Geography Education and Pedagogy

Geography education research examines how people learn to understand space, place, and the relationships between human and natural systems, with particular attention to the methods and tools that make geographic reasoning stick. A central concern is how students develop spatial thinking—the ability to interpret maps, recognize patterns across landscapes, and connect local observations to broader processes—through approaches ranging from hands-on fieldwork to GIS-based analysis and, more recently, virtual field trips that extend classroom boundaries. Researchers are actively working out which combinations of experiential and technology-mediated learning produce genuine conceptual understanding versus surface familiarity, and how students' own perceptions of geographic learning shape what they take away from it. Open questions include how to make critical spatial thinking accessible across varied educational contexts and how digital tools can complement, rather than substitute for, the irreplaceable complexity of direct engagement with real places.

Works

40,749

Total citations

126,077

Keywords

Geography EducationSpatial ThinkingExperiential LearningGeographic Information SystemsFieldworkActive Learning