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Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), Vol. 2, Year 6, December, 2017

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Contents Chew-Hung Chang, Muhammad Faisal Aman

The International Charter on Geographical Education – a reflection on published research articles on Assessment Daniela Pasquinelli d’Allegra

Proposals for the development of competences in geography by applying the IGU International Charter Wiktor Osuch

Geography in the reformed educational system in Poland ‒ return to the past or a brand new quality? Enrico Squarcina, Valeria Pecorelli

Ocean citizenship. The time to adopt a useful concept for environmental teaching and citizenship education is now Margherita Cisani

High school commuters. Sustainability education on students’ mobility behaviours and perceptions of their everyday landscape

THE LANGUAGE OF IMAGES (Edited by Elisa Bignante and Marco Maggioli) Elisa Bruttomesso, Jordi Vic

Intentional Camera Movement: A Multisensory and Mobile Photographic Technique to Investigate the Urban Tourism Experience MAPPING SOCIETIES (Edited by Edoardo Boria) Matteo Proto

Irredenta on the map: Cesare Battisti and Trentino-Alto Adige cartographies

GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND (PRACTICAL) CONSIDERATIONS Emanuela Gamberoni

Challenges of Geography in Education. Proposals from the EUROGEO Conference (Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2-3 March 2017)

Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 6, Dec., 2017, pp. 5-16 DOI: 10.4458/9446-01

The International Charter on Geographical Education – a reflection on published research articles on Assessment Chew-Hung Changa, Muhammad Faisal Amana a

National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore Email: chewhung.chang@nie.edu.sg Received: September 2017 – Accepted: October 2017

Abstract The paper examines the 1992 and 2016 versions of the International Charter on Geographical Education with a view to provide a commentary on the extent that research on assessment issues in geographical and environmental education respond to the directions set out in the two documents. The authors started on a concern with an apparent lack of discourse on assessment issues in geographical education and endeavours to provide a reflection of issues within the geography education community by an exploratory inquiry based on an analysis of article titles published in 4 prominent geographical journals: Environmental Education Research; International Research in Geographical Environmental Education; Journal of Environmental Education and; Journal of Geography from 2010 to 2017. The authors believe that the number of journal articles and issues related to assessment and evaluations in Geographical Education provide an indication of the general direction that were previously proclaimed, have to varying degrees been reflected and enacted upon by geography educators and scholars. The findings show that while the published research articles contribute to achieving some of the action plan items on the International Charter on Geographical Education, areas of improvement include research on professional development and international exchange of ideas about geography assessment. Moreover, the authors believe that geography educators are key facilitators of knowledge-making for Geography Education in the 21st century classrooms. As a consequence, geography educators should be empowered to do research on issues that are “relevant” to them, be guided and mentored, be given the appropriate channels to “feed-back” and “feed-forward” inputs, and if needed, to (re) shape action plans to adhere to the spirit or intention of these declarations. Keywords: Assessment, Environmental Education, Geographical Education, International Charter

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1. Introduction Brooks, Gong and Salinas-Silva (2017, p. 12) reported that there are “inconsistencies on how progression in geography is understood, how geography can be learnt alongside other subjects, and the extent to which the curriculum should respond to local contextual needs and environmental concerns”. However, there is some clarity in the international geographical education community on what geographical education is, how it is carried out and why it is important, in as far as it has been documented in the 1992 and 2016 versions of the International Charter on Geographical Education (referred to as the Charter in this article). The first charter was published in 1992 and the 2016 revision was declared at the International Geographical Union (IGU) Congress in Beijing. Both Charters were developed and prepared by the IGU Commission on Geographical Education (CGE). The redraft of a 2016 Charter reflects the changing contexts to advance the goals of quality geography education for policymakers, curriculum developers and educators. Using discourse analysis, Bourke and Lane (2017) identified the key themes across both Charters. The 1992 Charter focused on 5 key discourses, namely, the discourse of geography education as beneficial, discourse of quality geography education as essential, discourse of concern, discourse of conceptual knowledge and skills and discourse of research. The 2016 document was focused on “the charter as an action plan” (IGU-CGE, 2016, p. 5) and featured the discourse of geography education as vital for the future and the discourse of improving quality through internationalization (Bourke and Lane, 2017). While the discourses focused on slightly different aspects of the same issues, the two common features identified were “the importance of geography and the need for it to be adequately delivered by trained geography specialists”. Geography is concerned with asking questions of “Where is it?”, “What is it like?”, “Why is it there?”, “How did it happen?”, “What impacts does it have?” and “How should it be managed for the mutual benefit of humanity and the natural environment?” (IGU-CGE, 1992, p. 5). Indeed, Kidman and Chang (2017, p. 266) argue “research on geographical and environmental education is

paramount to prepare children for an uncertain world plagued by environmental problems”. The question is not about why, but rather how we can prepare children for a good geographical education. The study also expands the scope of looking beyond literature in geographical education to those in environmental education given the explicit discourse of environmental education within the community. The 2016 Charter outlines an international action plan with 5 key action statements (bold indicate authors’ emphases): 1. National and local education policy makers, as well as geography teachers at all levels, should make the focus and contribution of geographical education for society more explicit to encourage higher levels of public support for its place in the curriculum; 2. National and local education policy makers should set minimum requirements for geography teaching and geographical literacy of those who teach geography; 3. National and local education policy makers and geography teacher associations should develop processes to encourage (inter)national exchanges of meaningful geography teaching and learning practices; 4. National and local education policy makers and the geographical education community should develop a relevant research agenda for geographical education and facilitate this research for the development of geographical education; 5. National and local education policy makers and geography teacher associations and teachers should create and maintain a strong professional network structure. (IGU-CGE, 2106, pp. 10-14) As a charter, a document that establishes some boundaries within which the functions, rules and governance of an organization, there is an obvious emphasis on the role of national curriculum and local policy makers. These key stakeholders broadly define educational objectives that are deemed imperative within their situated national agenda and contexts. Further, the comparative studies across national geography curriculum may

Chew-Hung Chang, Muhammad Faisal Aman yield several gaps and alignments to the charter and declarations. The identification of geography educators as enablers and how they structure their networks and associations may also provide a useful platform to understand on how they have developed resources and structures to enact and meet their national curriculum objectives. Such strategies, whether intentional or not, may expedite the actualization of the action plan of international charter on geographical education. Indeed, the world is facing a variety of global issues such as unequal access to education, social conditions that result from economic inequality across countries and unparalleled environmental changes. Each of these issues can be understood through geographical knowledge. The authors argue that to reflect on the progress of Geographical Education, there is a need to (re)visit assessment practices as key markers of progress. Good assessment practices in geography will allow the teacher to determine how well they are teaching and how well the students are learning (Voltz, Sims and Nelson, 2010, p. 116). Indeed, “if knowledge is a measurable goal, then it takes a clearly defined means of assessing the knowledge to measure it. There is a strong academic and research tradition […] among geography educators and it ranges from national assessments to classroom based assessment” (Stoltman, 2012, p. 20). In the knowledge-based society of the 21st century, school curriculum plays a critical role in offering solutions to the problems such as climate change, environmental degradation, and sustainable economic and social development. Werlen (2016) argues that people need to take responsibility for their actions and to consider the challenges of global social events and climate change, for examples by taking sustainability into account when making decisions. There is a common perception that curriculum refers to a planned sequence of work that guides teachers’ instruction but the teacher’s role is not limited to planning activities suggested by a curriculum document but it extends to making sense of the curricular requirements while actively making decisions about what to teach, how to teach and most importantly, how to assess. Reflecting on the action plan as outlined in the Charter, assessment and evaluation practices in geographical education should be given its timely Copyright© Nuova Cultura

and important place as a yardstick and instrument to measure the effectiveness of the action plan visà-vis national and local curricula. Newton (2007) highlighted that there are 18 purposes of assessment and pointed out that there should be clarity in the distinctions of each purpose. For instance, it could be argued that at a broader and larger scale, assessment in Geographical education can be purposely framed to monitor developments at a systems level or even at a programme level, assessment can be used to evaluate the success of the initiative. Assessment practices can also be employed at a smaller scale by geography educators in the classrooms. Weeden and Lambert (2006) have indicated that in English schools, there is a correlation between formative assessment and increased student achievement. Formative assessment therefore plays a critical role to instill belief and encourage students that they can be successful. Assessment should measure the effectiveness of geography teaching and literacy, guiding geography educators to relook at learning processesrecalibrating non-meaningful practices which may not be in -sync with intended objectives. For example, Weeden and Lambert (2006) also acknowledged that formative assessment should look into how students develop acquisition skills to apply the numerous technical jargons and vocabulary appropriately. In another instance, assessment scholars Black and William (1998) had demonstrated that regular and useful feedback are part of assessment for learning. However, in another study, James and Pedder (2006) have found that educators in England struggle and face competing and contradictory demands although they are “committed to the values (not just the methods) of assessment for learning” (James and Pedder, 2006, p. 109). Assessment practices are processes which need to be tested for validity and reliability, to be researched, informed and refined upon not only by educators in the classrooms but by geography educators internationally and at all levels. It is therefore appropriate for the disposition and treatment towards assessment and evaluation practices be shifted from an “afterthought” to be the foci – not only assessing conventional geographical skills but extended to assessing geographical thinking and attitudes in order to be Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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reflected upon, perhaps to (re) course and (re)chart the direction of geographical education, if necessary. Consequently, two research questions arose from this understanding: 



How much work on assessment was reported on in the geographical and environmental education research literature? What are the topics reported in the geographical and environmental education research literature?

To sufficiently address these two questions, there is a need to conduct an extensive literature review. However, the scope of this article is to provide an exploratory inquiry into these two questions with a view to provide an exposition on the issue so as to encourage geographical education researchers to do more work in the area of assessment. The methodology for this inquiry will consequently be limited by the exploratory scope of this article.

2. Methodology To scope this research study, the authors selected four research journals in geographical education and environmental education as a starting point. These are “International Research in Geographical Environmental Education (IRGEE)”, the “Journal of Geography (JoG)”, the “Environmental Education Research (EER)”, and the “Journal of Environmental Education (JEE)” due to their importance and reputation in the geographical education community. The selection of two geography education and two environmental education journals is also purposive in response to the findings of an earlier publication in IRGEE. In 2012, Kidman and Papadimitriou performed a content analysis of articles published in IRGEE between 1992 and 2009. The main findings of this analysis showed that there was a roughly equal proportion of articles published in the geography and environmental education domains. The analysis also showed that there were 153 articles published on assessment between 1992 and 2009 (Kidman and Papadimitriou, 2012, p. 5). At the same time, Copyright© Nuova Cultura

IRGEE was started in 1992 at least in part, in response to the 1992 Charter’s call for more concerted efforts in research on geographical and environmental education. The authors have therefore decided to include in the analysis two geography education and two environmental education journals of similar standing in their respective community. IRGEE is the flagship journal of the IGU-CGE while JoG is the flagship journal of the National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE) based in the United States of America. JEE and EER are Q1 journals in environmental education with journal H-indices of 26 and 24 respectively, which potentially attracts high quality papers in the field. This is comparable to H-indices of 19 and 25 for IRGEE and JoG. A period of 10 years from 2007 was chosen to provide a common timeframe of comparison and also to allow for analysis over a substantial period of time. The authors assert that as an exploratory study that the purpose was to reflect on the issues raised in the Charters and also the potential of extending a similar methodology for future work. In order to explore broad issues related to “assessment” and “evaluation”, a generic search strategy was employed with the above key words for these 4 journals.

3. Findings A total of 134 relevant article titles were featured across the 4 journals between 2007 and 2017. These resultant titles from the search were subsequently fed into a “Word Cloud” that allows words which are text data to be tagged. A word count of these keywords was also conducted and the frequency distribution has been tabulated. The authors stress that this analysis is based on the titles only and a more thorough treatment will be to include the keywords and abstracts for analysis in a future date. The frequency of words is visually represented in the relative font sizes used. The filtering and visualization process were also repeated for each journal. The results are as follows: amongst the 4 journals, JEE had 56 articles containing the key phrases of “assessment” and “evaluation” in the titles, the highest amongst the 4 journals. This is followed by 35 articles from ERR and IRGEE with 25

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Chew-Hung Chang, Muhammad Faisal Aman articles. JoG had the least number of articles at 18. The following sections will present the results in this order. The visual representation of key phrases and words in the titles across 4 journals is seen in Figure 1.

Word

Frequency

Environment/Environmental Programme/Programmes Geography/Geographical Students Learning Attitudes Schools Knowledge Course Teaching/Teachers

66 31 24 16 11 11 10 10 9 8

Table 1. Frequency of words found in titles across the 4 journals.

Figure 1. Word cloud from 4 sources.

The ten most frequently used words in the titles, excluding the words “assessment”, “assessing”, “evaluation” and “evaluating” are tabulated in Table 1. To further identify frequently used words related to “assessment” and “evaluation” in titles, the ten most frequently occurring keywords were tabulated for discussion (see Table 1). Apart from key search words, “assessment/assessing” and “evaluation/ evaluating” and “Geography”, the titles across the 4 journals were primarily concerned with questions of “What do we assess?”, “Assessment for program or curricular evaluation”, and “Who are we assessing?”. The “what” of assessment written in these journals can be classified according to the dimensions of learning outcomes such as “knowledge” and “attitudes”. In addition, the theme of “environmental education” seems to be a recurrent theme across the journal title articles and these are often situated in “schools” and for “students”. These themes correspond to the action plan to make the importance of geographical education for society more explicit to bolster its place in the curriculum.

Indeed, one of the contributions of geography to education in that it “helps us to face questions of what it means to live sustainably in this world […] understand human relationships and their responsibilities to both the natural environment and to others” (IGU-CGE, 2016, p. 5). While environmental issues may be driving geographical and environmental education, geography is additionally interested in providing “the study of Earth and its natural and human environments. Geography enables the study of human activities and their interrelationships and interactions with environments from local to global scales” (p. 4). “Program” may refer to the curriculum and how geography researchers and educators design and organize information. But a reading across all titles show that the articles coded with “program” are typically about program evaluation. Further, the articles published are concerned with assessment for the purposes of measuring student learning as well as teacher efficacy. In other words, research on the quality of geography teaching and geographical literacy of those who teach geography, especially in the area of assessment is also an area that has come up in the findings. Indeed, teachers need to conduct good assessment as they want to know how well they are teaching and how well the students have learned (Voltz, Sims and Nelson, 2010, p. 116). In order to understand how these issues are distributed across the 4 journals that are analysed, the following sections will report on the analysis of Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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each of these journals. The visual representation of key phrases and words in the titles in EER is depicted in Figure 2 and Table 2. While EER is primarily an environmental education journal (and JEE as well), the analysis on this journal will inform the type of works published about assessment in environmental issues – which is an important aspect in the Charters. Apart from key words such as, “evaluation/evaluating”, “assessment/assessing”, the word cloud in the EER journal listed 4 previously key words: “environmental”; “education”; “learning”; and “program”; that were found across 4 journals.

Figure 2. Word cloud from EER.

A key term, “sustainability”, is unique to EER while discussing issues related to assessment and evaluation (see Table 2). This does not come as a surprise as “students require increasing international competence in order to ensure effective cooperation on a broad range of economic, political, cultural and environmental issues in a shrinking world” (IGU-CGE, 1992, p.3). Indeed this was re-stated in the 2016 charter and there is also an additional statement that says the Charter is supportive of the principle set out in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (IGU-CGE, 2016, p. 1). The Lucerne Declaration on Geographical Education for Sustainable Development in 2008 supports the aims of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD) through integrating sustainable development into the teaching of geography at all levels and in all regions of the world (Reinfried, 2009). The declaration recognizes that geographical Copyright© Nuova Cultura

knowledge, skills, attitudes and values contribute the goals of the UNDESD. Further, “Geography is concerned with human-environment interactions in the context of specific places and locations and with issues that have a strong geographical dimension like natural hazards, climate change, energy supplies, migration, land use, urbanization, poverty and identity” (IGU-CGE, 2016, p. 10). Indeed, the theme of “sustainability” is relevant to promoting the importance of geographical education for society as outlined in the action plan of the 2016 Charter. Word

Frequency

Environment/Environmental Education Programme/Programmes Sustainability Learning Students Impact Schools

23 19 10 6 6 4 4 3

Table 2. Frequency of words found in titles in EER.

IRGEE is the flagship journal of the IGU-CGE, the developer of the Charters. While IRGEE is an independent academic journal managed by a team of academics and the publishing company of the Taylor and Francis Group, members of the IGUCGE regularly publish in this journal. Furthermore, there have been a number of commentaries written about the Charters in IRGEE. In a sense, published works in the journal represent the key discourses that occur within the geography education community. The visual representation of key phrases and words in the titles in IRGEE journal is shown in Figure 3. IRGEE journal highlighted 3 highly repetitive words, “Geography”, “environmental” and “education” that are linked to ideas related to “assessment” and “evaluation” (see Table 3).

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The visual representation of key phrases and words in the JEE journal title is featured in Figure 4. The words “conservation” and “resource” have emerged from the expected list of words “knowledge”, “programs”, and “resource” that have appeared across 4 journals.

Figure 3. Word cloud from IRGEE.

There are still the concerns with the key questions of “What do we assess?”, “Assessment for program or curricular evaluation”, and “Who are we assessing?”. However, GIS comes up on this subset when compared to the analysis for all titles across the 4 journals. Like EER, there are works published about assessment issues that focuses on the teaching and learning of geography for issues in the environment (see Table 3). This underscores the importance of geographical education for society. There are also a few articles on teacher education and the teaching processes that are concerned with the quality of geography teaching as measured through assessment.

Word

Frequency

Education Geography/Geographical

11 13

Environment/Environmental

Schools

Teacher/Teaching

Students

Secondary

Learning

GIS/Technology

Research

Table 3. Frequency of words found in titles in IRGEE.

Figure 4. Word Cloud from JEE.

Chang (2015, p. 182) argues that teaching school geography is not just about teaching a subject, but there is opportunity for the teacher to educate a child and that “[i]f we truly embrace the notions of learning about human-environment interaction, space, place, movement and time, then the geography subject allows us to teach a person how to use one’s imagination and to be able to think and reason and to decide on how to live based on one’s understanding of the environment”. Indeed, there is a focus on the knowledge and attitudes of students on issues of the environment in articles about assessment in JEE (see Table 4). Word

Frequency

Environment/Environmental Education Programme/Programmes Resource Knowledge Attitudes Students School Teacher/Teaching Conservation

34 30 21 6 6 6 6 6 6 5

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The visual representation of key phrases and words in the JoG journal title is depicted in Figure 5. The words “spatial” and “thinking” have emerged strongly in the search process of assessment and evaluation (see Table 5).

Figure 5. Compiled word cloud from JoG.

(and)enables an evidence-based investigation of sustainability in a holistic manner” (Hwang, 2013, p. 286). Consequently, the articles on assessment in JoG does feature the importance of geographical education for society and affirms its place in the curriculum.

Word

Frequency

Geography Spatial Thinking Teacher/Teaching Learning GIS/Computer Education Schools Textbook Student

13 6 5 5 4 4 3 3 3 3

Table 5. Frequency of words found in titles in JoG.

There is an interesting absence of issues on environment and society at the title level of these articles on assessment in JoG (see Table 5). However, there are more titles focusing on “spatial”, “thinking” and “GIS. Geography “offers the opportunity to acquire knowledge and skills to see clearer how things are running on planet earth and what we can do differently on a local as well as on a global scale” (Béneker and van der Schee, 2015, p. 287), and the use of spatial thinking with technology seems to be the main focus on assessment articles in JoG. Bearman, Jones, André, Cachinho and DeMers (2016, p. 394) argue that “(t)eaching of critical spatial thinking in higher education empowers graduates to effectively engage with spatial data”. Nevertheless the importance of geographical education for society is not diminished in this case as there are opportunities to develop student employability through developing geographical skills with a focus on spatial thinking and technological tools. However, the potential of teaching about sustainability and environmental issues in spatial thinking through technology should not be ignored. GIS offers such opportunities. “GIS helps manage the complexity inherent in sustainability challenges through interactive geographic visualization and analysis techniques […] Copyright© Nuova Cultura

Based on the search attempts, and an analysis across 4 journals that are linked to assessment and evaluation, the article titles have generally focused on creating programmes or curriculum for geographical or environmental topics. In journals such as EER and JEE, there is tendency for articles to relate assessment and evaluation to sustainability and conservation issues. As for IRGEE and JoG, issues related to “GIS” and “spatial” and “thinking” have emerged in relation to assessment and evaluation, and in the case of IRGEE, over and above the topics on environment and sustainability. The differing areas of interest may perhaps be due to the intended focus and characteristic nature of the journals. Nonetheless, efforts to establish and expand assessment issues to appear in the research agenda regularly should be pursued by all journals. It is also peculiar to note that there is limited representation of key ideas to “teacher training” and “professional development” with reference to assessment and evaluation issues. The authors argue the quality of teaching practice can be enhanced through teacher professional development. “Professional development in geography should emphasise the intellectual development of the teacher in areas relevant to Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Chew-Hung Chang, Muhammad Faisal Aman (geography) education but undertaken at a time and with a level of commitment determined by the teacher” (Chalmers, 2005, p. 90). The lack of references to these areas across key geography journals indicates that there is a likelihood of a research gap and it signifies the critical need to nurture and develop it. The impetus is that without training and professional development in assessment practices, it creates doubt and uncertainty as to whether relevant geographical ideas, skills, knowledge and learning progressions identified in previous declarations and action plans are currently carried forward concertedly in the long term and across national curricula.

4. Discussion As the authors have asserted, there is a need to conduct an extensive literature review to address the research questions raised earlier in this article. However the scope of this article is to conduct an exploratory inquiry with a view to provide an exposition on the issue so as to encourage geographical education researchers to do more work in the area of assessment. Hence, the methodology for this inquiry is limited by the exploratory scope of this article. Considering the 5 key action plan items outlined in the Charter, the analysis of the published literature in the last 10 years have provided some reflection points for the authors. In as far as making the contribution of geography more explicit, there has been alignment between the types of works published on assessment with the issues of environment and society with the exception of JoG which does this through focusing on the importance of spatial thinking. In comparison to the findings by Papadimitrou and Kidman (2012, p. 11) that “teacher education” “values & attitudes”, “inquiry & problem-solving” “GIS” and “sustainability” were the prominent topics published in the 1992 2009 period in IRGEE, the findings from the analysis in this article are not so different. While this article presents an analysis at the title level, only, we can see these contributions of geography to education clearly. There is perhaps room for improvement in terms of research on teaching and assessment and whether such practices are exchanged across national and Copyright© Nuova Cultura

international contexts. There could be perhaps research on how meaningful geography teaching and learning practices can exchanged nationally and internationally. However there is clearly a growing body of work on assessment in the journals related to the scope of work identified in the Charters. Perhaps what is missing in this initial analysis of assessment research literature is the systematic review of assessment in geography to identify gaps in research agenda. There is also a need to determine if there are clear research agenda in assessment, especially on geographical knowledge and skills. The authors would like to argue that a priority in the agenda should firstly include the disposition and understanding in the geographical attitudes and thinking of geography educators towards assessment. It is critical to foremost establish the baseline(s) of geography educators’ attitudes and preferences toward the use of assessments within their contexts of geographical learning, be it locally, nationally and internationally. By understanding the deeper intentions, thinking, motivations and possible constraints that geography educators may face in the classrooms, we can surface pertinent reasons why certain assessment instruments are often used while others have not been utilized. It is not only “what” assessment instruments should to be used or developed to measure progress but more importantly, “why” these instruments have been used to measure progress. There is also an apparent lack of research work on how practices in assessment are exchanged internationally. The authors are only aware of a panel discussion at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) annual meeting in Boston in 2017 where there was a comparison of assessment items types from the context of 4 countries (Solem, Bourke, Chang, Stoltman and Yoon, 2017). In accordance to action plan item 3, more can be done. The example of the panel discussion is also a response to the action plan item 4 on developing a relevant research agenda for assessment in the context of geographical education. Members of the panel belong to an international research collaboration to develop an international geography assessment that at the 8th Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Chew-Hung Chang, Muhammad Faisal Aman

grade assessment level, for planned implementation in 2023. The research in the development process will provide a first international collaboration in this specific area of work. However such collaboration occurs among individuals but Gerber (1998) urged the community to consider alliances between institutions.

and mentored, and where they can share ideas to ‘feed-back’ and ‘feed-forward’ input for the development of future updates and declarations related to the Charter. These could be through teachers’ participation at IGU-CGE symposia and conferences. The authors urge teachers to use this opportunity to feed back and feed forwards.

Gerber (1998) argued that strategic alliances involve formalized arrangements among institutions to advance geographical and environmental education research. These alliances can start off as collaborations between people and involve working together to obtain research grants. However the collaboration should “extend beyond individual collaborations towards forming effective relationships in which researchers work together on projects; strategic planning between the institutions on the exchange of researchers” (Gerber, 1998, p. 180). Gerber’s (1998, p. 180) emphasis on deliberate formalised alliance of the institutions “to treat research in geographical and environmental education very seriously and as a priority”.

Indeed, it is important to highlight the importance of professional developments (PD) of geography educators in relation to assessments. Assessment in geography not only guides geography educators to reflect on learning and teaching aims and practices but encourage practitioners to re-assess their position(s) to the action plan and direction of the 2016 Charter.

National and local education policy makers and geography teacher associations and teachers should create and maintain a strong professional network structure. The IGU-CGE and the national committees of the commission like the United Kingdom and China committees, can play their roles here but the international community of geographical and environmental education researchers can also benefit from stronger relationships with AAG, EUROGEO and the Southeast Asian Geography Association (SEAGA) for instance. There is still room for improvement when it comes to synergising the discussions at these platforms and as Gerber (1998) has suggested, the alliances through university department and institutions will benefit geographical education. Brooks et al. (2017, p. 13) acknowledged “universities provide intellectual authority as well as the conditions for a profession’s occupational community”. University educators also need provide service to the communities “they serve” (Brooks et al., 2017, p. 13) by taking a lead in facilitating the professional development of geography teachers. These could be through national and international platforms where teachers’ professional development can be guided Copyright© Nuova Cultura

In this view, PD networks and activities that allow teachers to share and exchange ideas could well be the answer to “how” assessments should be used to support progress. PD has the potential to provide timely updates for geography educators to adopt new assessment instruments competently. Research and practices in assessment should be shared across levels, local and national borders to provide essential support in realising the action plan. The dearth of assessment articles on effective training and professional development may indicate disparate, unorganized and sporadic efforts that limit progress.

5. Conclusion Geographical and environmental education does matter to our future and we need to recognise that the geography subject represents “a body of science that has much to offer to humanity”, and that the discipline is a product of thinking and reasoning about humans and the world they live in (Golledge, 2002). To “prepare children for an uncertain world plagued by environmental problems” (Kidman and Chang, 2017, p. 266), we need to know that the assessment of the students’ learning can be used to inform curricular development. There must be a platform where teachers’ professional development can be guided and mentored, and where they can share, with a view to (re) shape action plans of the Charters. The Charters has provided very clear steps in the action plan discourse that moves from affirming the importance of the subject, to the quality of teacher Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Chew-Hung Chang, Muhammad Faisal Aman education, the exchange of ideas about teaching practices, research agenda and to the importance of professional networks. Assessment should be embedded in the discourse of the action plan so that it will encompass this important aspect of teaching and learning about geography.

References 1. Bearman N., Jones N., André I., Cachinho H. A. and DeMers M., “The future role of GIS education in creating critical spatial thinkers”, Journal of Geography in Higher education, 40, 3, 2016, pp. 394-408. 2. Béneker T. and van der Schee J., “Future geographies and geography education”, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 24, 4, 2015, pp. 287293. 3. Black P. and William D., Inside the Black Box: Raising standards through classroom assessment, London, King’s College, 1998. 4. Bourke T. and Lane R., “A Comparison of the International Charters on Geographical Education”, Journal of Geography, 2017, pp. 1-7. 5. Brooks C., Qian G. and Salinas-Silva V., “What next for Geography Education? A perspective from the International Geographical Union – Commission for Geography Education”, Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 6, 1, 2017, pp. 5-15. 6. Chalmers L., “Guest Editorial Geography Teaching, Governance and Professional Development”, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 14, 2, 2005, pp. 89-91. 7. Chang C.H., “Teaching climate change – a fad or a necessity?”, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 24, 3, 2015, pp. 181-183. 8. Gerber R., “Strategic Alliances: One Approach to Developing Research in Geographical and Environmental Education in the Next Millennium”, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 7,3, 1998, pp. 179-180. Copyright© Nuova Cultura

9. Golledge R., “The nature of geographic knowledge”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 92, 1, 2002, pp. 1-14. 10. Hwang S., “Placing GIS in sustainability education”, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 37, 2, 2013, pp. 276-291. 11. International Geographic Union – Commission on Geographical Education, “International Charter on Geographical Education”, 2016, http://www.igu-cge.org/Charters-pdf/2016/IGU _2016_def.pdf. 12. International Geographic Union – Commission on Geographical Education, “International Charter on Geographical Education”, 1992, http://www.igu-cge.org/charter-translations/1.% 20English.pdf. 13. James M. and Pedder D., “Beyond method: Assessment and learning practices and values”, The Curriculum Journal, 17, 2, 2006, pp. 109-138. 14. Kidman G. and Chang C. H., “The end of a beginning-what it means for international research geographical and environmental education for uncertain times ahead”, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 26, 4, 2017, pp. 265268. 15. Kidman G. and Papadimitriou F., “Content analysis of international research in geographical and environmental education: 18 years of academic publishing”, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 21, 1, 2012, pp. 3-10. 16. Newton P.E., “Clarifying the purposes of educational assessment, Assessment in Education: Principles”, Policy & Practice, 14, 2, 2007, pp. 149-170. 17. Papadimitriou F. and Kidman G., “Statistical and scientometric analysis of international research in geographical and environmental education”, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 21, 1, 2012, pp. 11-20. 18. Reinfried S., “Education for sustainable development and the Lucerne Declaration 1”, International Research in Geographical and

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19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

Environmental Education, 18, 4, 2009, pp. 229-232. Solem M., Bourke T., Chang C.H., Stoltman J. and Yoon O., “Design and Development of an International Geography Assessment”, American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, (Boston, 5-9 April 2017). Stoltman J. P., “Perspective on geographical education in the 21st century”, Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (JREADING), 0, 1, 2012, pp. 17-24. Voltz D., Sims M. and Nelson B., Connecting teachers, students and standards – strategies for success in diverse and inclusive classroom. Alexandria, VA, USA, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2010. Weeden P. and Lambert D., Geography inside the black box: Assessment for learning in the geography classroom, London, Granada Learning, 2006. Werlen B., “Bridging the gap between local acts and global effects. The Importance of Global Understanding for Sustainable Living”, ESRI, 2016, http://www.esri.com/esri-news/arcnews/ spring16articles/bridging-the-gap-betweenlocal-acts-and-global-effects.

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Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 6, Dec., 2017, pp. 17-31 DOI: 10.4458/9446-02

Proposals for the development of competences in geography by applying the IGU International Charter Daniela Pasquinelli d’Allegraa a

Dipartimento di Scienze Umane, LUMSA University, Rome, Italy Email: pasquinelli.daniela@gmail.com

Received: September 2017 – Accepted: October 2017

Abstract Nowadays competences represent a real test in the world of work. As a consequence, their acquisition requires the commitment not only of schools at all levels but also universities. Geography is ready to give its contribution not only for the development of specific transversal competences for the education for development, environment and cross-culture, but also for lifelong learning. This paper sets out to demonstrate how geography, even if not expressly listed in the eight key competences for lifelong learning recommended by the European Parliament and Council in 2006, is to be found in all of them with its fundamental themes; another objective is to make proposals – going from theories to didactic practice – to put into practice the precepts of the “2016 IGU International Charter on Geographical Education”: a number of possible strong arguments of geography have been taken from the “International Action Plan” of the Charter on which to build a curriculum which is as unitary as possible and which links all levels of education. Keywords: Charter on Geographical Education, Key Competences, Method, Vertical Curriculum

1. Introduction In today’s society there is more and more talk of competences to possess and competences to assess in the world of work and the field of education. Nobody aspires to entrusting themselves to someone “incompetent” in any sector of work, and therefore an education based on specific skills for each type of employment is desirable. Consequently, in recent decades the world of schools, university and education in the broad sense has been entrusted with the task of training competent people, able to apply their Copyright© Nuova Cultura

knowledge and skills to practical cases that they will have to deal with in their daily lives, in contexts that are completely different from the case studies encountered at school. Education focussed on competences has considerable merits insofar as it has made it possible to pass from a more or less mnemonic learning to a “meaningful” learning, or a learning that can be linked to a network of concepts that is already structured in the mind so as to enable the person, their skills and knowledge to evolve (Ausubel, 1968). The aim

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of “productivity” in the construction of competences in the teaching/learning process at school must be placed at the cognitive and personal growth level connected to the development of autonomy and a critical sense, and not with a view to its use in the labour market; it is therefore necessary to avoid the risk that the logic of competences makes the delicate sector of education plummet into the innerworkings of the economy (Reboul, 1980). This would bring about an impoverishment of general culture, above all the humanistic one, which instead should be overriding at school so as to allow the development of harmonious personalities able to cultivate interests transversal to knowledge and interpret the reality from a broader and more complex viewpoint (Le Boterf, 2000a). This knowledge (from literature to music, from art to philosophy) contributes to fully realising the human being, an objective that is indispensable for a proper education. Nowadays however, there are many scholars and operators working in the education sector who fully support the opportunity to assume competence as an organisational element of the curriculum, considering the building of skills as being very important not for an early preparation for the world of work, but to face the vicissitudes of life (Perrenoud, 2000). Destined to being defined as a bridging or linking discipline between the scientifictechnological and humanistic subjects, geography has a more complex identity, just as its task in society has. For this reason it has a rare wealth and potential, even if all too often not recognised or neglected. Nevertheless, it has now reached a turning point: the urgent need for geographical knowledge – to collaborate with other knowledge that is indispensable to remedy the desperate predicament of the planet from an environmental and humanitarian point of view – must be promptly tackled by qualified and motivated teachers, who can foster the development of geographical competences in their students. The aim of this paper is twofold in this sense. The first, dealt with in the third paragraph, is to demonstrate the pervasiveness of geography in continued education, setting out in a geographical perspective the key competences for lifelong learning of the Recommendation of the European Parliament Copyright© Nuova Cultura

and of the Council of 2006. The second aim, dealt with in the fifth paragraph, sets out to highlight the passage from theory to didactic practice: in fact, proposals are made for the selection of a number of fundamental arguments of geography (among the many to be found in the Charter). The four arguments have been chosen because they make it possible to deal with other important focal themes within them. From these themes it is possible to bring forth the indication of competences to be developed in a possible vertical curriculum, as shown in the attached table.

2. Competence or competition? The term “competence” derives from the Latin cum-petere, or that is, “ask together, to converge towards one same point, to meet”, from which derives also the term “competition”. “Competence” and “competition” are two terms around which revolve research and the labour market in today’s world. The application and evaluation of individual competences can lead to a healthy competition which gives good results when arousing emulation and making team work and/or research collaboration grow, but it can become harmful if it poisons the work environment and sours the relations between colleagues or students. Authentic competence is when it is put to the service of the common cause and expense to make an entire community grow, at school, in companies, in society and state government. Nonetheless, great attention must be paid to the polysemic and complex word “competence”, which Guy Le Boterf (2000b, p. 18) very effectively defined as ‘conceptual chameleon’. One of the first to bring the concept of competence to the attention of the scientific world was Noam Chomsky, who in his book “Syntactic structures” 1957 deals with the concept of “linguistic competence”, meaning all those types of knowledge that go beyond the simple act of speaking, like for example, the conscious use of grammatical structures and the various communication registers, appropriate for rapidly conveying a certain type of message to one’s interlocutor. Very soon the concept makes its way into the world of companies and Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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business, spread by organisation psychology. In 1973 in the Unites States, David C. Mc Clelland maintains that in order to select personnel it is preferable to assess their competences rather than resort to aptitude and intelligence tests: “For some purposes it may be desirable to assess competencies that are more generally useful in clusters of life outcomes, including not only occupational outcomes but social ones as well, such as leadership, interpersonal skills, etc. […] Some of these competencies may be rather traditional cognitive ones involving reading, writing, and calculating skills. Others should involve what traditionally have been called personality variables, although they might better be considered competencies” (Mc Clelland, 1973, pp. 9-10). Competences thus connect the world of education with the world of employment and, in the context of education, become increasingly more prominent with the spread of theories supporting the importance of acquiring constructive knowledge of thought, shunning those that Alfred North Whitehead defined as “inert ideas” at the beginning of the 1920s: “In training a child to activity of thought, above all things we must beware of what I will call “inert ideas” – that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilised, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations. […] Except at rare intervals of intellectual ferment, education in the past has been radically infected with inert ideas” (Whitehead, 1929, pp. 1-2). Therefore, inert ideas are the ones deriving from notions accumulated in the memory to be then soon cancelled almost without leaving any trace and without having entered to be part of a network of authentic knowledge which, integrated with personal skills and abilities can become useful competences in the personal and working sphere. For many years geography too was “infected” by inert ideas connected to the simple memorisation of names of seas, mountains, rivers and towns. Many generations lost the appeal and the sense of the study of geography, but there is always time to make up for this by fostering a “significant” learning and competences that enable young people, also by means of the study of geography, to give their Copyright© Nuova Cultura

concrete contribution to work and the community in which they live, taking part in a healthy and fair competition for the improvement of everyone’s quality of life and the protection of the environment.

3. The key competences in the European reference framework, in a geographical perspective In Europe an important unitary reference framework with regard to competences at educational and training level is represented by the “Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18/12/2006 on key competences for lifelong learning”. It stresses the need to ascertain competences and unifies their interpretation, offering a precise definition of competence as “a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the context”. The Recommendation identifies eight key competences, considered equally important, as “those which all individuals need for personal fulfilment and development, active citizenship, social inclusion and employment”: 1) Communication in the mother tongue; 2) Communication in foreign languages; 3) Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology; 4) Digital competence; 5) Learning to learn; 6) Social and civic competences; 7) Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship; 8) Cultural awareness and expression. These key competences must be achieved at school and in permanent training through the contribution of all subjects. Geography is not mentioned in the document, even though its educational contribution has great transversal potential and is fundamental for the understanding of the complex dynamics of the contemporary world. Upon analysis of the document, I noticed that many parts relative to each of the eight key competences are perfectly adapted to the Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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geographical contents and objectives. As well as highlighting them, I have added some didacticoperational indications, among the many possible. Communication in the mother tongue and Communication in foreign languages The first two key competences are at the basis of all knowledge, including geographic knowledge. One can of course speak about linguistic competence, which is fundamental for the expression and circulation of any information. But students need to be made literate also in the specific lexicon of the various subjects, geography included (as well as the specific cartographic code), both in their mother tongue and in the most widespread foreign languages. While the use of English in international communication (also at scientific level) is now consolidated, defined as the “passport language”, no language should be neglected, but rather they should all be cultivated owing to the huge baggage of culture and identity that they bring with them. The communication in foreign languages fosters one of the educational objectives of geography: the meeting between geographical realities and different cultures. In fact, the Recommendation states: “A positive attitude involves the appreciation of cultural diversity, and an interest and curiosity in languages and intercultural communication”. In order to widen young people’s increasingly limited vocabulary from the very first years of school, the specific terms of geography can be introduced, for example by means of iconic cards (evoking a certain geographical “object” in a picture, like a volcano, a river mouth, or an estuary, an archipelago, etc.). Divided into teams, the students correctly match the card containing the geographical term (which can written in their mother tongue and in a number of foreign languages) with the one with the corresponding image. Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology The third key competence also involves geography in different ways: a great deal of Copyright© Nuova Cultura

geographical knowledge in fact requires an interdisciplinary link with mathematics (from the basic concept of scale reduction to those of localisation, distance, and direction, to the processing of statistical data in graphs, tables etc.). The Recommendation declares: “Mathematical competence involves, to different degree, the ability and willingness to use mathematical modes of thought (logical and spatial thinking) and presentation (formulas, models, constructs, graphs, charts)”. And once again geography finds itself, always nonexplicitly, among the key competences in the scientific and technological fields: “Competence in science refers to the ability and willingness to use the body of knowledge and methodology employed to explain the natural world, in order to identify questions and to draw evidence-based conclusions. […] Competence in science and technology involves an understanding of the changes caused by human activity and responsibility as an individual citizen”. Physical geography collaborates with natural sciences, applying its own methods “to explain the natural world” and human geography, also to realise environmental education and active citizenship, tackling the study of both the positive and negative changes made to the environment by anthropic action and making students and citizens feel responsible for the respect and protection of their natural environment. Digital competence This competence has become fundamental in geography, both in research and didactics. There is more widespread use of geotechnologies in Italian schools, supported by invaluable manuals like Cristiano Pesaresi’s (2017), which guides teachers and students in acquiring competences in the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), today the most powerful and complete means for the analysis, interpretation and territorial planning. The author also stresses the importance of a strong educational focus that these new means require. This attention is shared by Michael F. Goodchild, who in the preface to his volume writes: “We could even go so far as to say that no geographic data are the truth, as all are subject to varying degrees of uncertainty. This last point provides a very important caution to any user of GIS, and Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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establishes the need for what is often called critical spatial thinking. A GIS is not a machine to which a user can surrender responsibility. Rather it is an aid to the user’s own thought processes, which must be constantly reflecting on what the GIS is saying and what it means. A GIS database is not the truth, but a representation of the truth, and only the user can appreciate how the GIS database differs from what is true in the real world” (Goodchild, 2017, p. X). Learning to learn This fundamental competence can be applied to geography, insomuch as one can learn to learn the use of specific methods of geography (direct observation, indirect observation, analogies and differences etc.): one thus has the right “instruments” to know and explore the world, distinguishing between man’s positive and negative actions in the construction of the territory. From a very early age the observation of the surrounding environment allows learning by direct experience and undoubtedly the most fruitful type of learning. In order to learn to learn in terms of space, a guided reflection is needed that leads to metacognition. It is important, but difficult even for adults, to exercise metacognition to learn to learn space, to make oneself aware of how one can dominate increasingly vast spaces by means of direct or indirect knowledge. Learning to learn space must start in the very first years of school. By means of game-exercises and, eyes closed, the children are encouraged to reflect on how they are able to carry out a certain habitual path in the well-known spaces of the school (for example, to go from the classroom to the IT lab), inviting them to go over it mentally: they are thus surprised to discover that their capacity for intentional movement in space is guided by the capacity to learn to memorise the known space, or by the creation of mind maps. The metacognitive phase is important during the whole learning process in geography; to reflect on the methods and instruments and individual strategies that are triggered when learning to learn the world undoubtedly helps to understand its entire complexity, but also to approach its multifaceted aspects with curiosity and undiminished amazement. Copyright© Nuova Cultura

Social and civic competences In the interpretation of the territory and the consequent development of the capacity for the planning or redesigning of defined spaces, geographical competences contribute to the conscious participation in “civic life”. One enters into the domain of geographical education also when the Recommendation states: “Understanding the multi-cultural and socioeconomic dimensions of European societies and how national cultural identity interacts with the European identity is essential. […] Individuals should have an interest in socio-economic development and intercultural communication and should value diversity and respect others, and be prepared both to overcome prejudices and to compromise”. By means of the in-depth knowledge of others and other places, geography can foster hope (today increasingly hard owing to conflicts and even threats to use devastating arms, like chemical and atomic ones) for a future of peace and solidarity among peoples, forming new generations used to relating with persons of different ethnic groups, cultures and religions and ensuring that everyone is willing to respect and valorise the identity of others, by that very knowledge of this reciprocal reality. There are many educational-didactic projects being set up in this direction in schools at all levels, involving more and more children belonging to other ethnic groups: such projects aim at the knowledge of the different traditions, customs and food which are connected to the study of the contexts, landscapes and resources of the students’ places of origin. If well guided by appropriate training, young people represent the hope for a real inclusion. Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship With regard to this key competence, geography can contribute to developing “an individual’s ability to turn ideas into action” by means of the capacity for territorial planning. By exercising their active democratic citizenship, students can be guided to take part in projects for the organisation of the territory in which they live, putting forward proposals to local institutions, gathered from a survey carried out among the inhabitants of the area to record their different opinions and most urgent needs, and Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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from a pieces of research carried out with cutting edge geographical instruments, first and foremost GIS. It is however important that geography, linked to other disciplines, contributes to the acquisition of the “awareness of ethical values and promote good governance”. In fact, it is essential to make young people understand that the spirit of initiative and enterprise is a value only if realised bearing in mind the common good. Cultural awareness and expression Lastly, with regard to the eighth key competence on the list – but not least for its importance, insofar as each competence is placed at an absolutely equal level – the text of the Recommendation repeats exactly some of the educational objectives of geography, among which “an awareness of local, national and European cultural heritage and their place in the world”, but also the capacity “to understand the cultural and linguistic diversity in Europe and other regions of the world, the need to preserve it and the importance of aesthetic factors in daily life”. By stressing the aesthetic factor and emotional geography, the subject uses the aesthetic approach to landscape (from the emotionally engaging common perception of the “beautiful landscape” to the reflections of privileged witnesses who might be painters and writers, who filter their observation through their sensitivity and make it the interpretation in their works) so as to enrich the scientific study of the geographical landscape with data taken from individual geographies and its didactic application with cross-curricular projects (Pasquinelli d’Allegra, 2016, pp. 79-83).

4. A unifying document: “2016 IGU International Charter on Geographical Education” At the end of 2016 a very important document marked a turning point in geographical education at international level: this was the “International Charter on Geographical Education” (hereinafter referred to only as Charter)1. 1

“This 2016 Charter on Geographical Education has been prepared by prof. Joop van der Schee and prof.

In the initial “Proclamation” the origin of this document is declared, which is essentially based on the Charter approved in 1992 by the General Assembly of the International Geographical Union during its 27th Congress in Washington. The huge importance of the 1992 Charter lies in its having communicated with an act of international reach and appeal what Geography is and can do, by means of a complete and fulfilling geographical education, for a better understanding of the contemporary world and for a wiser construction of the future one (Bissanti, 1995, p. 95). The successive evolution of the world and the increasingly rapid transformations led the Commission to review some of the contents and to streamline the structure. The merit of this new Charter is that it better meets the needs and methods of the contemporary school and the teachers of geography who have to tackle a subject that is in continuous evolution, like the world itself with its changing territorial layouts and growing global problems. It is a “practical” Charter, which can be a valid help for the creation of educationaldidactic projects in schools at all levels. If the most recurring terms were recorded, all the paradigms of modern research and the strategies of the most updated geographical education would appear. Here is an example of some recurring terms: natural and human environments, places, landscapes, relationships, responsibilities, the others, perspectives, challenges, choices, resources, educational goals, experiences… and this could go on. It must be stressed that the above terms are cited in the plural in the text: the preferential use of the plural would perhaps seem to underline the fact that one does not want to speak about absolute concepts but concepts declined in the different territorial realities, which draw lifeblood from individual geographies. A geography appears that is concerned about being close to all the peoples of the world (“The Commission commends the International Charter on Geographical Education to all people of the John Lidstone (co-chairs) on behalf of the IGU Commission on Geographical Education. Draft versions of the 2016 Charter have been discussed with representatives of EUROGEO, EUGEO, AAG, SEAGA and others”. Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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world”), a geography that finally comes back to claim a fundamental role in the education of the new generations and to let its universal voice be heard by young people and adults. It is just a question of knowing how to listen. The Charter rallies round for this aim “national and local policy makers, as well as geography teachers at all levels”. We just have to take action now.

5. “An International Action Plan” for the construction of the vertical curriculum of geography The heart of this renewed UGI Charter is undoubtedly the part that suggests the passage for all countries from the theoretical framework to didactic practice, and which is by no chance entitled: “An International Action Plan”. Who exactly are the subjects that have to develop this Action Plan? They are listed in detail in the document in point 2: “This 2016 Carter specifically addresses policy makers, education leaders, curriculum planners, and geography educators in all nations and jurisdictions of the world […] and to help geography educators everywhere to counteract geographical illiteracy”. All school levels have the task of combatting illiteracy in the various fields of knowledge in their own particular way and must make students literate in geography too; they therefore find themselves having to put a curriculum in place that mirrors the needs highlighted by the Charter in point 3: “Teaching geography serves several vital educational goals. Building on people’s own experiences, learning geography helps them to formulate questions, develop their intellectual skills and respond to issues affecting their lives. It introduces them not only to key 21st century skills but also to distinctive investigative tools such as maps, fieldwork and the use of powerful digital communication technologies such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS)”. 5.1 Questions of method Some of the most updated methods of general didactics are outlined in the Charter, and can be successfully applied to the didactics of geography too.

The first among these is the method of learning by research and discovery. The research methodology, which is now successfully applied in all types of school and level, foresees teachers no longer being committed to transferring contents but to researching the suitable methods and strategies to lead pupils to “conquering” their knowledge. The most advanced part of such methodology is action-research which was born in the 1940s from the theorisations on social dynamics by the German psychologist Kurt Lewin and successfully transferred to the field of education (Lewin, 1946; Ebbutt, 1985; McTaggart, 1991; McNiff and Whitehead, 2002). Applied to geography, action-research involves teachers and students in a circular process that goes through three phases: a) cognitive (identification of the knowledge problem, formulation of solution hypothesis); b) operational (experimentation on the territory and planning of solutions in the spatial and environmental surroundings; for example, to devise the redesign of a space or adopt measures for energy saving and waste recycling); c) metacognitive (consideration of the results achieved also to set up appropriate assessment and self-assessment instruments and mechanisms). From this last phase arises a new cognitive phase and the circle closes, at the same time opening up to new fields of research and learning to be reached (Pasquinelli d’Allegra, 2016, pp. 5051). Action-research proceeds along two parallel lines: that of the students who work around a research project and that of their teachers who, on the one hand are involved in being the “directors” of the students’ work and on the other carry out their action-research by finding methods, techniques and strategies that are suitable for pursuing specific educational targets. The Charter stresses the role of the teacherresearcher: “How best to teach geography to a range of learners is a deep concern and will require significant and ongoing research. We encourage policy makers and geography educators to build capacity to conduct both theoretical and applied research”. In a following passage the Charter states the importance to

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“develop a ‘research orientation’ amongst geography teachers and educators that enables reflective and critical engagement with educational practices, and professional ‘habit of mind’ that demand improvement in the quality of geographical education”. Furthermore, the Charter refers to the importance of teachers’ in-depth understanding of the ‘problem based learning strategies’ and the use of the new technologies. The Problem-based learning (PBL) process comes into constructivism, which is based on the active and autonomous “construction” of knowledge rather than on the acquisition of knowledge. Dialectical Constructivism (Moshman, 1982) highlights the sharing process of learning in a social context: the learnings spring from the exchange of opinions with others and this is important for geography, insofar that in the contact with the world one cannot overlook the relations that are established with others. From this viewpoint therefore, PBL foresees that the construction of new knowledge starts from the search for solutions to a problem and is the exact opposite of the contents based method: in fact, it foresees a cognitive activism that brings into play all the personal and group resources and strategies to resolve a knowledge problem, linked to a surrounding reality. For this reason, it is particularly effective in the study of geography too: geographical research must always be linked to a real context, to the problems of construction and protection of the territory and landscape, exercising critical thinking and developing competences relative to active citizenship, development education and cross-culture (Giorda, 2014). 5.2 “Strong arguments” for a possible curriculum for competences The 2016 Charter pays particular attention to the geography curriculum that each country must draw up as homogenously as possible: “While it is acknowledged that school curricula around the world will differ in significant ways, it is important that all geography curricula are recognizable around the world as reflecting the best of contemporary geographical scholarship”. As is well known, the curriculum is the set of training and learning paths that each school organises for its own pupils, with the aim to reach

the educational objectives and compe-tences that conform to the educational standards for which it is formulated. The vertical curriculum is the one that, with a progression of objectives and contents in keeping with the age of the pupils, develops their competences along the whole educational path, guaranteeing continuity between the different levels. According to what is set out in the Charter, the construction of a unitary and homogenous curriculum is an extremely difficult and complex operation for a series of reasons: “Different national systems reference different age and grade bands, have varying jurisdictional reach, and different levels of subject prescription. When reviewing national curricula, not only are there linguistic barriers but also regional variations as to the degree of detail publicly available. Indeed, even the notion of a national curriculum is problematic in countries which allow for regional variation and local curriculum control” (Brooks, Qian and Salinas-Silva, 2017, p. 8)2. What should at least be shared are the geographical principles and the precise guidelines, at the basis of a renewed didactics, contained in the Charter’s “International Action Plan”. I have taken some key concepts from this document, among the many that make up the “strong arguments for geographical education”. I think that these themes, which contain a number of important contents might constitute the unifying cornerstones of the geography curricula. By way of example, a vertical curriculum is given in Table 1 developed only on the last of the following arguments identified and which are worthy of reflection: A) Location; B) Region; C) Transcalary vision; D) Human-environment interactions. 2

In order to make the curricula of the various schools more homogeneous in Italy, in 2012 The Ministry of Education, Universities and Research published the “National guidelines for the nursery school and primary school curriculum”, the latter, in order of time, still in force. These guidelines have since 2004 substituted the ministerial syllabuses, which were completely prescriptive; these are only prescriptive when they say the “goals for the development of competences”, to reach at the end of each segment of education, while the rest is presented as a rough “indication” for the teachers’ creative and professional work. Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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Strong arguments of International Action Plan HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT INTERACTIONS Nursery school (3-5 years of age)

Primary School (6-10 years of age)

First-grade Secondary School (11-13 years of age)

Competences to assess at the end of each level of education The child: - “knows” the surrounding landscape by means of the use of all their sensoperceptive systems; the principle natural and anthropic elements of a landscape and can identify them in the surrounding environment; - knows the functions of spaces experienced daily (spaces of the school and home), understands their relations and rules of usage; - understands that some of man’s actions produce negative effects on the surrounding environment and on the consumption of resources and knows what the right behaviour is to avoid them (actions for water and energy saving). The student: - identifies the physical and anthropic elements characterising the landscape and can apply the analysis to their place of residence, region and the state in which they live; - recognises man-environment interactions in the configuration processes of the neighbouring territory and surmises transformations on the basis of the needs arising among their peers; - knows the negative effects of the man-environment interaction and devises solutions for the protection of the neighbouring environment and natural resources. The student: - knows the principle European and world landscapes and can identify analogies and differences; - recognises a common patrimony in natural and cultural heritage and plans actions for its protection and valorisation; - identifies the results of the

Methods -Activities - Exploration of an environment (urban park, wood etc.) hunting for sensorial clues (visual, tactile, olfactive, auditive and gustatory) and natural and anthropic elements to be known in order to protect them. - Listening to and dramatisation of tales for a fantastic approach to geographical reality. - Exploration of the spaces of school and outside school to identify their functions and links. - Realisation of sketches to stigmatise incorrect behaviour towards the environment and others. - Setting up of direct observation methods (land excursions) and indirect observation (use of maps, modern and period photographs, satellite images etc.) for the study of the landscape. - “Problem based learning”: to identify problematic situations and devise solutions for the protection of the environment and sustainable development. - Role playing games to develop the ability to manage the territory and the exercise of active citizenship.

- Setting up of direct and indirect observation methods and analogies and differences. - Application of cooperative learning and Problem based learning methods. - Application of territorial analysis methods and computerised (GIS) mehtods to the subjects and problems being Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Daniela Pasquinelli d’Allegra

man-environment interactions in studied. the territory, even with the use of - Use of different sources information technologies and (scientific, photographic, literary, remote sensing images; artistic-architectonic, musical, - has acquired the concept of cinematographic etc.) to interpret territorial system and recognises the features of European and it in the urbanisation processes, world landscapes and territories also in a diachronic sense; and to become acquainted with - knows the local and world global issues. environmental issues and the solutions adopted by the institutions to knowledgeably carry out responsible behaviour; - knows the main causes of inequality and poverty and can identify them in cases of their living environment seeking their causes and possible solutions for a united world. The student: - Use and comparison of different Second-grade Secondary - knows worldwide subjects and sources. School issues (climate change, energy - Use of GIS for the (14-18 years of age) supplies, migration, land use interpretation of themes and etc.) and is ready to give their issues at local and global level. contribution to a society - Research-action method in committed to repairing the cooperative groups; project and damage caused to the realisation of a final multimedia environment and the weakest; product to raise awareness in the - knows the main economic, local population of problems for demographic and social the protection of the parameters to identify countries environment, reception and according to their level of solidarity towards migrants. economic, human and social - Reading, interviews and debates development and to undertake, as with selected witnesses on the future citizen of the world, to most pressing subjects of combat inequalities and build a contemporary society. more equal and supportive future. Table 1. Example of a vertical curriculum for competences referred to the strong arguments of the International Action Plan of 2016 International Charter on Geographical Education. The school levels follow the Italian legal system and the age of the pupils is given in brackets to make it possible to adapt the curriculum more easily to the different levels of other school systems. The example only considers one of the themes highlighted in this article. The curriculum could be enhanced “according to the context” with other columns dedicated to specific objectives, contents, means and instruments. Source: Original elaboration.

A) Location This “strong argument” is set out as follows in the Charter: “As location is a key factor in life, especially in an era of globalization and the internet, geography with its focus on spatial variability provides a very practical and useful perspective on everyday life”. The argument and Copyright© Nuova Cultura

the term used to define it could therefore include both the place, or a space rich in its own identity, given also by those living there who over the centuries have imprinted a stratified series of meanings, and the localisation, or the identification process of the place by means of the instruments used in geography.

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In its didactic application, the study of places is highly interdisciplinary; geography can involve history, art and architecture, literature and cultural anthropology in cross-cultural projects: they all contribute to interpreting the sense of place, as well as the perception of those living there. In this case considerable input can come from the geography of perception and from individual geographies, which students can investigate by interviewing insiders and outsiders, or those staying in a particular place for some time for study, work or tourism. On the basis of the validity of the results achieved, the final product of the students’ project can also go on to enrich the research data in the subjects involved. Localisation, which goes hand in hand with the objective of “orientation”, must lead to the construction of a mind map of the “espace vécu” (Frémont, 1972), and to the progressive widening of the map through the direct and indirect observation of more distant lands. At school therefore one can begin in the first years with the construction of a basic mind map of the position of the “objects” in the classroom and short routes around the living space of the school, to then arrive at the orientation in space with fixed reference points and/or with compasses and large scale maps (map of the quarter or town) and lastly in secondary school the use of maps and grid references and GPS too to localise one’s own position and that of others in the relative space. The use of geotechnologies greatly facilitates the localisation processes. B) Region The Charter states the importance of the concept of region for the study of geography as follows: “Geography is the discipline where knowledge about locations and regions has its base. The appreciation of unique contexts and circumstances in an interconnected world helps deepen our understanding of human diversity”. With regard to this, I would just like to recall the fact that the debate on the regional theory is still open among geographers, bearing in mind that in the systemic logic of recent years the criterion of change in time and evolution to which regions are subject constitutes one of the main subjects of diachronic analysis. Adalberto Copyright© Nuova Cultura

Vallega3 identified a complex bimodular system in the region, in which the two modules are made up of society (human elements) and the ecosystem (external natural environment), continually interacting. Society reacts to the change of the external environment with a change in its organisation. Vallega gave the example of the Mediterranean coastal regions which, in the post-industrial period of western Europe, gave up the idea of industrial economy based on the transformation of imported raw materials and decided to create a new economic source by developing tourism and the advanced tertiary sector (Vallega, 1995, pp. 61-83). All these and many other variables must be taken into consideration when these themes are transferred to the didactics of geography; one must at least be careful that the study of geographical regions does not become “regionalism”, but opens up a range of opportunities for knowledge starting from the different meanings of the polysemic concept of region (physical, climatic, historical, cultural, linguistic, administrative…). At secondary school level the regionalisation process can be gone into in more detail (also in relation to the sustainability of human development by the environment) along with the changes of some of the regional set-ups that took place in the past, with a view to future perspectives. C) Transcalary vision “Geography is concerned with both the local and the global and the interconnections between these scales of human experience”: this is another strong argument for geographical education set down in the Charter. Today, this is a very strong argument to which schools must be fully committed. The “human experience” develops on the large scale of the neighbouring space (diagram, map, topographic map) and projects its acquisitions and deductions onto the distant space of the very small scale (planisphere). However, at the same time, through the study of interpretative theories of the territorial reality, one must be prepared to tackle the investigation of complex 3

President of the Association of Italian Geographers (AGeI) from 1981 to 1984; vice-president from 1996 and president from 2004 to 2006 (year of his death) of the International Geographical Union (IGU). Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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global problems to then go on to analyse the “shapes” that they take on in the local space and devise suitable solutions. In today’s world one must be trained to have a transcalary vision that goes continuously from local to global and vice versa. Competence in using the scale game from local to global and vice versa comes into the sphere of the competences of the language of geographicity, which is the most valid to transmit spatial information with respect to verbal and numerical languages (De Vecchis and Morri, 2010). This also includes the whole series of cartograms, models, graphs, statistical data and whatever else geographers and teachers of geography use to “educate to the territory, educate the territory” (Giorda and Puttilli, 1995).

D) Human-environment interactions This is another of the fundamental arguments for geography as a science and discipline. With regard to this, the Charter states as follows, suggesting also the delicate issues that teachers can tackle with their students: “Geography is concerned with human-environment interactions in the context of specific places and locations and with issues that have a strong geographical dimension like natural hazards, climate change, energy supplies, migration, land use, urbanization, poverty and identity. Geography is a bridge between natural and social sciences and encourages the ‘holistic’ study of such issues”. Once again the complex task of geography appears, which is the only subject able to link almost all the others by very reason of the fact that it deals with the study of the interconnections between human and environmental systems; its interdisciplinary nature enables it to become the pivot of crosscurricular projects with strong educational objectives (De Vecchis, Pasquinelli d’Allegra and Pesaresi, 2011). Other “strong arguments” of geography come into this general theme, like the concepts of landscape and territory, with all the processes linked to them. In the study of systemic interactions it is important to underline to students what the impact is of human beings on the ecosystems, evaluating the increasingly Copyright© Nuova Cultura

negative outcomes of this (reduction of biodiversity, excessive land use owing to uncontrolled urbanisation processes, excessive exploitation of natural resources and big inequalities in their distribution, air, water and land pollution etc.). The “era of Anthropocene” is the definition being used more and more to indicate the new geological era in which the environment has begun to be considerably conditioned – and often even threatened – by human action (Crutzen, 2005). By including the tackling of the issues connected to the Anthropocene era in education, it is considered opportune to lead young people to look towards the future with hope and not only with the great fears generated by the present situation (Pawson, 2015). Geography expresses all its educational potential on topics of sustainable development4 and environmental protection. Joop van der Schee’s statement is also a strong reminder: “To get attention for the contribution of geography education to society and particularly to sustainable development it is better to start sustainable development projects in which geographical knowledge is indispensable than to complain about the marginalized position of geography education” (van der Schee, 2016, p. 13). Young people (but above all the policymakers of all the world states), starting with those with greater influence on the international stage), must finally understand the urgency to remedy even greater damage in every way possible, and be aware that what happens in every corner of the Earth has repercussions on the whole planet, sooner or later involving all its inhabitants. I would just like to add that the arguments that the Charter sets down must be dealt with in vertical progression, according to the capacities of each age group of students, but I also underline that smaller children can be exposed to them, since with respect to spatial dynamics they are territorial actors and citizens in the same way The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has 17 Sustainable Development Goals, many of which are common to geography; one example is the goal number 11: “Sustainable Cities and Communities” (https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs). 4

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as adults, even if they are younger (Guaran, 2017, p. 38). By means of suitable strategies they can in fact begin to behave responsibly towards the environment and others right from the word go.

6. Conclusion In its last part the Charter stresses that “National and local education policy makers and geography teacher associations and teachers should create and maintain a strong professional network structure”. There are many countries in which geographical associations are “historically” strong; all geographical associations are committed to fostering the values of geography as science and discipline, even if the path is fraught with obstacles. The specific sixty-year mission of the Italian Association of Geography Teachers (AIIG) has also been to promote geography through training and refresher courses for teachers in schools of any level and type and universities, with international exchanges, as reported in this very same Journal. There is still a long way to go to completely revitalise the subject of geography, but one thing is certain: we must believe implicitly in what we are doing, with determination but also with solid competences. Going back to my original reasoning: geographers and teachers of geography with “competence” can “compete” with each other only to affirm, each in their own way, the values that geography brings with it. Nevertheless, they must remain united to make everyone understand what their specific tasks are how they cannot be replaced by other knowledge and, as the Charter recommends, create a solid professional network and a real community for geographical education. The recommendations of the Charter are triggering a series of important reflections on many sides. The hope is that one can really go from programmed intentions to a renewed daily action in didactics at all levels, which might have a shared common theme. The very objective of taking part in the debate on the sharing of a pathway to follow together and encouraged by international documents, is what mainly gave the input for this contribution.

Geography, along with the generations working to one day intervene in the territorialisation processes, urgently need a strong unity of purpose, from that of the national policy-makers and supranational bodies to the teachers at all levels of education. Young people are gaining the awareness of having to repair the excessive damage caused in the past and still today and of having to put the good of a universal community before local interests and separatist pressures: the human community.

References 1. Ausubel D.P., Educational Psycology. A cognitive view, New York, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968. 2. Bissanti A., “Una carta internazionale per l’educazione geografica”, La didattica, 2, 1995, pp. 95-98. 3. Brooks C., Qian G. and Salinas-Silva V., “What next for Geography Education? A perspective from the International Geographical Union – Commission for Geography Education”, Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 1, 6, 2017, pp. 5-15. 4. Chomsky N., Syntactic Structures, The Hague/Paris, Mouton, 1957. 5. Crutzen P., Benvenuti nell’Antropocene! L’uomo ha cambiato il clima, la Terra entra in una nuova era, Milan, Mondadori, 2005. 6. De Vecchis G. and Morri R., Disegnare il mondo. Il linguaggio cartografico nella scuola primaria, Rome, Carocci, 2010. 7. De Vecchis G., Pasquinelli d’Allegra D. and Pesaresi C., “Geography in Italian schools. An example of a cross-curricular project using geospatial technologies for a practical contribution to educators”, Review of International Geographical Education Online (RIGEO), 1, 2011, pp. 4-25. 8. Ebbutt D., “Educational Action Research: Some General Concerns and Specific Quibbles”, in Burgess R.G. (Ed.), Issues in Educational Research: Qualitative Methods, London, The Falmer Press, 1985. 9. EU, “Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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10.

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December 2006 on key competences for lifelong learning”, (2006/962/EC), http://data. europa.eu/eli/reco/2006/962/oj. Frémont A., Essai sur l’espace vécu, Mélanges offerts à André Meynier, Rennes, PUB, 1972. Giorda C., Il mio spazio nel mondo. Geografia per la scuola dell’infanzia e primaria, Rome, Carocci, 2014. Giorda C. and Puttilli M. (Eds.), Educare al territorio, educare il territorio. Geografia per la formazione, Rome, Carocci, 2011. Goodchild M.F., “Preface”, in Pesaresi C., Applicazioni GIS. Principi metodologici e line di ricerca. Esercitazioni ed esemplificazioni guida, Novara, Utet-De Agostini, 2017, pp. IX-XI. Guaran A., “Le competenze pre-geografiche nella scuola dell’infanzia”, in Zanolin G., Gilardi T. and De Lucia R. (Eds.), Geodidattiche per il futuro. La geografia alla prova delle competenze, Milan, FrancoAngeli online open access, 2017, pp. 34-42. Holloway S.L., Rice S.P. and Valentine G. (Eds.), Key concepts in geography, Sage, London, 2003. IGU-CGE, “International Charter on Geographical Education”, Amsterdam-Beijing, IGU-CGE, 2016, www.igu-cge.org. Le Boterf G., “De quel concept de compétence les entreprises et l’administration ont-elles besoin?”, in Bosman C., Gerard F.M., Roegiers X. (Eds.), Quel avenir pour les compétences?, Bruxelles, De Boeck, 2000a, pp. 15-19. Le Boterf G., Construire les compétences individuelles et collectives. Agir et réussir avec compétence. Les réponses à 100 questions, Paris, Édition d’Organisation, 2000b. Lewin K., “Action research and minority problems”, Journal of Social Issues, 2, 1946, pp. 34-46. McClelland D.C., “Testing for Competence Rather Than for Intelligence”, American Psychologist, 1, 1973. McNiff J. and Whitehead J., Action Research: principles and practice, London, Routledge, 2002.

22. McTaggart R., “Principles for participatory action research”, Adult Education Quarterly, 41, 3, 1991, pp. 168-187. 23. Moshman D., “Exogenous, Endogenous and Dialectic Constructivism”, Development Review, New York, 2, 1982, pp. 271-384. 24. Pasquinelli d’Allegra D., “Le competenze geografiche. Presupposti metodologici e costruzione del curricolo”, in De Vecchis G. (with the contribution of Pasquinelli d’Allegra D. and Pesaresi C.), Insegnare geografia. Teorie, metodi e pratiche, Novara, Utet-De Agostini, 2016, pp. 50-67. 25. Pasquinelli d’Allegra D., “Apprendimento autentico in geografia. Le prassi didattiche”, in De Vecchis G. (with the contribution of Pasquinelli d’Allegra D. and Pesaresi C.), Insegnare geografia. Teorie, metodi e pratiche, Novara, Utet-De Agostini, 2016, pp. 69-93. 26. Pawson E., “What sort of Geographical Education for the Anthropocene?” Geographical Research, 53, 3, 2015, pp. 306-312. 27. Perrenoud P., “L’école saisie par les compétences”, in Bosman C., Gerard F.M., Roegiers X. (Eds.), Quel avenir pour les compétences?, Bruxelles, De Boeck, 2000, pp. 21-41. 28. Pesaresi C., Applicazioni GIS. Principi metodologici e linee di ricerca. Esercitazioni ed esemplificazioni guida, Novara, Utet-De Agostini, 2017. 29. Ray W.C., Waverly C., Muñiz-Solari O., Klein P. and Solem M., “Effective Online Practices for International Learning Collaborations”, Review of International Geographical Education Online (RIGEO), 2, 1, 2012, pp. 25-44. 30. Reboul O., Qu’est-ce qu’apprendre? Pour une philosophie de l’einsegnement, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1980. 31. Tani S., “The environments of learning environments: What could/should geography education do with these concepts?”, Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (JREADING), 1, 2, 2013, pp. 7-16. 32. UN 2030, “Agenda for Sustainable Development”, https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org.

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33. Vallega A., La regione, sistema territoriale sostenibile. Compendio di geografia regionale, Milan, Mursia, 1995. 34. van der Schee J., “Sustainability and Geography Education”, Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 5, 2016, pp. 11-18. 35. Whitehead A.N., The Aims of Education and Other Essays, New York, Macmillan Company, 1929.

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Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 6, Dec., 2017, pp. 33-43 DOI: 10.4458/9446-03

Geography in the reformed educational system in Poland ‒ return to the past or a brand new quality? Wiktor Osucha a

Geography Department, Pedagogical University of Cracow, Cracow, Poland E-mail: wiktor.osuch@up.krakow.pl

Received: September 2017 – Accepted: October 2017

Abstract In 2017 the reform of the educational system in Poland was introduced. The current system of education is being changed drastically owing to both the removal of the three-year junior secondary school (gimnasium1) and the extension of primary school education. These systemic changes are likewise responsible for a change in the curricula of all school subjects at different levels of education, including Geography. Will these changes be beneficial for teaching this subject and the status of Geography at school? We are not certain at this time. Despite the fact that the proposed changes and the constructed core curriculum were likewise consulted among a wider group of teachers, it has not been possible yet to assess these changes unequivocally. Therefore, the subject of the present analysis and evaluation is the core curriculum for teaching Geography and the status of Geography in the Polish educational system. It is, however, impossible not to refer to other determinants of changes introduced into education, including geographic education. A profound reform of the educational system rapidly introduced by the present government is giving rise to intense emotions. The reform proposes to return to the system and solutions that were valid many years ago such as the removal of the “gimnasium or lower secondary school”, compulsory education starting from the age of 7, as well as enormous and unforeseen consequences of those changes for students, parents and teachers who are uncertain their future teaching career. Keywords: Geography Curriculum, the Reform of the Educational System in Poland

1. Introduction The notion of changes in educational systems in many countries is the subject of lively discussions and even disputes among a wide range of societies, especially among politicians, 1

teachers, parents and even students. It is indeed a lively discussion because it points to an extremely important process of preparing children and adolescents for adult life and a proper planning of their career and educational career. The introduction of new system solutions

Gimnasium – a three-year lower secondary school, obligatory for 13 to 16-year-old students.

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requires a detailed preparation, a number of analyses, social simulations and consultations, as well as a large amount of money. The proposed changes often apply to all subjects taught at multiple levels of education and should be properly embedded and incorporated into the overall educational process. Therefore, the subject of the changes in geographic education at school is likewise discussed not only by Geography teachers, educators, administrators of education, but also among teachers at different levels of education. Such discussions do aim at solutions that are to be effective, innovative and conducive to a student’s comprehensive development, geographical passion development and social needs. At the same time, the proposed solutions should not cause unnecessary doubts as to purpose, appointed tasks, and even strengthening the rank of Geography as a subject in the educational system.

2. Educational system after 1999 – are changes desirable? The former (implemented as a result of the reform of the educational system by previous the government in 1999) system of education defines three stages of education: full-time compulsory education lasts for 10 years and comprises the last year of pre-school education, 6 years of primary school education and 3 years of gymnasium (lower secondary school) education while parttime compulsory education (obligation to be in education) can be continued in e.g. three-year upper secondary school (liceum)2. In 1999, the most bitter criticism of the reforms centred on shortening a primary school education from 8 to 6 years and introducing a new level of education – a lower secondary school as a three-year compulsory school. As a consequence, academic subjects – Geography, Biology, Physics and Chemistry – have been removed from the primary school. In place of those subjects taught in grades IV-VI at primary school the subject called “Nature” was 2

Liceum – a non-mandatory three-year comprehensive school with specialized classes, for 16 to 19-year-old students. Upon graduating a student is awarded with the

introduced. The number of hours for Nature did not compensate for the losses for teachers of the four aforementioned subjects who were forced to either retrain by completing postgraduate studies in order to teach Nature or start teaching at a newly-formed “gymnasium”. Unfortunately, it turned out that only 4 hours for a three-year cycle were devoted to teaching these subjects at lower secondary school. Consequently, teachers of Biology and Geography lost out the most owing to these changes. Students were deprived not only of the opportunity to develop their skills in Geography but also to broaden their horizons or geographic passion. It likewise encouraged a belief in the low value of Geography as the school subject. Changes in the teaching of Geography in the Polish educational system over the past twenty years are presented in Table 1.

3. Geography at “gimnasium” Since 2017 there have been four hours of Geography in a 3-year cycle at a mandatory gimnasium. The same number of hours were dedicated for other science subjects: Biology, Physics and Chemistry. Therefore, the rank of those science subjects at this stage of education was the same and regrettably low. Moreover, unfavourable demographic changes, resulting in a smaller number of grades at school, have a dominant influence upon the number of Geography hours, forcing Geography teachers to look for jobs in other educational institutions so as to have a full-time job. Geography teachers were forced to acquire additional qualifications so as to be able to teach a second subject, in order to stay in their teaching profession. According to Tracz and Świętek (2014), this phenomenon is visible especially in small towns where the educational offer is still very limited.

matriculation certificate after passing the external Matura examinations required to enter a university.

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Education level primary school

lower secondary school (gimnasium)

Teaching Geography in educational system after 1999 (in hours per week) The 4th, 5th and No geography as a 6th grades subject, geographical contents only at natural science The 1st grade The 2nd grade The 3rd grade

upper secondary school (liceum) The 1st grade The 2nd grade The 3rd grade

Education level primary school

1 hour 1 hour 2 hours

Basic level

Extended level

1 hour ---------------------

1 hour 4 hours 4 hours

Teaching Geography in educational system after 2017 (in hours per week) The 5th grade 1 hour The 6th grade 1 hour The 7th grade 2 hours The 8th grade 1 hour

liceum The 1st grade The 2nd grade The 3rd grade The 4th grade

Basic level

Extended level

1 hour 2 hours 1 hour --------

3 hours 4 hours. 4 hours 2 hours

Table 1. Teaching Geography in Polish educational system. Source: elaborated by W. Osuch according to Project of core curriculum for Geography.

Tracz and Świętek (2014) asserted, basing their knowledge on research conducted at 50 schools, that gimnasium teachers pointed out an increase in behavioural problems in the gimnasium, reduction of the level of students’ knowledge of the natural science subjects and an abridgement of teaching content from selected courses. There were likewise advantages: better learning outcomes demonstrated in PISA research, structural solutions Copyright© Nuova Cultura

similar to other European countries and better equipped schools with teaching aids (Tracz and Świętek, 2014, pp. 58-59). An important conclusion for analysing and evaluating the educational content is that, in practice, in many cases the physical geography issues studied in the first grade are too difficult for students (Tracz and Świętek, 2012) and, very often, the given material has to be continued at Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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the beginning of the second grade. Moreover, the distribution of the hours of Geography is not compatible with the intentions of the authors of the core curriculum. This implies that the choice of some textbooks of the Geography of Poland in the third grade is motivated by marginalizing this content because approximately about half of the teachers in the survey devoted two hours of the subject in the second and not the third grade (Tracz and Świętek, 2014). This is likewise confirmed by previous studies conducted by Tracz (2008) pointing to the results of the competence test after gimnasium.

4. Geography at liceum The reform of the educational system in Poland which started in 1999 has been valid at the liceums, starting from the 2011 / 2012 school year. Geography was taught at the basic level (30 hours in the first grade) and at the advanced level (240 hours in the second and the third grades). Only the basic level was mandatory for all students. It is estimated that Geography at the advanced level (in a variety of possible configurations and specialities) was studied only by 20-25% of all students (Osuch, 2017). The lack of, or a very short time for, social consultations is a major problem as far as the educational changes are concerned. This makes an analysis and evaluation of the proposed changes superficial, limited to slogans formulated in the core curriculum; it does not enter at a deeper level into the “philosophy” of a new way of thinking. It is significant to remark that teachers themselves do not often feel comfortable in the throes of quick and thorough changes. They rather tend to keep their own jobs and think only about their own professional development and, therefore, are not willing to give specific feedback or suggestions on the core curriculum or specific geographic education topics. Consultations with teachers-practitioners, however, seem to be valuable and necessary. New trends, opportunities and changes in the Geography curriculum in New Zealand were reported by Fastier (2013), using teacher surveys and interviews with Geography Institute directors to evaluate proposed changes. It is worth noting that Copyright© Nuova Cultura

Geography as a subject is chosen as an optional subject among students aged 11-13 years old at the level of 6-8 (Fastier, 2013). Demonstrating the concept of “geographic thinking” is of importance to go into detailed solutions. Maude (2013) presented a highly important concept of “geographic thinking” in the Geography curriculum in Australia. According to Maude, the full vision of “geographic thinking” and analysis requires the following elements: place, space, environment, interconnection, sustainability, scale and change (Maude, 2013). It seems necessary to look more deeply into the past and into the history of the changes that have already been made, in order to have a broader view of the current ideas and solutions proposed. De Vecchis (2016) wrote in depth on the subject of the reform of secondary schools in Italy in the context of changes at secondary schools over a hundred years. It is intriguing to analyse the relation between Geography and History and to show some possibilities for integrating the content of education, although the assessment seems to be rather critical. Although the general education curriculum reform is realized at two different schools – gimnasium and liceum – it does create a coherent whole as the foundation of education (Marciniak, 2011). The material in the first grade at liceum covers issues of socio-economic Geography, according to the assumption adopted earlier that at primary school a student should know about the socio-economic and environmental problems of the modern world (Czerny, 2011). According to Adamczewska (2014) Geography teachers generally positively assess the content selection carried out in the first grade at liceum, believing that it is absorbing and it may attract young people with content about political Geography, cultures, high-tech industries, demographics and tourism. In line with the author of this study, long-time Geography teachers were accustomed to implementing content from the physical Geography and the spiral arrangement of the contents. One downside of it is the lack of content of the Geography of Poland. Therefore, teachers cannot make references to specific examples. Furthermore, the limiting of hours to particular issues seriously hinders the development of critical thinking and analytical skills in the Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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geographical environment which may sadly lead to reproducing and reinforcing stereotypes (Adamczewska, 2014). One has to agree with this statement fully because the basic education level (30 compulsory hours) seriously hinders the acquisition of knowledge of the subject. However, a detailed analysis of educational content for the extended level of Geography, conducted exclusively by eager students in the second and the third grades has a lot of flaws. Despite the number of 240 hours allocated for the extended level there are indeed problems with implementation of the material at this level because the new core curriculum differs only a little from the previous one, which in turn means that educational content must be implemented in a shorter (only a two-year cycle) time. Moreover, even a short weekly absence may cause a backlog of 4-5 topics in one subject, which can be extremely difficult for a student to catch up with. During the implementation of physical geography content in the second grade at lyceum, students should remember the issues discussed at gimnasium, which can be an obstacle for them and for teachers alike. Issues implemented in the second grade are markedly contrary to those of the first grade because they require specific knowledge, adequate use of maps, assimilation of geographical terminology, perceiving and explaining relations and dependencies between individual elements of the geographical environment. (Adamczewska, 2014). According to Adamczewska (2014) a detailed summary of the geographical liceum education carried out according to the SWOT method of analysis is not quite positive. The weaknesses of the geographical liceum education include:

- the completion of mandatory geographical education after the first year at lyceum;

- very restricted role of the Geography of Poland at basic level;

- the insufficient number of hours and the absence of physical Geography. A threat is a decrease in the level of geographical knowledge in society and knowledge about the country, the number of dismissed Geography teachers is increasing (the choice of a specific grade profile and thus the extended level is dependent on a number of eager

students), and an increase in the anonymity of students even in the first grade. The strengths and opportunities were likewise considered:

- a large number of hours for the extended level, - dynamic and global approach in teaching Geography;

- the possibility of a thorough and conscious preparation for the Matura exam opportunity to learn and understand the surrounding world, different cultures, shaping the attitudes of openness (Adamczewska, 2014). In short, according to Osuch (2017) it is impossible not to agree with the results of the research conducted by Adamczewska at schools and generally known experiences of Geography teachers in this field. The geographical education at liceum decreases the significance of Geography as the subject, but also the scientific discipline. After completion of the geographic education at liceum, a student should acquire knowledge and skills (competences) allowing him or her to pass the Matura exam in Geography. Since 2005 students at liceum, since 2005 have been able to choose Geography as one of the selected subjects in the written part of the Matura exam. So far, the Matura exam can be taken at the basic or advanced level. Since 2017 only at the advanced level. As a consequence of the earlier choice of Geography at the advanced level, current (from 2015) liceum students can pass Geography only at the advanced level of the Matura exam. Polish language, one foreign language, and Mathematics are mandatory Matura exams and students must obtain at least 30% in order to pass. In addition, they are obliged to choose at least one additional subject at advanced level (max. five), but without the selected threshold of completion (Osuch, 2017). According to Wójcik (2013), who made an analysis and evaluation of Geography Matura exam tasks, especially the scope of content, their construction, technical and educational correctness. The results of Wójcik’s research in 2005-2011 point to an increase of tasks checking knowledge with a decrease of tasks checking Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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skills, which should be considered reproachful. So far, a large number of students were interested in Geography during school education and positively set to it. Moreover, average and poor students willingly chose Geography as their Matura exam because they were even weaker at other subjects and they thought that they could quickly catch up with Geography. At that time such thinking in fact proved to be wrong. Currently (since 2015), the main motive for choosing Geography is higher education where the Matura exam in Geography is required or additionally rewarded (Osuch, 2017). Geography is currently very often chosen by graduates as an additional subject. In 2017 in Poland, 71601 students attempted to pass Geography at advanced level, which accounted for 27% of the students who chose this subject as an additional one. By comparison, Biology was chosen by 49928 students, Chemistry – 28880, Physics – 21801, History – 17924 and Civic Studies – 25479. An average result obtained at Geography exam at the advanced level is only 31%, 10% less than in 2015 (Central Examination Board 2017. www.cke.edu.pl).

5. Geography at “new primary school” As far as the most recent concept of geographic education at primary school is taken into consideration, the content of education and detailed requirements are divided into 18 thematic sections and are to be taught in V-VIII grades in the following hourly arrangement: the 5th grade – 1 hour, the 6th grade – 1 hour, 7th grade – 2 hours, 8th grade – 1 hour per week. the 5th grade: (total of 26 hours) Map of Poland, Polish landscapes, lands and oceans of the Earth, landscapes of the world. the 6th grade: (total of 26 hours) Earth movements, geographic coordinates, Geography of Europe, neighbours of Poland. the 7th grade: (total of 60 hours) Poland’s natural environment in Europe, society and economy of Poland in Europe, relations between elements of the geographical environment in the selected areas of Poland, my Copyright© Nuova Cultura

own region: “Little Homeland”. the 8th grade: (total of 26 hours) Regional Geography of Asia, regional Geography of Africa, regional Geography of North and South America, regional Geography of Australia, regional Geography of the Antarctic. For example, according to the core curriculum, the Neighbours of Poland section (6th grade) comprises the following issues: an industrial transformation in Germany; an economic development of the Czech Republic and Slovakia; a natural environment and an economic situation of Lithuania and Belarus; political, social and economic problems of Ukraine; Russia’s natural and socio-economic diversification. Such a form of formulation of particular topics does suggest the use of the dominant content layout and the specific problems of a lesson. The authors of the core curriculum strongly suggest a passage from passive teaching methods to a “searching” mode of education, and the most beneficial teaching-learning methods will surely be those that are able to activate learners, allowing them to monitor, analyse, compare, reason, evaluate, design, and take action so as to solve problems independently. The authors of the core curriculum demonstrate the ability to use both modern (e.g. GPS) and traditional ways of field orientation (e.g. maps, compass, the Sun, polar star, etc.) as a practical dimension of geographic education, so as not to be surprised and lost in a variety of terrestrial or atmospheric conditions. The use of maps, geographic orientation, demonstration of spatial diversity of natural components and human activities in the geographical environment, and an interpretation of map content are thus the primary aims of education at this level. As for the selection of content itself, it is indeed the return to Geography from a primary school in the 1970s and 1980s, which was fairly simple and clear. In the 5th grade, a student (now 10/11 yearold, ultimately 11/12 year-old) will first get to know Geography as an object and will be able to learn about the diversity of Poland and the world, the distribution of continents and oceans on Earth, as well as maps as an important source of geographic knowledge. The key task of geoItalian Association of Geography Teachers

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graphic education in the 6th and 7th grades, relating to the regional Geography of Europe and the world, is to get to know about the regional diversity of the world and the relation between nature and man. In the 7th grade a student studies the Geography of Poland. Particular issues in the field of physical Geography and socio-economic Geography are dealt with against the background of the Geography of Europe. The process of teaching and studying Geography also makes recourse to, among others, the application of the model of examples and case study as a detailed study of the unit (a region, an administrative unit, a city, a village, a farm, other geographical objects) which discloses exceptionally well typical features, phenomena, processes and relations of nature-man. This approach is not new and was being used successfully in the past at liceum but it was more about examples and case studies rather than the exemplary content, which is probably what the authors of the new core curriculum plan to achieve. Using the project method so as to create the conditions for students to undertake independent field research is a certain innovation introduced at this stage of education, and is all the more important because it concerns the knowledge of one’s own region. This is an excellent opportunity to return to the regional Geography of our own country. One of the innovations, apart from formulating the general aims of geographic education, is to identify important goals for shaping attitudes – upbringing. Here are some examples of geographic education objectives in education in the context of the policy pursued by right-conservative authorities:

- shaping the sense of identity, patriotism as well as community and civic attitudes;

- shaping the sense of pride in the beauty of the nature of our own country and the heritage of our people by means of studying a variety of natural and cultural heritage objects of our own region and Poland, Polish landscapes, natural, cultural and tourist beauty and the achievements of Poles in various spheres of life, successes of Polish companies in the international politics arena (The core curriculum for geography primary school, pp. 4-5); - developing positive, emotional and spiritual

bonds with the motherland, with the closest social and natural environment (“Little Homeland”, our own region), and, to some extent, with the whole planet Earth (The core curriculum for geography primary school). Despite the fact that those assumptions are right, so far they have not been sufficiently prominent in geographic education. Nevertheless, their significance has been indicated. “Geography fits in with the foundations of patriotic education which requires both historical and geographic knowledge” (The core curriculum for geography primary school). It should also be noted that the number of hours of History at “new primary school” will amount to 9 hours throughout the cycle (Geography only 5 hours) which should be considered as a significant manifestation of government policy and a tremendous increase in the importance of the subject of History at school. At this stage, it is extremely difficult to clearly define what the effect of the “novel” geographical education at primary school will be on account of the fact that in September 2017 only the 7th grade started education according to the assumptions of the reform. The textbook exclusively to this grade has just been published. On the other hand, this “transition” (removal of gimnasium, extension of primary school education, structural and program changes at liceum) can cause mounting anxiety. Primary school students, upon completion of the 6th grade of primary school (in the hitherto 6th grade of primary school there was no Geography, there was only Nature subject) passed into the 7th grade and started an entirely new program for the 7th grade. As a consequence of such a procedure, they did not acquire content and competence for the 5th and the 6th grades; they did not acquire the necessary information and did not develop competences in the implementation of many important issues (e.g. Map of Poland, Earth Movements, Geographic Coordinates). It is true, however, that some parts of the content should be fulfilled in a Nature subject in a hitherto primary school, but one does not have any certainty if it was done properly. It is only up to the teacher whether the students will catch up with the backlog or just move on to the next level of content without looking at the canons of Geography. It turned out, however, that the Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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publishing house has hopefully placed an extra insert for students in the 7th grade textbook to revise some important content taken from the 5th and 6th grades. According to research conducted by Szczęsna (2011) on students’ geographical achievements before the gimnasium, it was concluded that the integration of the science content at school contributed to lowering the level of Natural science competences among students, including Geography. In addition, Natural science classes poorly prepared students for further geographical education at gimnasium, due to insufficient training of cognitive and practical skills. The research confirmed teachers’ general assumption that especially the geographic and biological content in Nature subject classes was insufficient for further geographic and biological education at gymnasium. It should be noted that a biologist who teaches Nature – obviously being less competent than a geographer and vice versa – may deal with the geographic content superficially. The truth is that the primary school teachers of a variety of subjects (especially biologists, geographers, chemists and physicists) who completed an additional 2 or 3 term postgraduate studies became teachers of Nature.

6. Geography in the “new liceum” The content of education as well as specific requirements are divided into 16 core subjects and 21 extended ones. It is assumed that they are to be studied from the 1st to the 4th grades in the following matrix of weekly hours: the 1st grade – 1 hour of basic level + 1 hour of extended level, at the 2nd, the 3rd and 4th grades (for technical college classes the 4th and 5th) – 2 hours of extended level. Geography is also taught at the same level at technical college. Although the same core curriculum is valid for technical college as it is for liceum, the course is spread over five years, with slightly different versions of basic and extended education. This article focuses primarily on Geography at liceum, on account of the fact that after completing the current gymnasium and a “new primary school” in 2019, 80% of young people will probably attend liceum.

In the 1st grade (students are 15/16 years old), the basis of physical Geography is being studied (as it was done in the 1970s and 1980s). The basic level comprises sections that analyse geographic information sources, geoinformation technologies and spatial data presentation methods, the Earth in the universe as well as spheres: an atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the lithosphere, the pedosphere and the biosphere (Project of the core curriculum for geography in upper secondary school, p. 8). Only the great tragedy of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011 has led to changes in the Geography curriculum in Japanese schools and more attention has been focused on the causes, effects and prevention of such catastrophes, as was stated by Ohnishi and Mitsuhashi (2013). It can be astonishing that geographic education in Japan did not illustrate the notion of the consequences of such disasters early enough, and the possibility of anticipating and preventing them. If it were not for the use of modern information technology, it could be considered as a traditional physical Geography that used to be so adored by an older generation of Geography teachers. And it is quite possible that such a trend will continue on account of the fact that the use of modern information technology by some geographers is still very poor, especially in small towns. The content of education and requirements for the 2nd grade at basic level cover the basics of socio-economic Geography, within the limits of the classical division into issues related to political divisions and differences in an economic development, population and urban transformation, the determinants and development of three (traditional) sectors of the economy (agriculture with forestry and fishing, industry with construction and services). It is, however, interesting to note that the fourth sector of intangible services has not been included. This grade concludes with the chapter covering conflicts of interest in bilateral relations between human beings and the geographical environment. At the extended level the content of education and requirements refer to the issues of cooperation and conflicts in the world, changes in social structures and settlement networks, trends in an economic development and diversification of husbandry, as well as contemporary transforItalian Association of Geography Teachers

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mations of the industrial and service sectors (Project of core curriculum for geography upper secondary school, p. 8). At the moment it is difficult to estimate how many students will choose the extended version of Geography; it will possibly motivate their decision to pass the Matura exam in Geography. Nevertheless, it will probably be 20-25% of the population at liceum (just as in the pre-reform years). In the 3rd grade at basic level the issues relating to the regional diversity of the natural environment of Poland, its socio-economic diversification and maritime affairs are to be studied. At the extended level in this grade, apart from the requirements related to the natural environment of selected regions of Poland, there are a number of requirements that apply to completely new issues at this stage of geographic education: a landscape diversity in Poland, a socio-cultural diversity in Poland, and the section of content intended to be conducted in the field concerning relations between elements of the geographic environment in one’s own region. The author of this publication analysing the level of acquisition of selected competences among active Geography teachers (Osuch, 2010, 2012) found that only half of them can competently conduct field research, 10% of secondary school teachers cannot do it, and about 40% do it weakly and insufficiently. Especially at liceum this type of classes was hardly ever carried out, as the teachers openly admitted. At gymnasium the results of these studies were much more satisfactory, as there were more field activities in the curriculum, and teachers more open to innovations. Most of the Geography teachers at gymnasium comprised former primary school teachers who were forced to follow the 1999 reform to pursue various postgraduate studies and courses. The 4th grade, according to the authors of the core curriculum, “occupies a special place in geographical education due to a greater maturity of students in perception of the surrounding world and the need to prepare for the Matura examination in Geography” (Project of core curriculum for geography upper secondary school, p. 8). The extended version (the fact is that only Copyright© Nuova Cultura

such a form is possible in the last grade) includes issues related to, among others, environmental, political, social and economic problems of the modern world, the level and quality of life. In addition to the systematic use of the atlas, geographic wall maps as well as the Internet cartographic resources, the authors of the core curriculum are especially concerned with the deployment of geographic information (GIS) technology. The objective of the usage of these geoinformation technologies and GIS applications is to transform Geography into a modern discipline and extend learning potential of students’ cognitive sphere. Very ambitious goals were set and skills were identified that a student would develop through the use of geoinformation technology. These are as follows:

- searching for selected locations on the map; - searching for data and information at geo-

portals; obtaining information and documents from various sources; map tool support (map navigation); analysis of aerial and satellite imagery and reasoning based on them; assessment of validity and reliability of data; using Google Earth; determining regularity or randomness of distribution of phenomena in the geographical space – identifying connections and cooccurrence in space; use of information and data for multimedia presentations (Project of core curriculum for geography upper secondary school).

It is a pity that the authors of the core curriculum have not paid due attention to the competences required by Geography teachers in this field, which are, unfortunately, very limited nowadays. It will be possible to develop these skills in additional courses for teachers and during postgraduate studies. Such a course has been planned by the Institute of Geography at the Pedagogical University in Cracow and ESRI Poland. Geography will also be taught in a three-year vocational school, 1 hour per week for three years. In vocational schools – the element of vocational education after primary school – students are supposed to study theoretical basics Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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so as to be able to enter a profession. The core curriculum of Geography is considerably shallow in relation to that of the liceum, accentuating the human-environment relation. In the previous form of the two-year vocational school the subject was called “Geography with protection and shaping of the environment.” It seems to be an attempt to return to a good tradition of vocational schools from the past, educating highly qualified workers mainly for industry and services and entering the labour market directly (without the Matura exams). In recent years, bitter criticism was levelled at vocational education in Poland due to its too narrow education in specialities that were not always needed for a dynamically changing labour market. Vocational schools did not educate young people as far as the current conditions of the labour market are concerned. Moreover, the superficial core curriculum of general subjects did not allow for mobility and independence of graduates in the labour market. There was indeed an unshakeable conviction, a stereotype claiming that young people attending vocational schools were for sure worse off, neglected, without prospects and ambitions. Recently however there has been a considerable demand for welleducated graduates to perform specific professions, good mechanics, plumbers, and even miners. The reconstruction of the vocational school is supposed to change the status quo.

7. Conclusions The profound changes – planned and quickly introduced in 2017 – in the educational system in Poland are revolutionary and involve practically all levels of education – from kindergarten, primary school to liceum, and even higher education. These changes do involve students, teachers and parents who entertain very different or even diametrically opposed opinions on the reform or some of its elements. Geography as the subject taught at all stages of education is likewise prone to changes in this process that stresses a different concept of teaching this subject. It is difficult to predict what the future holds as far as teaching Geography in Polish schools is concerned. The truth is that political changes have triggered changes in many areas of life, including Copyright© Nuova Cultura

education. Education should not depend on politics, but unfortunately it does in many situations. Education certainly needs transforming, but should it be so revolutionary? Possibly more evolutionary transformations could be better since one cannot experiment on children and adolescents. Time will tell whether these changes will improve the functioning of the educational system in Poland, whether they will increase the interest of young people in Geography, whether the significance of Geography as a subject will increase, or whether the students will achieve a much desired high level of competency to meet the challenges of a dynamically changing labour market in both Poland and European countries.

References 1. Adamczewska M., “Geografia w zreformowanym liceum – doświadczenia nauczycieli z Łodzi i województwa łódzkiego”, in Wójtowicz B. and Osuch W. (Eds.), Annales Universitatis Peadagogiscae Cracoviensis. Studia Geographica VI, Folia 162 “Innowacje w kształceniu geograficznym”, Kraków, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Pedagogicznego w Krakowie, 2014, pp. 207-216. 2. Czerny M., “Komentarz do podstawy programowej przedmiotu geografia”, Podstawa programowa z komentarzami. Tom 5. Edukacja przyrodnicza w szkole podstawowej, gimnazjum i liceum. MEN. Warszawa 2011. pp. 177-194. 3. De Vecchis G., “Geography in Italian Licei”, Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 1, 5, 2016, pp. 105-112. 4. Fastier M., “Curriculum Development in New Zeland: New directions, Opportunities and Challenges for School Geography”, Review of International Geographical Education Online (RIGEO), 3, 3, 2013, pp. 241-251. 5. Marciniak Z., “O potrzebie reformy programowej kształcenia ogólnego”, Podstawa programowa z komentarzami. Tom 5. Edukacja przyrodnicza w szkole podstawowej, gimnazjum i liceum. MEN. Warszawa 2011, pp. 7-21. 6. Maude A., “The Vision of Geography Underlying The Australian Geography Curriculum”, Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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Review of International Geographical Education Online (RIGEO), 3, 3, 2013, pp. 252-265. 7. Ohnishi K. and Mitsuhashi H., “Geography Education Challenges Regarding Disaster Mitigation in Japan”, Review of International Geographical Education Online (RIGEO), 3, 3, 2013, pp. 230-240. 8. Osuch W., Kompetencje nauczycieli geografii oraz studentów geografii – kandydatów na nauczycieli, Kraków, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Pedagogicznego w Krakowie, 2010. 9. Osuch W., “Changes in university education of geography students in Poland against the competences of geography teachers”, Europäische Kooperationen. Europäische Perspektiven 4. Pädagogische Hochschule Wien (Hg.), Wien, LIT VERLAG GmbH & Co. KG, 2012, pp. 71-85. 10. Osuch W., “Teaching and Learning Geography in Secondary Education in Poland”, in Karvánková P., Popjaková D., Vančura M. and Mládek J. (Eds.), Current Topics in Czech and Central European Geography Education, Springer International Publishing Switzerland, 2017, pp. 45-59. 11. “Preliminary information on the results of the matura exam conducted in May 2017”, Website of Central Examination Board (Centralna Komisja Egzaminacyjna), www.cke.edu.pl/egzamin-maturalny/egzamin -w-nowej-formule/wyniki/sprawozdanie-zegzaminu-maturalnego-2017/. 12. “Project of core curriculum for Geography upper secondary school”, www/men.gov.pl/ ministerstwo/informacje/projekt-podstawyprogramowej-dla-szkol-ponadpodstawowych -zaczynamy-prekonsultacje.html. 13. Szczęsna J., “Osiągnięcia uczniów z zakresu geografii i progu gimnazjum”, in Tracz M. and Szkurłat E. (Eds.), Efekty kształcenia geograficznego na różnych poziomach edukacji. Prace Komisji Edukacji Geograficznej Polskiego Towarzystwa Geograficznego Tom 1, Łódź, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2011, pp. 67-79. 14. “The Core Curriculum for Geography primary school”, www/men.gov.pl/zycieszkoly/ksztalcenie-ogolne/podstawaprogramowa/podstaw a-programowa-materialy-dla-nauczycieli. html. 15. Tracz M., “Znaczenie geografii jako przedmiotu ogólnokształcącego na przełomie XIX i XX wieku – studium przypadku”, Copyright© Nuova Cultura

Dokumentacja Geograficzna 38, Warszawa, Instytut Geografii i Gospodarki Przestrzennej PAN, 2008, pp. 72-79. 16. Tracz M. and Świętek A., “Zmiany programowe nauczania geografii w rzeczywistości szkolnej na przykładzie gimnazjum”, in Wójtowicz B. and Osuch, W. (Eds.), Annales Universitatis Peadagogiscae Cracoviensis. Studia Geographica VI, Folia 162, Innowacje w kształceniu geograficznym, Kraków, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Pedagogicznego w Krakowie, 2014, pp. 53-66. 17. Wójcik J., “Geografia na maturze – zróżnicowanie merytoryczne i ocena zadań z arkuszy egzaminacyjnych w latach 20052011”, in Piróg D. and Tracz M. (Eds.), Annales Universitatis Peadagogiscae Cracoviensis. Studia Geographica IV, Folia 148, Współczesne obszary badań w dydaktyce geografii, Krakow, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Pedagogicznego w Krakowie, 2013, pp. 84-100. 18. www.cke.edu.pl/index.php/egzamin-matural ny-left.

Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 6, Dec., 2017, pp. 45-53 DOI: 10.4458/9446-04

Ocean citizenship. The time to adopt a useful concept for environmental teaching and citizenship education is now Enrico Squarcinaa, Valeria Pecorellib a

Dipartimento di Scienze Umane per la formazione “Riccardo Massa”, Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy b Dipartimento di Diritto, Economie e Culture (DiDEC), Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, Como, Italy Email: enrico.squarcina@unimib.it Received: July 2017 – Accepted: September 2017

Abstract The sea is undeniably the unique heritage shared among the world’s inhabitants. Most people seem to identify very little or no connection between their activities and the future of the ocean. However, a well-preserved ocean may enhance and protect human wellbeing. In this perspective, sea education is a meaningful tool to inspire a sense of attachment and personal responsibility that can be translated as ocean citizenship (OC). There is considerable support in the literature debate to recommend further investigations on this topic and scholars seem to agree with the need to develop sea literacy as a key factor to water preservation and ocean environments. In Italy, the debate is quite far from being fully taken into consideration, despite its 7,500 km of coasts and the need to save the Mediterranean Sea habitat. Despite its importance, the sea is a big absentee in the geography of Italian schools, as well as in environmental education conducted in and out of the school system. This work resonates with the recent overseas studies and aims at relaunching the discussion on the meaning of ocean citizenship to provide an opportunity to develop OC in terms of environmental and citizen education. Keywords: Citizenship, Education, Geography, Ocean, Research

1. Introduction In the 2007 Coastal Management, Stephen Fletcher and Jonathan Potts published an article entitled “Ocean Citizenship: An Emergent Geographical Concept” addressing the necessity of affirming “ocean citizenship” (OC). A decade Copyright© Nuova Cultura

ago, this was considered as an emerging concept as the result of a close relation between our everyday lives and the health of the coastal and marine environment. As pointed out in the study, informed lifestyle choices may positively affect the sea and therefore human beings have a great responsibility in minimizing negative impacts Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Enrico Squarcina, Valeria Pecorelli

while ameliorating large-scale geographical problems that in some cases may appear insuperable. In so doing, geography was promoted to have a meaningful role as also reported in a lively academic debate that has developed in an Anglophone context since then. In order to create and spread the concept of ocean citizenship, various scholars have been outlining the limits as well as the possible solutions. In 2004, one of the first pieces of research on the subject of sea and citizenship reported the US Pew Ocean Commission data, identifying the need to improve public literacy about ocean issues (Steel, et al., 2005). Attention was focused on developing public support thorough public knowledge, while other findings suggested that internet and the media may have played a key role in enhancing sea awareness at different levels among citizens. Later, in the journal “Aquatic Conservation Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems” (Vincent, 2011) levels of criticality emerged as an outcome of previous studies carried out in Mexico, Portugal and Ireland. The world’s sea was scarcely acknowledged by a large part of interviewees, specifically regarding the quality of marine waters, ocean conservation and pollution issues. According to Vincent we should address the reality that too few people act in support of the ocean (2011). The key to people’s commitment to marine conservation lies in making the ocean seem familiar so that its care becomes a matter of personal responsibility rather than an abstract notion and a tiresome chore. Similarly, Voyer et al. (2012) affirm that we need to feel the ocean as “a part of me”. Most people seem to see very little or no connection between their activities and the future of the ocean (Pew Oceans Commission, 2004), even though a well preserved ocean may guarantee food, coastal protection and climate control, all key factors for human wellbeing. In this perspective, sea education can represent a meaningful tool to inspire a sense of attachment and personal responsibility that in McKinley and Fletcher’s (2010) view can be translated into the concept of ocean citizenship. Furthermore, Marmoree and Conk (2009) explore how US individuals perceive the ocean providing a number of meaningful and sharp insights. Accordingly, while for some interviewees oceans represent the main source of fun, food and Copyright© Nuova Cultura

inspiration, for others it is paired with hurricanes and natural disasters. Interestingly, most of the individuals involved do not seem to recognize the sea as the most significant element in climate control, and in oxygen provision, an essential and vital constituent for the Earth as well as for the economy and a wide range of human activities. In other words, one of the most important observations made in the existing studies seems to concern the fact that the real beneﬁt for the ocean lies in how humans connect to the sea. Although the largest part of the studies underline that citizens’ attentiveness is quite limited and sea issues represent marginal concerns, other research suggests that where awareness is well developed, best practice and virtuous behaviour are increasingly carried out (Fletcher et al., 2012; Guest, Wallance and Lotze, 2015; Haklay, 2002; McKinley, 2011; McKinley and Fletcher, 2010; Fletcher and Potts, 2007; Fletcher et al., 2009; Steel et al., 2005; Voyer et al., 2015). While overseas scholars all agree with the need to develop sea literacy as a key factor in water preservation and ocean environments, in Italy the debate is still quite far from being fully taken into consideration even with its 7,500 km of coasts and the need to save the Mediterranean Sea environment. In order to first of all accept and then to apply the idea of ocean citizenship, as already outlined in the foreign literature debate, consistent educational action supported by formally appointed institutions and informal actors must be championed. With this contribution we aim to take into account a research project addressed to encourage an OC scientific debate. Therefore, in this perspective this article is to be intended as a working agenda based on preliminary findings explaining the reasons why it is necessary to adopt OC by formal and informal education actors and bodies. The research has visually and textually investigated a number of geography school books with the support of primary and secondary school teachers working in the Italian education system and in this early phase it presents a set of preliminary data. It finally suggests possible steps along which the project could be further developed.

Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Enrico Squarcina, Valeria Pecorelli

2. From the citizenship concept to the ocean citizenship The concept of citizenship has been applied in three ways. Firstly, as a political status characterizing a person with regard to the state, secondly as a sense of belonging and individual political capacity within a specific community, lastly as a personal attitude that encourages a person to act for their community’s sake and consequently for the safety (or improvement) of their community’s territory. In the latter case citizenship goes beyond a juridical status and meets the individual will – or association of individuals – to look after the whole community heritage. According to international maritime law, in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1 , also known as the “Montego Bay Convention”, coastal states exert a decreasing sovereignty up to a limit of 200 nautical miles, beyond which the high sea extends. This is considered human world heritage. Affirming that a part of the Earth’s surface is world heritage, it implies that each state has the right to use that specific space. Moreover, at least theoretically, it also means that continental states have the right to enjoy the benefits from sea exploitation. All the same, each individual, as a member of the human community besides belonging to a specific nationality, is entitled to avail of their rights2. If a common heritage exists, a participatory will may also exist to manage it along with the desire to be committed to its preservation and improvement. In the light of what we have so far examined, this may be defined as a form of citizenship, or to use Fletchers and Potts’ words, Ocean Citizenship. Theoretically speaking, as individuals, we all share rights on the sea that are connected to duties in terms of respecting this space together with the community of human beings. If the relation of individual “rights-duties” referring to one’s community can be envisioned as one the key elements in the citizenship relationship, in this context the ocean citizenship idea is even more reinforced and takes on a renewed character: collective and individual sea responsibility. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) 1

http://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements /texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf. 2 At the same time, a contradiction is present in the cited convention. In the high seas, boats and ships need to be Copyright© Nuova Cultura

sponsored the idea of universal citizenship and obtained a first legal framework promoting a superior level of citizens’ rights and duties than those enjoyed in the national state, beyond the national belonging. On the other hand, ocean citizenship is the result of the relationship between a person and a space, a territory which is not – fully – exposed and subject to the state jurisdiction even if that person has not yet visited it, or if they live miles away from the sea. This type of citizenship can be considered revolutionary – perhaps utopian – for being independent from the state, as it chiefly assumes the form of environmental citizenship, that is to say, a personal commitment to deepen the knowledge of elements and dynamics affecting the environment accompanied by a more responsible conduct and lifestyle choices. This specific form of citizenship, we believe, is suitable to be applied to most of our planet’s surface: the sea.

3. The need for ocean citizenship education The difficulties encountered in sharing the idea of OC are mainly due to cultural elements in those human communities settled far from the sea. Its physical distance may be the limit to projecting feelings and sense of belonging. This may in other cases inspire care and affection for the marine environment if we consider that literature and cinema have often located their stories, transforming the sea into a symbolic place (Mack, 2012; Squarcina, 2015). Another critical point is rooted in the fact that caring for the sea may often involve virtuous mainland citizens whose actions do not appear tangible in the immediate lapse of time. The delayed verifiability – spatially/temporal – between action and result makes the adoption of best practice and good habits even more difficult. For example, the relation between the indiscriminate use of disposable plastic goods and marine contamination is not self-evident as inscribed to the national sea register to be identified by any military entities. This may underline how sea national rules may limit individual rights to use high sea waters. Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Enrico Squarcina, Valeria Pecorelli

stated by Moore and Phillips (2011) as well as the abuse of cleaning chemicals detergents in a lowland and the eutrophication phenomenon hundreds of miles away. Thus, Wilcox et al. (2016) define the ocean plastic issue as a “silent threat” for the ecosystem as the result of a 30 year data collection on the occasion of public cleaning events on beaches and coasts. This issue is particularly felt by international environmental associations such as Green Peace. Another challenging point derives from the Westphalian concept of the modern state, as the main holder of political power which is still considered the only entity capable of acting on a large scale with coercive capacity. Since the last century, this has taken place at least in Western democracies, despite the claim that international organizations and public opinion exerted their influence. Owing to their constitutive features as territorial controlling entities, along with political expediency, states tend to prefer the so-called national interests, which often correspond to the political and economic interests of the hegemonic actors of the nation, which frequently conflict with the adoption of environmental protection measures, especially if these relate to a distant environment such as the high seas. On the other hand, jurisdiction is exerted only in their territory and they are unprepared, or in some cases inadequately prepared, to intervene in those distant areas for reasons which do not correspond to economic or political interests. The same international organizations appear as mere round tables where States discuss those resolutions entrusted by the individual state decisions. Though not formally, states are less likely to apply interventions affecting their balances, which do not provide immediate benefits to their interests, do not involve the public opinion, or which are against their economic interests. All the same, there are few States with such an economic, technological and cultural power that are capable of taking action in enforcing international conventions in the high seas. In this way, it remains a space where most of the crimes are committed against the marine environment. A good example of this is the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from 3

Ships, 1973 later modified by the Protocol of 1978 (MARPOL 73/78), and promoted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). It sets down the prohibition for all ships to discharge waste into waters and pollute the marine environment. MARPOL 73/78 applies to oil tankers, cruise ships, general cargo and container vessels, tugs, ferries, yachts and small pleasure craft. The objective of the convention is to reduce the volumes of harmful materials entering the world’s ocean and the marine environment. Ships have traditionally discharged all their waste into the sea. In the past, this waste was mainly foodstuffs, timber and packaging materials, ship's gear and lost cargo. More recently it has included oils, chemicals, plastics and other materials which may float, are not biodegradable, extremely persistent and which deteriorate very slowly. MARPOL 73/78 requires that ships retain all the waste on board until reaching port. However, certain waste can be discharged under certain conditions such as the distance from shore, the type of waste and the condition of the waste. MARPOL 73/78 requires that countries provide adequate reception facilities in all their ports, harbors and anchorages3. The Convention provisions rely on state inspections and prescriptive capacities. These are often very poor, in some cases deliberately poor in application, since enrollment in the national shipping registers, as well as periodic inspections may represent an underestimated source of economic income. Similarly, inspections are mainly carried out when ships are in the port, this however does not prevent them from washing tanks or dispersing military, civil, industrial refuse, fishing equipment etc. In addition, despite the progressive biological impoverishment of the sea caused by industrial fishing, we are still far from finding an effective remedy to overfishing (Callegari, 2007). As a matter of fact, the richest countries’ fishing fleets, even though signing fishing limitation conventions are indiscriminately looting world fish stocks and seriously damaging traditional fishing activities.

International-Convention-for-the-Prevention-of-Pollution-from-Ships. Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Enrico Squarcina, Valeria Pecorelli

Moreover, a sustainable development paradigm seems insufficient to justify a change of attitude with regard to marine areas and environmental problems. The idea of sustainable development has a reference policy document in Agenda 21, whose philosophy is rooted in local action for global conservation. The sea’s distance felt by a large part of human communities, whether physical or psychological, can represent an extra difficulty in perceiving the marine fragility, the need to defend this environment or to simply realize the idea that it provides most of the oxygen we breathe through the photosynthesis of microscopic algae (Louchet, 2014). Given the current scientific debate, we argue that the adoption of the idea of ocean citizenship could help to raise awareness also in campaigning to implement national safeguard policies and repressive measures against those conducts that may harm the marine heritage (McKinley and Fletcher, 2010, 2011, 2012). To respond to the sea environmental question the most realistic option seems to be more idealistic: a cultural revolution. Promoting ocean citizenship could spread the idea of individual and collective responsibility towards this vast and unique part of the planetary surface.

4. Actions for Ocean Citizenship In UNESCO’s natural science section webpage, it is declared that we should add some blue into the economy of the green in order to know the ocean, by preserving our marine treasures and reinforcing ocean citizenship. It also states that society must be committed in the definition of a shared future of the sea while acting in favor of a real change. This will not be possible without a great transformation of human behaviour which only seems to be feasible through education and ocean consciousness 4 . UNESCO, along with a number of intergovernmental agencies, has sponsored conferences, seminars, campaigns and publications and plans on the subjects of the sea and coastal warming. In the education fields, different international non-profit organizations are networking with education institutions, 4

www.unesco.org/new/fr/natural-sciences/ioc-oceans/.

aquariums, scientific centers and natural science museums (Ballantyne, 2004; Kim, 2014), NGOs (Howe, 2001; Calado et al., 2012), supporting sea world knowledge and are taking action to foster public awareness with several events such as the celebration of the World Oceans Day (8th of June) or the creation of ocean citizenship passports.

5. Ocean citizenship in Italy In Italy, despite being embraced by the Mediterranean Sea, little debate is devoted to sea issues. In the past for example, the “colonization” of the littoral areas emerged only after national unity in the 19th century, when land reclaims were planned and portions of the population were displaced to the coasts (Mioni, 1978). Apart from the bombastic fascist hegemonic claims, Italian politics has shown little interest in the sea. In general, Italians consider this space playfully or economically profitable, the sea basically meaning holiday (Frascani, 2008). Given this, the role of sea literacy therefore seems particularly important, and despite the main national educational agency known as MIUR5, the school seems reluctant to pursue marine environmental education and to spread the idea of ocean citizenship. Indicazioni nazionali per il curricolo della scuola dell’infanzia e del primo ciclo d’istruzione (MIUR, 2012) the official ministerial education document for Italian schools and teachers states that the most important issues affecting our continent and humanity nowadays cannot be addressed and resolved within the traditional national boundaries, but only through the understanding of being part of the great common traditions, of a single European community destiny as well as of a single common planetary destiny. In a second passage of the text it also declares: “On the one hand everything that happens in the world affects every person’s life; on the other hand, each person holds in his/her own hands a unique and singular responsibility towards the future of humanity”. From a methodological point of view, this first stage of the research has adopted a comparative perspective taking into account possible discre5

Here we refer to Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca (MIUR) ‒ http://www.miur.gov.it. Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Enrico Squarcina, Valeria Pecorelli

pancies resulting from school books and ministerial documents. A preliminary content analysis was based on a set of ministerial documents – such as Linee guida e Indicazioni nazionali – and around 30 primary school textbooks. The books investigated were published between 2009 and 2016 and are still in use in Italian schools by students from grade 3 to grade 5 6 . Along with this, we interviewed 10 primary school teachers (8 female – 2 male) who had full access to 24 classes. According to our preliminary analysis, the idea of citizenship proposed by the MIUR document is circumscribed to a specific territory and to the national culture, at the most it comprises the European Union, while completely neglecting the global scale. Ocean citizenship does not seem to be included and nor does the high sea. Moreover, while teaching to care for the environment is presented as a priority, we deduced that the “environment” referred to is essentially conceived as a space surrounding pupils’ life rather than a global milieu, or the earthly habitat and certainly not the marine environment. After all, the sea and the ocean are just mentioned in the “milestones for the development of skills at the end of primary school” merely as physical geography objects to be recognized or in the “Learning objectives at the end of the fifth primary school grade” as geography elements to be known in terms of “main general features” (MIUR, 2015). Furthermore, the guidelines for environmental education and sustainable development (Ministry of Education, University and Research and the Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea, 2015) are a document that aims “to provide some innovative recommendations on environmental and sustainable development education for the elaboration of curricula by the educational institutions and for the organization of educational and teaching activities”. This form pays more attention to explaining and justifying the need for the inclusion of environmental education in the school system according to the sustainable development paradigm. It also defines it as a proper education tool to be applied 6

Amulfi M., 2009; Amulfi M., 2013; Ri.Cer.Ca., 2009; Strano L., 2016; Valdiserra L., 2011; Valdiserra L., 2014; VV.AA., 2009a; VV.AA., 2009b; VV.AA.,

through actions aimed at innovating the lifestyles and people’s behaviour to protect the environment. The second part of the text is mainly focused on educational courses. In particular, the very first document section dwells on the “Protection of water and the sea” where teaching activities are provided for Nursery School and Primary School; instead other environmental issues are broadly developed for the Secondary Schools. In analyzing the section devoted to water and the sea, it resulted that sea issues appear to be quite overshadowed by freshwater issues. The sea is essentially presented as a climate controller and as a food resource, while no mention is given to the role played by the sea in supplying oxygen, absorbing carbon dioxide or in providing biodiversity. Moreover, no information is provided on the key role of the sea played in the economic and cultural exchanges between different people during the ages. Least of all, the sea is regarded as a symbolic and emotional space, although the first part of the document states that in order to intervene on the environment is also necessary “to establish a connection with it from an emotional point of view and thus with our deepest parts”. Finally, it is also declared that in the nursery school, children are encouraged to develop key skills to establish an emotional relationship with marine ecosystems. The third part of the document is instead devoted to several “in-depth explanation sheets”, one of which is dedicated to the “Protection of the Sea”. Even in this section, the topic seems quite superficially dealt with and limited to a mere list of key marine physical environment features with specific reference to the Mediterranean basin; a brief part is devoted to possible actions and strategies that the Italian state authorities and other supranational organizations have adopted to defend the sea. Although a certain amount of attention seems to be devoted to the restoration and enhancement of the maritime character, no targeted strategies are suggested to approach citizens, or the youngest among them, in creating ocean 2014; VV.AA., 2015; VV.AA., 2016a; VV.AA., 2016b; VV.AA., 2016c.

Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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citizenship. Hence, those proclaimed didactic actions seem to be still quite underdeveloped with reference to the promotion of a rich knowledge that may encourage an affective appropriation of the sea by students. More precisely, the connection between the protection of the sea and global citizenship seems to be missing. In contrast, in our view this would be a key factor for the realization, also in spatial terms, of an ethically valuable idea that comprises a human community capable of going beyond national citizenship. We also believe that adopting a more critical and extensive approach to the sea may overcome the risk that education guidelines and school programs may end up in an outlook of ethnocentrism, sentimentalism and pietism. Likewise, several recommendations on geography teaching (Schmidt die Friedberg, 2005; Giorda, 2006; Malatesta, 2010; De Vecchis, 2011; Giorda, 2014 etc.) have provided detailed insights, later embraced by MIUR, such as spatial analysis and the affective appropriation of the nearby space as a starting point to explore the larger scale. Nonetheless, in Italian primary schools, spatial knowledge often seems to be restricted to very limited spatial scales, while in secondary schools the approach to European and global spaces rarely succeeds in escaping from an impersonal and aseptic list of nomenclatures, definitions and geographical facts without creating empathy with the studied topics. In any case, the sea remains something which is distant and remote. As a matter of fact, in primary schools, the result of such a distance is also due to the scarcity of contents, banality and the rhetoric used by school books to represent the sea. Drawing on the preliminary findings from the previously cited school text analysis, it emerged that in most cases chapters and paragraphs dealing with sea issues are limited to a superficial description of the coastal landscape in which nomenclatures related to the type and the cost of accidents are always present while, economic, cultural, emotional, and recreational analysis is always missing. According to 10 key informants working in schools, it seems that the sea, and particularly the high seas, is likely to remain an unknown space, something which is indistinct, intangible, abstract.

Outside Italian schools, other bodies are working for the interaction between citizens and the marine environment. These are environmental, cultural and sports associations, which in addition to promoting the practice of different sea sports, spread maritime culture and respect for the marine world. Institutions like the Coast Guard for example are also supporting institutional educational activities in collaboration with educational institutions. Therefore, an extensive information campaign and updated education agenda is urgently required. To be effective, this should include the adoption of a geographical point of view (Tilbury, 1997), which strongly emphasizes a physical, economic, political, perceptual and cultural relationship between humans and space. It should be also implemented by educational institutions in collaboration with international organizations, NGOs, museums, aquariums, environmental associations, sports clubs and no less important world sailing personalities. To conclude, we also suggest that a deeper and lasting relationship should to be created from an early age to take care of the sea environment. Basically, it is about transforming the relationship with a space into the relationship with a place (Tuan, 1978).

6. Conclusive reflections: the need for an OC research agenda In our opinion, it is necessary to promote the idea of ocean citizenship to enhance the will to preserve the largest environment of the Earth. The sea is undeniably the unique heritage that is wholly shared among the world’s inhabitants, and as such it the unique space where the idea of human community finds its own territory to experience commitment in overcoming national and more general socio-spatial individualisms (Raynaud, 1984). As outlined in the numerous cited studies, the spread of this idea must be promoted through education and put into effective action by appointed formal and informal education bodies and actors that often seem to ignore reciprocal activities. There is considerable support in prior literature debates to recommend further investigations along with a sounder research agenda. This may ideally comprise a

Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Enrico Squarcina, Valeria Pecorelli

wider range of sea related topics focused on schools, environmental associations, sport clubs, national entities, armed forces and nautical world characters with the purpose of mapping and registering whoever is working to develop the idea of ocean citizenship while possibly suggesting shared common practices. Furthermore, the sea image and marine culture values should not be forgotten as narrated and projected by literature, cinema, arts, and press because our ideas and relations of space derive from a sum of constructive discourses of geographical sense, promoting or restricting a cognitive, affective and cultural appropriation of a portion of – or the entire – planet even by those who have not yet had the opportunity to look over a limited horizon. After all, Halford J. Mackinder argued that “geography at its best is a matter of imagination” (Schmidt di Friedberg, 2010, p. 256) or, even better, of utopian imagination.

Acknowledgements While the full article is the result of a joint piece of work, Enrico Squarcina developed paragraphs 2, 3, 4; Valeria Pecorelli wrote paragraphs 1, 5, 6.

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8. De Stefani P., Il diritto internazionale dei diritti umani. Il diritto internazionale nella comunità mondiale, Padua, CEDAM, 1994. 9. De Vecchis G., Didattica della geografia. Teoria e prassi, Novara, Utet, 2011. 10. Fletcher S. and Potts J., “Ocean Citizenship: An Emergent Geographical Concept”, Coastal Management, 35, 2007, pp. 511-524. 11. Fletcher S., Potts J., Heeps C. and Pike K., “Public awareness of marine environmental issues in the UK”, Marine Policy, 33, 2009, pp. 370-375. 12. Frascani P., Il mare, Bologna, il Mulino, 2008. 13. Giorda C., La Geografia nella scuola primaria. Contenuti, strumenti, didattica, Rome, Carocci, 2006. 14. Giorda C., Il mio spazio nel mondo. Geografia per la scuola dell’infanzia e primaria, Rome, Carocci, 2014. 15. Guest H., Lotze H. K. and Wallace D., “Youth and the sea: Ocean literacy in Nova Scotia, Canada”, Marine Policy, 58, 2015, pp. 98-107. 16. Haklay M., “Public Environmental Information: understanding requirements and patterns of likely public use”, Area, 34, 1, 2002, pp. 17-28. 17. Howe V., “Local community training and education in southern Tanzania, a case study”, Marine Policy, 25, 6, 2001, pp. 445455. 18. Jong-Mun K., “Connecting children to the ocean: understanding elementary students’ changes in ocean literacy during a marine aquarium summer camp experience”. Ph.D Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2014. 19. Loucet A., La planète océane. Prècis de gèographie maritime, Paris, Armand Colin, 2014. 20. Malatesta S., Per fare l’albero ci vuole la carta. Note critiche per un curriculum geografico, Milan, Guerini, 2010. 21. McKinley E. and Fletcher S., “Individual responsibility for the oceans? An evaluation of marine citizenship by UK marine practitiones”, Ocean & Coastal Management, 53, 2010, pp. 379-384. 22. McKinley E. and Fletcher S., “Public Involvement in Marine Management? An Evaluation of Marine Citizenship in the UK”, Littoral 2010, 100001, 2011, https://coastnetItalian Association of Geography Teachers

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littoral2010.edpsciences.org/articles/litt/pdf/ 2011/01/litt-10001.pdf 23. McKinley E. and Fletcher S., “Improving marine environmental health through marine citizenship: a call for debate”, Marine Policy, 36, 2012, pp. 839-843. 24. Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca e Ministero dell’Ambiente e della Tutela del Territorio e del Mare, Linee guida per l’educazione ambientale e allo sviluppo sostenibile, Rome, 2009. 25. Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca e Ministero dell’Ambiente e della Tutela del Territorio e del Mare, Linee guida per l’educazione ambientale e allo sviluppo sostenibile, Rome, 2015. 26. Mioni A., Le trasformazioni territoriali in Italia nella prima età industriale, Venice, Marsilio, 1978. 27. MIUR, Indicazioni nazionali per il curricolo della scuola dell’infanzia e del primo ciclo d’istruzione, Rome, 2012. 28. Moore P. and Phillips C., L’oceano di plastica. La lotta per salvare il mare dai rifiuti della nostra civiltà, Milan, Feltrinelli Editore, 2011. 29. Morin E., L’identità umana, Milan, Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2002. 30. Nagel P. and Beauboeuf D., “Yellow ducks overboard! A lesson in geography and word citizenship”, Social Studies and the Young Learner, 2, 2012, pp. 5-7. 31. Parrain C., “Territorialisation des espaces océaniques hauturiers. L’apport de la navigation à voile dans l’océan Atlantique”, Ph.D Thesis, Université de La Rochelle, École doctorale de La Rochelle, 2010. 32. Raynaud A., Disuguaglianze regionali e giustizia socio-spaziale, Milan, Unicopli, 1984. 33. Ri. Cer.Ca., A spasso con Luni e Tuni, vol. 3, Monte s. Vito (AN), Raffaello editore, 2009. 34. Schmidt di Friedberg M., Geografia a scuola: monti, fiumi, capitali o altro?, Milan, Guerini, 2005. 35. Schmidt di Friedberg M., Che cos’è il mondo? È un globo di cartone. Insegnare geografia fra Otto e Novecento, Milan, Unicopli, 2010. 36. Steel B.S., Smith C., Opsommer L., Curiel S. and Warner-Steel R., “Public ocean literacy in the United States”, Ocean & Coastal Management, 48, 2, 2005, pp. 97-114. Copyright© Nuova Cultura

37. Squarcina E., L’ultimo spazio di libertà. Un approccio umanistico e culturale alla geografia del mare, Milan, Guerini, 2015. 38. Strano L., Il paperlibro, vol. 3, Milan, CETEM, 2016. 39. Tilbury D., “Environmental education and development education. Teaching geography for a sustainable world” in Tilbury D. and Williams M. (Eds.), Teaching and Learning Geography, London, Routlege, 1997, pp. 105-112. 40. Tuan Y.-F., “Spazio e luogo in una prospettiva umanistica” in Vagaggini V. (Ed.), Spazio geografico e spazio sociale, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1978, pp. 92-130. 41. Valdiserra L., Io tu e Pilù, vol. 3, Florence, Giunti Scuola, 2011. 42. Valdiserra L., Peperoncino, vol. 3, Florence, Giunti Scuola, 2014. 43. Vallega A., Ecumene oceano. Il mare nella civiltà: ieri, oggi, domani, Milan, Mursia, 1985. 44. Vincent A.C.J., “Saving the shallows: focusing marine conservation where people might care”, Aquatic Conservation: Marine Freshwater Ecosystem, 21, 2011, pp. 495-499. 45. Voyer M. et al., “‘It’s part of me’; understanding the values, images and principles of coastal users and their influence on the social acceptability of MPAs”, Marine Policy, 52, 2015, pp. 93-102. 46. VV.AA., Allenamente, vol. 4, Turin, Piccoli editore, 2009a. 47. VV.AA., Nel giardino scopro, vol. 3, Florence, Giunti Scuola, 2009b. 48. VV.AA., Il mondo nello zaino, vol. 4, Casalecchio di Reno (BO), Giunti del Borgo, 2014. 49. VV.AA., Giramondo, vol. 4, Casalecchio di Reno (BO), Giunti dal Borgo, 2015. 50. VV.AA., A scuola insieme, vol. 4, Turin, Pearson, 2016a. 51. VV.AA., Storie curiose, vol. 3., Turin, Pearson, 2016b. 52. VV.AA., Studia con me, vol. 4., Turin, Pearson, 2016c. 53. Wilcox C. et al., “Using expert elicitation to estimate the impacts of plastic pollution on marine wildlife”, Marine Policy, 65, 2016, pp. 107-114.

Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 6, Dec., 2017, pp. 55-68 DOI: 10.4458/9446-05

High school commuters. Sustainability education on students’ mobility behaviours and perceptions of their everyday landscape Margherita Cisania a

DiSSGeA – Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche, Geografiche e dell’Antichità, University of Padua, Italy Email: margherita.cisani@unipd.it Received: September 2017 – Accepted: October 2017

Abstract Geographic education has the ability to easily connect everyday practices and experiences to global issues and trends, linking students’ everyday life with science and society and more generally allowing students to appreciate the complexity of life. Landscape and mobility provide key concepts to help students understand the relationships between society and ecosystems, especially as these notions directly relate to everyday experience. The main goal of this article is to describe the results of an experiment on sustainable mobility in which high school students were asked to make a change in their commuting behaviours: walking or cycling instead of using other means of transportation. The data collected through an online survey and the production of mental maps enabled the researcher and the students to reflect on their commuting behaviours and the perceptions of the everyday landscape in relation to mobility. This article explains the methodology and the data collected and offers some considerations on the sample analysed and on the theoretical underpinnings of the experiment. Keywords: Cycling, Everyday Landscape, Geography Education, High School, Mental Maps, Sustainable Mobility

1. Introduction As climate change adaptation and sustainability gain increasing attention, especially in public policies, geography can play a key role in offering knowledge, concepts and tools to promote sustainable behaviours. As the 2016 International Geographical Union (IGU-CGE, 2016) International Charter on Geography Education states, geography is a vital subject and resource as it facilitates understanding the relationships

between social behaviours and the environment and offers a powerful, critical knowledge, from a local to a global level (Van der Schee, 2016; De Vecchis, 2011, pp. 123-130; Puttilli, 2011). Despite this charter and many other official statements unfortunately, geography is frequently not considered as a core school subject. However, students are exposed to numerous stimuli every day that require geographic knowledge and skills, from online map reading to the interpretation of the continuous flow of information from all over the Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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world, from real and virtual mobility experience to migrations and cultural differences. A main characteristic of geographic education is the ability to easily connect such everyday practices and experiences to global issues and trends, linking students’ ordinary life with science and society and more generally enabling students to appreciate the complexity of life on planet Earth. Among the many geographical concepts, landscape and mobility might provide a key to understanding the relationships between society and ecosystems, especially as these notions directly relate to everyday experience. The landscape, according to the European Landscape Convention, is determined by people’s perceptions and behaviours (Council of Europe, 2000). It belongs to everyone, and everyone belongs at least to one landscape. Landscape literacy (Spirn, 2005) is considered to be a prerequisite to promoting landscape quality and sustainability (Castiglioni, 2012), but given its ambiguity, the concept of landscape is rarely fully explored at school. As a subject, mobility, at least in the Italian educational and academic context, primarily concerns transportation means, migration and international flows of people and goods. There is a lack of attention to shortdistance and everyday experiences of mobility and its effects on the environment and perceptions of the landscape. Although highly relevant in fostering global changes, everyday practices, especially regarding mobility and landscape, demand more consideration and understanding. This need resonates with the key messages of the International Year of Global Understanding, held in 2016, which emphasised the importance of the connection between science and everyday actions (van der Schee, 2016, p. 13). Educational programmes and activities, therefore, should go beyond teaching facts and concepts and be aimed at providing students with powerful thinking instruments and engaging them in actions that motivate sustainable behaviours (idem, p. 16; Collier, 2004). The effectiveness of sustainability education, moreover, depends on the actions carried out by the whole school itself (Granados Sánchez, 2011, p. 176; Tilbury and Wortman, 2005), as will also emerge in the results of this experiment.

The main goal of this article is to describe the results of an experiment on sustainable mobility conducted with high school students. The data collected through an online survey and the production of mental maps enabled the researcher and the students to reflect on commuting behaviours and perceptions of everyday landscape in relation to mobility. The article begins by laying out a brief theoretical framework of mobility and landscape studies in research and education, focussing on whether and how research translates into tools for education and sustainability awareness. Next, a two-phase experiment conducted with high school students using an online survey and mental maps is described. Most relevant to the topic at hand, between the first and the second phase of the experiment, the students were asked to practise sustainable mobility in their own daily commute to school. Finally, the discussion turns to the students’ descriptions of their usual mobility behaviours and opinions and insights into their perceptions of the everyday landscape from an analysis of the mental maps they produced after experimenting with taking different means of transportation to school (i.e. walking or biking).

2. Mobility and landscape between research and sustainability education Academia, especially the social sciences, has seen renewed interest in mobility on all scales in what is widely called the “mobility turn” or the “new mobilities paradigm” (Sheller and Urry, 2006). Both terms refer to major changes in mobility and space theories to consider more deeply what happens to subjects, objects and spaces during the movement from point A to point B (Aldred, 2013). Mobility, on the one hand, can be considered to be an object of research, but on the other hand, it can be used as a tool, clue or sign to detect related social issues involving, for instance, power, gender, equality and poverty (Cresswell, 2010). Regarding sustainability, mobility studies can offer insights into how and to what extent new transportation modes can be implemented, the social acceptability of changes in mobility behaviours and factors that could help or hinder these movements towards climate change adaptation. Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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In the Italian geography curriculum in secondary education, mobility is often treated as a subtopic covering the characteristics of the different modes of transportation but it also appears when considering demography, population movements and migration across time and space. Landscape is a core research subject in human and physical geography as it has the power to elicit many different interpretations due to the tensions that it raises between objectivity and subjectivity, observation and experience (Wylie, 2007). Influenced by phenomenological and postrepresentational approaches, recent landscape studies consider landscape to be the world we live in, our dwelling place, strictly related to everyday activities (Ingold, 2000). Landscape, therefore, is a component of everyday life, and its sustainability depends on a balanced, harmonious relationship between social needs, economic activity and the environment. By achieving sustainable development as its second main objective, the European Landscape Convention offers instruments and approaches to integrating landscape into spatial planning and, more interestingly for the purposes of this study, education and awareness raising. Landscape education has manifold potentials: it increases awareness of our dwelling place and our rights and responsibilities towards it as actors able to transform it. Moreover, landscape education helps build a sense of belonging, as understanding our neighbouring landscape also means understanding ourselves. Finally, it promotes the ability to read distant landscapes, thereby engaging in intercultural exchange (Castiglioni, 2012, p. 59). It appears clear that research on both mobility and landscape can offer interpretative and operational tools to address sustainability awareness and education. More specifically, educators can borrow the phenomenological approach, which characterises both lines of research, as well as some research methodologies. As Pedroli and Van Mansvelt emphasise (2006, p. 122), the “phenomenological approach, including exercises such as sketching the landscape and telling its stories, might increase the students’ openness for the character and identity of the place”. Direct experience of landscape involves practices such as listening, smelling and looking, and what enables these experiences is the act of moving through landscape, often using a non-motorised transportation mode, such as walking or cycling. If Copyright© Nuova Cultura

direct contact with landscape is of paramount importance, this experience also needs to be analysed and compared with others to draw useful insights. Geographical research methodologies can be easily applied to do so in an educational context. Specifically, the use of questionnaires and surveys helps students share their opinions and compare them with their classmates, while cartographic and other visual tools can express experiential values, emotions and sensations (Plutino and Polito, 2017). Among cartographic tools, mental maps have gained widespread use since Lynch’s (1960) seminal research on Boston’s readability. Mental maps consist of subjective representations of spatial knowledge made of words, feeling, images and information about elements of the physical environment and their spatial relationships (Weston and Handy, 2004). Mental maps and similar tools such as sketch maps can be used to give a general description of a city from the perspective of its inhabitants. As in Lynch’s study, these tools can help deepen transportation and mobility analysis, uncover values and sensations related to places such as perceived risks and safety, assess geographical knowledge and, finally, support participation and community-building processes (Boschmann and Cubbon, 2014). In education, mental maps are applied to help students develop basic geographical and sustainability competencies (Wise and Kon, 1990; Caniglia et al., 2016), they vary according to age, sex, culture, etc. and they grow in accuracy and complexity the more students are trained in observing their surroundings, memorising landmarks or other maps and also in representing spatial information with drawings (De Vecchis, 2011, p. 104). Before describing the use of questionnaires, mental maps and the phenomenological approach in the case study, it is necessary to stress a characteristic of the research context (Italy) which is also common in other countries (e.g., Emond and Handy, 2012, p. 71). In addition to the thematic gap that often separates academic research and education, most educational initiatives regarding sustainable mobility, such as those described in this paper, are targeted only at primary and lower secondary school students. This is seen, for example, in the number of teacher training programmes, documents on experiences and shared materials available on the Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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website of the Italian national cyclists’ federation (Figure 1). This account, therefore, is also aimed at sharing the results, potentials and critical nodes of this experiment with high school students to foster the implementation of similar initiatives in other secondary schools.

Figure 1. On-line resources on cycling education. Source: Italian Friends of the Bicycle Federation (FIAB Onlus) official website (www.fiab-onlus.it).

3. Methodology: from critical understanding to proposed action In March 2017 as in the past seven years, I was asked to hold a class on sustainable development as an extracurricular activity for students at the secondary school I attended, the Scientific Lyceum “Lorenzo Mascheroni” in the Italian city of Bergamo. The class comprised two 1-hour lessons with five classes of students in the fourth year of high school (16-18 years old). Every year, the aim of the class is first of all to address sustainability from a critical point of view, teaching students how and in what social and environmental circumstances the concept emerged, as well as alternative approaches, and, secondly, to share practical solutions alongside theoretical facts and concepts. Every year, the teacher responsible for this seminar has given positive feedback about the topic and the interest of students, while their actual engagement and confidence in change and sustainability remain low. As Granados Sánchez points out, although referring to the case of Spain, the adoption of participative learning methodologies can be integrated to cope with this lack of engagement skills, especially when the components of the

geographical competences for sustainable development related to taking local action in community projects are not accomplished throughout the educational stages (2011, p. 172). The goal of this year’s experiment, therefore, was to stress the tangible and everyday-life-related face of sustainability through the direct engagement and participation of students. The title of the class was “Sustainable development: from critical understanding to proposed actions” and, as the title suggests, it consisted of two phases conducted a week apart. In order to elicit knowledge and insights useful for both research and education, an “explanatory sequential” mixed method approach (Zadrozny et al., 2016 p. 221) was implemented, consisting in a quantitative phase (a survey) followed by a deeper exploration through a qualitative phase (mapping and group discussion). In the first stage, a standard lecture focussed on global trends (e.g. population growth, uneven resources distribution, natural resources consumption, atmospheric pollution, biodiversity loss and sea level rise), their consequences for habitats and populations and the various approaches that emerged alongside sustainable development (e.g. frontier economics and the concept of de-growth). Next, the topics of mobility and the bicycle as a symbol of transport sustainability were deepened, as mobility has been considered capable of connecting students’ subjective everyday experiences to the global level. Basic information about the modal split, pollution caused by different transportation means and other social, economic and political features related to the promotion of cycling were explained. After being encouraged to think globally, the students were asked to start acting locally, taking part in a basic research process through two different methodologies: an online survey and the production of mental maps. The online survey based on the Google Form platform was open to all the students in the school and was aimed at collecting information on their mobility behaviours. In addition to basic demographic information (e.g. the participants’ class, age, sex and hometown), the first section of the questionnaire was intended to capture the students’ opinions on the usefulness of reducing traffic-related environmental impacts. The survey then focussed on the students’ usual means of Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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transportation in their everyday commute to school and finally on their opinions and ideas specifically related to the use of bicycles. Similar surveys can be found in literature, mainly in the context of transport geography (e.g., Emond and Handy, 2012) or health studies (e.g., McKee et al., 2007). Emond and Handy adopt a paper-based survey to provide a better understanding of what encourages cycling among high school students while McKee et al. offer an example of a mixed-method research, although conducted with primary school children, that encompassed an online computerised questionnaire to ascertain barriers and motivation to actively commute to school. To allow the students to develop critical, global but also personal opinions on the topic, the second research methodology required their direct involvement in putting sustainable mobility into practice. The students were asked to commute to school or to another common destination using a sustainable mode of transportation (e.g. walking or cycling) for at least one day before the second meeting. To collect their impression, sensations and thoughts, they were asked to draw a mental map of their itinerary. As previously stated, mental maps are a very useful tool for assessing perceptions. Nowadays, most of the applications of such technique use sketch maps or Geographical Information Systems in order to allow easier comparison (Manton et al., 2016; Boschmann and Cubbon, 2014). In the present study, the exercise aimed at eliciting landscape perception and experiences along different itineraries, therefore a baseline map was not needed and free-hand maps were considered the best option in order to facilitate students to freely express themselves, as in Calandra and Palma (2017), where free-hand drawings served as first step to elicit young students’ mental representations of their everyday places after the 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy. During the second lesson of the experiment, the information gathered from the survey and the students’ opinions about their direct experience, mobility form chosen and landscape travelled provided the basis for the discussion. Workshops were conducted with groups of about five students each to share their opinions, identify positive and negative aspects and generate proposals to increase the number of students who

bike to school. At the end of the experiment, each group presented their opinions and proposals, which were then collected in order to be offered to the school administration.

4. Results of the on-line survey The online survey was distributed to all the students in the school during the two weeks of the experiment and was completed by 327 students (23.4% of the school population). The sample is fairly representative of the entire school, given the high response rates from first-, second- and third-year students, along with the fourth-year students who participated directly in the experiment (Figure 2). Regarding gender and age representation, 56% of the respondents were male, similar to the general gender composition of this scientific high school, while the students’ age varies from 14 to 17 years old.

Figure 2. Distribution of the participating students per class year.

More than half of the participants come from the city of Bergamo or nearby municipalities, as shown in Figure 3. Although many students live within a 10 km radius, a distance within which bicycling is highly feasible (Staricco, 2013, p. 351), and 93.9% of students own bicycles, only 8.3% cycle to school. The majority commute to school using public transport, such as buses and trains (Figure 4), but a considerable number still are driven to school (26%) or use motorbikes (11.6%).

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Figure 3. Distance of students’ hometown from the school.

The survey then asked the students to rate on a scale of 0-10 how important they thought it was to reduce the environmental impacts caused by car traffic. The majority rated its importance at 8 (27.8%) or 10 (25.1%). Curiously enough, especially considering the distance of the students’ hometowns from the school (Figure 3), 43.4% of the students considered the length of the trip to be among the three main obstacles (or concerns) that limited the use of bicycles to commute to school. The second main concern was bad weather (33.6%), followed by the effort needed (28.7%). With regard to the students’ opinions on factors that would encourage them to cycle to school more frequently (Figure 5), improved cycling infrastructure, such as bikeways and bike paths, garnered the greatest consensus (61% of participants). Improved intermodality the possibility to use different modes of transportation during one trip with trains and buses would also encourage the students to consider bicycles as an option (33.2%).

Figure 4. Means of transportation used by the students.

Intermodal options included being able to carry their bicycles onto trains or use bike-sharing services with an annual bus-ticket subscription. Students also appeared to be interested in rewards or other incentives (23.5%) and worried about the safety of their bikes when parked (16.5%).

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The final question of the survey was designed to collect ideas and proposals to increase studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; awareness of sustainable mobility and use of bicycles. These suggestions were listed and presented during the second part of the experiment as a starting point for group discussion.

5. Analysis of the mental maps The second phase of data collection involved only the five classes that took part in the experiment, limiting the number of participants to 70 students. These students agreed to directly experiment with a mobility change in their routine and to walk or bike to school or another frequent destination instead of using their regular means of transportation (Figure 6). The majority of the students usually used public transportation, particularly buses, to get to school, and this group was equally split between those who chose to experiment by biking and by walking. The same distribution was found in the motorbike group, while those who usually took cars to school preferred to bike. Most of the students (50 out of 70) decided to experiment by walking or biking to a destination other than school, such as the supermarket, the gym or a friendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house. Thus, only 20 students truly experimented with changing their commuting behaviour, and most of these students decided to walk (12). Nevertheless, the exercise made it possible to collect a useful set of mental maps with drawings, indications, landmarks, points of references and comments about the paths students took (39 bicycling and 31 walking). Along with drawing the itinerary taken, the students could also explain their positive and negative impressions of the experience (Figure 7). Analysis of these comments showed that contact with nature and the landscape was the primary positive aspect, especially among those who biked. Exercise and relaxation were the two other positive impacts reported by the students, both those who biked and those who walked. Those who chose to bike also described speed, fun, a feeling of independence and interaction with nature as positive aspects.

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Figure 5. Motivating factors for the students to cycle more to school.

Figure 6. Students who decided to walk or bike by their regular means of transportation.

Both biking and walking but especially the latter allowed students to observe their surroundings, which they considered to be a positive outcome of the experience. The main disadvantages of both walking and biking were the fatigue and the physical effort (which could be regarded as positive if viewed as exercise) and the longer time taken to reach the destination. Traffic, pollution, cold and bad weather and perceived danger, particularly due to the lack of bikeways, were considered to be disadvantages, especially for those who biked.

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the map drawings and sometimes lines and paths, along with labels, were the only components of the most basic maps (Figure 8). The second category includes all the maps with icons and drawings with labels – or legends in some cases – representing landmarks (Figure 9). This category and the first were the largest as most of the maps had only lines that connected points of reference. Other drawings representing landscape elements appeared in only a few maps, mostly the river and some urban green areas, such as parks and areas with trees, hills and mountains in the background (Figure 10).

Figure 7. Advantages and disadvantages of biking and walking.

In addition to these comments, which gave an interesting overview of the students’ opinions, the experiment had the students produce mental maps as an exercise to reflect on the path taken and the landscape elements encountered along the way. The representation of the nature and number of elements in the students’ mental maps was analysed to evaluate the students’ ability to read and represent the landscape and the influence of the means of transportation on their perceptions of the landscape. The maps could be divided into at least four categories from the most basic to the most complex, according to the type of elements included: lines, landmarks, landscape elements or comments. This categorization is drawn from the analysis of the maps but, even though simpler, it is also consistent with the one used by Murray and Spencer (1979, p. 387) which identified different degrees of organization, elaboration of features and complexity of mental maps. Lines representing roads form the skeleton of

Finally, some maps were enriched with comments related to the students’ experiences (Figure 11). For example, one student wrote “new road discovered” on a map, others pointed out uphill roads that required more energy while biking or walking, and some added comments on encounters or events along the road, such as the rabbit in the left map in Figure 11. The majority indicated where and why the road was dangerous. Thus, the maps contributed to restoring a more complex image of the journey through the students’ everyday landscape comprised of both the elements (a few natural, most artificial) and interactions with them. Deepening the analysis, the landmarks could also be divided by the category of elements they represented. In the mental maps drawn by the students, landmarks mostly consisted of shops, public services (e.g. schools or churches) and some public spaces (squares or parks). Most of the maps represented only the paths taken by the students, with no indication of parallel or intersecting roads. These mental maps often appeared childish for the students’ age (1719 years old), and this could reflect lack of training or use of their ability to interpret their surrounding landscape, orient themselves in it and then represent it in maps. The students’ geographic skills, therefore, could be strengthened, for example through observation, memorisation and representation activities that encompass innovative teaching strategies as well as the use of classical and digital cartography.

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Figure 8. Mental maps with lines.

Figure 9. Mental maps with lines and icons.

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Figure 10. Mental maps with drawings.

Another interesting insight could be drawn from comparing the mental maps of the students who biked and walked. Among those who cycled, 12 out of 39 (30%) added comments about their experiences (e.g. traffic, uphill stretches or stops) to their maps, while only 5 out of the 31 (16%) who walked did the same. Although these numbers cannot be considered statistically significant or support any generalisable conclusions, it can be stated that at least in this experiment, cycling appeared to be better able to involve students and elicit more comments and reflections.

6. Results of the group discussion on proposals The result of the online survey, the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; comments and their list of positive and negative aspects of biking and walking as means of sustainable transportation served as the basis of the discussion during the second phase of the experiment. As described, the class was divided into smaller discussion groups which had a defined amount of time (10-15 minutes) to internally negotiate a common opinion on the primary pros and cons of non-motorised forms of mobility and, more interestingly, to develop a CopyrightÂŠ Nuova Cultura

concrete proposal for action to increase the number of high school students commuting by bike. The result of this group work in the experiment was a unique list of proposals based on data related to the entire school collected through the online survey, the subjective, direct experience of sustainable mobility put in practice and, finally, the discussion and negotiation phase. The ideas on this list concerned infrastructure, incentives and participation solutions. Students asked for safer roads with more bikeways, bike lanes and slow traffic areas but also realised that bikeways needed to be more visible and have adequate signals. They believed that more secure bike parking, showers and lockers at the school might make a difference. Along with road and infrastructure solutions, which were essential but primarily the responsibility of municipalities, the students proposed various bicycling incentives schemes: food and beverage discounts or vouchers in the school cafeteria using a mobile monitoring mechanism via app that awards points for each kilometre pedalled; generic rewards or coupons for stores; discounts on the annual subscription fee for the bike-sharing system; and sponsorship of the purchase of bicycles or electric bikes by local companies.

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Figure 11. Mental maps with comments related to the experience.

The last groups of ideas related to high school students’ participation and involvement in discovering the bicycle not only as a means of transportation but also as a sport that could improve physical and psychological wellbeing. According to the students, this could be encouraged in general by educational and awareness campaigns but, more specifically, by the establishment of official school bike days inviting students, teachers and employees to bike to school; charity bike rides or competitions between classes and schools; and, finally, bicycle mechanics challenges. Most of these proposals confirm the need of what has been called the “whole school approach” (Tilbury and Wortman, 2005) as a set of coordinated strategies and actions towards sustainability taken at the level of the school management and beyond (such as the municipal, regional or national level).

7. Conclusions The efficacy of sustainability education depends on students’ direct, active involvement and their understanding that sustainability is relevant to and affects their everyday life (Collier, 2004; Pedroli and Van Mansvelt, 2006; van der Schee, 2016). In Italy, sustainability and Copyright© Nuova Cultura

environmental education is mainly directed at primary and lower-secondary pupils rather than high schoolers, who nevertheless are thought to be more independent and capable of making changes in their day-to-day routine. The experiment described in this paper directly addressed mobility issues and implicitly everyday landscape perceptions among five classes of students at a scientific secondary school in Bergamo, Italy. Scholars focusing on practices and experiences have increasingly explored both mobility and landscape notions; therefore, they can function as key concepts linking sustainability with students’ everyday life, as indicated by the interest and the number of the participants in the online survey, which extended beyond the five classes involved in the experiment. The overall goal of the experiment was to test a methodology that could stress the tangible aspect of sustainability, its relation to day-to-day practices, such as commuting, as well as its connection to our ability to read and to connect with our everyday landscapes. Borrowing Collier’s words, it focuses on “promoting the doing” rather than knowing (2004, p. 22) and on “promoting connection to place messages” (ivi, p. 23). The survey, the production of mental maps Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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and the group discussion on students’ direct experiences made it possible to draw some insights regarding student’s commuting habits, their relation to landscape perception and, finally, on the efficacy of this methodology of awareness raising and sustainability education. According to the survey, most high schoolers commuted to school by bus, followed by the car as the second most used means of transportation. Although the majority of the students lived within a 10 km radius of the school, only a few brave students considered bicycling as an option. The low participation in the mental maps compared to the high participation with the online survey might signal not only that the methodology could be improved but also that students found it very difficult to make changes in their habits, even if only for one day. In particular, only 20 of the 70 students who completed the mental map walked or biked to school instead of another common destination (which was the second option). As Emond and Handy report (2012, p. 77), perceived distance is often an important deterrent to bicycling. Research both in geography and sustainability education could therefore focus more on factors and conditions related to distance perception, in order to evaluate whether and how it is possible to increase students’ willingness to change their behaviours towards sustainability. Regarding landscape perceptions, the students most commonly identified the “open air”, “direct contact with nature” and the possibility to “observe the landscape surrounding you” as the most positive aspects of their walking and biking experience. Nevertheless, the mental maps showed a higher prevalence of urban and anthropic landscape elements (e.g. roads, roundabouts, squares and buildings) over natural ones, which were rarely represented (e.g., rivers, hills, trees and urban green areas). The landmarks and points of references in the maps corresponded mostly to commercial activities. This lack of representation of some landscape features suggests a physical and cognitive distance between the students and what they consider to be the natural landscape. Moreover, the scarcity of details found in many mental maps might arise from the fact that most students were driven to school and did not play an active role in choosing the itinerary and orienting themselves. These two hypotheses could be the subject of further Copyright© Nuova Cultura

investigation on the relationships among students’ mobility practices, space awareness and landscape literacy. A similar use of mental maps as a basic exercise to unveil different landscape understandings and perceptions could also be replicated as a tool to teach students to think geographically through the exploration of the local landscape (Hermann, 1996). In addition to the sustainability of students’ commuting habits and their ability to read and represent the landscape, the experiment produced positive results regarding awareness. The students were prompted to reflect on their own commuting behaviours and to experiment with different transportation or at least to discuss the experience with students who did the experiment. The success of the experiment could also be further analysed with the same sample of students to perform an ex-post analysis on eventual changes to commuting behaviours. In conclusion, this experiment demonstrated that geographic education has potential, particularly to address and simultaneously involve different concepts and skills, such as sustainability, mobility, urban planning, participation, landscape literacy and mapping. The concepts of landscape and mobility, especially, make it possible to undertake sustainability education activities which are closely correlated to everyday practices, although there is the need to deepen the analysis on what could encourage a more proactive attitude among students. Moreover, since the literature on sustainability – and specifically on sustainable mobility – education geared towards secondary school students is limited, the description of the activities here presented might serve as a basis to reproduce, improve and compare other experiments in similar contexts, making it possible to gradually fill the existing gaps both in didactic and research contexts. Acknowledgements This paper is based on data collected during five experiments carried out in March 2017 at the Liceo Scientifico Statale L. Mascheroni high school in Bergamo, Italy. In particular, the author thanks Professor Battista Panseri and all the students in classes 4C, 4D, 4CS, 4BS and 4AS for their contributions.

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condizioni”, Tema. Journal of Land use, Mobility and Environment, 6, 3, 2013, pp. 342-354. 25. Tilbury D. and Wortman D., “Whole school approaches to sustainability”, Geographical education, 18, 2005, pp. 22-30. 26. van der Schee J., “Sustainability and geography education”, Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 5, 2, 2016, pp. 11-18. 27. Weston L. and Handy S., “Mental maps”, in Hensher D.A., Button K.J., Haynes K.E. and Stopher P.R. (Eds.), Handbook of Transport Geography and Spatial Systems (Hand-

books in Transport, Volume 5), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2004, pp. 533-545. 28. Wise N. and Kon J.H., “Assessing geographic knowledge with sketch maps”, Journal of Geography, 89, 3, 1990, pp. 123-129. 29. Wylie J., Landscape, London and New York, Routledge, 2007. 30. Zadrozny J., McClure C., Lee J. and Jo I., “Designs, Techniques, and Reporting Strategies in Geography Education: A Review of Research Methods”, Review of International Geographical Education Online (RIGEO), 6, 3, 2016, pp. 216-233.

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THE LANGUAGE OF IMAGES Edited by Elisa Bignante and Marco Maggioli

Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 6, Dec., 2017, pp. 71-82 DOI: 10.4458/9446-06

Intentional Camera Movement: A Multisensory and Mobile Photographic Technique to Investigate the Urban Tourism Experience Elisa Bruttomessoa, Jordi Vicb a

Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche Geografiche e dell'Antichità (DISSGeA), University of Padua, Padua, Italy Departament d’Antropologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain b Photographer, Barcelona, Spain Received: October 2017 – Accepted: November 2017

Abstract By using an autoethnographic perspective, the aim of the present article is to develop a nuanced vocabulary for understanding and performing visuality in relation to the photographic practices of tourists in urbanscapes. Drawing from photography as part of multisensory processes experienced through the interconnection of the senses and images as moving trajectories, this study experimented with Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) as a potential specific photographic technique to examine tourist photographs in relation to urbanscape shots and, more broadly, to critique the pervasive privilege of sight. Furthermore, ICM aims to develop a critical-creative style to evoke (rather than illustrate) the experience of movingthrough urban tourist spaces at a time of mobile media and ubiquitous digital cameras. Keywords: Intentional Camera Movement, tourist photos, mobile methods, Barcelona, Venice

1. Introduction The proliferation of mobile phones, digital cameras and a range of other portable media, has led to a continuous change in the nature of tourists’ photographic practices (Larsen, 2006). It would appear that nowadays, no angle remains unphotographed. The pervasiveness of camera phones (Horst and Hjorth, 2014) and the visual nature of our world, require re-examining the photographic practices of tourists, as well as the ethnographic and knowledge production surrounding them. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to develop a more nuanced vocabulary for understanding and performing visuality (MerriCopyright© Nuova Cultura

man et al., 2008) in relation to tourism and photography. Drawing from photography as part of multisensory processes and images as moving trajectories, this study experiments with Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) as a potential specific technique to investigate tourist photographs in relation to urbanscape shots and, more broadly, to critique the pervasive privilege of sight.

The current discussion emerges from a shared working project by a photographer and a tourism scholar (who wrote this study) based in Barcelona and Venice. The study interweaves personal and ethnographical experiences with art and

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geographical knowledge, and it seeks to sympathise with that strand of work in geographic production that uses the descriptive power of photography as an active, even disruptive, part of the reasoning process (Rose, 2008). Based on this, the rest of the paper unfolds as follows. First, I go over some important theoretical points on tourist photographic practices and photography in general to provide the proper background for the article. Following that, I discuss the process that led us to consider ICM photography as a useful tool to approach such an argument. Then, I provide some examples of ICM photographs. I conclude by suggesting that this creative approach is useful to develop hidden potentialities in photography and, subsequently, to carry out geographical investigations.

2. An overview on tourism and photography It seems that to be a tourist implies that pictures will be taken. Of course this is nothing new. Forty years ago, Susan Sontag’s work On Photography (1977:9) notably touched on this topic. The author argues that ‘it seems positively unnatural to travel for pleasure without taking a camera along’ and that photography dramatically transforms the perception of the world, turning it into a society of spectacles, in which reality becomes an item for visual consumption. Since then the relationship between tourism, tourists and photography has long been an interest of cultural researchers. As indicated by Sontag (1977), tourists use their cameras to possess the place that they visit, relieving their anxieties about being in a foreign environment. Hence, attempts have been made to create a general frame on tourists’ photography practices. The conviction of “consuming” a place through the camera became a shared inclination between critical tourism and visual scholarly, while the standardisation of tourists as “people with cameras” spread throughout academic works of tourism theory (MacCannell, 1976; Urry, 1990). In addition, photography also has been a constituent element of other academic strands whose focus is to demonstrate how the tourism industry works through signs and images (e.g., Mirzoeff, 1998). This is well summarised in the concept of the

“circle of representation” suggested by Urry in his The Tourist Gaze (1990), which states that tourists’ photographs both reflect and inform destination images. Tourists try to reproduce the iconic images of a destination in their own photos, which serve as evidence to display their version of what they saw before their visit. Tourists create an image before visiting the destination and, once there, they gaze upon an ideal representation of the pre-experience spot. According to the author, tourists travel searching for specific shots from travel brochures or postcards to capture nearly identical images as photos. If this might sound too strict, according to the co-authored third edition of The Tourist Gaze 3.0 (Urry and Larsen, 2011), the authors offer a much broader reconceptualisation. They argue that the tourist gaze is also about ‘embodied and mobile practices’, and they highlight that ‘each gaze depends upon practices and material relations as upon discourses and signs’. Larsen (2006) also argues that tourist photography is a performed, rather than preformed, practice. He suggests that the intertwining of tourist and photography has a composite ‘theatrical nature, which involves corporeal, staged and enacted imaginative geographies’. Tourist photographers are thus choreographed by images, but their picturing practices are not fully determined by this scripting. Tourism phenomena and practices are defined as embodied and situated as a large amount of academic work sought to highlight (Crang, 1997; Crouch, 2000; Edensor, 2000). Alongside this, new debates on photography have emerged. Photographs have been defined as part of multisensory environments, experienced through the interconnection of the senses (Pink, 2011). In addition, thanks to new technologies, photography presents a hybrid character of technical and social aspects and its hybrid performances by corporeal humans affording ‘non-humans’ (Larsen, 2006) permits to take, to post-process and finally share the images all on the same device, almost at the same time. Such reasoning shall then be connected to Massey’s (2005) statements on images. According to her, photos are not ‘of’ place or stopping points. Rather, they are inevitably and obligatory ‘in’ places, produced by moving through environments. This means shifting away from the common-sense idea that Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Elisa Bruttomesso, Jordi Vic

a photograph stands for a static surface (Pink, 2011). In this sense, visual events are created through movement, stand for movement and are viewed in movement. They are part of new ‘constellations of processes’ (Massey, 2005) in a world that is always in forward motion. Thus, people engage with photographs corporeally and sensorially (Pinney, 2009). Pictures, produced and consumed, become intertwined with the trajectories of moving, and they both emerge from, and are implicated in, the production of the event of place (Pink, 2011). Given all these developments and leaving academic debate aside for a moment, queues of tourists still, however, can be seen in many cultural capitals, waiting to take the ‘classic’ shot of a building or urban landscape (Picard and Robinson, 2009). Destinations are characterised by markers that identify the places that are worth seeing and the fact that most urban tourists are often concentrated within a very limited area is evidence of that. Common modern practices played out by tourists include taking pictures of a specific attraction or iconic objects while walking and without stopping, or waiting until people get out of the frame, sometimes suffering the frustration of not achieving the proper frame and not capturing the essence, thereby making the sight ‘unphotographable’ (Garlick, 2011) or taking a bad photo. Such behaviours are also remarkably parodied in some famous photographs by Martin Parr (2012), as well as in a few reflections on his blog1: One thing that has really changed in recent years is how the tourist uses photography. […] Now mobile phone cameras and digital photography mean that the entire visit is documented. […] So I am under the impression that no one is really paying attention to the splendours and beauties of the site, as the urge to photograph is so overwhelming. Parr wrote his blog after a visit to Barcelona and, as stated through his words, several cities still lend themselves easily to a feverish pursuit by tourists to photograph the most famous attractions as holiday evidence. This method of acting indicates that the notion of the ‘tourist 1

https://www.martinparr.com/2012/too-much-photography/.

gaze’ remains relevant and highlights the privileging of the visuality and ocular centrism of modernity. Supported by new technologies such as tablets and smartphones, the visual consumption of tourist destinations leads people to take pictures more and more rapidly, while performing their urban experience within clustered, urban tourist spaces (of course, the concept of cluster city can represent some urban centres better than others). Even if performed rather than preformed (Larsen, 2006), the belief that photographs record a piece of reality is a central aspect in the tourist’s effort to catalogue the world. The basis of this, of course, lies in the social nature of the photograph, which embodies a specific method of seeing (Garlick, 2011). In other words, it is mainly the sight that comes to be recognised as the only possible way of acknowledging (Costello, 2012; Heidegger, 1977; Garlick, 2011). Given all this and intertwining our positionalities (being ourselves a researcher, a photographer and inevitably tourists as well in our lives), our purpose was to look for a way to perform photography that can clarify the concept of photos as part of a multisensory process (Massey, 2005; Pink, 2011). Indeed, it has to be said that some recent important attempts have been made to call into attention accidental, unexpected or overexposed photos, taken during interrails, as part of the hectic everyday tourism experience (Jensen, 2016); nonetheless, here we move from the analysis to the production of images. Hence, the point will be if there is an alternative visual practice that could make explicit how photographs are emplaced and experienced in movement inside tourist urbanscapes.

3. Approaching the methodology: an

autoethnographic account The present research is the result of a shared effort by a tourism scholar and a photographer, taking place in two of the most touristificated urban contexts in Europe, Barcelona and Venice, where millions of tourists go to visit; both locations of the fieldwork and cities in which we have lived for a long time. This is precisely what (being first inhabitants and subsequently tourists Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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in these cultural capitals) allowed us to approach the present issue of photographic practices in tourist urbanscapes with such a different sensitivity. Sometimes our daily walks to certain places were, and still are, in a way, “hindered” by a flow of people who did not pay attention to other passers-by, too busy taking picture of some architectural details, iconic objects or other attractions. The overcrowding of the most-beaten tracks, especially at certain times of the years, fed our desire to visually document these photographic practices, specifically those in which tourists do not stop to accurately frame fellow travellers, but instead use their smartphones or tablets to take ‘mobile’ photos of the different hotspots. At the very beginning, we asked ourselves whether this style of photography, which epitomises the aforementioned “unphotographable” sights and sometimes expressed a ‘bad’ aesthetic, would be seen ever again. Driven by this question, we started taking pictures of travellers using the Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) technique. This method of shooting consists of rotating or moving in a horizontal, vertical or casual direction while photographing. In terms of the visual outcome, ICM images are characterised by a blurry artistic abstraction of the scenery, with marked signs and nuances that depend on a combination of shutter speed, aperture and ISO setting, along with the camera movement and natural light. These characteristics initially seemed to be as a useful means for us to make sense of what we were observing during our daily urban strolls. The intent was to represent metaphorically a sort of “no instants”, i.e. the continuing need to shoot denoted by a lack of presence in which people are too distracted to pay attention to their surroundings, yet not entirely focused on the picture they are taking. Nevertheless, as the project moved along, more articulated developments arose. In order to take pictures of tourists, we were retracing their urban paths and, by stopping at the same spots, we were in a way re-enacting their behaviours, the one of the subjects of our visual project. Within this framework and inspired by the pictures we were taking, our curiosity moved to another point: ‘Could these ICM images be part of the tourist experience and replace the classical shoots we were questioning? Could ICM provide visual evidence of what Pink and Copyright© Nuova Cultura

Massey stated?”. Hence, such questions brought us back to Rose’s statements in Using Photographs as Illustrations in Human Geography (2008), according to whom, scholars should engage with photographs beyond mere documentation or criticism, i.e., photos are not just taken-for-granted illustrations, nor are they problematic representations. Instead, despite their implicit characteristic of being imbued with representation, they have the potential to turn into a creative resource for geographical work, besides conveying something that written text cannot reveal. Moreover, the camera can add new dimensions to the experience and, within an artistic process, it can serve to open up new “worlds” (Gadamer, 1994; Garlick, 2011), thereby helping to make arguments through images. Influenced by this reasoning, we kept up our urban walk on the most beaten tracks, aware that we were not just thinking of tourists as performers, but that we had turned the performative photographic act inwards through an autoethnographic perspective as a means of engaging with the world. Hence, photography shifted from being a way of mere documentation to an output in “practice-led” research (Hawkins, 2011) to develop a critical-creative style to evoke (rather than illustrate) the experience of being-in and moving-through urban tourist spaces. The experimental aspect of this practicephotography-led research is based on more-thanrepresentational knowledges and draws attention to the corporeal experience, pursuing embodiment in tourism research. For these reasons, the photographs presented here refer to the second part of the experimental fieldwork. They were taken during the early months of 2017, first in Barcelona where we were working together, then, during the summer in Venice, where I conducted the research alone. At the beginning, Jordi was snapping photos using the ICM mode, while I was capturing the same images in a standard way. This was done to provide us with an archive for comparing photo shoots. Nevertheless, and on my own accord, we later started to take picture likewise, so that the two of us could be involved with the same dynamics and compare personal experiences. Therefore, the outcomes presented below only include the ICM output. This choice also aims to engage the readers with the visual results in a more spontaneous way (if possible), Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Elisa Bruttomesso, Jordi Vic

without any interference from the ‘classical shot’ on their understanding. Regarding our fieldwork in Barcelona, for several afternoons, we simply met at some point at La Rambla (a tree-lined pedestrian mall that stretches for 1.2 kilometres known, among other things, for its street performers2), then wandered around, mingling with the fluctuating flow of tourists on the avenue. Our focus was on the route that links Catalunya Square to the end of La Rambla passing through the Gothic neighbourhood. Here, walking tourists look for the charm of the old neighbourhood in a city that, according to statistics, in 2016 hosted 8 million overnight tourists (this number only covers hotel statistics and does not include illegal flats or alternative accommodations) and, on the whole, saw 30 million visitors that year. In greater detail, the distance we covered goes from Catalunya Square to Columbus Monument passing through La Rambla and making a stop in La Boqueria Market. We then moved to Plaça Reial, Santa Maria del Mar Church and the Gothic Cathedral, then finally returned to Catalunya Square: approximately 3 kilometres. In Venice, I retraced one of the city’s most tourist-beaten tracks, somewhat comparable to the one we traversed in Barcelona. Specifically, it is the path that connects Piazzale Roma, the final destination for the means of transportation that arrive from the mainland, to Saint Mark Square. The easiest way to go from one point to another is to walk across Strada Nova and the Rialto area: 6 kilometres total. This is one of the city’s most well-known pedestrian routes, full of shops and restaurants synonymous with a predominantly tourism monoculture. During certain times of the year, this area is so overcrowded that, for the first time in 2017, a project based on geolocation and developed by Corila, A4smart and Bologna University started to investigate the volume of tourists who walk this path. The aim is to provide the local government with numerical data that can be used to shape new tourist-management policies. On the whole, the selection criteria in both 2

Until 2006, street artists were allowed to perform throughout the entire length of La Rambla. Since then, a city council regulation limited this activity only to the final part of the avenue, establishing specific spaces for human statues and music shows.

situations was to go through tourist itineraries as defined by an evident urban structure that works as a dispositif, generates visual discourses and promotes gazing practices. The hand-held digital camera was set with a shutter speed of around 1/30 (or shorter), with the aperture as small as possible. Sometimes we stopped when taking shots, but other times, we took pictures while walking or talking, pretending we were tourists on holiday. We photographed a variety of subjects, from broad views, such as architecturally significant buildings (e.g., Plaça Reial in Barcelona), to smaller iconic details (e.g., a gondola in Venice), trying to cover all the elements of interest that normally capture the attention of visitors walking through tourist areas. Hereafter, a selection of photographs is offered (Figures 1-6). Following Rose’s suggestions to engage with photography as an autonomous creative resource, and adhering to Cosgrove’s statement (2008) on the ability of the images to foresee, as well as see, a specific analysis of the case study’s outcomes will come only after displaying the images.

4. A multisensory and mobile technique to enact and question tourist practices During our fieldwork, tourist paths turned into key settings in which photography as a practice has been explored in its urban choreographies, giving us the opportunity to question how certain tourist practices are structured or, more simply, ‘happen’. ICM and the autoethnographic attitude provided us with first-hand experience of what many authors have debated concerning the first edition of Urry’s Tourist Gaze (Edensor and Holloway, 2008; Lund, 2005; Obrador-Pons, 2007; Scarles, 2009; Spinney, 2015; Urry and Larsen, 2011 among others). These authors, in fact, questioned the predominance of the visual and suggested that places and photography are experienced in multi-sensuous ways. Focusing on the particular photographic practice of rapidly shooting specific tourist hotspots allowed us to re-examine ‘the tourist gaze’. Moreover, such an approach made the corporeality and multimodal experience concrete, and above all, visually explicit.

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Figure 1. Walking down La Rambla. Photo: J. Vic, March 2017.

Figure 2. Taking a break in Plaça Reial. Photo: J. Vic, March 2017.

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Figure 3. Saint Mark’s Basilica. Photo: E. Bruttomesso, August 2017.

Figure 4. People queuing outside Saint Mark’s Basilica. Photo: E. Bruttomesso, August 2017.

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Figure 5. Flower vendor in La Rambla. Photo: J. Vic, March 2017.

Figure 6. Gondola with tourists in Venice. Photo: E. Bruttomesso, August 2017.

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Indeed, while strolling during our urban visits in Barcelona and Venice, we experienced a multitude of sensations: the noise of cars and buses along La Rambla; music from the shops; people loudly inviting us to enter some restaurant; a wide range of smells, from smog to canals (depending on the city); the kinaesthetic aspects of the urban visit; the exhaustion of walking too much, etc. All these variables somehow ‘disturb’, blur, shift out of focus and otherwise make visual practice unstable. Our mobile practice-led method made it possible for us to approach the photographic practice by engaging the field directly with our whole bodies. While we were retracing tourists’ most beaten tracks, we experienced that the images that normally stand for a waste product are part of a process of extreme dynamism in which ‘shooting at a view’ is only a fragment of a broader multi-sensuous process. And it is perhaps this kind of picture that tourists delete or do not look at anymore that better represents an experience made of mobility. ICM outcomes, which would seem to be a sort of exaggeration of this kind of picture and still are visual products, seemed to be the product of a specific technique to reveal the world in a way that is not enframing, a somatic sensibility that may be able to interplay with the other senses as it provides the sensation of more longitudinal rhythm. Hence, the present results aim to communicate visually how images continually emerge in relation to a series of flows and rhythms across space in which tourists’ bodies move around, consuming photography more and more in movements facilitated by digital media tools. Subsequently, by understanding photography through a multisensorial theory, and together with the photo-elicitation of our artistic, blurry ICM pictures, we were able to reconsider the cultural role of the sign content of pictures, considering the issue of tourism. Here, again, I am referring to (and questioning) those images that require certain standardisation to be easily recognisable to confirm their status as ‘tourist moments’. Many of those secondary, but no less experiential moments are deleted, discarded as part of a ‘ritual’ that often causes frustration from not achieving the proper frame. ICM aims to explicitly restore those moments lost in flux. Moreover, thanks to the specific outcomes of the technique that we used, the signifier seems to Copyright© Nuova Cultura

drift apart from what is signified, legitimising the choice of subjects different from the prototypical hallmark. Indeed, while performing our fieldwork, we often found ourselves picturing unconventional subjects (in relation to the tourist ones), attracted by vivid colours or peculiar details that then were exalted in the ICM photographs. Hence, in our opinion, ICM also works, and differently, as a tactical creative resource that invokes a “non-visual picture” and invites the photo-taker to go off of the beaten track to experiment with new points of view or subjects of interest. This means the visual results can offer a different visual discourse that challenges (and tries to oppose to) the ‘normative’ visual, i.e., this technique aims for a more intuitive and sensual, less visual, mode of representing the urbanscape as it is encountered by tourists in non-cognitive ways. In conclusion, broadly speaking, by pulling together photography and ethnography, the intention has been to demonstrate the interdisciplinary potential that links theoretical and also practical, active engagements. The present study sought to point out how photographs can be active players in making arguments and in carrying out geographical knowledge. That is to say, instead of thinking of photos as mere transparent windows or social constructs, ICM, in this study’s context, approaches them as a prism that refracts and puts together cultural practices as well as corporeal experiences in space. Here photography represents both a process and a product, a method out of many that has made it possible to both enact and document the mobile in photographic urban tourism practices. Moreover, the artistic feature suggests a new potential route to communicating research on critical issues such as mass tourism beyond conventional channels. ICM can be used in urban analysis, as well as perform politics in action. Such research does not aim to provide a complete and rigorous method; rather, it explores practices related to dominant power relations and spatial constraints, such as the concept of cluster city or the beaten track, trying to look differently to such phenomena and offer alternative points of sensorial involvement and contestation to a broader audience beyond academia.

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Acknowledgements This study was a collaborative effort. Elisa Bruttomesso wrote the above article on the study, and selected and edited the Venice photos. Jordi Vic inspired this photographic innovation on the use of ICM, and selected and edited the Barcelona photos. More of his work can be seen at http:// bloc.jordivic.com/noinstantes/. Several of his ICM photos were part of a collective exhibition on “imaginary travel”, from the 8th to the 22nd of September 2017, in Budapest, Hungary. Gratitude goes to Tania Rossetto for her constant advice, as well as to the section editor at J-Reading for their thoughtful reviews.

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graphy, and the space-times of street performance”, Cultural Geographies, 19, 4, 2012, pp. 423-445. 52. Spinney J., “Close encounters? Mobile methods, (post)phenomenology and affect”, Cultural Geographies, 22, 2, 2015, pp. 231246.

53. Urry J., The tourist gaze: leisure and travel in contemporary societies, London, Sage Publications, 1990. 54. Vannini P. and Stewart L. M., “The GoPro gaze”, Cultural geographies, 24, 1, 2017, pp. 149-155.

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MAPPING SOCIETIES Edited by Edoardo Boria

Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 6, Dec., 2017, pp. 85-94 DOI: 10.4458/9446-07

Irredenta on the map: Cesare Battisti and Trentino-Alto Adige cartographies Matteo Protoa a

Department of History and cultures, Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy Email: matteo.proto2@unibo.it

Received: October 2017 – Accepted: November 2017

Abstract The geographer and cartographer Cesare Battisti (1875-1916) is regarded as one of the main intellectuals to have addressed the issue of the so-called Terre irredente (unredeemed lands). His main scientific contribution is the understanding of Trentino, part of the Austrian Empire until after the WWI, as an Italian region. This paper examines his most significant cartographic work – the atlas Il Trentino (1915) – considering in particular three maps in which Battisti recognizes the entire region southern of the Alpine watershed as belonging to the Italian Nation. In so doing, Battisti also included the central part of former Austrian Tirol, the area north of Trentino nowadays identified as Alto Adige/South Tirol, in his survey. In terms of the theoretical and methodological references underlying these cartographies, I consider firstly the role of Italian regional geographical paradigms in shaping Battisti’s understanding of geography and the cultural milieu that conditioned his political views. More generally I examine the concealed political, didactic and propagandistic role entailed in using cartography as a scientific instrument. Keywords: Political Geography, Cartography, First World War, Irredentism, Nation-building, Borders, Italy, Regional Geography

1. Geographies, Maps and the Nation-State “Western bourgeoisie spin tales of world regions in an effort to explain, to justify, to defend a world they believe is both theirs and under attack” (Wood, 2012, p. 12). This paper discusses an example of cartography that contributed to the scientific definition of Italy as a nation-state. My exploration begins with the analysis of theoretical regional models developed by Italian geographers after national unification and proceeds with an examination of some of Cesare Copyright© Nuova Cultura

Battisti’s geographic and cartographic work. I consider in particular three maps from Battisti’s most significant cartographic publication in which the author partially discards his previous theoretical positions to instead support the recognition of the Alpine watershed as an Italian geographical and political border. With the radical but incisive observation quoted above, D. Wood highlights the geographical and cartographical regionalisation of the world, a spatial partitioning that entails a particular political will. The understanding of Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Matteo Proto

regions as politically connoted and historically determined facts has been a central point of critical geography in the last fifty years, a perspective developed in opposition to positivistic claims that frame regions as natural scientifically determined areas or statistically defined compartments (Gambi, 1964). During the long 19th century, many European countries such as Italy and Germany gave rise to particularly liberal urban bourgeoisie that played a key social role in leading national unification processes (Meriggi and Schiera, 1993). In addition to political and economic features, this had an important effect on the organisation of knowledge: in the Italian case, for instance, the Italian Scientist Congresses organised in many cities between 1839 and 1847 contributed significantly to the establishment of a national scientific community. After national unification in 1861, this intellectual community promoted both an educational process aimed at transforming society and a research system for the social and economic development of the country (Casalena, 2004; Giovannini, 2012). In opposition to the former, absolute aristocratic-feudal state, the bourgeois nationstate also required a new understanding of geography (Farinelli, 1992). In exploring the relationship between science and nationalism, I draw on the theorisation of C. Withers and his argument that geography as a scientific discipline is inextricable from its methodological application to nation-building processes, thereby stressing how geographical discourses and representations have contributed to nationalism and imperialism. In this context, the analysis of specific geographical concepts highlights the ways they have reinforced a spatial understanding of the nation-state.State politics then serve to promote the circulation of geographical knowledge which in turn participates in reinforcing the very idea of the nation (Withers, 2001).After Italian political unification, the establishment of academic geography and development of geographical theories and survey methodologies were thoroughly permeated by this discourse. The geographical definition of the nation-state obviously entails its cartographic representation; indeed, cartography constitutes a causal preconCopyright© Nuova Cultura

dition for this process. During the 19th century, the nationalisation of the masses and emergence of new political demands called for new communicative practices and symbols (Mosse, 1975). Cartography and thematic maps, ethnographic and linguistic ones in particular, began to contribute to nationbuilding processes, especially in the period from the late 19th century to WWI (Boria, 2016). According to T. Winichakul, cartography became not only a representational tool for shaping specific, realistic images of identity but also an instrument that drove and transformed administrative and military processes (Winichakul, 1994). As a final theoretical premise, I would like to highlight the idea of cartography as a process which goes beyond the objectivity of maps and their reality as documents with their own authorial and ideological content to also entail an analysis of the different practices that lead to the creation of maps as well as their social use and reinterpretation: “Rather than cartography being narrowly understood as the scientific pursuit of how best to represent the space of the world (focused on issues such as form and accuracy), cartography becomes understood as the pursuit of representational solutions (not necessarily pictorial) to solve relational, spatial problems” (Kitchin and Dodge, 2007, p. 343). In stressing the contingent nature of cartography, this assertion goes beyond the traditional critical perspective that understands cartography as merely an expression of authorial will. Rather, cartography should be interpreted as an instrument for shaping reality that contributes to territorial processes through a variety of practices (Boria, 2016). In this context and for the purposes of such an analysis, it therefore makes sense to analyse and interpret the different steps that lead to the creation of maps as well as the elements that shape the final cartographic product: images, discourses, texts, comparisons, debates, discussions, techniques, etc. (Kitching et al., 2013). Battisti’s explanation of regional and border issues takes place precisely through his use of cartography, the final result of which is shaped by his cultural background and political ideas and the historical context in which he worked but also his technical abilities, debates and discussions with other scholars, exchanges of information and Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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opinions, the publisher’s editorial guidelines, and the choice to use specific instruments, texts and images. All of these elements contribute to the cartographic product, a document which is then disseminated in society where it generates new images and different interpretations, producing approval and dissent, contributing to political processes and reinforcing spatial territorialisation more generally.

2. The understanding of Italy as a unified geographical entity Beginning at the end of the 19th century, Italian geographers launched extensive inquiries into regional issues. Scientific geography’s main goal was considered that of providing a comprehensive description of the earth by synthesising its most significant phenomena. These elements had to be collected and classified in multiple ways, including by representing their spatial distribution. According to Giovanni Marinelli (1846-1900) and his son Olinto (18741926), the purpose of this methodology was to depict a synthetic regional outline of geographical phenomena as a preliminary step that would set the stage for theformulation of general theories (Proto, 2014a). These ideas arose from a specific understanding of physical geography as a synonym for general geography and were borrowed from the American geographical sciences and geomorphology, influenced above all by the work of William Morris Davis.For Davis hydrology in particular constituted the main explanationfor terrestrial morphology (Marinelli, 1908). A region was therefore understood as a set of specific physical and human conditions. By means of direct observation and cartographical interpretation, the task of the geographer was to locate the limits of a single geographical element or geographical phenomenon. This in turn revealed the so-called regione elementare (elemental region) conceptualized as the basis of regional geography. Having noted the areal distribution of distinct elements and phenomena on the map, geographers where able to distinguish the regione complessa (complex region) whose interaction went on to determined the regione integrale (integral region),

considered to constitute a unified geographical entity (Marinelli, 1916; Proto, 2014a). At the beginning of WWI Olinto Marinelli stressed the importance of subordinating the concept of the border to the concept of the region. Borders were therefore understood as depending on the recognition of a specific region. Furthermore, he arguedthat integral regions represented the more or less coincident coexistence of natural-physical and historicalanthropic elements within a given territory. It followed that if the combination of historicalanthropic elements could easily amount to a nation, an integral region might therefore correspond to a nation-state. As part of the same work Marinelli also definitively specified a conceptualisation of geographical borders. The main problem was how to reduce the complexity of the interaction among different phenomena to a single line. Regional borders appeared as more of areas than lines, because there was no overlapping of geographical elements (Marinelli, 1916).This issue had gone unresolved in Friedrich Ratzel’s political geography as well: “If we want to draw on a map this border, as we individuated it, then we have to sketch more or less larger belts […]. The border belt is the reality, the border line is only its abstraction” (Ratzel, 1897, p. 448). In order to identify borders that could be used for diplomacy and political purposes, geographers were required to reduce the multiplicity of regional characters to a single line, which could be depicted on a map. This issue involved many European geographers in this historical period, for example Otto Maul in Germany (Maull, 1925). Olinto Marinelli finally solved this problem by drawing on the methodology of scientific experimentation and defined the geographical border as the element that produced a substantial decrease in regional characters. For instance this element might take the form of a natural feature, such as a large mountain chain, and this development confirmed the pre-eminence of the empirical experimenttation, that is, knowledge developed according to natural sciences principles and the positivist reason (Marinelli, 1916).

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Consequently, most Italian geographers accepted this theory as a paradigm and began to work from an understanding of Italy as an integral region whose terrestrial border clearly coincided with the Alpine watershed (Proto, 2014b).

3. Cesare Battisti and Trentino regional geography Cesare Battisti was born in Trento – at that time, part of the Austrian Empire – in a wellheeled merchant family. He belonged to the liberal bourgeoisie, the class that played a significant role in bringing Irredentism to the fore as a political-social phenomenon (Cattaruzza, 2011). He attended university in Florence, graduating in Geography under Giovanni Marinelli in 1897, and while there joined the Socialist Party. His first surveys were dedicated to his native region of Trentino and after graduation he began engaging intensely in politics, founding a local session of the Socialist Party and rising to a position in the Austrian parliament in 1911. His first monographic work, edited in 1898 as a development of his final dissertation in Florence, depicted Trentino as an Italian region, bounded to the fatherland by historical, cultural and physical-natural connections. However, distancing himself from the main argument of Italian geographers, Battisti refused to extend this connotation up to the Alpine watershed. He therefore recognised the existence of a natural and social border at the Salorno gorge, which at that time served as the administrative border between the Trento and Bolzano districts in the Austrian Land of Tyrol. In so doing Battisti delimitated the Italian national territory to the area in which Italian was, in fact, the main language (Battisti, 1898). In contrast to this assertion and in keeping with Marinellis’ regional theorisation, one of the few maps in the book (Figure 1) depicts the Adige river basin as a unified geographical area: in this physical sketch,the internal border between Trento and Bolzano is not made visible and the entire region is depicted as a whole up to the Alpine watershed.

Figure 1. Physical-natural region based on river Adige basin upon Battisti. Source: Battisti, 1898.

Battisti’s political view was strongly characterised by anti-colonial and anti-imperialist perspectives, positions he shared with the leftistrepublican geographer Arcangelo Ghisleri and with the liberal-socialist historian Gaetano Salvemini (Ferretti, 2015). In his view, nationalism represented the first step towards the emancipation of the lower classes, by dismantling the feudal structure of theold empire: people selfdetermination was therefore the premise for working-class liberation (Calì, 2003). European geographical ideas also played a significant role in shaping Battisti’s understanding of regional geography. As stated above, his education in Giovanni Marinelli’s positivistic school proved highly significant. In Florence he was also introduced to Friedrich Ratzel’s thinking and began to translate Ratzel’s most renowned book Politische Geographie into Italian. Thanks to Ratzel, Battisti developed a great interest in the historical evolution of geographic phenomena and, more specifically, in organic concepttualization of the state and the movements that characterise geographical unity (Ratzel, 1897). With this background, Battisti began from his first publications to question the difference between the natural region and the historical region: the first basically stable and the second varying in time and space, enlarged and diminished by wars, conquests, migrations, etc. In developing this paradigm, he began to investigate place names semantically in order to

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uncover the historical processes concealed in toponymy (Battisti, 1899). This survey has some similarities with the contemporaneous investigations carried out by the geographer and politician Ettore Tolomei (1865-1952). Tolomei is regarded as the inventor of Alto Adige as an Italian region and is particularly renowned for his surveys into place names, which were finalized to disclose the Italian historical substratum in this territory (Tolomei, 1906, 1916). The contact established and information exchanged between Tolomei and Battisti on the eve of WWI are key for understanding Battisti’s updated approach to defining Trentino geography.

4. Conquering the Alpine watershed: the Italian geographical border on the map At the beginning of 1915,the publisher Giovanni De Agostini offered Battisti a place in an Atlas series devoted to the geography of unredeemed lands. The worsening international situation suggested that Italy’s involvement in the European war was imminent. De Agostini’s commitment was aimed at supporting political propaganda in relation to those lands outside of the Italian border that were considered the main political goal of national politics. Thanks to the communicative capacity of maps and images, a cartographic book was thought to constitute a powerful instrument for underlining the historical-cultural bond between Italy and those regions and spreading this ideato a wider public (Calì, 1988). Battisti was entrusted with the volume about Trentino and he created the draft in May of 1915, with the atlas as a whole finally published by that autumn (Battisti, 1915). As evidence of its success, the first edition was sold out in few months and the book was reprinted twice, in 1917 and 1919.

attached maps for further explanation. All of these elements are presented to assert Trentino’s belonging to the Italian Fatherland and frame the area’s German cultural connection as irrelevant. The innovative character of Battisti’s perspective lies in his choice to include Alto Adige in his political discourse, based on its common Roman heritage and, above all, geographical unity defined on the basis of physical and human geography. In fact, Battisti’s argument is the first and one of the most significant examples of an empirical implementation of Marinelli’s theoretical discourse about regional models outlined in section 2. The cartographic annexis composed of nineteen original maps, mostly at a 1:500.000 scale, based on Italian Military Geographical Institute topographic maps. Three of them represent Trentino together with Alto Adige. Cartography plays a significant role in this atlas by visually describing the theoretical model and its application in order to demonstrate the geographical unity of this region. The first map (Figure 2) features a depiction of the different borders – political, administrative, ethnical etc. – which had historically characterized the region: the political border of Italy in 1915 (red with +++); the coeval Austrian administrative border between the Trento and Bolzano districts (green); the historical border of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy between 1810 and 1814 (orange); the ecclesiastical limit of the Trento diocese, which does not correspond to the administrative border (yellow); and the Alpine watershed (red). Another line (purple) is an ethnographic border that delimitates the areas withmore or less significant Italian populations.

Through this work Battisti challenged himself for the first time with the task of producing thematic cartography conceptualized as a complement to the written texts. The first fifty pages of the atlas are dedicated to Trentino’s history, physical geography, statistics and demography, political and economic geography, summing up significant excerpts of his previous monographs and continually referencing the

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Figure 2. Map of historical, administrative and ethnical borders in Trentino-Alto Adige. Source: Battisti, 1915.

In defining this border delimitation Battisti discussed the issue with Tolomei, who pushed him to also include most of Alto Adige in the supposed Italian region. According to Tolomei’s investigation, a significant part of this region had only been colonised by German people in the last Copyright© Nuova Cultura

few centuries, a fact which meant it should be regarded as fundamentallyan Italian region (Calì, 1988). As emerges from their correspondence, Battisti himself was eventually persuaded by this argumentation:

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Figure 3. Ethno-linguistic map of Trentino-Alto Adige. Source: Battisti, 1915.

“If the answer to the question I pose, without forcing history, is that indicated by the border I represent, the audience will have the impression that the difference between geographical and ethnic Italy, both in its contemporary status and potentiality, is very slight. It is the same for the current difference between ecclesiastical Italy Copyright© Nuova Cultura

and geographical Italy” (Calì, 1988, p. 343). The final representation sought to highlight the fact that this region had been involved in significant population movements over the centuries. These were regarded mainly as Italian people, who had in someway left behind a kind of historical substrate. Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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Figure 4. River basins and hydropower in Trentino-Alto Adige. Source: Battisti, 1915.

The second map (Figure 3) concerns the linguistic distribution in the region, split between Italian and German speakers. This map is drawn from a very famous 1:500.000 map created by the cartographer Achille Dardano that was immensely popular at that time (Dardano, 1915). CopyrightÂŠ Nuova Cultura

As Dardanoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s original map, Battisti decided first of all to also include Ladin speakers in the Italian linguistic group, thus considerably enlarging the Italian area. He then represented the population distribution up to 1.300 meters of elevation. In this way, given the more elevated elevations of Italian Association of Geography Teachers

Matteo Proto

the Bolzano district as well as ashrewd use of colours (red for Italians, light blue for Germans), the result is that the German population appears in the map as only a few meagre lines. The last map of Trentino Alto Adige (Figure 4) is both physical and economic, representing water resources management for hydroelectricity generation. In order to highlight the exploitation of hydropower, the map depicts the different river basins with their respective limits and watersheds while also indicating the main Alpine watershed as in the other maps. The physical shape of the Adige river basin draws attention to regional physical unity, since water management depends on drainage divide. Hydropowermade up 90% of the country’s energy stores and thus represented a strategic resource at that time, but the reference to river basins and the related watershed – as stated above – was also a central point in Italian regional theorisation.

5. Conclusions If we were to print out these maps on tracing paper and overlap them, the result would provide definitive proof of the regional model theorized by Olinto Marinelli. In fact, these comparative analyses made it possible toassert the geographical unity of the whole Trentino-Alto Adige region, based on the collection and representation of different geographical phenomena. The result was an integral region whose population was or hadbeen in majority Italian; therefore, an Italian region. Looking at Battisti’s maps, it becomes easier to also accept the Alpine watershed as the scientifically established Italian political border. Political opportunities and the need to unite the irredentist movement undoubtedly played a key role in shaping Battisti’ stransition to more radical views about the Italian border. In this context, the collapse of the Socialist Party after the beginning of WWI contributed to informing his thinking. As mentioned above, Battisti was also very close to Gaetano Salvemini, one of the leading figures of the so-called interventismo democratico (democratic interventionism). According to this perspective, the Great War was perceived as a struggle against the ancient régime in favour of people’s self-determination (Salvemini, 1915; Frangioni, 2011). Copyright© Nuova Cultura

More generally, the scientific definition of the state proceeded hand in hand with the development of geographical paradigms. What geography produced was – at least apparently – a neutral and quantitative description of the relationship between humanity and the environment which, employing a secular, scientific, empirical approach, was capable of transcending the feudal state and universal power. This entailed deleting the borders of the old states based on different juridical traditions, political alliances, ancestries etc. to present – as Carl Ritter would have said – a living picture of lands, nature and human beings developed by means of comparison (Ritter, 1806). Acknowledgements I am grateful to the referees and the editor for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I also wish to thank Angelina Zontine for the linguistic review of the manuscript. This work was in part funded by the SIR Programme (grant number RBSI14UPSV), a research programme financed by the Italian Ministry of Education.

References 1. Battisti C., Il Trentino: saggio di geografia fisica e antropogeografia, Trento, Zippel, 1898. 2. Battisti C., “Intorno ad una raccolta di termini locali attinenti ai fenomeni fisici ed antropogeografici da iniziarsi nelle singole regioni dialettali d’Italia”, Proceedings of the III Congresso Geografico Italiano, II, Firenze, Ricci, 1899, pp. 354-360. 3. Battisti C., Il Trentino. Cenni geografici, storici, economici con un’appendice sull’Alto Adige, Novara, Istituto Geografico De Agostini, 1915. 4. Boria E., “A un passo diverso: geografia politica e cartografia di fronte ai poteri statuali”, Semestrale di Studi e Ricerche di Geografia, XXVIII, 1, 2016, pp. 61-75. 5. Calì V., Cesare Battisti geografo: carteggi 1894-1916, Trento, TEMI, 1988. 6. Calì V., Patrioti senza patria: i democratici trentini fra Otto e Novecento, Trento, TEMI, 2003. Italian Association of Geography Teachers

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7. Casalena M. P., Per lo Stato per la Nazione: i congressi degli scienziati in Francia e in Italia, 1830-1914, Rome, Carocci, 2007. 8. Cattaruzza M., L’Italia e il confine orientale, 1866-2006, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2011. 9. Dardano A., La Regione Veneta e le Alpi nostre: dalle fonti dell’Adige al Quarnaro. Carta etnico-linguistica, Novara, Istituto Geografico de Agostini, 1915. 10. Farinelli F., I segni del mondo. Immagine cartografica e discorso geografico in età moderna,Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1992. 11. Ferretti F., “Arcangelo Ghisleri and the ‘Right to Barbarity’: Geography and Anti-colonialism in Italy in the Age of Empire (1875-1914)”, Antipode, 48, 3, 2015, pp. 563-583. 12. Frangioni A., Salvemini e la grande guerra: interventismo democratico, wilsonismo, politica delle nazionalità, Soveria Mannelli, Rubettino, 2011. 13. Gambi L., Questioni di geografia, Napoli, Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1964. 14. Giovannini C., “Territorio e cultura igienista”, in Roccucci A. (Ed.), La costruzione dello Stato-nazione in Italia, Rome, Viella, 2012, pp. 187-209. 15. Kitching R. and Dodge M., “Rethinking maps”, Progress in Human Geography, 31, 3, 2007, pp. 331-344. 16. Kitching R., Gleeson J. and Dodge M., “Unfolding mapping practices: a new epistemology for cartography”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 38, 3, 2013, pp. 480-496. 17. Marinelli O., “Del moderno sviluppo della geografia fisica e della morfologia terrestre, Rivista Geografica Italiana, XV, 1908, pp. 226-248. 18. Marinelli O., “La geografia in Italia”, Rivista Geografica Italiana, XXII, 1, 1916, pp. 1-24, 113-181. 19. Maull O., Politische Geographie, Berlin, Borntraeger, 1925. 20. Meriggi M. and Schiera P. (Eds.), Dalla città

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alla nazione: borghesie ottocentesche in Italia e in Germania, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1993. Mosse G., La nazionalizzazione delle masse. Simbolismo politico e movimenti di massa in Germania (1815-1933), Bologna, Il Mulino, 1975 [Mosse G., The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich, New York, Howard Fertig, 1974]. Proto M., “Giovanni Marinelli (1846-1900) and Olinto Marinelli (1874-1926)”, in H. Lorimer, C. W. J. Withers (Eds.), Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies, 33, London-New York, Bloomsbury, 2014a, pp. 69-105. Proto M., I confine d’Italia. Geografie della nazione dall’Unità alla Grande Guerra, Bologna, BUP, 2014b. Ratzel F., Politische Geographie, München, Oldenbourg, 1897. Ritter C., Sechs Karten von Europa, Schnepfenthal, In der Buchandlung der Erziehungsanstalt, 1806. Salvemini G., Guerra o neutralità?, Milan, Ravà & C., 1915. Tolomei E., “La toponomastica dell’Alto Adige”,Archivio per l’Alto Adige, I, 3, 1906, pp. 137-159. Tolomei E., “Introduzione al prontuario dei nomi locali dell’Alto Adige”, Archivio per l’Alto Adige, XI, 1916, pp. 5-32. Winichakul T., Siam mapped: a history of the geo-body of a nation, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1994. Withers C.W.J., Geography, science and national identity: Scotland since 1520, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001. Wood D., 1,001 Regional Nights, Public Colloquium of the Center for Area Studies of the University of Leipzig, December 12, 2012.

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GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND (PRACTICAL) CONSIDERATIONS

Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 2, 6, Dec., 2017, pp. 97-100 DOI: 10.4458/9446-08

Challenges of Geography in Education. Proposals from the EUROGEO Conference (Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2-3 March 2017) Emanuela Gamberonia a

Dipartimento di Culture e Civiltà, University of Verona, Verona, Italy Email: emanuela.gamberoni@univr.it

Received: October 2017 – Accepted: October 2017

Abstract From March 2nd to 3rd, 2017, the EUROGEO (European Association of Geographers) Conference 2017 took place in Amsterdam. It was an occasion for geography teachers and professors to attend plenary lectures, paper and poster sessions and workshops focused on Geography in Education. The title of the Conference Key Challenges for Geographical Education indicates the underlying theme centred on the relationships between geography teaching, global understanding and the future of the worldwide society. Satellite Seminars were dedicated to the Geocapabilities project. Keywords: EUROGEO, Geographical Education, Geocapabilities

1. Introduction The 2017 Members Meeting and Conference EUROGEO (European Association of Geographers) was organized in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on 2-3 March 2017. This event, which occurs every year in a different European location, was held at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel, Amsterdam Airport. This year the title of the Conference was Key Challenges for Geographical Education. Notably, Geography in schools and in higher education is facing many challenges: the EUROGEO 2017 examined some of these issues and their possible responses.

Figure 1. Professor Karl Donert, President of EUROGEO. Photo: E. Gamberoni.

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After the greetings and the presentation of the intense activity of the EUROGEO association on topics like migrations, human rights, open data and media, environment, in relation for example to the Unesco and the Council of Europe Programs, he underlined the key role of Geographical Education in society for the policy makers and for urgent and current questions such as urban planning in the world.

“What” is related overall to these keywords: cultural diversity, sustainability and globalization. Geographical thinking was indicated as the first element that contributes to Global Understanding together with man-nature relations. The “Why” question is very interesting: the answers depend on the different problems faced by people in their countries, that is in their local living conditions.

The Conference was organized in plenary lectures, paper and poster sessions and workshops. After the end of the main program, a field visit was planned: Water in the Dutch landscape. Delegates explored the features of the local region and part of the World Heritage defensive site around Amsterdam.

2. Conference Keynotes Delegates attended two plenary keynotes focused on the challenges for Geographical Education. The first, entitled “Geography Education and Global Understanding”, was given by Prof. Joop van der Schee (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) together with Dr. Tine Béneker (Utrecht University). Joop van der Schee presented an overarching framework on the relationship between local and global, the sense of the world on a traditional paper map and on the web or the mobile phone, competences and tools for living in peace, across borders in today’s world. He underlined that Geographical Education has a crucial role in a world where the Sustainable Development Goals 2015-2030 are proposed and where people on the one hand have to understand the meaning and the complex implications of inclusion, richness and poorness, cities and villages, and on the other, have to choose what is “possible, probable and/or preferable”. He reported the proposal of the International Year of Global Understanding (IYGU) for the comprehension of a globalized world and the relevance of the 2016 International Charter on Geographical Education (Figure 2). He also presented the main results of a short survey proposed to an international group of IGU geography educators regarding “What is, Why and How Global Understanding”.

Figure 2. A moment of Professor Joop van der Schee keynote. Photo: E. Gamberoni.

The “How” is referred to Good Practices in teaching Global Understanding, such as international activities or the utilization of a holistic approach. In conclusion, three main points were drawn: more attention to respect, commonality and social justice; need for data banks, research and teaching materials (for example Geocapabilities project); the addition of Geographical Education and Global Understanding to the policy makers agenda (such as Geo Future School for Dutch teachers). The other lecturer, Dr. Béneker, highlighted some aspects regarding the output of research in schools. She showed some pictures representing the idea of the world of the future and compared the different positions regarding personal responsibility and one’s own role in the development of the planet. It was evident that research and experience exchanges on geography activities and knowledge can develop the Global Understanding approach.

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In the second keynote, Dr. Suchith Anand (Nottingham University) presented his thinking and experience on “Open Principles in GeoEducation” (Figure 3). He underlined the high potential of open resources for a global education (open source software, open data, open access to research publications, open education resources). They are fundamental for changing life of the people, especially for the poorest ones, and for sharing ideas and actions (as an example for all see the Godan - Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition platform). He spoke about Open Principles of his project GeoForAll, started in 2010 in a spontaneous and humble way. Its aim was to render accessible geospatial education to everyone by implementing open source, technologies, training and expertise. It would represent a real opportunity for the diffusion of the knowledge about unavoidable problems on Earth (such as hunger or pollution or climate change). It should be pointed out that open sources sharing is absolutely vital today for people empowerment in order to create global conscious citizens. Following this view, we could imagine and build a geospatial ecosystem for education, research and business, in order to improve education and drive prosperity for everyone.

3. Conference Sessions and Poster Session The Conference was divided into the following parallel sessions: ICT and Geographical Education; Students and Teachers; GIS and Cartography; Challenges for Geographical Education; Beyond the Classroom; Primary Teaching and Training; Spatial Perspectives; Methods in Geography Education; Geography Textbooks and Curriculum and Content. As can be seen, these themes highlight the key aspects of Geographical Education, spanning from a methodological point of view, taking into account the different ages of students, to the inclusion of different tools and resources. Moreover, referring to the posters, it was observed that some of them were focused on both proposals for a better didactics, such as activitybased learning and game-based learning (the utilization of geomodels, games for improving the comprehension of risk, virtual field trips for digital excursions, a special sandbox as educational tool), and the questions about geography curricula in different European countries. In this way, delegates had the possibility to know the position that geography occupies in the different education programs in Europe.

4. Workshops The EUROGEO Conference included some interactive workshops: 1. Fieldwork and geospatial technologies; 2. Nexus Thinking; 3. YouthMetre: using European data to engage youth; 4. Resource flows in a Circular Economy; 5. the SDGs: no one left behind; 6. Let's Move! Spatial classroom activities; 7. Polder Workshop on flood risk; 8. the HERE map creator. It was an excellent opportunity for teachers to learn how to manage several tools with student groups as well as to engage in practical activities ready to be transferred into their professional competences.

Figure 3. Professor Karl Donert is introducing Dr. Suchith Anand. Photo: E. Gamberoni.

5. Geocapabilities One of the original contributions to Geographical Education is carried out by Geocapabilities, a project presented in two satellite seminars (Figure 4) by Prof. Karl Donert, Prof.

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David Lambert (University of London) and Prof. Michael Solem (Association of American Geographers). It is an international project addressed to teachers and educators to develop their ability to teach geography considered as a “powerful disciplinary knowledge”.

Figure 4. One of the Geocapabilities seminar. Photo: E. Gamberoni.

autonomy and responsibility. Michael Solem developed some examples in particular of how teachers can use artefacts and vignettes to develop geographical thinking: one of the key concepts is that teachers have to pay particular attention to how countries are interrelated to each other and to how they operate inter-dependently on a local-global scale, for example from the environmental to the migration problems. Finally, Karl Donert explained some aspects of the Curriculum Leadership. This part of the project is strictly related to the Curriculum Making. Teachers have to develop a curriculum thinking in order to become curriculum leaders, that is, for example, to “provide a vision and create opportunities” and not only to “follow directions and react”.

6. Conclusions This means geographical knowledge that is not a list of facts or general knowledge, but rather facts that deal with a specific way of thinking about the world, based on what this knowledge can do to improve intellectual power. The project is divided into four training modules: The Capabilities Approach and Powerful Disciplinary Knowledge; Curriculum Making by Teachers; Video Case Studies; Curriculum Leadership and Advocacy. As David Lambert explained in his talk on the theoretical and conceptual bases of the Geocapabilities project, the capabilities approach is based on the idea that if children are not taught geography properly at school, they are deprived of their capabilities since they are lacking in a deep understanding of the world dynamics. In fact, geography is knowledge that connects natural and human aspects, global and local scales for an interrelated vision of the world. In this sense, they are trained to be able to think about the world geographically. A concept of curriculum, named Future 3, was proposed. In this curriculum the geographical contents are not given “top-down”, but rather students are guided in dynamic and interlinked disciplinary processes to engage themselves to be and live in the world with

The focus of this Conference was on interesting and fascinating themes, linked to the possibility of exchanging experiences and ideas. Lastly some concluding remarks are worth highlighting: the central position of Geographical Education in overall education; the Geographical Education based on the geographical thinking; the necessary implementation of innovative methodologies; the potential of technologies; the importance of teacher networks around the world to increase the quality of Geographical Education; the relationship between Geographical Education and the vision of the world (for example the 2030 vision). The 2018 EUROGEO Annual Meeting and Conference will be held in Cologne, Germany, on 15-17 March 2018. The title is strictly connected to what was discussed during the Amsterdam Conference: Geography for All. The discussion goes on. (see: www.eurogeography. eu/conference-2018/).

References http://www.eurogeography.eu http://www.geocapabilities.org

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