold: first, to educate the general public that
geography is more than place-name knowledge and, second,
that the efforts to improve the geographical performance
of American students and teachers would be an enterprise
requiring the work of at least a generation and that
it would have to be a multi-pronged effort."
(Natoli, 1988, pp.ix-x) The flame that ignited this
necessary movement was kindled in 1982 when representatives
of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) and
the National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE)
began working on the Guidelines for Geographic Education.
The guidelines serve as a "current statement
for improving geographic education in the United States."
(Joint Committee on Geographic Education, 1984) Since
the guidelines were published in 1984, they have helped
"move geography into the U.S. educational consciousness
in a way that had not been achieved since the heyday
of the High School Geography Project." (Salter,
1992, p155)
The Guidelines explain the necessity of geography and emphasize the role of geographic inquiry. One section lists the skills for the high school geography curricula as: asking geographic questions, acquiring geographic information, presenting geographic information, analyzing geographic information, and developing and testing geographic generalizations. (Joint Committee on Geographic Education, 1984) [Although the Guidelines provide examples of each of these skills, a more thorough examination is found in Vuicich, et al. (1988).] The examples do not mention GIS explicitly, but much of the discussion of the skills could easily be interpreted as including GIS (e.g., integration of maps, use of electronic data). In fact, a GIS could be used to develop each of these skills, including acquiring geographic information since many GIS software packages are bundled with data and developed GIS applications store a wealth of data. The GIS could also serve as the repository for data that is collected by other means. GIS especially shines as a tool for data presentation, analysis, and generalization testing.
The Guidelines attempted to expand the public perception of geography by identifying five key themes common in geographical study that those unfamiliar with the breadth of the discipline could understand and apply. These themes (Location, Place, Relationships Within Places, Movement, and Regions) can be used as a tool for the elucidation geographical concepts at various educational levels. (Natoli and Gritzner, 1988; Joint Committee on Geographic Education, 1984) Although there has been some limited criticism (see Harper, 1990), for the most part the themes have been widely adopted as a framework for geography studies thanks in part to their clarity, widespread distribution, and acceptance by the geographical community. (Hill, 1991; Salter, 1992) Beyond their service to teachers as a method to organize geographic content, the themes are also being incorporated into geography and social studies curricula and textbooks. (Hill, 1991) Gersmehl (1992), a proponent of the five themes, responding with a musical analogy to a potential misuse of the themes--the five themes as the definitive outline of geographic content--notes that the themes are just that, themes that tread their way through many geographic courses (classical pieces) and help tie the facts and theories (notes, measures, movements) together. He also demonstrates that a theme may be expressed in alternate ways (counterpoint in music).
Whether or not Gersmehl's note of caution will achieve its intended purpose of limiting teacher and textbook writer misuse of the themes as a rigid structure for organizing geographic information, the themes are quickly becoming part of the geography education landscape. GIS activities and concepts may help express these themes in a way that will increase teacher effectiveness in using the themes to bring geography to life for their students. The following represent surmised uses of GIS within the five themes. A more careful study of this potential is left for future research.
Location, the position of a feature on the Earth's surface, could be demonstrated effectively in a GIS display. Relative locations could be compared at different scales, with varying levels of detail displayed, and in changing perspective (3-D, oblique views, orthophoto/digital map combinations). A GIS could emphasize the role of various reference systems for establishing an "absolute" location, since all features in a GIS are geographically referenced. The importance of locational reference could be demonstrated in some of the GIS analytical operations (e.g., distance or area calculation, inconsistent coordinates and the ensuing sliver polygons).
The second theme, Place, which is the physical and human characteristics of a location, could also be creatively developed with a GIS. By placing various characteristics of a location on different layers, the elements determining the nature of the place could be examined in various combinations. This could help show how place is subjective, though often the characteristics are objective. At a more basic level, the layers could show the students what characteristics existed at each location and how places differ. An example would be an ARCVIEW (or other software) representation of the countries of Africa and the different demographic, political, physiographic, and climatic features as demonstrated on separate or combined layers.
Relationships Within Places, which stresses humans interacting with their environments, could initially use a GIS to display key pieces of information in the human/environment interaction at a place. A more sophisticated use of the GIS, could be an analysis of potentials of an area to benefit or hinder human activity. For example, a combination of layers could attempt to model potential soil fertility. Discussion of necessary thresholds for various agricultural activities could emphasize the dependance of humans on the environment.
GIS in its display and analysis of networks is well suited to serve as an exemplar of Movement. Various aspects of the movement theme can be demonstrated, from simple display of airline service networks to analyses of urban traffic patterns or seasonal flows of migrant workers.
The last theme Regions can be demonstrated through GIS with its polygonal representation of map features. Simple one variable regions can be displayed. Various regions (homogeneous or classified "homogeneous" areas) could be overlaid to create new regions. Traditional global and national regions could also be displayed, but with the analysis capabilities and rapid update of information available in a GIS students could manipulate regional boundaries. This would help destroy the common misconception that regions are actual physical entities with established boundaries. Discussion of attempts to display fuzzy boundaries in a GIS could help the students decipher the difference between discrete and continuous variation through space.
It is important to note that GIS, while capable of exemplifying any of these themes, is merely one potential tool for geography education. It excels in the presentation and analysis of spatial data in digital graphic or tabular forms, but is limited in its ability to present certain concepts. In the example of place, the cultural milieu of an area may best be communicated through photographs, video, text, and cultural artifacts rather than the discrete phosphorous view provided by the GIS computer image. This example emphasizes that geography is not limited to the strong suit of GIS, spatial analysis.
Digital maps in a GIS, while easy to manipulate and update, often are missing the artistry of the traditional manually drafted maps and lack some of the visually explicit and subliminal information conveyed through the careful application of cartographic license. Therefore in some cases, despite the power of the GIS and relative truthfulness of data in its database, an alternate mode of data presentation may be more appropriate; however, for an increasing number of spatial data tasks such as managing, planning with, calculating, and updating spatial data, the automated power and relative positional accuracy of database elements make GIS ideal. Although GIS is not a panacea for lagging geographic understanding among today's youth and may not always be the best presentation medium, it is nevertheless a very powerful tool for reinvigorating geography instruction.
GENIP
Following the successful development of the Guidelines,
the American Geographical Society and the National
Geographic Society joined with the NCGE and AAG in
1985 to form the Geographic Education National Implementation
Project (GENIP). GENIP's purpose is to improve geography
education by activities and publications focussing
on teacher preparation, teaching materials, evaluation
of materials and programs, interaction between teachers
and university professors, and public relations. (Hill,
1989) As a consequence of GENIP's activities and membership,
"the educational world was prodded from a number
of sides about the critical significance of geographic
ignorance." (Salter, 1992, p155) Building on
the suggested learning outcomes highlighted in the
Guidelines for Geographic Education, GENIP published
more detailed frameworks of geographic concepts for
curriculum development in the elementary and secondary
schools. (Hill, 1989)
The 7-12 GENIP framework serves as a model for the development of the five themes into concrete learning opportunities for a group of example courses. This framework defines GIS in its glossary and specifically mentions the use of a GIS in one of the learning opportunities as a source of data. (There is, however, a vague sense that GIS may be erroneously seen by the framework writers, or at least portrayed to teachers, as mainly as a source of geographic information.) A group of the learning opportunities discuss the use of gridded data, which would tie-in well with an exposure to a raster GIS. The various learning opportunities listed often suggest the use of various geographic methods and media. There are no learning opportunities focussed on the student practice with and understanding of geographic skills and technologies. Since it is likely that very few secondary schools will devote a course to geographic techniques, the learning about the tools of the geographer must be integrated with the other learning opportunities in courses such as world geography or physical geography. (GENIP, 1989)
Since the guidelines and framework writers are predominantly from the human side of the discipline, it is not surprising that there are not many physical geography learning opportunities listed. In fact for the Movement theme, none were listed. This gross oversight has only recently been challenged by Bednarz, et al. (1993) in an article in which they suggest a set of physical geography learning opportunities for this theme. If the weakness in physical geography persists in the objectives supplied to teachers, a whole set of potential uses for GIS as an instructional tool will go unrealized. Despite some of the drawbacks, the framework does offer many salient options for incorporating GIS into instruction. For example, many of the learning opportunities listed in the 7-12 framework focus on map display, analysis of geographic information, and the use of computers, aerial photographs, remote sensing images, and statistical data.
National Geographic Society and The Geographic Alliance
Network
During the same period of these early GENIP activities,
the National Geographic Society (NGS), under the leadership
of Gilbert Grosvenor, became very active in promoting
geography in the schools. The NGS established a Geography
Education Program (GEP) in 1985 with the goal of restoring
"geography to America's classrooms so that students
can gain a better understanding of their world and
become more effective citizens." (Geography Education
Program, 1991, p9) The GEP picked up on an innovative
strategy of an alliance between geographers and educators
(representing a vertical integration of the different
education levels) initiated by Tom McKnight at UCLA.
UCLA served as the base for this California Geographic
Alliance which had as its primary goal the improvement
of geography teaching in the K-12 schools. (Gardner,
1986)
In 1985, Chris Salter, also at UCLA, organized a five-week summer geography institute for classroom teachers as an Alliance activity. The institute was designed to help teachers implement geography objectives in the new California State Model Curriculum Standards for social studies that had been created as a framework for local school district curriculum development. The institute also sought to demonstrate that the study of geography consists of more than just the memorization of names and details about various locations. (Salter, 1986) Following this first Alliance Institute, the NGS asked Salter to help them coordinate the development of Alliances in different states and conduct a national level summer institute in Washington. This first summer institute in 1986 and the eight charter state-based Geographic Alliances were the beginnings of the present Geographic Alliance Network which now includes all 50 states and Puerto Rico.
The NGS provides some of the funding for the State Alliances with the remainder coming from state government and other public and private sources. The GEP defines a geographic alliance as a "university-based, grass-roots organization that brings together the content expertise of academic geographers and the experience of classroom teachers to improve geography instruction." (Geography Education Program, 1991) The summer institutes have continued at both the state and national levels. Over 5000 teachers have been through these intensive learning opportunities and have impacted tens of thousands of teachers in their home school districts. In addition to the standard GEP summer institute, they have offered an Instructional Leadership Institute and an Educational Technology Leadership Institute (ETLI). Each ETLI, partially funded with a grant from IBM, focussed on the use of computers in geography instruction. (Strong, 1993)
The National Geographic Society's Geographic Education Program and the Geographic Alliance Network have had a dramatic impact on the teaching of geography in the nation's schools. The GEP has shown a strong commitment to the use of state-of-the-art technology in geography instruction as is evident by offering the ETLI, in the interactive video disk they have helped develop, and through recent interest in incorporating GIS and Remote Sensing-based learning activities into their program. (Grosvenor, 1989) The NCGIA is aiding the Alliance Network in their efforts to introduce teachers to GIS by offering summer workshops that provide a one-week concentrated exposure to GIS modeled on the prototype workshop described in Chapter 1. The Alliance members that attend these workshops return to their states to make presentations at their summer institutes and give in-services in their school districts. The Alliance Network will be an effective mechanism for increasing teacher awareness of GIS. As Hill (1989) notes "because of this nationwide movement, the need for new geography instructional materials has never been greater." As general interest in GIS rises in the schools, there will be also demand for curriculum materials that incorporate GIS activities and concepts and also for software that meets the needs of the schools. These NCGIA workshop attendees can serve as a pool of potential instructional materials writers who, in concert with software developers and GIS experts, can create GIS-based curriculum materials.
National Projects
As we have seen, concerned geographers, educators, professional
organizations (AAG, NCGE, AGS), and other organizations
(NGS), have contributed to a dramatic increase in the
status of geography in the schools. The political
mechanism has also played a role in this resurgence
of geography. In the early eighties the Nation at
Risk report on the status of education in the U.S.,
stimulated various educational reform activities.
(Hill, 1992) With strategic efforts by individuals
such as Gilbert Grosvenor and the organizations noted
above, geography was included in the agenda as reform
was discussed in various forums including the National
Governors Association. In 1990, the nation's governors
met with the president and agreed on the goals for
the reform. One of the six goals was that by the year
2000 students would excel in English, mathematics,
science, history, and geography. This goal was incorporated
into the Bush administration's America 2000 education
strategy. (Brand, 1992). The inclusion of geography
in the "big five" was a major accomplishment.
(Salter, 1992)
A recent out-growth of the America 2000 strategy was the Department of Education's 1991 grant for a framework which would outline what geography students should know in grades 4, 8, and 12 for the purpose of assessment. (Salter, 1992) This resulted in the Geography Assessment Framework which provides the guidelines for the development of a National Assessment of Educational Progress voluntary nation-wide geography assessment which will be administered in 1995. (Brand, 1992) This will include geography as one of the important subjects tested at a national level. The Geography Consensus Project, the team of individuals responsible for identifying the content of the Geography Assessment Framework, consisted of a 20 member Steering Committee and a 20 member Planning Committee representing a wide range of geographers, educators, and other national leaders. (Salter, 1992b) Many of these same individuals are participating in a parallel project, the Geography Standard Project. These "World Class" Standards will help states and individual school districts define the content and expected student performance levels in various geography courses. (Brand, 1992, Salter, 1992b)
The Geography Assessment Framework and the Geography Standards Project are major developments that will affect the nature of pre-collegiate geography education for years to come. The Framework clearly defines GIS as an important analytical tool in geography. Since this document is a framework, it does not attempt to identify every topic, subtopic, and technique that students should know, instead it identifies three content outcomes (Space and Place, Environment and Society, and Spatial Dynamics and Connections) and demonstrates the type of questions that might be asked at grades 4, 8, 12 employing three cognitive levels (knowing, understanding, and applying) for these content outcomes. (NAEP Geography Consensus Project, 1992) Although uses for GIS could be identified at any of the cells of the matrix formed by the three content outcomes and the three cognitive levels, one might argue that GIS, if available to students, should be employed when attempting to use the higher order thinking skills required in the application cognitive level (e.g., map-based multivariate analysis, network analysis, comparing spatial patterns). When teaching the concepts found in many of the sample questions for grade 12 in the content outcome category, Spatial Dynamics and Connections, a GIS could serve as an effect tool to improve student understanding (e.g., "use maps of agricultural land use in a variety of regions to draw conclusions about distance from market, value of product, and agricultural production" and "analyze and explain land value patterns in urban, suburban and rural areas" (NAEP Geography Consensus Project, 1992, pp38-39)).
So far the Geography Standards Project, which is much more explicit in terms of content and method, continues to be consistent with the direction set by the Framework in which GIS is highlighted as a common tool in geography. The draft version of these new National Geography Standards clearly articulates a role for GIS both as a topic of study (often as a database with map generation capabilities) and as a support for the exploration of various geographical concepts. (Geography Education Standards Project, 1993) Unfortunately, a reflection on the progress of the Standards Project indicates that there may be difficulty building consensus. (Wilbanks, 1993) Some of the difficulties may be based on traditional divergent philosophies of academic geographers, on the human/physical division, or perhaps on the role of advanced techniques such as GIS in pre-collegiate instruction. If these conflicting viewpoints do not reduce the strong role that GIS has both explicitly and implicitly in the draft standards, the final standards will encourage the further development of GIS software and materials for use in the classroom.
Geography Education and GIS
Wilbanks also notes that the place of geography among the other four major disciplines (science, math, English, and history) is not assured in the new national administration. He encourages geographers to continue to mobilize the "talent and energy" of their small discipline. The activities of the Geographic Alliance Network have effectively communicated the need for and ways to implement more geography education to the nation's teachers and schools; however, there is much to be done at the collegiate level. Undergraduates need to be inspired to be geography educators, teacher training programs need to prepare teachers for geography instruction, and academic geographers need to help in the development of curriculum materials by translating geographic knowledge, theory, and practice into a form appropriate for the schools. The demand for materials that will help teachers implement GIS concepts and software into their teaching will only increase. This is where the geographer and other professional who is a GIS user or developer can participate in this effort to solidly establish geography in the schools.
As noted earlier, GIS while capable of demonstrating aspects of geography as understood in the "five themes" construct, also has shortcomings. Some geographers may object to the use of GIS in communicating the heart of geography. Those approaching this issue from certain cultural, socialist, feminist, and other strands of geographic thought may see the digital world view and GIS-based education as narrow or even misguided; however, many geographers explain the discipline in terms that emphasize the role for geographic tools such as GIS.
A geographer with a fairly broad perspecitve, Peter Haggett (1983), lists the orthodox structure of geography as philosophical, systematic (physical and human), regional, and techniques. Clearly, GIS falls squarely in the techniques category, but it also plays a significant part in the systematic and regional camps. This is evident in Haggett's synthesis of the aspects of these two branches, labeling these integrated pursuits: spatial analysis, ecological analysis, and regional complex analysis. Each of these types of analysis may utilize GIS as a tool. Thus, in his classification scheme for the sub-fields of the discipline, the only branch that does not have a clearly identifiable role for GIS is the philosophic. This category includes History of Geography, which when attempting to record recent times will not be able to escape the impact, for better or worse, that GIS has had on the discipline.
Despite the support Haggett's breakdown seems to provide to GIS-based education, there are still inherent limitations in GIS. Some of these relate directly to general questions on the appropriate role of technology in learning and in society at large (Chapter 3 reviews some of these issues.) Others are tied to the structure of data in a GIS The necessary dependance on coordinate geography creates a view of information that, although more accurate in an absolute sense, can end up creating more confusion in the mind of the layperson or student used to the representation space found on a standard reference map or in their own mental map. Some methods of gathering and displaying information utilized by the humanist geographer may also not be portable to the mathematically structured GIS database. Despite the reservations that some geographers may hold with regard to GIS-based education, GIS is clearly "at home" in geography and logically has much to offer to many areas of study within the discipline.
This review of the renaissance of geography in the schools and the potential role for GIS highlights the most obvious discipline for GIS-aided instruction and for instruction in GIS. As noted by the teachers at the prototype GIS in the Schools workshop, there are other disciplines that will also benefit from GIS. These include a few subject areas that are clearly linked to geography: earth science, environmental studies, oceanography, history, political science, and economics. Other subjects (e.g., English, foreign language, biology, chemistry, etc.) that may not be as obviously connected to geography might also find use for GIS and thus discover that geography really has a role in enhancing the study of that discipline, strengthening the perception of geography as the great integrating subject.
If geography can be seen as vital discipline, situations in which reasonable professionals demonstrate their spatial ignorance (often wasting valuable time, resources, and perhaps in some cases human life) can be avoided. Dobson (1991) notes an example of this spatial deficiency in a case where various groups of scientists studying lake acidification in a region ignored the effects of a key weather event due to a misunderstanding of scale, mis-identified samples because of confusion about where they were, and mislabeled the dominant tree type by not noting an obvious classification error on their satellite image. Exposure of students to GIS at a young age may help them use that technology appropriately later in life. The use of GIS to aid the instruction in basic geographic concepts may help reduce the quantity of, often costly, spatial errors which are made by individuals in their daily lives.
Since GIS represents not only an expression of geographic knowledge, but also is the practical outworking of a series of technological innovations, the next chapter explores the role of technology and GIS in the schools.