Mediated Geographies: Critical Pedagogy and Geographic Education

Abstract

Motivated by a need to engage students in the critical evaluation of visual information, and by a desire to teach students how to use digital technologies as a way of exploring and expressing geographical constructs and processes, the geography departments at Arizona's three universities sought and received funding from the Arizona Board of Regents for learner-centered curricular development organized around the theme of "Mediated Geographies." In this paper, we explore how critical pedagogy and learner-centered education strategies were used to engage students in semester-long documentary and photo essay projects. Some of the student projects discussed in this essay are posted for viewing at the project Web site: http://geography.asu.edu/lukinbeal/mediated.html. This project was funded by the Arizona Board of Regents' (ABOR) Learner Centered Education Grant Program. For more information about ABOR's program, see http://www.abor.asu.edu/4_special_programs/lce/index_lce.html.

Practicing physical geography: An actor-network view of physical geography exemplified by the rock art stability index

“…RASI also raises the student to the level of field researcher, giving them a type of ownership over the process of scientific inquiry -a key principle of learnercentered education (cf. Lukinbeal et al, 2007). The purpose of RASI rests in offering land and public works managers a relatively rapid strategy to identify which rocks are in danger of becoming unstable the quickest.…”

“…Lesh, 2006). In the realm of higher education, LCE focuses on students taking responsibility and ownership for their own learning (McCombs and Pierce, 1999;McCombs, 2002;Pierce and Kalkman, 2003;Lukinbeal et al, 2007). The RASI contains all the essential LCE elements: (1) training occurs indoors initially, but practical application and experience is gained outside, in the field; (2) RASI focuses on managing priceless cultural heritage resources; (3) debriefing of experience occurs in groups; (4) training occurs in a team/ collaborative environment; (5) RASI includes 'user discretion', is dynamic, evolves with increased use, and can be adapted for general stone decay applications.…”

Doing film geography

“…Garrett ( 2010 , p. 536) discusses the advantages of including video production in the toolset of geographic research, as “[v]ideographic work gives researchers an avenue to depict place, culture, society, gesture, movement, rhythm and flow in new and exciting ways.” The production of geographic knowledge can be achieved through videography—the acquisition and analysis of qualitative video data (Knoblauch & Schnettler, 2012 ) and the production of films. Knowledge of the possibilities of researching film but also making film can change film geography from a form of inquiry to one of praxis (Jacobs, 2013 ; Lukinbeal, 2014 ; Lukinbeal et al, 2007 ; Thieme et al, 2019 ).…”

Can a research film be considered a stand‐alone academic publication? An assessment of the film Climate Change, Voices of the Vulnerable: The Fishers' Plight

“…It is clear that currently video production and films are being used and created by academics not only for research but also for teaching or public awareness building about environmental and geographical problems (see Lukinbeal et al . ). However, there is limited discussion on whether these research, teaching or public awareness building films are as rigorous as written research‐reports.…”