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Geography education research
‘What questions are we asking about geography education? Where do we go to find reliable evidence? What kinds of standards do we require of this evidence, and what might we do with it?’
Puttick (2017) ‘Researching geography education’. The Handbook of Secondary Geography. Geographical Association.
This section contains well-grounded and critically reviewed theoretical and empirical research and is presented in the belief that high quality teaching is not achieved simply by transplanting ‘evidence-based practice’, but through teachers who are:
- evidence-aware, with a critical understanding of research
- familiar with both evidence-based and debate and argument-based practice
- able to apply research evidence to their own context.
Read this short guide on ethics to understand how ethics underpins all geography education research.
If you are thinking about undertaking research then attending a conference is one way to get a feel for the context. Read this informal guide to attending geography, or geography teaching, conferences.
The Geography Education Research Special Interest Group (GERSIG) supports the geography education community to access, use and take part in geography education research.
The aim of this section of the website is not to provide a comprehensive library of Geography Education Research (GER) literature for teachers; attempting this would be an impossible task. Instead, it aims to provide various ‘ways in’ to the research literature for all teachers of geography regardless of context. In doing so, it starts to map the research landscape, flags up examples of sources and provides overviews of some of the key themes in Geography Education Research. Throughout this section the drop down menus signal accessibility, the different categories are:
- Accessible to all
- Accessible to GA Members (either in GA journals or as part of the Taylor and Francis package for subscribers of Geography)
- Accessible through other subscriptions e.g. university logins, or paid-for resources
It is also worth highlighting that currently, the scope of the sections is not comprehensive; there are some notable gaps that we are aware of. This is deliberate as firstly, we hope that this section of the website will continue to evolve so new areas are added, but also that members who use this section have the opportunity to shape further developments. If you do have any suggestions or comments please e-mail info@geography.org.uk.
The following sections aim to explore some of the key themes in geography education research more deeply. Compiled by the Geography Education Research working group and drawing on the expertise of GA Special Interest Groups and Phase Committees, these sections are not exhaustive but provide an introduction to research, examples of key research and active research networks in specific thematic areas.
