Gaining a “sense of place”: students’ affective experiences of place leading to transformative learning on international fieldwork

“It was amazing to see our projects come to life!” Developing affective learning during geography fieldwork through tropophilia

“…Both Bloom and Krathwohl posited that cognitive learning is often achieved through the acquisition of knowledge and affective learning is satisfied through the emotional valuing of that knowledge (Bolin et al, 2005). While both the cognitive and affective domains are discussed here, this research focuses primarily on the development of affective learning to highlight the range of values, attitudes and behaviours (Buissink-Smith et al, 2011) and how these influence, and are influenced by, place and mobility (Simm and Marvell, 2015). Krathwohl's (1964) taxonomy identifies five hierarchical stages in the acquisition of affective skills: an ability to (1) receive information, (2) respond to interactions, (3) value such responses, (4) organise such values, and (5) internalise or commit to practice (Buissink-Smith et al, 2011).…”

“…These increases were apparent across all variables (with the exception of understanding local cultures which decreased for both years) and again reflect how students' capacity to learn can be stimulated through engagement and personal connections with field locations. As Simm and Marvell (2015) suggest, this type of learning is commutable, presenting 'in-between' spaces (e.g. travel times or down-time in accommodation) as useful opportunities to pause, reflect and plan.…”

“…Crucially though, the incongruity of the decrease in understanding local cultures may have less to do with the field experiences themselves and perhaps might instead reflect Nairn's (2005) caution that inexperienced undergraduate researchers may not easily be able to reconcile (or indeed recognise) their own positionality as Other in field-class situations. Notwithstanding, students may also experience mild culture shocks during short fieldwork exercises meaning without careful monitoring through informal discussioncautioned by Simm and Marvell (2015), students can become tropophobic, quickly disengaging and detaching their learning from the field itself if they feel out of place.…”

“Looking with intention”: using photographic essays as didactical tool to explore Berlin

“…We wanted the students to think how certain theoretical notions were grounded in the landscape (Sanders, 2007), requiring them to translate abstract theories in concrete items, persons or urban landscapes. Moreover, doing photography cultivates the students' sensory receptivity and sense of place (Phillips, 2015;Pyyry, 2016), which fits within everyday, non-representational ways to research the city (Dowling, Lloyd, & Suchet-Pearson, 2018;Latham & McCormack, 2009) that have become increasingly popular in academia, including this journal, in recent years (Glass, 2014;Simm & Marvell, 2015) and that were also discussed in the course textbook (Hubbard, 2006(Hubbard, /2018.…”

Creating global students: opportunities, challenges and experiences of internationalizing the Geography curriculum in Higher Education

“…The use of learning journals has the potential to make students more aware of global citizenship (Kenna, 2017) and their place as a (global) student through the reflection on the student's own place in the world, reflecting and empathy for the inequality and unevenness, confrontation with diversity, whether different languages or nationalities within the classroom (Ryan, 2013) or recognizing different cultural and social backgrounds either directly through fieldtrips to "exotic" destinations (McGuinness & Simm, 2005;Simm & Marvell, 2015) or indirectly through background reading. Students can also develop a more nuanced awareness of even recognizing the dominance of western examples in western literature (Kenna, 2017).…”