Abstract
Abstract. Public spaces can be seen as arenas where gendered social roles, relations and identities are (re)produced, represented and contested. Because of their (assumed) public character – crowded, open, accessible and visible – these spaces are extremely useful as «observatories » for teaching and learning geography. This article presents and discusses 17 examples of assignments of eleven different universities in Europe, the United States and Israel in which students are encouraged to observe public spaces in order to understand the gendered use of space, interactions in space and the physical and symbolic design of public spaces, and to reflect on their observations from a gender perspective. Two different teaching styles are distinguished: semi-formal (detailed, protocolized and object-oriented) and informal (open, relational and subject-oriented). These differences in teaching styles are argued to reflect differences in academic cultures between countries and between disciplinary paradigms.
Highlights
Box 4: Two teaching styles Zwei Lehrmethoden Deux méthodes d’apprentissage examples from the California State University Chico and the urban anthropological example from the Free University of Brussels, suggest another interpretation: the difference between geography embedded in a social science academic environment and geography in a planning and architecture related environment, characteristic for the examples from the University of Amsterdam, Technical University of Athens, Tel Aviv University, University of Vienna and California State University Chico
Following Kolb’s cycle of experiential learning, Bradbeer distinguishes four different learning styles according to a concrete-abstract and an active-reflective dimension
Chemistry and mathematics are seen as examples of disciplines with an abstract-reflective learning style, engineering as an example of an abstract-active discipline, law as an example of a concrete-active discipline and history, modern languages and sociology as examples of concrete-reflective disciplines
Summary
Doing fieldwork is seen as an essential element in teaching geography. In recent volumes of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education, for instance, fieldwork is an often-recurring theme. Fieldwork and gender-sensitive observations are part of the teaching repertoire in feminist geography, as exemplified in feminist geography textbooks (Domosh & Seager 2001; Rose 1993; Women and Geography Study Group 1997) These teaching practices and experiences do not refer to residential fieldwork in distant destinations (the situations in which the exclusionary processes are most pronounced), but are related to ordinary public spaces in known and nearby cities, where «the commonplace may be rendered exotic» (Pawson & Teather 2002: 277). In these practices, students are encouraged to do fieldwork in a critical and reflective way and to analyze the daily behaviour of ordinary people in nonexotic contexts. Seven respondents sent one or more examples of assignments in the original language (English, Catalan, Dutch and German – the last three were translated into English by the author), while one Greek respondent sent an assignment example in translation
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
