{"id":6884,"date":"2016-08-03T14:28:10","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T14:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/citejournal.org\/\/\/"},"modified":"2016-12-19T14:37:30","modified_gmt":"2016-12-19T14:37:30","slug":"integrating-geospatial-technologies-into-existing-teacher-education-coursework-theoretical-and-practical-notes-from-the-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citejournal.org\/volume-16\/issue-3-16\/current-practice\/integrating-geospatial-technologies-into-existing-teacher-education-coursework-theoretical-and-practical-notes-from-the-field","title":{"rendered":"Integrating Geospatial Technologies Into Existing Teacher Education Coursework: Theoretical and Practical Notes from the Field"},"content":{"rendered":"
Geospatial technologies are a set of tools that include dynamic and interactive maps and globes, remotely sensed imagery, geolocation devices, and the information systems that power these technologies. \u00a0They are inherently interdisciplinary because they merge data and knowledge available from a multitude of subject areas about the processes and events in the world.<\/p>\n
Using geospatial technologies in educational contexts opens up possibilities for teaching and learning because students must interact, analyze, and represent their understandings and experiences with and in the world in a new digital form. \u00a0With some basic knowledge of their function, teacher educators can easily incorporate a number of these sense-making tools into their practice with teacher candidates.\u00a0 Learning management systems and other educational applications are increasingly presented in teacher education programs, but the potential of geospatial technologies has yet to be widely explored and considered in the teacher education research.<\/p>\n
Heeding various calls for multidisciplinary approaches to research and practice in geospatial technologies education (Baker et al., 2015; Kerr et al., 2013), I situate this practitioner paper between the fields of teacher education, geography\/geospatial technologies, and geography education. \u00a0I discuss my own use of geospatial technologies with teacher candidates in a social studies teacher education program as a method to prompt new ways of thinking about the world and the pedagogy they may eventually use in practice.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, this paper shows how teacher educators, even those with limited or no experience in geospatial technologies, might incorporate them into practice to accomplish their various pedagogical goals. \u00a0First is an overview of the value and relevance of integrating geospatial technologies within teacher education, followed by three examples of including\u00a0geospatial technologies in existing teacher education courses.\u00a0 Each example includes a description of the activity and its use of geospatial technologies, as well as the assessment and experience of teacher candidates.<\/p>\n
These three detailed examples show teacher educators how they might integrate geospatial technologies into the courses they teach\u2014whether it be a course on methods, curriculum, a content area, or beyond.\u00a0 The examples illustrate a rich use of geospatial technologies that do not require any previous experience with the technology and are pertinent across disciplines. \u00a0Also, all of the examples are free and require access only to a device with an Internet connection (computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone).<\/p>\n
In education, cautions abound against using \u201ctechnology for technology\u2019s sake\u201d (e.g., Hicks, Lee, Berson, Bolick, & Diem, 2014, p. 437). \u00a0For example, asking students to read a textbook chapter on the computer that they could read from a printout or the textbook itself is not an effective use of a device or its embedded technology. \u00a0Teachers and teacher educators are, instead, urged to \u201cconsider whether the technology is allowing them to learn in a way they could not without the technology, or if they are at least learning in a more meaningful ways\u201d (p. 437). \u00a0Engaged and informed use of geospatial technologies follows this recommendation, because these technologies can enable new types of interactions with data and representations of space that a paper map\u2014while still valuable in its own right\u2014will never be able to offer.<\/p>\n
Although the \u201cclaims that technology would transform or even reform\u2026teaching and learning seem, from today\u2019s vantage point, misguided or, at the very least, premature\u201d (Crocco & Leo, 2015, p. 56), the proper harnessing of geospatial technologies could lead to a major change in how students, teacher candidates, and teachers relay, understand, and interact with information in the classroom. \u00a0Geospatial technologies, at their core, are sense-making tools that develop critical thinking, as well as the abilities to assess data, design representations, and form new understandings of the processes at work in the world (Fargher, 2013; Kerski, Demirci, & Milson, 2013).<\/p>\n
Further, geospatial technologies are interdisciplinary in that they use data and maps rooted in a variety of disciplines and are embedded with the knowledge that stems from decades of statistical and analytical data created in a variety of fields (Baker et al., 2015; Biddulph, Lambert, & Balderstone, 2015; Fargher, 2013).\u00a0 Although using geospatial technologies might seem most natural for geography teachers, the potential exists for the creation of relevant assignments across all disciplines.\u00a0 Therefore, giving all teacher candidates, regardless of certification concentration, the space to experiment with geospatial technologies in meaningful and context-rich ways is important.<\/p>\n
Through these investigations, teacher candidates can further develop the intertwined skills and knowledge related to technology use, content knowledge, and pedagogy. \u00a0In this way, experimenting with geospatial technologies during teacher education addresses the development of teacher candidates\u2019 pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1987) by contributing to their “understanding of how particular topics, problems, or issues are organized, represented, and adapted to the diverse interests and abilities of learners, and presented for instruction” (p. 8).<\/p>\n
Importantly, addressing geospatial technology in teacher education also engages teacher candidates’ development of technological pedagogical content knowledge, also known as technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge\u00a0(TPACK).\u00a0 As Hammond and Manfra (2009) described in their discussion of TPACK in social studies education, TPACK is a conceptual framework in teacher education that \u201cprovides a common language to discuss the integration of technology into instruction and builds upon the concepts of pedagogical content knowledge, [as well as] teacher as curricular gatekeeper” (p. 160).<\/p>\n
They presented a three-scale model for effective classroom technology integration based around teacher and student expectations in relation to the sequence of \u201cgiving, prompting, and making\u201d (Hammond & Manfra, 2009, p. 163). \u00a0The model suggests a sequence in which the teacher (a) provides information to students (giving), (b) facilitates student interaction with materials, and (c) supervises and challenges students as they create some type of product.<\/p>\n
Hammond and Manfra (2009) noted that the use of technology, even following an integrative and informed model, does not automatically enhance the quality of teaching and learning associated with it.\u00a0 In fact they stressed that \u201cthe pedagogy should lead the technology, not technology lead the pedagogy\u201d (p. 163).<\/p>\n
The kinds of activities described in this article heed this call, as they emerge from previous pedagogical tasks that I believed could be augmented through the integration of geospatial technologies.\u00a0 The activities are clearly aligned with both the prompting <\/em>and making<\/em> levels of the model, in which students are challenged first to \u201cobserve detect patterns, create associations or make inferences\u201d (Hammond & Manfra, 2009, p. 164) and then transfer their understanding and skill through the development of a tangible product.\u00a0 These types of activities move teacher candidates beyond tasks requiring rote memorization and teacher-directed instruction.<\/p>\n In addition to offering an active form of student\/teacher (educator) engagement and a chance to develop skills and knowledge related to technology, content, and pedagogy, geospatial technologies can offer unprecedented access to looking at and understanding the world.\u00a0 Unlike any other tool, they can be used to swiftly input, model, and modify various data points in ways that illuminate spatial disconnections and connections. \u00a0For example, a number of research studies espouse the educational benefits of various geospatial technologies in classroom contexts relevant to teacher education, such as the technologies\u2019 ability to function as a tool for engaging in inquiry (Fargher, 2006; Scheepers, 2009), bridging content across disciplines (Sinton & Lund, 2007), augmenting place-based activities and community engagement (Mitchell & Elwood, 2012), prompting critical (spatial) thinking (Kim & Bednarz, 2013; Milson & Curtis, 2009), connecting personal experiences to school curricula (Shin, 2007), and even developing empathy (Thomas-Brown, 2010). \u00a0The commonality between these varied uses is that geospatial technologies integrated in educational contexts can offer \u201cnew ways of viewing, representing and analyzing information for transformative learning and teaching\u201d (Alibrandi & Palmer-Moloney, 2001, p. 483).<\/p>\n The ability to see, think about, represent, and understand the world in new ways is an essential function of education that geospatial technologies can aid in prompting and promoting.\u00a0 All of these abilities matter greatly in the context of teaching and teacher education.\u00a0 A major goal of many teacher education programs is to prompt teacher candidates to think about the lives of their students and the communities in which they live.\u00a0 The places where students reside are often deeply imbricated with social lives, interests, and relationships.\u00a0 Knowledge of place and the types of social networks therein, therefore, has the potential to allow teacher candidates to teach their future students in effective, culturally responsive, and equitable ways.<\/p>\n Although teacher educators have effectively used place-based pedagogies to engage with these ideas (Ajayi, 2014; Dubel & Sobel, 2008), geospatial technologies offer another modality by which teacher educators can help teacher candidates learn about communities, schools, and their students.\u00a0 Geospatial technologies can add to the experience gained through place-based pedagogy (among other forms of community\/place-rich pedagogy) by engaging with relevant spatial data of those contexts\u2014data, for example, related to demographics, income levels, educational attainment, presence of amenities, and infrastructure. \u00a0In this way, geospatial technologies have the ability to augment, if not transform, teacher education practices related to learning about communities, their diverse populations, and other place-specific qualities.<\/p>\n When used in ways that are informed by knowledge of the content, technology, and related pedagogy, geospatial technologies can function effectively on two levels for education across disciplines and context: (a) as a tool to engage students with the learning of content across disciplines and (b) for teachers and student to learn more about their communities and how those spaces influence and come to matter in the classroom.\u00a0 Despite their potential to seem overwhelmingly complex, pedagogical practices infused with geospatial technologies can be simple to implement in the teacher education classroom in meaningful and context-rich ways.\u00a0 Geospatial technology use is built around the facilitation of authentic skills and tasks, and data come from real-world contexts that can spatially illustrate nearly any phenomenon from the social and physical world (Alibrandi & Palmer-Moloney, 2001; Kerski, 2012; Johansson, 2003).<\/p>\n Further, geospatial data on nearly any topic are available widely and freely available, making them an accessible resource for teachers.\u00a0 Thus, teachers and teacher educators wanting to teach about sustainable environmental practices, for example, can access relevant data sets ranging from spatial statistics on rainfall to point data demonstrating access to recycling and composting centers to yearly data on a county\u2019s water use.<\/p>\n These data can then easily be plotted, layered, reviewed, and queried using a variety of technological platforms and can enhance student learning across contexts\u2014whether they be the learning of content as guided in the standards or learning about the communities in which teachers and students live. \u00a0While the learning of these concepts is not new to many teacher education courses, geospatial technologies offer tools to enhance the teaching of these ideas in ways that help teacher candidates visualize processes in both novel and meaningful ways.<\/p>\n Although geospatial technologies afford teachers a toolkit for critical thinking and sense-making, many teachers candidates and in-service teachers have limited exposure to these technologies; even those with some training in geography (Baker, Palmer, &\u00a0Kerski 2009). \u00a0This limited exposure is problematic for the potential implementation of geospatial technologies in the K-12 classroom because, as numerous researchers have found, teachers are unlikely to adopt technologies that they are uncomfortable with and have not been taught to use for pedagogical purposes (Kerski, 2003; Mueller, Wood, Willoughby, Ross, & Specht, 2008; Wright & Wilson, 2009).<\/p>\n This finding is echoed in the results of a survey of geography teachers I conducted to further understand the challenges faced by geography teachers as part of a larger study (Kerr, 2016). \u00a0Only seven of the 47 participants (15%) said they used geospatial technologies in their instruction. \u00a0Further, a total of eight participants (17%) said they would feel comfortable using geospatial technologies in their instruction.<\/p>\n While the vast majority of respondents were not comfortable with using geospatial technologies in their instruction, 33 participants (70%) said they would be interested in learning how to use geospatial technologies pedagogically.\u00a0 These findings were reinforced in a free response portion of the survey, where one participant wrote,<\/p>\n Learning more in undergraduate courses could have helped\u2026I also really struggle with GIS. \u00a0I took a class on using Google Earth, but it was extremely basic. \u00a0I don’t recall learning anything that I didn’t already know about Google Earth.\u2026In my district, there were nine 7th grade geography teachers and eight 6th grade geography teachers. \u00a0None of us had majored in geography, and only a handful of us had even taken a geography course in college. \u00a0So content was something of a struggle for everyone.<\/p>\n Similar responses were reiterated throughout the survey, as well as the larger body of literature. \u00a0Teachers often enter the field unprepared to teach geography and use geospatial technologies pedagogically. \u00a0Therefore, if the ultimate goal is to have teachers using geospatial technologies, let alone in robust ways, their use must become integrated into the teacher education experience. \u00a0Although geography teachers expressed these sentiments, the pedagogical strategies presented in this article are useful for all kinds of teaching and learning in teacher education. Furthermore, the feelings communicated by the geography teachers are likely not dissimilar from the feelings of teachers in other disciplinary areas.<\/p>\n In my work as a social studies teacher educator at a large southeastern U.S. research university, I was\u00a0tasked with creating interventions and additions in the teacher education experience by using geospatial technologies in the existing context of our program. \u00a0 I saw firsthand how geospatial technologies could open up a world of opportunities in the relaying, management, and interpretation of complex data about the world.\u00a0 As such, I sought to expose teacher candidates to geospatial technologies early and often, so that they may invite their future students to think about, understand, and see the world through new technologically enhanced ways.<\/p>\n This activity is important for a number of reasons. \u00a0First, geospatial technologies are now used in a number of different professional contexts\u2014from environmental groups to over two thirds of Fortune 500 companies that use Esri GIS products to guide their operations (Clancy, 2014). \u00a0Therefore, teacher candidates and their students will likely encounter geospatial technologies in some capacity in their future careers and civic life.<\/p>\n Second, competency in geospatial technologies can improve critical thinking across contexts and disciplines. \u00a0<\/strong>If the goal of teacher education is to prepare teacher candidates to become educators that effectively prepare their own students for career and civic life, introducing them to geospatial technologies is crucial. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The activities described here were integrated into existing courses for both undergraduate and master\u2019s level students with a social studies education degree focus.\u00a0 In order to increase teacher candidates\u2019 awareness of the potential of geospatial technologies, I took the existing course goals and worked to augment them through the incorporation of geospatial technology-based activities that added real-word context to educational content and standards, allowed for creative work, and prompted a reorientation to problems in the social and physical world. \u00a0For a list of example course goals and related geospatial technology-based activities, see Appendix A<\/a>.<\/p>\n To first lay the groundwork for activities based in geospatial technologies, I reintroduced students to geographic thinking. \u00a0Many, if not most, teacher candidates in these courses likened geography to the naming of places on maps. \u00a0To help dispel this notion, the courses\u2014in addition to maintaining their original content on methods and curriculum for the social studies classroom\u2014focused on using geography and geospatial technologies as sense-making tools for teachers and students. \u00a0I aimed for students to think about the connections between the social world and the spaces within which it exists.<\/p>\n Each of the assignments discussed in this paper\u00a0met a variety of goals I had laid out for the teacher candidates: incorporation of and exposure to geospatial technologies, critical questioning of a social issue pertinent to education, use of creative skills, and connection to pedagogy.\u00a0 Although I focus on geospatial technology integration in a social studies context, the bulk of these activities could be easily modified to suit the needs of other content areas, because the knowledge that can be gleaned about communities and the world at large is important for any type of culturally responsive practice, not only within social studies education.<\/p>\n In general, the activities prompted teacher candidates to consider new information that is important for their future work as teachers, ideas related to structural issues of race, gender, language, class, and sexuality.\u00a0 Learning about and recognizing the power of race, gender, language, class, and sexuality is an important practice for thoughtful teachers of all disciplines.\u00a0 The use of geospatial technologies can add to teachers\u2019 knowledge bases in thinking about how these structures function in their work as educators and as major factors in their students\u2019 lives.\u00a0 In the context of these courses, for example, we used geospatial technologies to learn more about food deserts, income inequality, walkability, climate change, and the spread of disease.\u00a0 These are types of current events and phenomena that all teachers should have knowledge of to be a socially responsive and aware pedagogue.\u00a0 The activities allowed teacher candidates to interact with various interdisciplinary phenomena in ways that would likely not have been possible without geospatial technologies.<\/p>\n The first interaction that students in a course on social studies and geography pedagogy had with geospatial technologies was through their completion of photomissions. <\/em>\u00a0Building upon the work of Juan Carlos Castro (2012), as well as Sarah Mathews and Erin Adams (2016), photomissions prompt teacher candidates to read an assigned text and then take a photograph of a concept they identified from the reading.<\/p>\n In the context of this course, photomissions were assigned as weekly homework to help teacher candidates prepare for in-class sessions.\u00a0 For example, on a week when they engaged with ideas related to gender and space, teacher candidates first read excerpts from Doreen Massey\u2019s (1994) Space, Place, and Gender\u00a0<\/em>and were then tasked with taking a photograph of how they perceived the connections between gender and space, as informed by their reading, in their daily lives. \u00a0These photographs were then uploaded to the class Flickr\u00ae<\/sup>group and given a several-sentence caption explaining the supposed connection between reading, content, and photograph.<\/p>\n Each week, teacher candidates were encouraged to review their classmates\u2019 photographs.\u00a0 Then, every class began with a review and critique of the group\u2019s photographs, as well as review of the Flickr-generated map of the photographs. \u00a0In addition to evaluating the points students brought up about their own and others\u2019 photographs in these discussions, I assessed teacher candidate work by reviewing their photographs and the respective captions. \u00a0These readings provided me with more data to gauge a teacher candidate\u2019s understanding of the assigned geographic concept.\u00a0 I looked for the ways that teacher candidates connected elements of their assigned readings to objects, entities, or scenes they encountered and photographed. \u00a0While this assignment did not use maps as part of the formal assessment, the initial exposure to GIS that Flickr offered was important in other components of the course, where teacher candidates were tasked with digital mapping\/geospatial initiatives.<\/p>\n A specific requirement of the weekly photomissions was that photographs had to be taken with mobile devices that utilized location services.\u00a0 As such, all of the photographs\u2019 digital metadata contained geographic coordinates (geotags) that could be plotted using a GIS. \u00a0In the case of these photomissions, the class used the Flickr map functionality (see Figure 1) as a way for the teacher candidates to familiarize themselves with dynamic maps and engage with a basic use of geospatial technologies. \u00a0When photographs are taken with geotags and uploaded to Flickr, the web tool automatically generates an interactive and dynamic map.<\/p>\nGeospatial Technology in Teacher Education In Practice<\/h2>\n
Photomissions (Geotagged Photos)<\/h3>\n