Abstract
The field of geography is important for any sustainability education. The aim of geography education is to enable students to understand the environment, its influence on human activity, and how humans influence the environment. In this article we present a study on how the interplay between the three pillars of sustainability thinking (environment, society and economy) play out on smaller and larger scales of time, space and multitude in geography education. In this paper, we argue that central issues in high quality sustainability education in geography relates to students’ deeper grasp of how to shift between magnitudes of time, space and multitude patterns. We show how an appreciation of many core issues in sustainability education require students to understand and traverse different magnitudes of the scalable concepts of time, space and multitude. Furthermore, we argue and exemplify how common sustainability misconceptions arise due to an inability to make the cognitive shift between relevant magnitudes on these scalable concepts. Finally, we briefly discuss useful educational approaches to mediating this problem, including the use of digital tools in order to allow geography teachers to facilitate the students’ better understanding of different magnitudes of slow, fast, small and large scale entities and processes.
Highlights
The Sustainability Aspects of GeographyAt the time of writing this paper, over 200 bushfires are raging across large tracts of the Australian continent
The purpose of this paper has been to point out how most of the common alternative conceptions held by students within sustainability topics in geography education are related to issues of scale
How students make sense of different magnitudes of time, space and multitude appears to be the cause of many alternative conceptions within sustainability thinking in geography education
Summary
At the time of writing this paper, over 200 bushfires are raging across large tracts of the Australian continent. Good geography education should provide a fruitful immersion of students into knowledge and understanding of how human societies and economies develop, interact with and change the natural environment in time and space. The issue of scale is a known challenge to science education in general (e.g., [11,12,13]), and in the current paper we argue that it is of particular importance with regards to students’ understanding of sustainability and both physical and human geography. We attempt to suggest important scalable dimensions in geography and sustainability education and identify relevant research and ideas on how to improve students’ understanding of these dimensions of scale, with special attention to the usefulness of digital tools in this context. The purpose of this literature-informed perspective paper is, firstly, to identify relevant scales to promote geography students’ deep understanding of sustainability, and secondly, to suggest creative and useful educational approaches to teaching about scale in geography
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