This paper critically reflects on how transformative learning (TL) is described both conceptually and as a process in the literature in different fields and national contexts. We articulate a definition of TL and justify why geography education is an ideal vehicle for enabling it. This is followed by a series of case studies explaining how TL can…

Augmented reality (AR) technology has been gaining a meaningful position in the education sector with multiple subjects' application to support teaching and learning experiences. Thanks to the advancement of hardware and technological platforms it is becoming easier to adopt AR technology at schools. This study represents a systematic literature…

This research study focuses on preservice teachers' (n=66) inspection of pedagogical connections between geography and geometrical reasoning. The aim of this study was to empirically investigate the use of mathematical analysis to enrich the social studies topics of the distortion of country sizes on the world map. The analysis of data collected…

The purpose of this 2-3 day lesson is to introduce students in Grades 2-4 to the idea that people move around the world for a variety of reasons. In this activity, students explore why people move through class discussion, a guided reading, and interviews. The teacher elicits student ideas using the compelling question (Dimension 1 of the C3…

The aim of this study is to reveal the status of the geography course among other courses as perceived by teacher candidates, the way they use their geographic knowledge in daily life, what their expectations are from geography courses, and to determine their opinions about the necessity of learning geography and their suggestions for teaching…

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unanticipated event that has exposed human fragility in an interconnected and interdependent world. While impacts are of a global magnitude, they have been felt at the most local of levels. Across the world pupils' daily lives and experiences have been directly impacted by government-imposed measures and restrictions…

Almost eighty years ago, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, founder of Bank Street College of Education in New York City, wrote about social studies in ways that sound remarkably contemporary: "In the first place, we shall say that the curriculum should continue the laboratory methods, which means it should furnish the children with as many first-hand…

Students training to become primary school teachers appear to have little awareness of the core concepts of geography (teaching). To ensure that future primary school teachers are able to develop their pupils' geographical awareness, a six weeks programme was developed. The characteristics of this programme -- named Consciously Teaching Geography…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that many US students are deficient in core knowledge in geography, civics and current events. In this paper, a professor of social studies methods describes an action research project developed to assess and improve teacher candidates' knowledge in these areas. The article explains how data…

This study examined the effectiveness of two geography courses at improving student spatial thinking skills. Spatial thinking is an important cognitive skill in the sciences and everyday life. A taxonomy of spatial thinking was constructed by Gersmehl (2008) in geography education which included core modes assessed in this study: comparison,…

The "ecologisation" of Australian primary schools brings new opportunities for curriculum expansion and renewal for sustainability education. My contribution to the broader discussion of place, geography, sustainability and literacy stems from an interest in how children are brought into contact with sustainability discourses via sensory…

This contribution explains the connection between spatial intelligence and spatial competences and by indicating how the first is the cognitive matrix of abilities necessary to move in space as well as to represent it. Indeed, two are principal factors involved in the spatial intelligence: orientation and representation. Both are based on a close…

Originally called Earth Viewer in 2004, Google Earth was the first virtual globe easily available to the ordinary user of the Internet. Google Earth, at earth.google.com, is a free, 3-dimensional computer model of Earth, but that means more than just a large collection of pretty pictures. It allows the viewer to "fly" anywhere on Earth "to view…

Home geography was the principal means by which primary students in the United States learned about the social world from the 1890s through the 1920s. This subject was rooted in the German subject of Heimatkunde, and it reflected the changing nature of the academic discipline of geography in the late nineteenth century. Its content focused on…

Use of information technologies in the field of geography, one of the important disciplines that comprise the social studies course, contributes to rendering abstract phenomena and concepts concrete in terms of primary education students, thereby increases their interest in social studies. In this context, the basic purpose of this study is to…