The objective of this research was to determine if and to what extent students' learning of geographic concepts can be improved through incorporation of hands-on play with Play-Doh® and LEGO® and geospatial technologies, specifically drones. The project team conducted six months of biweekly, collaborative instruction at Comstock Middle School in…

Do more natural settings improve students' learning? We collected surveys immediately following 283 U.S.-based environmental education (EE) field trip programs for youth and used land cover data to examine the relationship between levels of naturalness, defined as the percentage of natural land cover of the EE field trip site, and student learning…

The Action Mapping Project (AMP) is a youth-oriented participatory action project that conducts research and education programs in high schools and middle schools in Tacoma, Washington. AMP uses participatory community mapping to generate new forms of data and conducts educational programs with high school students that center on the use of GIS…

The benefits of outdoor education are well known and irreplaceable. Teachers of environmental lessons frequently ask themselves what kind of cartographic support (paper maps or mobile navigators) to offer their students doing fieldwork either navigating to selected points or being engaged in the research of a selected environment. In this article,…

Computers and geospatial technologies such as Geographic Information Systems, Google Earth, and the Global Positioning System (GPS) are increasingly common tools for geography instruction in schools. The NAEP Data Explorer was used to conduct an analysis of geography achievement in the eighth grade based on differences in students' access to and…

This article describes the findings of a qualitative phenomenographic study that explored students' engagement from the perspective of the students. It describes how the participants perceived their engagement when they learned social studies using GIS Story Maps. Qualitative data collection involved classroom observations, student-written…

Using data is foundational to school leadership; however, when "data" are narrowly construed as academic outcomes, important data perceived as tangential to academics can be backgrounded, ignored, or unused. Today's school leaders must also attend to data around chronic absenteeism, discipline, learning climate, and social, emotional,…

The use of surveys and GIS mapping allows one to more readily examine spatial relationships that may occur. Greater attention may be paid to understanding these clusters and develop better individualized interventions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the bullying in a population of nearly 600,000 students who represent a population of…

Ever want to take a quick, deep-dive into a map found in students' textbooks? Ever want to use a web-based map to bring that static, print map to life? Maybe the map would be better with interactive or near real-time data. This article discusses the new Earth Science GeoInquiries! Earth Science GeoInquiries from Esri are instructional resources…

For decades, educators have hoped to integrate geospatial tools into K-12 classrooms but struggled with barriers of time, technology, and curriculum alignment. The authors formed a design partnership with ninth-grade science and social studies teachers in an urban high school in order to conduct teacher professional development while also…

Numerous educators have noted that Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a powerful tool for social studies teaching and learning. Yet the use of GIS has been hampered by issues such as the cost of the software and the management of large spatial data files. One trend that shows great promise for GIS in education is the move to cloud computing.…

This article reports the results of a case study that employed user-centered design to develop training tutorials for helping middle school social studies teachers use Web-based GIS in their classrooms. This study placed teachers in the center of the design process in planning, designing, and developing the tutorials. This article describes how…

Spatial literacy is a new frontier in K-12 education. This article describes a place-based introductory GIS/GPS middle school curriculum unit in which students used measuring tools, GPS units, and My World GIS software to collect physical and spatial data of trees to create a schoolyard tree inventory. Maine students completed "memory…

Aerial imagery has a great capacity to engage and maintain student interest while providing a contextual setting to strengthen their ability to reason proportionally. Free, on-demand, high-resolution, large-scale aerial photography provides both a bird's eye view of the world and a new perspective on one's own community. This article presents an…

Both "teaching" and "teaching" with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are "wicked problems," in the sense that they involve multiple variables that interact with one another. Effective teaching calls for both learning with understanding and transfer. The authors' own experience implementing a geography and…