Presentation by Mary Fargher from Institute of Education, University of London. Esri European User Conference.

1. Welcome #EUC11

2. Geography with a ‘different view’
through GIS
Mary Fargher
Institute of Education, University of London
m.fargher@ioe.ac.uk

3. Overview
• Educational context
• A Geospatial Project
• Findings
• Recommendations
• Next Research Phase
• Discussion

4. Educational context
GEOGRAPHY AND GIS IN UK SCHOOLS
• A concept-based UK Geography curriculum (2008-)
• GIS mandatory but under-used
• Geographical Association (GA) ‘manifesto’ :
‘Geography with a different view’ (2009)
• Geography teachers as ‘curriculum-makers’
• Political shift towards ‘core subject knowledge’
(2010-)

5. Geographical context
‘Spatial patterns, distributions and networks
can be described, analysed and often
explained by reference to social, economic,
environmental and political processes. As part
of their geographical enquiries, pupils should
identify these processes and assess
their impact.’
(UK Geography National Curriculum 2008)

6. Space
‘Pupils should develop spatial understanding,
including how the locations of human and physical
features are influenced by each other and often
interact across space.’
(Geography National Curriculum,2008)

7. Spatial thinking?
Geography’s ‘sacred cow?’

8. Mary Fargher IoE, 2011

9. Spatial Thinking
• Can be interpreted in a number of different ways
• Is a crucial concept in geography
• Different perspectives on spatiality significantly
influence geography teaching and learning

10. SPACE IN SPATIAL SCIENCE
‘ GIS can be used to analyze river networks on Mars
on Monday,
study cancer in Bristol on Tuesday, map the
underclass of London on Wednesday,
analyze the groundwater flow in the Amazon basin on
Thursday,
and end the week by modelling retail shoppers in Los
Angeles on Friday.’
(Openshaw, 1991)

11. Subsequent criticisms….
Positivist origins – Designed (only?) to locate, identify, predict,
problem-solve?
Questionable ethics behind the technology- Commercially-
orientated, dubious military applications, non-participatory?
‘Ground Truth : The Social Implications of GIS’ (Edited by John
Pickles, 1995)
Limitations to thinking geographically?

12. SPACE IN THE POSTMODERN
‘Geography is conceived of not
as a featureless landscape on
which events simply unfold, but
as a series of spatial structures
which provide a dynamic
context for the processes and
practices that give shape to
form and culture.’
(Jackson, 1989)

13. POST-STRUCTURAL SPACE
‘Space is generated by interactions
and interrelations. Human
geographers, then, need to account
for the relational spaces that do
emerge and they need to
understand how particular spatial
configurations are generated. But
equally, some attention must be
paid to spaces that do not emerge,
to the sets of relations that fail to
gain any kind of spatial coherence.
Relations between relations
therefore become important’
(Murdoch, 2006)

14. ‘The first step down the road is to insist that
place, in whatever guise, is,like space and time,
a social construct. The only interesting question
that can be asked is, by what social process(es)
is place constructed?
(Harvey, 1993)

15. Constructing and using Geographical Knowledge with
GIS :
- Declarative knowledge
- Procedural knowledge
- Configurational knowledge
(Mark, 1993)

16. Conventional GIS used in the classroom
ENQUIRY PREDICTION
PROBLEM-SOLVING
ANALYSING SPATIAL PATTERNS LINKING STATISTICAL
ANALYSES EG
CORRELATION
TECHNIQUES

17. DECLARATIVE GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE
IS BROADLY FACTUAL......
http://www.earth3d.org/oldsite/screenshot_
nasa_bmng.jpg

18. http://www.londonuk.org.uk/communities/9/004/006/962
/779/images/4525607521.gif
PROCEDURAL GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE
ENCOMPASSES ROUTES AND THE PRACTICE OF
‘WAY-FINDING’

19. CONFIGURATIONAL GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE
The bringing together of
different types of
geographical knowledge
to enable opportunities
for deeper learning and
understanding
http://www.wlinfo.org.uk/images
/geography2.jpg

21. Geovisualisation – the ‘fourth r?’
(Goodchild, 2008 )
Using digital geospatial tools – conventional
GIS and ‘neogeography’ to develop
geographical understanding

22. A Geospatial Project :Aim
• To explore the role of GIS in constructing knowledge
about place
Objectives:
To critically examine how place can be represented
through GIS
To explore how teachers and students mediate GIS in
studying place
To critically examine outcomes in terms of relational
‘readings of place’

23. CLASSROOM-BASED DATA
• Using ArcGIS, ArcExplorer and Google Earth to
study geography knowledge construction
• Data collected in 6 schools in GA ‘Spatially Speaking’
• Data collected in 2 schools on representing,
constructing and conceptualising place

26. USING CONVENTIONAL GIS TO
SUPPORT GEOGRAPHY
Housing quality data survey using GIS in a
school GCSE project
: MAPPING THE URBAN STRUCTURE OF
BISHOP’S STORTFORD
(O’Connor, 2007)

27. Neo geography as :’Volunteered geographies’
(O’Reilly, 2006)

28. / Christian Nold ‘ Greenwich Emotion Map’
(2006)

29. NeoGeography has been defined as a blurring of the
distinctions between producer, communicator and
consumer of geographic information. The relationship
between professional and amateur varies across
disciplines. The subject matter of geography is familiar to
everyone, and the acquisition and compilation of
geographic data have become vastly easier as technology
has advanced.
(Goodchild, 2009) http://
vimeo.com/9182869

30. Neogeography in the Classroom
TEACHERS AND
STUDENTS USE GEO- STUDENTS CAN CREATE THEIR OWN
REFERENCED DATA DATA
UPLOADED ONTO THE
NET
DATA CAN BE ADDED IN A
NUMBER OF FORMATS EG TEXT,
VIDEO, AUDIO

31. AID AND NEOGEOGRAPHY – PORT-AU-PRINCE, 2010
(Campbell, 2010)

32. USING NEOGEOGRAPHY TO SUPPORT GEOGRAPHY :
Banda Aceh, Indonesia – Google Earth Images overlain with
subsequent YouTube images (Fargher, 2009)
STUDENTS IN
THIS
ACTIVITY
PRODUCE A
SERIES OF
GEO-TAGGED
PICTURES
DESCRIBING
THE IMPACTS
OF THE 2004
TSUNAMI

33. Teacher Responses on working with hybrid
technology (GIS and Neogeography)
Students developed beyond the acquisition of spatial
science skills
More abstract geographical concepts more
transparent via higher quality geovisualisation
More able responded positively to the academic
challenge of using a wide range of geo-data
Less academic students appeared to perform beyond
teacher expectations when using hybrid GIS
(Fargher, 2011)

34. Research Findings (Fargher, 2011)
• The technical limitations of conventional GIS have
significant impacts on constructing richer place
knowledge
• Successful use of GIS remains significantly
dependent on TPACK* http://www.tpck.org/
• Large scale digital map space is important for
developing relational ‘readings of place’
• Shifting emphasis towards teacher geographical
subject knowledge enhances the use of GIS in the
classroom
• Hybrid GIS combines the rigour of spatial science
GIS with richer qualitative representations of place in
geographical thinking
• (Fargher, 2011)

35. Recommendations
• Embracing the analytical capacity of conventional
GIS selectively
• Exploring the educational potential of ‘public
geographies’ through ‘Web 2.0 meets GIS’
• Developing opportunities for ‘Geography
curriculum-making’ for subject specialists with
hybrid GIS
(Fargher, 2011)

36. Interconnected Place
• ‘One way of seeing ‘places’ is as on the surface of maps:
Samarkand is there, the United States of America (finger
outlining boundary) is here. But, to escape from an
imagination of space as a surface is to abandon also that
view of place. If space is rather simultaneity of stories-so-
far, then places are collections of those stories,
articulations of the wider power-geometries of space. Their
character will be a product of these intersections within
that wider setting, and of what is made of them. And too, of
the non-meetings- up, the disconnections and the relations
not established, the exclusions. All this contributes to the
specificity of place.’
• (Massey, 2005, p.131)

37. Next Research Phase (2011-
• Pilot ‘Geography with a different view through GIS’
using hybrid GIS
• 2 key foci:
• Teaching key geography concepts through ArcGIS,
ArcExplorer and Google Earth
• The role of geography subject specialist knowledge
in using GIS to enhance teaching and learning of
‘relational place’

38. Discussion

39. Thank You