What Kind of Geography Education Research is There?

Abstract

The broad aim of this paper is to support teachers in the use of published research in improving geography instruction. Despite the promotion of research-based (or evidence-based) practices, not many teachers prioritise reading research. This is because making research-based instructional decisions can be fairly time consuming. Research findings need to be combined with teachers' value judgment, and their tacit understanding of students' needs. As such, the potential of GER to improve geography instruction remains largely untapped. This paper seeks to encourage geography teachers to read GER, by describing what kind of GER is available for what kind of improvements in geography education. Three high quality GER journals were identified using the CiteScore and Journal Impact Factor metrics. Peer-reviewed articles published between 2000 and 2016 in these three journals were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. The results show that there is a large volume of GER that practitioners could consult. Although most GER scholars are based in a small number of English-speaking countries, GER covers cases from diverse parts of the world. Also, GER is most concerned with issues related to curriculum development and spatial thinking. These are topics relevant to both policymakers and classroom teachers. However, GER has not comprehensively evaluated the efficacy of different instructional approaches. As such, teachers may need to search beyond GER to achieve improvements in classroom instruction.