Geography in North America
Geography in North America
Geography in North America
In this chapter, a collection of geography educators portrays contemporary school geography in North America at both the national and state/provincial scale. First, T. Dickson Mansfield and Stuart Semple describe geography education in Canada examining the public perception of geography as instrumental in its successes and failures as a school subject. Second, Sarah Bednarz and Robert Bednarz review school geography in the United States using the heuristic device, SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis, to assess its current status. Finally, two case studies presented by Ron Dorn and Michael Libee describe geography education in Michigan and Arizona, respectively, showcasing examples of successful and imaginative programs in school geography.
It should be noted that this chapter reports on only part of North America. Unfortunately the project organizers were unable to identify a contributor from Mexico or the other countries of Latin America to inform readers of the situation in Spanish-speaking North America.
Contemporary School Geography in Canada
T. Dickson Mansfield 1 and Stuart Semple 2
1Faculty of Education, Duncan McArthur Hall, B-188, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6; 2 Department of Geography, Mount Allison University, 144 Main Street, Sackville, NB, Canada E4:L 1A7
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1. The Canadian Setting
Canada is a federal state in which education is the jealously guarded responsibility of ten provinces and three territories. Unlike the United States, it has no federal office or department of education, though it does have a Council of Ministers of Education whose role is largely consultative. Nevertheless, the country may be divided into four regions on the basis of curriculum making in geography and the social sciences
The first of these, the Atlantic Provinces, consists of Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick. It was in this region that the Atlantic Provinces Education Foundation (APEF) began work in 1993 on a curriculum framework for designing programs in the social studies across all four provinces. The second of the four regions is Québec and the third Ontario: recent developments in both have affected the status of geography adversely. The fourth region consists of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia; and the northern territories of the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. Like its Atlantic counterpart, this region formed a consortium as a matter of cost-efficiency in the joint planning, development, and production of curriculum resources (Western Protocol for Collaboration in Basic Education (K-12). Unlike APEF, however, the consortium has seen its members go their separate ways while retaining a common framework for grades K-8. One point of difference among them has been the development of separate geography (and history) courses, as in Manitoba, rather than courses in social studies with some geographical content; another, the policy on examinations (Semple, 2004, pp.173-174).
Whatever the configuration of curriculum, geographical education in Canada must contend with an approach to social studies that is dominated by history and civics. Depending upon teachers’ openness to geography’s viewpoint in social studies, the soundness of their own knowledge of geography, and their skill in teaching it effectively, geography may be strongly present or barely visible. As in the United States, the approach has generally resulted in a low level of basic geographic understanding; it has affected the way relationships are viewed over both time and space, whether in the physical domain, the human domain, or in interaction between humans and their environment. This outcome is in marked contrast to the expectations held for literacy and numeracy in an age dominated by English, mathematics, and science. It does, however, help to explain the results of a poll in 2002 that found Canadian scores in geographic knowledge to be third from the bottom among nine participating nations, and only slightly ahead of the United States and Mexico. (Mansfield, 2005, p.7)
In 1991 the Education Committee of the Canadian Association of Geographers, chaired by Richard Baine, (Baine, 1991) surveyed the status of geographical education in terms of enrolments, numbers of courses, and qualifications of teachers; more than a decade later, these three remain important indicators of status. Equally revealing today, however, is the way in which administrative decisions can prove detrimental to geography. The loss of key topics in physical geography to earth science or environmental systems is a case in point; so too is the spillover from administrative decisions taken elsewhere in the curriculum for reasons not directly related to geography.
The Baine report noted the absence in Canada of any geography courses between Kindergarten and grade 6. Over that range of grade levels, a mixture of courses was offered under the general classification of “Social Studies,” and these mandatory courses were virtually the only vehicles through which any geographic subject matter or skills might be taught. (Baine, 1991, p.6)
The report also found the border between Manitoba and Saskatchewan to be a clear boundary between western provinces that offered few geography courses and those to the east, notably Ontario, that offered most of those available in Canada (Baine, 1991, p.6). Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, has in fact been traditionally its strongest in the number of geography courses, the specialist training of its teachers, and the professional support given them over the past 50 years by the Ontario Association for Geographic and Environmental Education (OAGEE). Yet, even in Ontario, geography has recently faced a variety of challenges, so much so that the province offers an instructive case study of the visibility and availability of geography in Canadian schools.
2. Ontario: A Case Study in Challenges
Readers of the Baine report were cautioned against a misleading picture of the health of school geography in Ontario. The province’s high dropout rate after grades 9 and 10 was significant because, of 17 mandatory courses in the whole of Canada, all were in grades 7-10 (Baine, 1991, p.6). In Ontario today, geography as a compulsory core subject under its own name is limited to grades 7, 8, and 9; its total teaching time of 220 hours, spread over 3 years, is the highest to be found in Canada. Geography is not offered at grade 10 level in Ontario but is available as options in grades 11 and 12. Although structured separately for students who are destined for post-secondary education or the workplace, those optional courses exhibit the same expectations as the grade 9 course: Geographic Foundations, Space and Systems, Human-Environment Interaction, Global Connections, Understanding and Managing Change, and Methods of Geographic Inquiry. (Mansfield, 2005, p.32)
Yet it is precisely here that Baine’s caution about the health of school geography has force; for not all of the approved courses will in fact be offered. A base threshold of 25 students is usually required if a school is to offer a course. Geography courses, approved by the provincial ministry of education for grades 11 and 12, might not actually appear on the option sheets that schools or school boards ask students and their parents to complete. Moreover, while those courses fulfil requirements for graduation from high school, so too would an additional course in English, a third language, one in the Social Sciences and Humanities, or one in Canadian and World Studies taught from the perspective of history, politics, economics, law, or geography (Mansfield, 2005, pp. 31-32).
These things are best understood against the important decisions students must make in Grade 10 concerning optional courses in the final two years of secondary education. Yet Grade 10 is the one grade in which geography is not offered in Ontario: this has some bearing on whether a base threshold is achieved for a geography course to be offered in grades 11 and 12. Furthermore, as students often choose their future university programs well before leaving the high school, it may also affect recruitment to post-secondary programs in geography (Mansfield, 2005, p.11).
Admission requirements for post-secondary institutions tend to reinforce the dominance of English, mathematics, and science in the curriculum. Exceptions aside, few require or suggest geography courses in high school as precursors for entry to their geography-related programs, or allow for them when they have been taken. Yet growing numbers of students in the Advance Placement and International Baccalaureate programs have completed courses that are as rigorous as most first-year introductory courses at university level (Mansfield, 2005, p 14).
Public perception and expectation present yet another challenge for geography. While the principle of provincial testing is a contentious issue for many, its practice for some subjects, and not others, sends a message to parents, students, teachers, and administrators alike as to what is really important in the curriculum. The core subjects of Language Arts and mathematics are tested three times before students enter grade 11. Neither social studies, nor history, nor geography is tested in the same period of time (Mansfield, 2005, pp. 12-13).
As well, changing priorities and financial constraints at government, board, and school level have affected leadership in curriculum development, the maintenance of standards, and the provision of subject-based professional development in Ontario. In this geography has not been the only subject affected. In former times successful and well-qualified teachers would have been appointed to leadership roles as consultants at government and board level. Today, there are few consultants in general and almost none with a dedicated portfolio in geography. The pressure of financial constraint has also been felt at school level and former subject department headships have often been replaced by headships that are more broadly administrative in character (Mansfield, 2005, pp. 13-14).
Of all the challenges facing geography in Ontario, however, none is more basic than that of teacher preparation and placement. As elsewhere in Canada, the issues revolve particularly (though not exclusively) around social studies. They are implicit in the Baine report: are teachers predisposed to recognize the value of a geographical perspective in the social studies? Is their knowledge of geography sound enough for them to teach it with integrity? Are they trained sufficiently in methods to teach it effectively? In Ontario, where geography in grades 7 and 8 is usually taught by the core or regular classroom teacher, the answer to those questions might well be a negative one. Even at the secondary level, where teachers receive basic qualifications in two teachable subjects, hiring agendas may result in their being appointed to teach geography with minimal or no background in the subject. This is even more likely when school principals consider geography a “general subject” that anyone can teach (Mansfield, 2005, pp.15-16).
If teacher placement is often problematic, teacher preparation is no less so. The program for elementary school teachers (K-8) at Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario is fairly typical of the pattern of teacher training across Canada. Language Arts, mathematics, and science each receive 36 hours of curriculum contact time. Social studies in grades K-6, and history and geography as separate subject in grades 7 and 8, receive a total of 18 hours. At the secondary level, a minimum of 72 hours is allocated to basic subject qualifications and students spend up to half of a 13-week school-based practicum in the geography classroom. As explained earlier, however, administrative agendas at the time of hiring might result in this professional preparation not being matched by the teaching appointment (Mansfield, 2005, p.16).
3. Beyond Ontario: Challenges and Initiatives in Geographical Education
The present state of teacher education in Canada is of particular concern to the Canadian Council for Geographic Education (CCGE). Under its leadership summer institutes were organized in the early 1990s at Queen’s University along the lines of those established earlier in the United States by the National Geographic Society’s state alliances. These and short-term courses for degree credit, may well be needed to fill a growing void in Canadian faculties of education for the specialist training of geography teachers. Outside Ontario and Quebec, which already have well-organized associations for supporting teachers, the CCGE has also been promoting the development of chapters for professional development at grassroots level. This is an important initiative, because subject associations for teachers in other parts of the country are organized on the basis of social studies. These, like the provincial curricula themselves, are strongly influenced by history and civics. Highly successful chapters have been operating in British Columbia and in Newfoundland and Labrador. One had also been established at Regina, Saskatchewan. In 2005, a Nova Scotia chapter was formed; so also was one at Edmundston, New Brunswick, for French-speaking teachers of Acadian descent.
As a case study, Ontario is instructive, not only for the challenges to geography but also the responses they have aroused. The subject’s present state in Ontario has emerged from an even more radical proposal for a “common curriculum” that would have delayed the emergence of separate subjects until after grade 9. The proposal mobilized the geographic community to an extent previously unknown. While the outcome might not have been all that geographers wished, it was still better than what had been proposed – and often is, in other parts of Canada. The events in Ontario can therefore be helpful elsewhere in addressing the three most critical factors in the health of school-level geography in Canada: curriculum, teacher qualifications, and public image. The key to all three lies in effective networking.
Ideally, a nationwide survey of curricula and teacher qualifications, and a continuously updated data base, would form the basis for representation to government; in practice this has been more difficult to achieve. Canadians have been slower than others to build the type of broad network that rallied to the defence of geography in the UK and made possible the National Standards in the United States. The CCGE was instrumental in publishing Canadian National Standards for Geography in 2001. More recently it has been working with partners in the development of lesson plans. Nevertheless, Canada lacks at the national level a body with the resources, organization, and publishing output of the Americans’ National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE). Nor has it the equivalent of the Geography Education National Implementation Project (GENIP), which has been a steering committee in the United States for education outreach by the four US professional organizations of geographers. This may now be changing. The Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG) has shown growing concern for the state of school geography and is lending its support. Its Education Committee is now a formal Study Group and a valuable website has been established. Links with the school-oriented CCGE are being strengthened in a way that will encourage, when necessary, regional support of the type mobilized in Ontario.