‘None of Us Sets Out To Hurt People’: The Ethical Geographer and Geography Curricula in Higher Education1

Abstract

This paper examines ethics in learning and teaching geography in higher education. It proposes a pathway towards curriculum and pedagogy that better incorporates ethics in university geography education. By focusing on the central but problematic relationships between (i) teaching and learning on the one hand and research on the other, and (ii) ethics and geography curricula, the authors' reflections illustrate how ethics may be better recognieed within those curricula. They discuss issues afecting teaching and learning about ethics in geography, and through identifcation of a range of examples identify ways to enhance the integration of ethical issues into university geography curricula.

Fostering Cross-Cultural Empathy With Non-Western Curricular Structures

“…This stirred up an unexpected mid-term protest. However, it also brought to the surface wider frustrations: the backlash attacked not just the assessment but the larger structure of the course, especially its focus on the personal rather than more conventional impersonal objects of geography (Table 2; Boyd et al, 2008). The essence was that geography should be about other-people issues rather than uncomfortable personal ones.…”

“…received much attention. Several wondered what ethics had to do with either geography or their future employment, and in Year 3, explaining this link had become a new first task for the class to resolve (Boyd et al, 2008). This new exercise required them to research and write a paragraph-length exploration of these links, which finally would become the first page of their portfolio, a task that many tackled with some conviction and efficiency.…”

“…This study explores two approaches to the introduction of non-Western ideas into an advanced-level British undergraduate course, "The Ethical Geographer" (Boyd et al, 2008). First, it takes a traditional Western aspect of the curriculum, in this case a branch of cultural geography, Psychogeography, and shifts it from conventional European foundations to new foundations constructed from an Indian philosophy, Sa -mkhya.…”

“…Its objectives include developing the custom of reflective practice, responsible citizenship, and self-development while enabling the transition from life as a student to the world of work (Boyd et al, 2008;Teichler, 2004). The course, introduced as an exploration of the self and its worlds, a comment that reveals its dharmic substructure, is constructed on four pillars: ethics, empathy, environment (Education for Sustainable Development), and preparation for employment.…”

Whatever It Takes! Developing Professional Learning Communities in Primary School Mathematics Education

“…It is the cultures of classrooms, schools, districts, universities and other related contexts that must change. The changes need to enable teachers to work together naturally, both physically and attitudinally, to plan, observe each other's practice, and to seek and test and revise their teaching strategies on a continuing basis (Boyd et al, 2008;Boyd & Newton, 2011;Den Exter et al, 2012). Fullan reports research that students did much better when they had three good teachers in three successive years (Fullan, 2007).…”