Spatial thinking and analysis have greatly enhanced social science research throughout the past century, but explicit practice of spatial thinking in undergraduate social science courses is still quite rare. New computer technology to handle spatial information offers exciting opportunities that have been discussed at recent NSF-sponsored SPACE workshops on spatial thinking in undergraduate education. The authors discuss insights and strategies that emerged from these workshops in the context of the literature on spatial thinking in education and contemporary cognitive and learning theories. Practical suggestions regarding specific pedagogic approaches and assessment strategies that are proving successful in enhancing social science education are reviewed.
Geographic tools for the analysis of spatially referenced information now serve the research needs for a broad range of academic disciplines and public purposes. Nonetheless, the diffusion of spatial technologies into the curricula of most disciplines remains limited. This article reviews initiatives of the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science (CSISS) to address this problem through a programme of national dissemination in the United States. The experiences of its Spatial Perspectives on Analysis for Curriculum Enhancement (SPACE) programme are probed for guidelines on structuring workshops to serve undergraduate instructors in their efforts to advance spatial thinking in the social sciences.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.