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Field-based education is interactive, hands-on, and based on real world experience and methodology, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has faced special challenges. As many institutions may struggle to maintain this vital component of geographic education, this resource paper aims to illustrate the impacts of the pandemic and provide some strategies to overcome the challenges from the experience of teaching a field methods course at a university in Texas. While many studies have focused on evaluating field instruction amidst the pandemic, our commentary focuses on both a ground-based perception from instructors and students and a comparison before and after the outbreak of the pandemic. We found that virtual attendance is disadvantageous to teaching and learning, and transferable skills like teamwork and communication are compromised due to a reduction in social interaction. However, intrapersonal skills such as observation, note-taking, and organization were better received in students' learning. Students expressed minimal safety concerns about the on-campus fieldwork given the conformity to the safety and health protocols. Based on the existing literature and our experience, we conclude with four generalized recommendations to share with colleagues in a similar situation, hoping to help retain the critical role of field-based education even under disruption.

This study examined the successes and struggles that teachers experience while incorporating geospatial technologies (GST) into their lessons. Fourteen teachers' GST-integrated classroom lessons developed at the final stage of a semester-long graduate course were evaluated, using a TPACK-based GST-integrated lesson assessment rubric. The TPACK-related strengths and weaknesses of the lessons illuminate the challenges the participants faced while trying to incorporate GST into practice. Overall, participants were proficient in aligning the selected GST with the curriculum goals or instructional strategies targeted. However, some participants struggled with fitting all three TPACK components--geography content, pedagogy, and GST--together.

Discussions are one of the activity types that help students build their content-related background knowledge, understanding, and concepts through various communication approaches. Students express and share their perspectives and ideas with other students through a small- or large-group discussion. The formats of discussions may vary; they may be synchronous or asynchronous and structured or unstructured. Because geography is a field of study addressing real-world issues, discussions are a particularly important pedagogy to understand geographical concepts and to come up with solutions for those issues. Through classroom discussions, students become active learners, improve their critical thinking skills, embrace diverse perspectives, and develop higher-order thinking skills. These are essential skill sets not only for geography learning but also for other courses and can be built upon throughout the high school curriculum. Discussions also help teachers determine the level of students' understanding of concepts. In this paper, we share an effective way of utilizing traditional face-to-face discussions with some suggestions for video discussions in the Advanced Placement Human Geography (APHG) classroom and helpful hints for successful discussions.

The Advanced Placement Human Geography (APHG) exam consists of two sections: sixty multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and three free-response questions (FRQs); both sections have equal percentages in the exam weighting (College Board 2020). Because the main motivation of the students taking this course is to earn college credit by scoring a three or higher on a scale of five, being successful in the APHG exam is particularly significant. Among any other activity types, taking a quiz or test may be the most direct way to help students prepare for the APHG exam. Taking a quiz or test belongs to convergent knowledge expression activities, where students demonstrate their prior knowledge building on structured forms, and is frequently used to review and examine students' understanding and expressions of knowledge. This paper introduces two useful approaches for the MCQ and FRQ sections--AP Classroom's Personal Progress Checks (PPCs) and Google Forms--to evaluate students' level of understanding, help them prepare for the APHG exam, and ultimately improve their learning. Using these two technology-based approaches has been particularly beneficial during the COVID-19 pandemic because the instructions should be flexible to meet the need (in-classroom, hybrid, or virtual), and the College Board has offered online testing options.

In this paper, the authors introduce a student project that can help students stay engaged in Advanced Placement Human Geography (APHG) classrooms through the end of the year, through a project that can be implemented after the APHG exam is given. The tight curriculum schedule of APHG leaves little room for implementing student-centered learning activities in the middle of the school year. Once the exam is completed in early May, however, the challenge pivots to holding student interest and engagement through the end of the school year. This culminating project requires students to synthesize topics and concepts in APHG that they have learned throughout the year in a fun, engaging, and active learning environment. The project also supports student lifetime skills including conducting research, creating visual representations and models, collaborating with peers, and presenting research findings and products. Teachers can use it as a final semester project to ensure that the rigor of the course is consistent for the whole semester.

The purpose of this article is to introduce two easy-to-use analytical tools--OPTIC (Overview; Parts; Title; Interrelationships; and Conclusion) and SCRAP (Spatial-Temporal; Conditions, Connections, or Comparisons; Region; Aura, Association, or Analog; Pattern or Exceptions)--that can help teachers guide student learning with maps and photos. OPTIC and SCRAP support students' higher-order thinking as they process and analyze photos and maps, rather than just look at them. Both are perfect tools for daily warm-up activities in Advanced Placement Human Geography (APHG) classrooms to facilitate student learning of geography while they practice the four F's. In using these tools for a systematic analysis of maps and photos, students can determine their own approaches to understanding the content and intersections between themes in geography. The acronyms help students remember the structure and steps and go through the strategies in a proper order. They are effective and help students avoid becoming overwhelmed in writing from geographical or spatial perspectives.

This paper introduces four local field studies designed and conducted by two Advanced Placement Human Geography (APHG) teachers. All of these activities were designed for ninth-graders taking APHG courses. Both teachers implement multiple instances of field study in different units of the APHG curriculum throughout the academic year (e.g., two times in each semester). The four activities were selected to introduce a variety of local field studies across different APHG topics and spatial scales. The aim of the field studies was to encourage students to experience the real world and apply APHG knowledge in their daily lives. The students are natural geographers, and field study can show the real connection and application of what they learn with the real world. The local field studies help students develop geographical and critical perspectives and understanding how the world works. The four field study examples will show how local field study can be conducted and intertwined with the APHG curriculum.

Offering up-to-date information and diverse perspectives on issues, online information can be a valuable resource that supplements traditional course materials like textbooks. In this paper, the source types that students' use for a course assignment and the criteria they apply to determine usefulness of the online information are examined. Sixty-five undergraduate students enrolled in a world geography course in fall 2015 were asked to search for 20 sources of online information about recent changes in oil prices and then to rank the sources based on their usefulness for understanding the topic. The findings will provide instructors with insights for guiding students' appropriate use of online information for academic tasks and lifelong learning.

A wide variety of research is being completed and published in geography education. The purpose of this article is to provide a general overview of the different types of methodologies, research designs, and techniques used by geography education researchers. Analyzing three geography education journals, we found 191 research articles published about geography education, of which, 55 used a quantitative design, 65 used a qualitative design, and 71 used mixed methods. This article highlights specific articles to provide examples of how a variety of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods techniques were conducted and presented in the literature. The implications of this article is to provide geography education researchers with guidance when reporting research results in an effort to promote replicability and longitudinal research. Geography education benefits from all types of methodological designs and techniques, each serving a different purpose based upon the individuals' inquires and research questions.

Marsh et al.'s tests of appropriate spatial relationship concepts were administered to groups of college students to determine whether learning GIS enhances students' overall ability to generate and recognize fundamental spatial relationship concepts. 119 undergraduate students enrolled in various GIS courses and in non-GIS courses participated in the study. We found that learning GIS helps enhance students' ability to generate and recognize some spatial concepts, those explicitly learned in relation to the tools and functions of GIS software. The result indicates that students' understanding of many of the spatial relationship concepts are acquired incidentally rather than explicitly or intentionally.

Based on students' reflections and testimonials, we examined what it takes to help students become engaged in an online course designed with educators and education researchers in mind. The purpose of this paper is to provide the readers with insights into creating an online learning environment where students succeed by taking active roles and responsibility for their own learning process.

Few studies, if any, have systematically investigated the connection or relationship between geography curriculum and scientific literacy. With this realization, in this article, we examined the potential contribution of geography curriculum to developing students' scientific literacy, with China's middle-school geography curriculum as an example. Through content analysis and semi-structured interviews, we found that geography curriculum holds significant potential to develop scientific literacy, especially regarding interpreting data in various formats, scientific reasoning, and interrelationships among science, technology, society, and environment. This study could provide insights for educators to design interdisciplinary programs to develop students' scientific literacy.

Although geography education researchers in both China and Korea acknowledge that the education of spatial thinking and the development of teachers' dispositions toward teaching spatial thinking are important, very few studies are available on the topic. This article examines the dispositions of Chinese and Korean geography preservice teachers' dispositions toward teaching spatial thinking through geography, and it identifies the similarities and differences between the two countries. A survey was conducted with 979 Chinese and 323 Korean geography preservice teachers using the "Teaching Spatial Thinking through Geography Disposition Inventory." Overall, both Chinese and Korean preservice teachers showed low-to-moderate dispositions toward teaching spatial thinking in their future classrooms. Chinese participants exhibited more positive dispositions in all five subcategories of the disposition inventory than did their Korean counterparts. Participants from both countries expressed low confidence in utilizing geospatial technologies. No specific score differences were observed by gender, grade level, and overall geography course experiences. The results reveal the current conditions of spatial thinking education in China and Korea and will help to establish strategies for successful spatial thinking education in geography in the future.

This 45 minute inquiry lesson can be used for a high school world geography or AP Human Geography course when the class discusses various issues regarding world energy resources. The lesson focuses on two particular issues: fossil fuel dependency and the growing energy demand. Students will examine the geographic distribution of current energy production and consumption, analyze the relationship among energy accessibility, economic development, and population growth to make predictions on future trends, and speculate on policy implications for energy and the environment in different countries. Students will work with web-based maps to understand fossil fuel dependency and growing energy demand. The lesson was designed for teachers to initiate the inquiry process and set the context by ASKING geographic questions, then to have students engage in the inquiry process by ACQUIRING and mapping geographic data.

Empirical evidence is insufficient on the specific roles GIS learning plays in developing students’ understanding various spatial concepts. The present study aims to draw attention to common struggles of learning some spatial concepts in geography and offer directions for future research on GIS learning and the development of student spatial concept lexicon. Three types of technical terms – neutral, helpful associations, and hindering associations – by Glessmer and Brose (2014) provided an excellent framework to explain why some concepts are more or less difficult for students to grasp. Our findings suggest that learning map scale and map projection are relatively easy because they are neutral and introduced as a new vocabulary. Overlay and density are terms provoking helpful associations because they carry a similar meaning in everyday language, so most students had no problems understanding the meaning of these concepts. Spatial association seemed to elicit unhelpful association because everyday use of the term, association, is not precise enough to define spatial association, resulting in students confused with other terms. Future research must be done in the context of GIS requiring students to be able to not only know spatial concepts but clearly articulate these concepts regarding various GIS applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the successes and struggles that teachers experience while incorporating geospatial technologies (GST) into their lessons. Fourteen teachers' GST-integrated classroom lessons developed at the final stage of a semester-long graduate course were evaluated, using a TPACK-based GST-integrated lesson assessment rubric. The TPACK-related strengths and weaknesses of the lessons illuminate the challenges the participants faced while trying to incorporate GST into practice. Overall, participants were proficient in aligning the selected GST with the curriculum goals or instructional strategies targeted. However, some participants struggled with fitting all three TPACK components–geography content, pedagogy, and GST–together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advocates for geographic information system (GIS) education contend that learning about GIS promotes students' spatial thinking. Empirical studies are still needed to elucidate the potential of GIS as an instructional tool to support spatial thinking in other geography courses. Using a non-equivalent control group research design, this study examines the effect of using Web-based GIS in a world geography course on the development of students' spatial thinking abilities. The findings indicate that Web-based GIS activities implemented in this study significantly enhanced students' spatial thinking skills.

Twenty-four pre-service teachers participated in a workshop designed to provide explicit opportunities to learn what spatial thinking is and how to incorporate it into teaching practice. The objectives of this paper are to: (1) examine the educational effect of the workshop on pre-service teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and (2) provide geographers who prepare teachers in higher education with insights into effective ways to address PCK to teach spatial thinking in teacher preparation programs. The findings of this study indicate that explicit instruction in teaching spatial thinking is necessary and effective to develop pre-service teachers' PCK.

The primary objectives of this article are: (1) to conceptualize teacher dispositions related to teaching spatial thinking in geography classrooms; and (2) to propose an exemplar assessment that can be used to prepare teachers who are disposed toward teaching spatial thinking through geography. A detailed description of the construction procedures and potential uses of the assessment are presented with suggestions for future research and applications.

Field-based education is interactive, hands-on, and based on real world experience and methodology, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has faced special challenges. As many institutions may struggle to maintain this vital component of geographic education, this resource paper aims to illustrate the impacts of the pandemic and provide some strategies to overcome the challenges from the experience of teaching a field methods course at a university in Texas. While many studies have focused on evaluating field instruction amidst the pandemic, our commentary focuses on both a ground-based perception from instructors and students and a comparison before and after the outbreak of the pandemic. We found that virtual attendance is disadvantageous to teaching and learning, and transferable skills like teamwork and communication are compromised due to a reduction in social interaction. However, intrapersonal skills such as observation, note-taking, and organization were better received in students' learning. Students expressed minimal safety concerns about the on-campus fieldwork given the conformity to the safety and health protocols. Based on the existing literature and our experience, we conclude with four generalized recommendations to share with colleagues in a similar situation, hoping to help retain the critical role of field-based education even under disruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the location and varying spatiality of questions in geography textbooks. The results show that study questions posed in page margins address the three components of spatial thinking--concepts of space, using tools of representation, and processes of reasoning--more than questions in other locations within the text. Three practices are particularly recommended to help students develop spatial thinking skills through answering textbook questions: (1) utilize page-margin questions; (2) select questions around spatial representations; and (3) focus on higher-level cognitive processes. (Contains 9 figures and 3 tables.)

One measure of the impact of a new idea in geography education is how well it is incorporated into teachers' everyday practice. "Spatial thinking" is not really a new idea in geography education; spatial analysis has long been one of its core traditions, but the use of the term is novel and only beginning to be widely used. By spatial thinking the authors mean the use of spatial concepts such as distance, direction, and region; tools of representation like maps and graphs; along with the appropriate thinking processes, to conceptualize and solve problems. The purpose of this article is to help teachers incorporate spatial thinking into their instruction through a concrete tool, a taxonomy of spatial thinking, applied to the tried and true pedagogical strategy of questioning, both in texts and in classroom contexts. The authors' central premise is that students' spatial thinking can, and should, be facilitated by the careful design, selection, and use of questions. The authors begin by offering a brief review of types of questions, distinguishing between spatial thinking questions and other lower- and higher-order questions. They next introduce the tool to evaluate questions from a spatial thinking perspective, followed by suggestions for applications of the taxonomy. Throughout they use concrete examples to help guide understanding and to provide practice to ensure implementation into classrooms. (Contains 3 figures.)

This article examines whether questions embedded in geography textbooks address three components of spatial thinking: concepts of space, tools of representation, and processes of reasoning. A three-dimensional taxonomy of spatial thinking was developed and used to evaluate questions in four high school level geography textbooks. The results indicate that textbook questions focus on low-level spatial concepts more frequently than high-level spatial concepts; few questions require students to create various kinds of spatial representations; and textbook questions only rarely encourage higher-order cognitive skills. The study provides insights on the design and use of textbook questions to foster learning to think spatially. (Contains 2 tables and 5 figures.)

This study examined the effect of a minimal Web-based GIS experience within a semester-long methods course on enhancing preservice teachers' dispositions regarding the use of geospatial technologies for teaching. Fourteen preservice teachers enrolled in a senior-level methods course offered in geography and focused exclusively on how to teach geography in K-12 classrooms participated in the study. The findings of the study indicate that Web-based GIS activities had a positive impact on participants' beliefs, attitudes, and confidence in GST implementation and teaching spatial thinking in their future classrooms.

It is necessary for teachers to check what students should do: what students should observe and investigate in the field and what should be done for reflecting on students overall field study. Every student is different, so teachers should know their students and assess what kind of help and instruction students need during field study. The teacher might also direct students to pay attention to signs posted in and around the store, as they might help students understand the store's role in the ethnic community. Prior to student visits, the teacher should prepare students by establishing behavior guidelines. [Extracted from the article]

In this paper, we introduce a student project that can help students stay engaged in the course through the end of the year, through a project that can be implemented after the APHG exam is given. During the first few days, the teacher should make sure that students focus on the APHG concepts and geographic nature of the task and not become obsessed with a portion of the project title: Zombie Apocalypse. Despite a myriad of possible benefits, there are challenges when incorporating student projects and/or research in Advanced Placement Human Geography (APHG) classrooms. Project-based learning (PBL) is "a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging, and complex question, problem, or challenge" (Buck Institute for Education [2]). [Extracted from the article]

These strategies also facilitate student engagement and peer learning through group work and class discussions over the maps and photos. Then, students examine the map of the day, carefully read the SCRAP map analysis questions, and see whether or how each of the spatial thinking questions could be applied to the map. There are many photo and map prompts in Advanced Placement Human Geography (APHG) exams, so not being able to interpret and analyze them may cause students to miss important clues for those questions. Geography textbooks are full of visuals such as maps and photos, yet they are easily overlooked in class because teachers and students tend to focus mostly on text. [Extracted from the article]

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