This research describes how enrolling students in an afterschool Geography Club affects their perception of the discipline and their geographic literacy. The creation of the afterschool club at this particular school came out of the recognition of the need to increase students' exposure to geographical content. The results of this study show the…

Functional literacy is important in both English/language arts and geography. Using the "found poetry" strategy, students will summarize a piece of text, identify main ideas and find geographic connections. While using young adult literature is a great way to incorporate geography into English/language arts classroom, understanding of geography…

This research has been conducted to reveal the secondary school students' perceptions in relation with metaphors about the "geography" concept. A total of 110 students attending to secondary schools in Karabuk city center joined the research within the 2009-2010 academic year. Following questions were searched to answer: 1-Which…

The cornerstone of sound social studies pedagogy is the ability of teachers to use materials that spur students to think critically, reflect honestly, and to participate purposefully and passionately. This article illustrates how elementary teachers can use select children's literature that prompts students to think critically about their…

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…

Through an instructional approach, this article offers a template for a classroom-based geography capstone course grounded in pedagogical elements of synthesis and reflection, as based on exploration of ten key geographic ideas. It provides insights into course goals, structure, and components for instructors who may wish to implement it in…

Consistent with developments in American education pedagogy, geography educators have made great strides exploring a wide range of high- and low-tech methods for teaching and learning geographic concepts. This article draws on a qualitative analysis of essays in which college students discuss tenets of the National Geography Standards in the…

This document provides the framework to guide the development of the assessment instruments for the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in geography. Altogether, four documents will be designed to guide the geography assessment and this Assessment Framework is the first. This framework is designed to assess the outcomes of…

The Center for Global Geography Education (CGGE) is a set of online modules exploring geographic issues, which allow collaborative analysis and discussion between international teams of undergraduates. Using data from trials held in 10 countries, the modules' effectiveness in improving student understanding of geographic concepts and appreciation…

Assessment is a key component of the learning process. In order to maximize student learning, instructors need to provide students with appropriate, explicit and timely assessment. Despite the potential benefits of problem-based learning, some instructors may be reluctant to adopt this approach because it will require them to modify their current…

The Delaware Geography-Health Initiative is a Web- and GIS-based set of lesson units for teaching geographic concepts and research methods within the context of the state's high school geography standards. Each unit follows a research-based, inquiry-centered model addressing questions of health because of Delaware's high incidence of cancer,…

The author describes methods for using picture books to teach geography in middle school. Introducing students to geographic regions through narrative and visual text can provide background information about the area, stimulate student interest in the culture, and facilitate student comprehension of geographic concepts. The author provides…

Programs in geographic information systems (GIS) and related areas (e.g., GPS, remote sensing) have become important additions to the curriculum at colleges and universities of all sizes and types, including tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) such as Haskell Indian Nations University. This article discusses the recent development of a GIS…

In last month's column, the authors examined the different kinds of maps that exist in everyday life. In this month's column, they experience, through simulation, the skills that are required of a cartographer. A cartographer is a person who practices the art of making maps. Cartographers' maps were often unique, visual representations of data.…

Learning science includes learning to argue with "inscriptions": images used to symbolize information persuasively. This study examined sixth-graders learning to invest inscriptions with representational status, in a geographic information system (GIS)-based science investigation. Learning to reason with inscriptions was studied in emergent…