Steve Puttick
Following progress reports in Progress in Human Geography on geographical education by Rex Walford in the 1970s, Norman Graves in the 1980s, and Christine Winter in the 2010s, the most recent set of progress reports on geographical education have just been published:
Geographical education I: fields, interactions and relationships
Geographical education II: anti-racist, decolonial futures
Geographical education III: changing climate, changing geographies, changing geographical education?
Together, they aim to offer a critical account of the field by reviewing some of the major developments, examining trends reflecting on the changes in priorities for the research and practice of geographical education. The first report sketches the areas and sub-disciplines involved with geographical education and highlights opportunities for its contribution to public reasoning. The second examines trends around decolonial approaches towards geographical education and argues for the importance of anti-racism. The third and final report focuses on climate change, charting the rapid increase in attention to the issue and critically reviewing the multiple ways in which geographical education is grappling with this complex and urgent challenge. I hope the reports are useful for a wide range of colleagues working in the many different areas that together construct geographical education, ultimately contributing to the question that concludes the third report: How might we build geographical education that is creative, robust, generous, hopeful and diverse enough to empower and inspire everyone teaching and learning geography to create more just and equitable futures amid a changing climate?
Geographical education I: fields, interactions and relationships
Abstract
Complex global challenges, rapid shifts in the mediation and distribution of information, rising inequalities and a toxic milieu of low-quality public reasoning make geography education more important than ever. This first progress report explores the nexus of geography education research, geography education practice and scholarship and the geographies of education. Conceptualising the fields through expansive understandings positions this report in an optimistic space, highlighting significant opportunities for geography and its contribution to public reasoning through deepening collaborations and attending to tensions in education’s ‘shadow and shine’: tensions between its complicity in maintaining unjust hierarchies against its potential for emancipatory transformation.
Link: Geographical education I: fields, interactions and relationships – Steven Puttick, 2022
Geographical education II: Anti-racist, decolonial futures
Abstract
This report critically reviews developments in geographical education through the themes of anti-racism and decoloniality, reflecting on the silences around these issues across previous progress reports and arguing that the present moment might be understood in terms of a decolonial turn. Publication trends and increasing attention associated with the turn are unevenly distributed, contested and attenuated by structural issues surrounding the recruitment and retention of more diverse geographers. The report concludes with suggestions for developing anti-racist, decolonial futures through improving representation, addressing disciplinary fragility, and giving greater attention to nuance and singularity.
Link: Geographical education II: Anti-racist, decolonial futures – Steve Puttick, 2023
Geographical education III: Changing climate, changing geographies, changing geographical education?
Abstract
This third progress report critically examines the shifting role of climate change in geographical education: from a peripheral concern to an urgent and defining priority. Climate change now occupies substantial space across research, practice and curriculum, however, this transformation unfolds amid ongoing ‘lag’ between public discourse, research evidence, and curriculum development. Highlighting tensions across urgency and complexity, global and local scales, and representation and justice, the report concludes with a call for building geographical education futures that are creative, generous, hopeful, diverse and robust enough to meet the challenges of climate change.
If you don’t have access to that version, the Accepted manuscript is freely available in Oxford University’s Research Archive here: Geographical education III: changing climate, changing geographies, changing geographical education? – ORA – Oxford University Research Archive