Overview
The international community of geography educators has developed a Handbook for Geography Education. The book is intended to present a broad overview of research and practices in geography education at primary and secondary levels and to summarize the current state of knowledge in this sub-discipline of geography. The Handbook is organized around five components: the purposes of geography education—Why is it taught?; perspectives on geography education—What is taught?; practices of geography education—How is it organized and taught?; preparation of geography educators—How are geography educators prepared?; and possibilities for geography education—What are the futures of geography education from different national perspectives. In this proposed session, five authors of Handbook chapters from North America will present key ideas and findings from their chapter. Editors of the Handbook will moderate the session and summarize additional results.
Session Focus
All Grade Levels | Geography Education | Teacher Preparation | Practices of Geography Education | Curriculum and Instruction
Conference Room
San Pedro
Meet the Presenters
Sarah Witham Bednarz is professor emerita of geography at Texas A&M University. Bednarz’s research interests are in the intersection of teaching and learning geospatial technologies and spatial and geographic thinking. She was PI on two major curriculum and educational research projects; co-authored the national geography standards, Geography for Life (1994 and 2012); participated in the National Research Council Learning to Think Spatially project, and helped to develop the National Assessment of Educational Performance (NAEP) framework in geography. In 2013 she co-chaired the Geography Education Research Committee (GERC) of the 21 st Century Road Map for 21 st Century Geography Education Project. She has been an AP Human Geography reader, table leader, question leader, exam leader, and served on the Test Development Committee.
Jerry T. Mitchell is Professor and Chair of the Department of Geography at the University of South Carolina. He holds a BS in History and MA in Geography from Towson University, and a PhD in Geography from the University of South Carolina where he returned to the faculty in 2004 after teaching for several years in Pennsylvania. Jerry’s research has focused on environmental hazards and geography education. He was the coordinator of the South Carolina Geographic Alliance for 17 years, providing geography learning opportunities for more than 40,000 teachers and students. Additionally, he served as the Editor of the Journal of Geography from 2010-2019, was President of the National Council for Geographic Education in 2020, and was awarded the 2022 Gilbert Grosvenor Honors in Geographic Education from the American Association of Geographers.