Discourse on Method and the History of Discipline: Reflections on Dobson's 1983 Automated Geography∗

Pickles, John

doi:10.1111/j.0033-0124.1993.00451.x

Cited by 49 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 6 publications

(2 reference statements)

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“…Going back to the early 1980s (Dobson, 1983) the introduction of technology into geography curricula has been debated at every level from methodology (how to integrate it) (Kemp et al, 1992) to epistemology and ontology (how it defines what we need to know and how it may redefine the field itself) (Pickles, 1993;Sheppard, 1993). The coining of the phrase 'geographic information science' was meant to encompass all of these concerns as it considers the fundamental issues of scale, abstraction, boundaries and data quality in addition to software concerns (Kemp et al, 1992;Goodchild, 1993).…”

Section: Problem-based Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Geographic Information Systems in a Problem-Based Learning Environment

Drennon

2005

Journal of Geography in Higher Education

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How, where and why GIS is taught has been debated heavily in the geography literature. This article is a contribution to that debate, because it offers a new perspective from which to teach GIS: problem-based learning. In a problem-based learning classroom, theoretical foundations and the real world of problems are understood as constitutive of one another, rather than theory being prioritised over the real world of experience. In this paper, the author describes an introductory-level GIS class in which GIS was taught with a problem-based learning pedagogy. The problem around which the class focused was a proposal to add a new school district in the San Antonio, Texas metropolitan region. This article describes the class, including the nature of the problem and the way GIS skills were sequentially taught and integrated into the analysis of that problem.KEY WORDS: Problem-based learning, GIS, urban fragmentation IntroductionThere seems to be a dichotomy between how we teach geography in higher education and the nature of geographic problems and questions in the world. We teach separate classes in systematic geography, regional geography, cartography, and geographic information systems (GIS), yet expect students to address regionally specific, systematic geographic problems (sometimes with GIS skills) and present their findings cartographically. Reframing our presentation in terms of problems, i.e. using problem-based learning (PBL), may begin to allow our students to integrate concerns, conceptualisations and methods when faced with real-world situations. In this paper, I advocate the use of PBL in teaching GIS. In the class I describe, a problem framed the context in which geographic information systems skills were introduced to an interdisciplinary, undergraduate class of non-geographers. By the end of the semester, the students were presenting their findings to area school administrators, conversing with city government officials and compiling their findings for future publication.The acquisition of knowledge-in this case, the acquisition of knowledge concerning GIS technology-may occur in one of two ways: it may occur in a reductionist sense, such that theory and application are separated, and theory is later applied to various situations; or it may occur in conjunction with learning how to solve real-world problems, such that the problems are understood as interrelated with the practices. The latter approach will be detailed in this paper. The problem in this case came in the form of a proposal from the office of the Mayor of San Antonio, Texas, to carve a new school attendance district out of the extant districts in order to encourage economic development in one of the less economically developed parts of the city. Adjacent school districts received the proposal with great disdain, since they would lose revenue in the form of both property taxes and state aid when the new school district was created from the area covered by the existing districts. GIS capabilities were required to properly assess the impact ...

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Section: Problem-based Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Geographic Information Systems in a Problem-Based Learning Environment

Drennon

2005

Journal of Geography in Higher Education

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“…As GIS entered the core curriculum of geography programmes through the 1990s, this debate became increasingly sophisticated. For example, a special 'Open Forum' section of The Professional Geographer in 1993 revisited Dobson's 1983 article on automated geography with contributors critiquing the nature of technical training and the impact of GIS in furthering what was seen to be a strongly empiricist agenda (Dobson, 1983(Dobson, , 1993Armstrong, 1993;Cromley, 1993;Goodchild, 1993;Marble & Peuquet, 1993;Monmonier, 1993;Pickles, 1993;Posey, 1993;Shepherd, 1993). The contributions of Pickles and Shepherd to this forum, with their questioning of the nature of scienti c knowledge rendered in a GIS, provided a conceptual foundation for the later suggestion of three perspectives, ranging in a continuum from 'GIS as tool', through 'GIS as tool-making' to 'GIS as science' (Wright et al, 1997a; see also Goodchild, 1985;Pickles's 1997response to Wright et al, 1997a; and a subsequent reply by Wright et al, 1997b).…”

Section: Gis As a Learning Tool For Geographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysing Heritage Landscapes with Historical GIS: Contributions from problem-based inquiry and constructivist pedagogy

Summerby-Murray¹

2001

Journal of Geography in Higher Education

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This article examines a practical classroom experience using GIS technologies to analyse aspects of a local heritage landscape. An inventory of historic buildings comprising architectural and construction details was revised in the eld and then analysed using GIS software. Elements of the geographies of these buildings were displayed using thematic mapping and students used these maps to develop explanatory hypotheses and to suggest policy options for future management of the heritage landscape. Practically, the project demonstrated the contribution GIS can make to historical geography methods, engaged students in an externally supported research partnership working with real-world data, and suggested directions for local public policy formation. Pedagogically, the project demonstrated that historical GIS can be used effectively to shape problem-based inquiry and constructivist learning.

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“…Peter Taylor initiated the critiques when he suggested that GIS inherited an agenda from the quantitative revolution of 'retreating from knowledge to information ' (1990, p. 212 this retreat as the revenge of the positivists, an accusation that was rendered more bitter by its insinuations of epistemological naivety on the part of GISers. Subsequent critiques of GIS referred to positivism as an epistemological weakness (Smith, 1992;Lake, 1993;Pickles, 1993Pickles, , 1995Sheppard, 1993), and in this they restated a standard feminist scepticism toward objectivity and the neutrality of science (Keller & Longino, 1996). Lake offered that '[p]ositivist assumptions of objectivity, value-neutrality and the ontological separation of subject and object (or of the analyst and the object of analysis) constitute epistemological conditions with political and ethical consequences ' (1993, p. 405).…”

Section: Science Wars Incarnate: Critiques Of Positivism In Gismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It did not necessarily imply that data would be vastly generalised, only that observations are the basis of analysis. For Pickles and other critics, however, positivism implied a relation between science, technology and society, one that many human geographers had been at pains to sideline in the discipline (Pickles, 1993;Sheppard, 1993). Despite some exchange about the meaning of positivism, there was little effort to specify how GIS could be improved or made more rigorous through a shift in epistemology.…”

Section: Science Wars Incarnate: Critiques Of Positivism In Gismentioning

confidence: 99%