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The ubiquity and ease with which microbial cells disperse over space is a key concept in microbiology, especially in microbial ecology. The phenomenon prompted Baas Becking's famous "everything is everywhere" statement that now acts as the null hypothesis in studies that test the dispersal limitation of microbial taxa. Despite covering the content in lectures, exam performance indicated that the concepts of dispersal and biogeography challenged undergraduate students in an upper-level Microbial Ecology course. Therefore, we iteratively designed a hands-on classroom activity to supplement the lecture content and reinforce fundamental microbial dispersal and biogeography concepts while also building quantitative reasoning and teamwork skills. In a class period soon after the lecture, the students formed three-to-five-person teams to engage in the activity, which included a hands-on dispersal simulation and worksheet to guide discussion. The simulation involved stepwise neutral immigration or emigration and then environmental selection on a random community of microbial taxa represented by craft poms. The students recorded the results at each step as microbial community data. A field guide was provided to identify the taxonomy based on the pom phenotype and a reference to each taxon's preferred environmental niches. The worksheet guided a reflection of student observations during the simulation. It also sharpened quantitative thinking by prompting the students to summarize and visualize their and other teams' microbial community data and then to compare the observed community distributions to the idealized expectation given only selection without dispersal. We found that the activity improved student performance on exam questions and general student satisfaction and comfort with the biogeography concepts. Activity instructions and a list of needed materials are included for instructors to reproduce for their classrooms.

In the late-2000s, Washington, DC achieved national notoriety for its embrace of market accountability in public schools and support for a steadily expanding charter sector. At the same time, the DC government pursued a concerted effort to attract new residents and investment to the city, a project that bore fruit in the form of some of the highest levels of gentrification in the country. Most of the research exploring intersections between charterization and gentrification has focused on the school choice decisions of gentrifier parents and school enrollment patterns. This paper illuminates the geography of opening and closing schools in DC--both charter and District-operated--between 1997 and 2017 and describes the intersection of those processes with patterns of gentrification and neighborhood change across the city. A detailed description of how this played out in one gentrifying neighborhood supplements the citywide analysis.

Scholars have become increasingly interested in identifying a more effective set of core teaching practices for developing teacher education and professional development programs. Although they have conducted many investigations within this realm over the past two decades, these efforts have focused mainly upon science, language arts, math, and music. The existing body of academic literature contains only a few studies that examine the social studies context, and this deficiency ignores the field of geography. The current study addressed this gap in the literature by exploring the core practices of geographic inquiry. A Delphi method was used to identify the core practices for teaching geographic inquiry. The findings were derived from a three-round Delphi panel survey involving 27 experts in the geography education field, helping to build consensus around a set of core secondary school geography teaching practices. The results revealed that experts considered eight practices to be core for facilitating geographic inquiry: (1) use geographic questions; (2) explain geographic concepts, principles, and processes; (3) select and adapt geographic sources; (4) use geographic/spatial representation and geospatial technology tools; (5) develop geographic reasoning; (6) evaluate sources and employ geographic evidence; (7) construct geographic explanations and predictions; and (8) develop informed-geographic action. These eight core practices for facilitating geographic inquiry do not function separately; rather, they operate simultaneously and in an interconnected manner in which more than one practice works to facilitate inquiry.

Student translators at the College of Language Sciences take a Media and Political Translation course in which they translate the latest news stories, media and political texts and terminology. This study proposes a model for integrating Gaza-Israeli war terminology and texts in translation instruction to familiarize the students with terminology such as names of weapons (grenades, mortar, drones, missiles, Merkava, Cornet anti-armor, mortar shells), toponyms(Khan Younis, Maghazi, Sderot, Ashkelon), crossings (Rafah, Erez), Jihadist groups and brigades (Islamic Jihad, Golani), military actions (incursion, bombing, shelling, genocide, displacement) war metaphors (target bank, carpet bombing, scorched earth, fire belt, Philadelphia Axis, Hannibal's plan), (UNRWA, Gaza hospitals, starvation, humanitarian aid) and others. English and Arabic texts can be collected from mainstream media as RT, BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera and Al-Ghad. A class blog can be created for posting translations, corrections, discussions, and feedback. The students can practice full, summary, and conceptual translation and avoid word-for-word translation. They can watch news stories about the Gaza-Israel war, write a summary translation of it and receive comments and feedback. Beginners can translate short news excerpts (few lines). Students make sure their translations are cohesive, make sense and are easy to read. Students should use Google Translate and artificial intelligence (AI) with caution and should read the same news story in both English and Arabic to get used to the terminology and their equivalents. The instructor serves as a facilitator. Further instructional guidelines and recommendations are given.

In this article, I discuss how walking as mapping serves as a method for observing and disrupting spatial geopolitics, opening possibilities for alternative systems of living. I explore three theoretical perspectives--posthumanism, Indigenous and decolonializing theories of land, and Black geography--that, while distinct, nonetheless share some overlapping characteristics: the recognition and contestation of knowledge systems, the turn toward a relational ethics of living, and a call for critical and creative methods of mapping. intervention into existing systems. In the final half of the paper, I consider these orientations and their call for creative and critical methods of intervention as I review my scholarship on walking and how it has served as a form of counterstory mapping.

Environmental damage is a negative effect of human activities. The young generation is saddled with the burden of environmental damage left by the previous generations and must take on a role as an agent of change in improving the environment. This study analyses the pro-environmental behaviour of Indonesian students, the factors affecting such behaviour, and efforts to improve those behaviours. This research uses a quantitative approach with survey methods. Four hundred seventy (470) students in the department of geography and department of geography education from various public and private universities in Indonesia have participated as research respondents. The research instrument used was a questionnaire employing the Likert scale. The research variables were environmental knowledge (X1), environmental responsibility (X2), value-belief--norm (X3), environmental education (X4), and pro-environmental behaviour (Y). Data were analysed using path analysis through partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) software version 3. Findings revealed high levels of pro-environmental behaviour, affected by environmental knowledge, environmental responsibility, value-belief-norm, and environmental education having convincing positive effects on forming environmental behaviour.

The use of navigation applications changed the way people find their way in an unfamiliar environment. A combination of maps, images and textual route instructions shown (or with audio) on one screen guides the user to the destination but may sometimes be overwhelming. This article investigated the spatial knowledge participants acquired after being presented with different types of route instructions, human and computer-generated, in an online wayfinding task using Google Streetview (without the 2D map) of an unfamiliar environment. The results showed a significant difference in the wayfinding performance for deviations from computer-generated instructions, whilst there was no difference in the time spent and the scene recall. Sketch maps revealed both route-like and survey-like characteristics. But most sketch maps are characterised by high route-likeness. Furthermore, this study showed a significant effect of the environmental layout on the participant's performance based on deviations incurred during wayfinding. The results of this study have implications for improving navigation system instructions and design as well as for learning with geospatial technologies.

In the last few years, international student mobility has been disrupted not only by the global health crisis resulting from the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic but also adversely affected by the rise of geopolitics. The worsening relationship between China and its western counterparts led by the United States and its allies has significantly influenced students' motivation and plan for overseas education. Based upon interviews with 75 students from leading universities in mainland China, this article examines how Chinese elite students evaluate the impact of the new geopolitics on their overseas study plans and opportunities. The study found that, due to the influence of scientific internationalism ideas and institutional habitus, interviewees underestimated the impact of geopolitical factors. Furthermore, unpleasant environmental factors (such as racial discrimination) caused by geopolitical changes are tolerable because most of the interviewees plan to return China after studying abroad. On the other hand, deterioration of Sino-US relations has substantially affected Chinese students' international mobility. Many interviewees, especially those majoring in science and engineering, were unable to obtain visas. Some of them gave up their study abroad plans, while others transferred to other study abroad destination countries such as the United Kingdom and Singapore. We also find that the perception of the power shift in the field of higher education shapes the students' decision making. This article critically reflects upon the international student mobility from the broader political economy perspective, discussing policy implications for future international education.

The integrated status of Social Studies in the Norwegian "Curriculum for Knowledge Promotion in Primary and Secondary Education and Training 2020" reflects an international educational trend pertaining to a movement from knowledge and traditional disciplinary thinking to generic skills, competence and boundary crossing. This article addresses the changed organisation of geography as a subject within Social Studies in the national curriculum framework. Through a thematic analysis of how geographical knowledge is classified and represented in the curriculum, this article discusses opportunities and limitations in the curriculum when it comes to developing students' powerful geographical knowledge. The analysis shows that geographical knowledge is organised in an attempt to reduce content boundaries. Found across the curriculum, geographical knowledge includes geographical scale, geographic conditions and human-nature interconnections. However, geographical knowledge is represented through an understanding of space as absolute and fixed rather than relational and dynamic, as well as through a technical and mainly individual understanding of scale. We conclude that boundary crossing related to sustainability and citizenship as interdisciplinary topics opens opportunities for powerful geographical knowledge, although this potential is limited by the weak classification of geography in the curriculum for Social Studies.

In conversations about pedagogy, researchers often overlook how physical space and movement shape teacher sensemaking. This article offers a comparative case study of classroom videos using a dynamic visual method to map embodied interaction called "interaction geography." Our analysis proposes an integrative framework to study classroom interactions and teacher movement over space and time comprised of four salient characteristics within lessons: trails, landmarks, material routines, and circulation patterns. We discuss how this visual method and framework can be used and expanded by classroom researchers and teachers as a starting point to better understand teaching as a situative and spatial practice, a crucial step in characterizing responsive forms of instruction. This work has implications not only for teachers and teacher educators but also for architects, administrators, and researchers concerned with the physical design of classrooms.

Islamic university students in Indonesia must improve disaster literacy by developing science-Islamic integrated disaster geography textbooks. This study aims to determine the appropriateness of science-Islamic integrated disaster geography textbooks and the effect of using them on students' learning outcomes. The Dick and Carey model was used in this development. The product was validated by experts in material, design, and the integration of Islamic science and tested on students and lecturers on a limited basis. The experiment subjects were 27 Social Science Education students from Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang. Instruments are in the form of a questionnaire to determine the appropriateness of the book and test questions to determine the effect of book products on learning outcomes. Data were analyzed descriptively and using an independent sample t-test. The results showed that science-Islamic integrated disaster geography textbooks were appropriate for use in learning with an effective category (appropriateness score = 81.08%). The use of science-Islamic integrated disaster geography textbooks affected students' learning outcomes (p=0.000) < [alpha]=0.05). Further research suggests developing digital books on other materials because the Islamic science integration curriculum has been proven to improve students' learning.

The Australian Curriculum Science has "Patterns, Order and Organisation" as one of its six Key Ideas. In the biological sciences, the structural patterns revealed by observing living things are used to order and organise them in a hierarchical system of binomial nomenclature, in which living things have a generic name and a specific name, based on their morphological features. Each organism, thus described, will have its own unique name. But how does it get that name, and what happens when reputable sources have different names? This article demonstrates how science deals systematically with such disagreements by documenting a taxonomic journey into the naming of one particular zoological species, the Shark Bay pearl oyster. This scientific journey intertwines science with history and geography, as well as social, cultural, and political perspectives. It is truly a story of science as human endeavour.

Research on international organizations (IOs), both intergovernmental and non governmental, has become an important strand in comparative education. At the same time, strikingly absent in this large body of research is a large-N perspective on IOs themselves, representing a level of analysis in its own right where geography, discourse, and networks are reflected in conference activities. We examine data on 37,649 international education conferences organized by 6,634 IOs and analyze patterns of geographic distribution, discursive shifts, and network dynamics as they evolve over the twentieth century until today. We find that over time conferencing has become geographically less Western, much more substantively differentiated, and far more networked. At the same time, Europe, together with Asia, remains the hotspot of conference activity and the network structure reflects a clear core-periphery pattern with the UN, and particularly UNESCO, representing the pivotal hub of the entire field.

Interdisciplinary teaching and learning is an approach that synthesizes the curricular objectives and methods of two or more disciplines or subjects focusing on a specific topic or issue. While it is being increasingly implemented in universities, at lower levels of education there are still countries where science subjects are taught and learned fragmentarily. To assess the significance of the interdisciplinary approach in primary school biology teaching, the paper aims at an experimental verification of the effectiveness of this method in relation to the quality and retention of student knowledge, compared to the monodisciplinary approach to teaching and learning biology. The paper also describes a scenario for teaching a topic in which biological and geographical contents correlate. The study applied a pedagogical experiment with parallel groups. In total, 180 students attending two primary schools in the city of Novi Sad participated in the experiment and were divided into an experimental and a control group. The findings suggest that the interdisciplinary approach improved the quality and retention of student knowledge. The experimental group was more successful in completing tasks that required comprehension and practical application of knowledge. The study thus emphasizes the need for a professional curriculum development that would enhance the interdisciplinary correlation of various disciplines.

The purpose of this study was to observe the predictive power of the practices carried out in distance geography courses conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic in students' self-efficacy in geographical inquiry skills. Fourteen variables were determined for this purpose. In this context, questions covering the individual characteristics of the students, systems followed by the students (synchronous-asynchronous), students' interests in the course and their follow-ups, and their learning experiences were included. "The Self-Assessment Scale for Geographic Inquiry Process Skills" was used to determine the students' self-efficacy levels. The data were collected from 493 students attending 11th and 12th grades in eighteen high schools in the spring semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. The screening model was used in the research and the data were analyzed using multiple hierarchical regression methods. The results of the study showed that nine variables statistically predicted 89% of the total variance. In order of relative importance, grade, school type, and gender are the first and most important predictor variables. Students' asking questions, doing homework, and using supplementary materials come next. Based on this, it is recommended that teachers take on the responsibility of raising their students as individuals who are independent and learned to learn.

In South Korea, curriculum is revised, made public and implemented under a system known as a nation led curriculum. The South Korean national curriculum was completely revised 10 times between 1946 and 2015. At present, a complete revision is underway to replace the current 2015 national curriculum which is called the 2022 revised national curriculum. This study aims to analyze stakeholders' responses to the YouTube public hearing on social studies curriculum according to the 2022 revised national curriculum in South Korea in order to understand the context and causes of the issues that emerged. Text mining, semantic network analysis and word cloud techniques were employed to identify issues. As a result, three issues were identified in the social studies curriculum: the balanced development of general elective subjects in high school; the separation of social sciences and geography and division of textbooks in middle school social studies and the separate listing of four subjects, specifically geography, social sciences, history and morals. The issues revealed in this study provide beneficial implications for future social studies curriculum development, revision as well as the development of future research.

Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) are abilities that students in the 21st century must acquire. Problem-based learning (PBL) is one of the learning models to improve HOTS. In this study, PBL is integrated with technology through the use of e-modules. The taxonomy of Marzano is the framework used to assess HOTS. Student learning interest in studying geography as a moderate variable is a form of research refreshment that will result in a shift in research trends on PBL. Geography is the main focus of education in the 21st century, especially related to environmental issues. This study aimed to determine the effect of PBL with e-module based on HOTS to student's learning interest in studying geography. The research population consisted of second-year students (grade 11) of social class in SMAN 2 Semarang (Public Senior High School). The number of each student in the experimental class and control class is 32 participants. This research used a factorial experimental design. The data was collected using a test measuring HOTS and a questionnaire measuring enthusiasm for learning geography. The data were analysed using statistics, including the normality and homogeneity test, and hypothesis testing with the T-test, linear regression, and two-way ANOVA. The results found that: (1) PBL with e-modules had a significant effect on HOTS; (2) student's interest in studying geography had no significant effect on HOTS; (3) there was no effect between PBL and e-modules with student's interest in studying geography on HOTS. The HOTS test results were unaffected by the increase or decrease in student's interest. The HOTS is not influenced by student's interest in studying geography, but rather by the actual learning; (4) the highest indicator of developing HOTS is the capacity for abstract thought; (5) students conclude that using e-modules in PBL can improve interest for solving environmental issues. The combination of e-module content with project-based learning motivates students to protect the environment. Subsequent studies can focus on research on hybrid-based PBL as an innovation in 21st century learning.

The mass shift to Open-Book, Open-Web (OBOW) assessments during the pandemic highlighted new opportunities in Higher Education for developing accessible, authentic assessments that can reduce administrative load. Despite a plethora of research emerging on the effectiveness of OBOW assessments within disciplines, few currently evaluate their effectiveness across disciplines where the assessment instrument can vary significantly. This paper aims to evaluate the experience students across STEM subjects had of OBOW exams to contribute to an evidence-base for emerging post-pandemic assessment policies and strategies. In April 2021, following two cycles of OBOW exams, we surveyed STEM students across a range of subjects to determine their preparation strategy, experiences during the exam, perception of development of higher order cognitive skills, test anxiety, and how they thought these assessments might enhance employability. Overall, students from subjects that use assessment instruments requiring analytical, quantitative-based answers (Maths, Physics, Computer Science and Chemistry) adapted their existing study skills less effectively, felt less prepared and experienced higher levels of stress compared to students of subjects using more qualitative discursive based answers (Biosciences and Geography). We conclude with recommendations on how to enhance the use of OBOW exams: these include supporting and developing more effective study skills, ensuring assessments align with intended learning outcomes, addressing the issue of academic integrity, promoting inclusivity, and encouraging authentic assessment. Based on the outcomes of this study, we strongly advise that assessment policies that foster the whole-scale roll-out of OBOW assessment consider the inter-disciplinary impacts on learner development, staff training and workload resources.

Research has shown that mathematical proficiency gaps are related to students' and schools' indicators of poverty, with fewer studies on neighborhood effects on achievement gaps. Although this literature has accounted for students' nesting within schools, so far, methodological constraints have not allowed researchers to formally account for multilevel and spatial effects. I contribute to this discussion by simultaneously considering test-takers' own socioeconomic standing and the impact of their nesting schools and neighborhood structures. Multilevel simultaneous autoregressive (MSAR) models and population-level data of 2.09 million test-takers, whose standardized performances were measured at Grades 3-8 in New York State, revealed the presence of geography of mathematical (dis)advantage. Because mathematical performance is spatially dependent across schools and neighborhoods, moving forward, applied researchers should rely on MSAR to account for sources of spatially driven bias that cannot be handled with multilevel models alone. Full replication code and data are provided at https://cutt.ly/N4zRstL.

The purpose of this research was to determine whether there is a need for students to take online geography lessons during states of emergency situations when schools are temporarily closed as a result of unforeseen events such as pandemics, natural disasters, technological mishaps, the effects of terrorism, war, and other significant catastrophes. With this research we investigated whether the number of online geography lessons was increasing or decreasing and whether students searched for online help during school closure. Research was conducted through an online survey. Our study will contribute to the understanding of investigating how students at any school in the world are prepared for online learning. The results show that students need online assistance and tutoring when learning geography in unpredictable situations when schools are closed.

Teachers use feedback to modify student thinking or behaviour to improve their learning. In order for students to achieve better, teachers must use different strategies and ways of teaching. In this article we reflect on the practical application and impact that written and verbal feedback have on learners. Through the research reported on here we aimed to contribute to reflection about different concrete feedback models that are helpful to teachers and students. Seventy-four teachers of the curriculum area, society and environment (civic education, geography and history), in urban schools (n = 39) and rural schools (n = 35) from 10 lower secondary schools answered the questionnaire. The results show that teachers provide students with written and oral feedback and that there is no significant difference in the application by teachers in urban and rural schools, nor among teachers who teach subjects in the curriculum area, society and environment. We recommend that teachers receive continuous training on how to use formative assessment techniques.

This paper explores the thesis of de-globalisation in relation to international education. Through interrogating accounts of international school leadership during the COVID-19 crisis, the tension between international expectations and localised realities is charted, with four central tenets of internationalism undermined by the pandemic experience. It is argued that the COVID-19 crisis, ostensibly a single global event, resulted in the fractalisation of international education; the conceptualisation of unified internationalism was undermined by the inherently localised material effects of the pandemic. In place of an internationalism that is unified, transcendent, inclusive and connected, international school leaders' accounts of leading through the pandemic focused on their sense that their schools were fractured, rooted, privileged and isolated. It is suggested that this international crisis demonstrates the precarious nature of the respatialising of the global that is intrinsic to international schooling.

This study aims to examine the views of preservice social studies teachers on the use of Quizlet in a physical geography course. The participants of the study consisted of 56 preservice social studies teachers who were secondyear students in the social studies education program of the educational faculty of a state university and were taking the "physical geography of Turkey" course. At the end of a 5-week-long application of Quizlet, the qualitative data were collected using a questionnaire consisting of open-ended questions that were designed by the researcher. Participants' responses to the open-ended questions on the questionnaire were analyzed using qualitative descriptive analysis. Results showed that preservice social studies teachers found the use of Quizlet in the physical geography course as useful mostly because it was instructive and easy to use, allowed revising and permanence of knowledge, and the presentation of geography terms with visuals in Quizlet sets helped them to learn geography concepts. The most preferred modes among the categories in Quizlet sets by the participants were "flashcards", and their "match" in the games category. The majority of the participants did not have any problems when using the Quizlet study sets, but concerning the modes, some students had problems with the device, and they had problems with the internet connection. Based on the results of this research, using Quizlet in teaching the physical geography course and for teaching geography concepts are recommended.

Geospatial expertise draws on and recognizes a vast array of seemingly unrelated interconnections allowing the geographer to find solutions to otherwise incomprehensible problems. Geospatial thinking involves both time and space, acknowledges cause-and-effect relationships of geographic phenomena at multiple scales, and recognizes the impact of spatial and temporal scale on processes. The complexity of geographic thinking necessitates an equally complex set of learning experiences that collectively are characterized by the professional geographer. Due to the inherent complexity of geospatial expertise, its nuanced relationship to spatial thinking, and a lack of research on how individuals attain geospatial expertise, we organized an interdisciplinary group of experts to present their perspectives on developing geospatial expertise in this special edition. In this introduction, we review geospatial expertise and distinguish it from spatial thinking, review research on developing geospatial expertise, and end with recommendations for future research. Through these reviews and recommendations, this introduction provides background context for the articles in this special edition and elucidates their connections. Given the complexity of geospatial expertise, it is only through connecting researchers and educators across multiple disciplines that the nature of one of the most integrative professional disciplines -- that of the geographer -- can be fully understood.

With the introduction of in-class group-based virtual reality (VR), multiple students can interact in a single shared "metaverse". One geography-focused group VR option is the Wooorld app, available on various Meta Quest unit models. To evaluate the feasibility of group VR in a higher education geography lecture classroom, a pilot study was run for two days with a small, upper-level Urban Geography class at Arkansas Tech University in spring 2023. Using multiple wireless Meta Quest 2 headsets, the class collectively used the Wooorld app to visit 3D-rendered global downtowns. Inside the app, students saw each other's avatars and manipulated the viewing area for the rest of the class. Students completed pre/post-experience surveys, and the data suggest strong student enthusiasm for shared VR, and for Wooorld. However, some technical and physical space issues arose. While this pilot study aimed to evaluate the potential of classroom group VR via the Wooorld app, this study also considers the possibility of using group VR in future geography lecture classrooms.

The current mixed-methods study aimed at incorporating a virtual reality (VR) tool (i.e. Google Expeditions) into the writing process of Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners, examining its impact on their writing motivation and performance. To that end, 42 EFL learners were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups, exploring their favorite places in the world with and without Google Expeditions, respectively. Independent-samples t-tests and paired-samples t-tests were run to investigate the participants' writing motivation as well as their performance on the pretest and posttest. As the quantitative results demonstrated, the experimental group significantly outscored the control group in both writing motivation and overall writing performance at the end of the experiment. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to investigate the participants' attitudes toward Google Expeditions, casting further light on the initial quantitative findings. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data lent support to the contribution of this VR tool toward boosting the participants' confidence, general knowledge, and autonomy on the one hand and reducing distraction and anxiety on the other. Implications are discussed and future research avenues are outlined.

The employment of digital media and e-materials in the classroom in the time of COVID-19 in Palestine has generated much attention among scholars, researchers and teachers. One of these electronic resources is digital maps which have recently become enriching and transformative ways of learning in different educational and pedagogical settings in Palestinian academic institutions. The lack of physical mobility due to continued governmental enforcements of lockdown laws in the Palestinian Occupied Territories hindered many teachers, students and researchers in the field of national cartography and human geography, many of whom were faced with dire challenges in exploring local landscapes outlined in Palestinian travel writing. This article examines the vital role of using digital maps in teaching Palestinian cartographic fiction. While it notes the value of students' geographic practices in the field, it explores the benefits of using digital maps in the higher teaching of Palestinian literary cartography. The article, in particular, reflects on the development and re-construction of the meanings of students' subjectivity and nationalism in the light of their virtual performance, responses and imaginary relationship to "place" during the outbreak of COVID-19.

This paper highlights the transformative potential of place-based community organizing as a theory and practice of progressive social change and as a critical approach to the social purpose of community engagement in Higher Education Institutions. The aim is to expose power asymmetries and civic renewal "from below" through a focus on community engaged learning, specifically community organizing on the curriculum for geography undergraduates. The empirical focus is an English university, but the issues and observations are widespread. Around the world, students are coping with disruptions following a global pandemic, austerity, and loss of trust in local democracy -- participating in climate emergency and racial justice movements. This paper advances community organising and community engaged learning as a mutually co-constitutive challenge to conventional notions of the student as a passive consumer of recruitment, learning, and individualised notions of civic responsibility. Methods of community organising are based on the theory that if you want change, you need power: change ultimately traces a motivational journey from anger to agitation and action. Empirical vignettes explore the transformative role of emotionally stirring "political theatre" and direct action, while exposing tensions that arise due to the transitory status of students in place and time.

In recent years, there have been numerous calls for Geographers working in higher education to put into practice anti-racist pedagogies. Less well-developed is scholarship on the approaches which expand students' understanding of race and the socio-spatial and material processes of their own racialization. Within the context of food geographies, visceral pedagogies have been useful for advancing student knowledge on the multi-scalar, dynamic and complex systems of power that influence what we eat. Bringing together insight from critical pedagogy, food geographies, and corporeal feminist understandings of race, in this paper I point to the effectiveness of experimental and embodied pedagogies which expand students' emotional and cognitive learning about the relationship between race and everyday food practices. Drawing from narrative and interview data with primarily white undergraduate students in Colorado, USA, I argue that embodied, critical pedagogies contribute to anti-racist goals by destabilizing whiteness, linking students' theoretical understandings of race to everyday practice, and building empathy for/with others. Furthermore, I point to the effectiveness of a variety of student reflection formats, from narrative writing, to sharing a meal, to empathetic listening, to argue for greater attention to not only "what" we teach in anti-racist pedagogy, but "how" we teach.

This study aims to investigate Kazakhstani high school students' environmental knowledge, attitude toward the environment, environmental awareness, and environmental concern, and to present the effect of various extracurricular activities on high school students' knowledge, attitude, awareness, and concern. We surveyed 124 students at various grade levels. Results indicated that Kazakhstani students did not have a strong environmental knowledge base and their awareness of environmental issues is not strong at all, but they had a strong positive environmental attitude. There was no significant relationship between knowledge, attitude, and awareness based on grades in biology, chemistry, physics, math, and geography. Gender did not influence students' environmental knowledge, attitudes, and awareness but year in school did for environmental knowledge. Kazakhstani students were most concerned about air pollution, pollution of rivers and seas, and flooding, and they were the least concerned with overpopulation, radioactive waste, extinction of species, and climate change. Extracurricular activities did prove useful with increasing students' knowledge and awareness about environmental challenges but did not impact their environmental attitude. Our results imply that what is being taught about the environment in Kazakhstani schools is not substantial enough. Educators may modify the curriculum to better address environmental issues in the classroom and add more content and activities.

"Cuerpo-territorio" is a method stemming from Latin American geography, which recognizes the centrality of situated and embodied experiences as a form of knowing. We engaged with this method in the classroom to understand how students through their embodied and situated experiences had absorbed a post-development geographic course content and how these notions had remained with them. Given that emotions, particularly when elicited by images play a major role in consolidating knowledge, we asked students to explore their embodied feelings related to the course content by reflecting and representing them in a visual form on a poster. Through this paper, we aim to contribute to the debate on the importance of applying decolonial strategies in the classroom by widening the methodological toolbox of our geography colleagues. We find that, given the diversity of the students' population, working with a boundary object such as the posters helped students to relate to each other via the course content. Finally, reflecting and assimilating the course content through "cuerpo-territorio," we argue, was conducive to consolidating learning outcomes, while students experienced knowledge co-creation with their peers.

The article underscores that the cartographic language used in social science textbooks for primary education in Spain is unsuitable and does not meet the demands of the official syllabus. Consequently, pupil literacy in geography with regard to regional geography is markedly ethnocentric. To demonstrate this, the cartographic content of textbooks is compared to the knowledge pupils have acquired on regional realities towards the end of this education stage. Specifically, certain aspects of mental maps of the Balearic Islands produced by year six primary pupils at twelve Majorcan schools are analysed. Based on this school cartography, a diagnostic exercise is performed on island pupils' literacy in geography in their last year of basic education. The use of spatial analysis tools enables us to conclude that there is low-level intersectionality between academic knowledge (insufficient) and ethnocentric knowledge (majority) - symbolic proof that the educational philosophy at most Spanish schools provides significantly poor learning.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in profound disruption to geography higher education. A pivot to online teaching required staff to rapidly adapt their practices to novel digital spaces. Whilst many studies have reported the different pedagogic approaches adopted, fewer have evaluated the resultant student learning experience. In this study, we aimed to create an evidence base regarding the benefits and challenges of online learning during the pandemic, mapped against the teaching, cognitive and social presences of the Community of Inquiry framework. We adopted a mixed-methods approach of online surveys (105 students) and focus groups (14 students), undertaken across two undergraduate geography programmes in a British university, exploring the benefits of asynchronous and synchronous online learning, and assessment and feedback strategies. We discovered flexibility in student work patterns and use of technology to facilitate engagement in learning. We also identified key challenges for students such as time management, maintaining motivation, engaging in online classes, and feeling part of an online learning community. We identify best practice in collaborative-constructivist online learning, so that in the event of any future remote pivot, or with sustained adoption of blended modes of delivery, we can achieve a high-quality student learning experience.

The focus in this article is on the usefulness of spatial sequencing as a tactic for interpreting a map and organizing our memory of it. This skill is useful whenever some condition varies in a systematic way with distance. When students are asked whether they see a pattern on a map of a topic like wildfires or terrorist activity, some students can answer "yes" while using a different brain network and perceiving something very different from what the teacher thinks is "the" pattern. Unless a geographic pattern is quite simple and the map is well designed, human eyes may not perceive the pattern all at once. Map readers have to assemble a mental image of the pattern while their eyes jump around the page. This interaction of time and space can introduce distortions in perception. Part of becoming a good map reader, therefore, is learning how to guide your eyes to pick out patterns on maps.

This essay reviews and builds upon Aníbal Quijano's contribution to decolonial theory to sketch out what I refer to as the geopolitics and coloniality of curriculum, broadly understood as an imperial doctrine and a pedagogical mode of domination aimed at producing a modern/colonial subjectivity. It argues that the geopolitics and coloniality of the curriculum reveal the relationship between geopolitical designs, colonialism, and curriculum, thereby contributing to the interrogation of how dominant ways of knowing are propagated discursively and pedagogically. The article focuses on how the geopolitics and coloniality of curriculum enable the reading, interpretation and unsettling of curricular discourses and pedagogical practices reproducing Euro-Anglo-American ways of being (ontological violence), individualist ways of knowing (epistemic violence) and racialised affective grammars. It concludes by gesturing towards ways to think, be, act, relate and do otherwise.

Despite the rapid growth of English Medium Instruction (EMI) programmes around the globe, the language goals in such programmes have not been clearly defined, making it difficult to evaluate their success. Accordingly, our paper reports on a study that attempted to identify the language goals, operationalised as the vocabulary expected of learners, by investigating the under-explored area of EMI assessment. We sampled a corpus of 16 sets of examination papers in two subject areas, namely, Biology and Geography, spanning eight years in Hong Kong. The examination papers, analysed for their vocabulary profiles, indicated that students were expected to learn beyond the K3 level (the most frequent 3,000 words in English) and master mid-frequency words (K4-K8) as well as academic words. Our findings suggest that the less frequent words were not often shared by the two subjects. Analysing academic words also enabled us to showcase how some words were common across the two subjects while others were more subject-specific. Pedagogical implications are discussed, highlighting the need for teachers and students to attend to target language goals in EMI, and to consider the subject-specific nature of vocabulary items in EMI.

This study investigated the impact of virtual exchange on disrupting dangerous narratives about the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region among pre-service elementary teachers in the Midwestern region of the United States. The virtual exchange program provided direct interaction with teacher candidates in Morocco. Analysis of pre- and post-exchange memos revealed a significant shift from negative narratives to positive, generalized perceptions of the MENA region. While the shift towards positive generalizations represents progress, it also emphasizes the need for nuanced understanding and ongoing engagement. After participating in the exchange, pre-service teachers also communicated a strong desire to teach about the world and its people. This study highlights the possibilities of virtual exchange as a tool for preparing future educators who have been influenced by post-9/11 educational and media narratives. It advocates for the integration of virtual exchange as a mainstream approach to foster teaching for global understanding among teacher candidates.

Multiple perspectives on geographical thinking are lacking in the teaching of climate change in school geography. This study establishes an epistemic model through a co-construction design to support geography teachers' curriculum making with respect to climate change. We developed the preliminary model with four main geographical perspectives, including natural scientific, humanistic, social scientific, and posthuman perspectives, by drawing on studies in academic geography. Based on interviews with nine geography education researchers who have been involved in the GeoCapabilities project, we examined the educational potentials of multiple geographical perspectives in developing student's capabilities to react to climate change.

This paper investigates the impact of digital creativity educational practices on the improvement of academic performance and creative thinking development of Chinese high school students. The study defined the importance of the concept of STEM learning in the development of modern skills needed to live and work in a digital socio-economic change caused by the development of Industry 4.0. An educational experiment involving 60 9th grade Chinese students evaluated the impact of digital creativity learning practices on the development of students' creative thinking on such indicators as fluency, flexibility, originality, detailing, and metaphoricity. The impact of digital creative learning practices on the performance of students in the control group and the experimental group was assessed. The analysis of the results of practical research on the impact of digital tools and pedagogical models of learning on the acquisition of students' creative thinking skills was conducted, which proved that the digital environment is the optimal place for students' creative manifestations and provides opportunities to improve creative thinking skills by implementing learning practical activities using innovative tools for the manifestation of digital creative skills.

An "analogy" is a statement of relationship. A "spatial analogy" is an analogy based on a spatial relationship that is observed in a location. Spatial analogies can be based on any spatial relationship, including distance, direction, elevation, proximity, enclosure, or position in a pattern, region, or sequence - in short, every topic for spatial reasoning that has been mentioned in all five of the previous articles in this series. The symbols on the model or map have the same spatial relationships as the real-world features they represent. As a result, geography teachers could learn how to make better map-reading lessons by studying what psychologists and neuroscientists have discovered about the mental processes involved in thinking about analogies.

According to the author, this innovative lesson plan incorporates virtual reality (VR) technology to foster environmental awareness and care in late primary-age students. Drawing on the place-based education approach and social constructivism in the lesson design, students participate in collaborative project-based learning. The students' task involves creating a VR tour to showcase local environmental issues, their causes, and potential solutions. In tackling real-world environmental issues, students advance their digital and geographical literacies and deepen their community ties. Finally, this lesson plan can be extended to offer a multidisciplinary learning experience, merging diverse subjects to cultivate knowledge, skills, and attitudes beyond conventional subject boundaries.

Purpose: The purpose of this research was to discover the impacts of taught environmental sustainability-focused geography postgraduate programmes on student attitudes, behaviours and practices in relation to environmental awareness within two research-intensive universities in the UK. Design/methodology/approach: A case study involved online surveys to measure environmental attitudes, behaviours and practices at the start and end of four taught geography postgraduate programmes. Findings: There was widespread attitudinal change and an increasing prioritisation of environmental issues reported among participants after they had completed their programme. However, behavioural change was limited, and there was little evidence of greater awareness being translated into changed practices. The learning benefits included a greater focus on interdisciplinarity, holistic thinking and critical self-reflection. Practical implications: The findings demonstrate that postgraduate taught (PGT) programmes in sustainability improve student awareness and concern about environmental issues but do not necessarily lead to widespread behavioural change. This raises questions for programme convenors about how education for sustainability can be truly transformational and avoid leading students to develop eco-anxieties over the scale of change required. Originality/value: There is a lack of research engaging with students on PGT programmes, especially in understanding their impacts on environmental attitudes, behaviours and practices. The research provides an evidence base for understanding the effects of PGT programmes in challenging student values, attitudes and practices and by implication knowledge transfer post-graduation, with the potential to help protect the environment and identify ways of living better with the ever-changing planet.

A curriculum is generally regarded as an instructional plan that describes what, why and how students should learn. In this comparative study, we analysed the Czech and Slovak intended curricula of science subjects (physics, chemistry, biology, geography, and geology) and mathematics by comparing their national curriculum documents in terms of learning outcomes at the lower secondary level (ISCED level 2). Our analysis showed significant differences in the number of obligatory learning outcomes, which were much higher in the Slovak curriculum than in the Czech curriculum. The structure of these outcomes also differed across subjects and between countries. Nevertheless, the cognitive demands of the learning outcomes analysed using the revised Bloom's taxonomy were similar in the two countries, but metacognitive knowledge and higher-level cognitive processes were rarely represented in either. Additionally, by inductive content analysis of the Slovak curriculum document, we identified two significant groups of cross-curricular requirements, namely outcomes related to scientific inquiry and outcomes requiring working with information. Overall, these learning outcomes are underrepresented in both analysed documents (particularly in the Czech document) even though the skills that these outcomes develop are in high demand in the current context.

This paper focuses on Vietnamese PhD students' imaginative geographies of their destination countries. Using the data collected from in-depth semi-structured interviews with 18 Vietnamese PhD students, the study examines the participants' preparation for their sojourn before their departure, as well as their first multi-sensory experiences of the study countries on the first days of arrival, which then revealed how their imaginative geographies had been constructed and how they perceived the contrast between their imaginative geographies and reality. The findings of the study suggest that when the students chose to study overseas, they had diverse imaginations of the destinations that had been constructed over long periods of time thanks to the influences of movies, newspapers, media, and experiences of those in their social networks. Furthermore, the paper also highlights the collective imagination about countries in the West and the imagination of the collective West among Vietnamese students.

Previous work has demonstrated similarities and differences between aerial and terrestrial image viewing. Aerial scene categorization, a pivotal visual processing task for gathering geoinformation, heavily depends on rotation-invariant information. Aerial image-centered research has revealed effects of low-level features on performance of various aerial image interpretation tasks. However, there are fewer studies of viewing behavior for aerial scene categorization and of higher-level factors that might influence that categorization. In this paper, experienced subjects' eye movements were recorded while they were asked to categorize aerial scenes. A typical viewing center bias was observed. Eye movement patterns varied among categories. We explored the relationship of nine image statistics to observers' eye movements. Results showed that if the images were less homogeneous, and/or if they contained fewer or no salient diagnostic objects, viewing behavior became more exploratory. Higher- and object-level image statistics were predictive at both the image and scene category levels. Scanpaths were generally organized and small differences in scanpath randomness could be roughly captured by critical object saliency. Participants tended to fixate on critical objects. Image statistics included in this study showed rotational invariance. The results supported our hypothesis that the availability of diagnostic objects strongly influences eye movements in this task. In addition, this study provides supporting evidence for Loschky et al.'s (Journal of Vision, 15(6), 11, 2015) speculation that aerial scenes are categorized on the basis of image parts and individual objects. The findings were discussed in relation to theories of scene perception and their implications for automation development.

The literature review has clearly indicated that the scale and characteristics of demand for Geography Earth and Environmental Sciences experts across different countries is unknown. Therefore, there is an urgent need to investigate this issue. This paper presents the results of research on the real demand for GEES specialists. In the paper, real demand is expressed by job vacancies (N = 17 378) published in six European countries over a period of 18 months. To analyse such an extensive body of text data, we used data mining techniques such as: SVD, inter-factor correlation analysis, word frequency analysis and word significance indicators, which allowed us to recognise similarities and differences in the size and structure of demand for these specialists in specific groups of countries. Employers from the UK and Ireland offered the most comprehensive range of positions whereas the expectations of Polish employers were the least diverse. Word frequency analyses for each occupation group demonstrated which components of GEES experts' knowledge and skills are considered universal on the labour market and which are subject to substantial regional variations. Moreover, word significance analyses allowed us to identify the occupations where a wider range of general skill areas was required and the positions for which primarily geographic skills were in demand.

Modeling is a key scientific practice and is usually computer-implemented, but it is challenging to teach because it seems high on presuppositions, for example, coding. This design-based research study presents a geography course offered during the 2019/20 winter semester in computer modeling, with no prior coding knowledge. It was implemented in two elective classes: one in the Bachelor of Science program and one in the teacher program. Interviews were conducted to monitor the students' development, and the final reports showed their competencies at the end of the course. Since there were no noticeable differences between the Bachelor of Science students and the teacher trainees in terms of competence acquisition, four learning types could be described based on analysis of the interviews and final reports, which are important for the planning and adaptation of the course concepts. In summary, our results show four key findings: (1) mere reproduction of learning content is of no value for the development of geographic modeling skills; (2) the ability to access conceptual thinking patterns is crucial; (3) process-level understanding is a fundamental prerequisite for advanced geographic modeling understanding; and (4) poor programming skills hinder but do not prevent at least basic modeling understanding.