Spatial Citizenship Education: Citizenship through Geography

194 Pages·2018·1.763 MB·English

by  Euikyung E. Shin, Sarah Witham Bednarz

SPATIAL CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION
Spatial Citizenship Education is an innovative exploration of ways to engage and
promote citizenship through a deeper understanding of spatial and geographic
perspectives. The authors propose that recognizing the relationship between
space and citizenry enables productive and positive engagement with important
societal issues such as equity, justice, and environmental stewardship. By providing
a historical overview of geography’s contribution to citizenship education, including
progress made and challenges faced by educational reform movements, this
collection shows how geography can contribute to a new type of citizen—one
with an enhanced understanding of the world as seen through the key concepts
of geography: space, place, scale, power, and human-environment relationships.
Through a theoretical explanation of key citizenship ideas, and by providing
practical, classroom-based teaching tools, this volume will be essential for geography
education researchers and social studies educators alike.
Euikyung E. Shin is a professor in the Department of Curriculum and
Instruction at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois where she teaches
curriculum studies and social studies education. Her research interests include
incorporation of spatial perspectives for global citizenship education and
integration of geospatial technology to social studies curriculum.
Sarah Witham Bednarz is Professor Emerita of Geography at Texas A&M
University. Bednarz co-authored the national geography standards, Geography
for Life (1994 and 2012), served on the Committee on Spatial Thinking (2004–
2006), and co-chaired the Geography Education Research Committee (GERC)
of the 21st Century Road Map for 21st Century Geography Education Project.

SPATIAL CITIZENSHIP
EDUCATION
Citizenship through Geography
Edited by Euikyung E. Shin and
Sarah Witham Bednarz
First published 2019
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Euikyung E. Shin and Sarah Witham Bednarz to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections
77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-05644-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 9 78-1-138-05645-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 9 78-1-315-16535-6 (ebk)
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
Joseph P. Stoltman
1 Conceptualizing Spatial Citizenship 1
Euikyung E. Shin and Sarah Witham Bednarz
2 Geography as a Social Study: Its Significance for
Civic Competence 10
Stephen J. Thornton
3 Geography, Capabilities, and the Educated Person 22
David Lambert
4 The Spatial Production and Navigation of Vulnerable Citizens 41
Sandra J. Schmidt
5 Citizenship Education in a Spatially Enhanced World 59
Sarah Witham Bednarz and Robert S. Bednarz
6 Rediscovering the Local: Collaborative, Community Maps
for Civic Awareness 72
Todd W. Kenreich
vi Contents
7 Cultivating Student Citizens: Using Critical Pedagogy of Place
Curriculum to Enhance Spatial Thinking, Civic Engagement,
and Inquiry Through Student-Generated Topics 88
M. Beth Schlemper and Victoria C. Stewart
8 Geotechnologies and the Spatial Citizen 117
Tom Baker, Mary Curtis, and Lisa Millsaps
9 Informed Citizenry Starts in the Preschool and Elementary
Grades—and With Geography 132
Elizabeth R. Hinde
10 Spatial Citizenship in Secondary Geography Curriculum 145
Injeong Jo
11 Spatial Citizenship in Geography/Social Studies
Teacher Education 159
Euikyung E. Shin
List of Contributors 170
Index 173
PREFACE
Citizenship and geography education share a common goal: the preparation of
students to be well-informed citizens capable of making informed civic deci-
sions. An informed citizen has the capacity to participate in decision-making
processes to address the common good for the community in which they live, for
the country to which they belong, and for Earth, which they inhabit. Citizenship
education is preparation for civic engagement. Geography’s role relative to citi-
zenship education is to equip learners with the knowledge and skills they need to
become responsible decision makers. The following widely accepted goal of citi-
zenship education is an open invitation for geography education to participate.
Civic education should help young people acquire and learn to use skills,
knowledge and attitudes that will prepare them to be competent and
responsible citizens throughout their lives.
( Carnegie Corporation of New York, 2003 , p. 2)
It seems that if geography were substituted for c itizenship (Civic), then there
would be relative close agreement that geography education shares much with
citizenship education as a common educational goal.
As a newly minted teacher of middle school students some years ago, I was
often reminded by more experienced colleagues that every teacher is a teacher
of reading. We assigned reading from the geography textbook and expected stu-
dents to grasp the conceptual components and to link them together as they built
their knowledge and comprehension of the world. While I recollect the attention
to reading, I do not recall that we spent much time attending to the role of civic
behavior that was in the best interests of the larger community where the school
was located. It was taken for granted that our students would use the knowledge
viii Preface
they were acquiring to become responsible citizens. The editors of this book
intend to increase the attention given to the benefits of a geography education as
students practice civic responsibility and engage others in doing the same. The
chapters in the book are evidence of a commitment to use geography as a means
to leverage civic responsibility and citizenship. It is an invitation for educators
at all grade levels to think deeply about the relationship between geography
and being a responsible citizen. In the 21st century, every teacher is a teacher of
citizenship.
The book’s chapters are future looking and recognize the growing use of
technology within communities, with a special emphasis on geospatial technol-
ogy and mapping. Seldom does an event of local importance occur that it is not
captured by a person nearby who is using the video device on a smartphone.
Geography and geospatial technology are a significant component in capturing
and analyzing those events. Events have a spatial dimension with regard to their
scale, their occurrence at a particular place, and their association with specific
environmental conditions, both human and natural. The geographic challenge
is to identify and analyze the relationships among concepts central to geographic
inquiry, such as space, place, and environment. The citizenship challenge is to
apply the geographic information and concepts within a geographical context in
order to make informed decisions for the common good.
When the term citizenship is used in either formal or casual conversation, as
well as in the media, it is most often interpreted as the legal association between
an individual and the state, or the country. Citizenship defines who has the right
to a domicile within a country and the protections and responsibilities under
the laws of that country. Citizenship education has been treated very broadly
within schools in different countries, ranging from indoctrination regarding the
political position of a country’s leaders, to the quest for responsible individual
behavior and desirable moral values within the community. While citizenship
is diverse in its applications and practices, it does depend heavily on the societal
context in which it is practiced. In some societies, it is based on the birthright
within a country or the result of the formalities of immigration and naturaliza-
tion to a country and its laws. In other countries, citizenship is based on the
lineage of one’s parents. Still other countries may treat citizenship as the act of
being a resident in a place with a formal or legal attachment following a period
of residency that qualifies a person to be a citizen. The requirements necessary
to become a citizen are almost always included in the content of the citizenship,
civics, or government curricula that is presented in schools. Knowing about the
procedural components of citizenship are most often what educational specialists
and curriculum developers identify as the most basic steps in defining one’s role
as a citizen.
Social and political contexts generally determine where the development of
civic skills is included within the curriculum. In most countries, citizenship edu-
cation is largely within the disciplines of history and political science. History
Preface ix
tells the story of how a country became established, incorporated its laws and
rules, took international relationship steps to gain recognition through peace-
ful negotiations, war or territorial acquisitions, and assembled a population that
viewed themselves as citizens of the national unit or country. Citizenship rep-
resents the bonding between individual and country; this bond can range from
extremely nationalistic to a relative casual relationship, or in most cases, a balance
between those ends of a citizenship spectrum. Those are the historical compo-
nents of citizenship education.
Political science as a discipline represents citizenship education within the
curriculum in a more specific, legalistic fashion. Political science entails the
study of procedural content that describes the development of government as
legislative legalities. Within the curriculum, a frequent pattern for citizenship
education is to promote the type of government in power rather than to under-
take a comparative study of different types of government. The rationale is often
used that citizens need to be educated, beginning in primary school, regarding
the operations, expectations, and successes of a government or system that gov-
erns the country. Of course, the critical analysis of government by its citizens
may result in upheaval against those governments that ignore procedural laws, or
it may result in a passive acceptance of the role a government pursues rather than
what should be the purpose of government.
Other elements of citizenship education, beyond historical accounts and gov-
ernmental procedures, are components of the curricula in many countries. Citi-
zenship education may also include the morals, ethics, and values that students
experience in their studies as they interact within society. Moral and ethical
actions result from a lifetime of learning and practice, both in and out of school.
However, it is the early years of education that provide the basis for citizens to
make sound moral judgments, ethical decisions, and reflect values that promote
the common good. Usually, morals, ethics, and values are merged either specifi-
cally or by stealth into the content that students study in school subjects ranging
from mathematics to health/physical education. They include the underlying
qualities of honesty, fairness, courage, and integrity, just to name a few, that
educators aspire to promote in their students regardless of age or subject in
school. Morals, ethics, and values are perhaps the very basis from which educa-
tion as a social practice emerged. They continue to be part of the formal and/
or informal curriculum by virtue of their importance as building blocks of a
civil society.
Teachers are regularly concerned with student behavior and the civility of the
classroom environment as a place to engage with and learn from each other as
well as to complete formal studies. The classroom is a part of the larger prepa-
ration for living in a civil society. This is the setting where the content being
taught and the skills and values which teachers are charged to help students
develop intersect with citizenship education. This book is written to help edu-
cators determine how geography can be positioned within the curriculum in