Q&A With Sarah Bednarz of Human Geography

1. Inform us just a little bit about your self and your background (present title, skilled milestones, skilled historical past, schooling, analysis works, hobbies, and so forth.)

I’m retired from Texas A&M College the place I used to be a professor of geography. I additionally served as Affiliate Dean for the School of Geosciences for six years. I now reside in Albuquerque, New Mexico with my husband who can be a geographer.

I got here into geography due to a deep curiosity about locations I lived. As a toddler, due to my father’s job with Mobil Oil, I moved in the USA and abroad ceaselessly. I at all times wished to know “the why of the place.” After I lived in New Zealand as a young person, I found geography. The topic answered the questions I had about individuals, locations, and environments. I majored in it in faculty (Mount Holyoke School) and after receiving an M.A. in Instructing (College of Chicago), I taught center and highschool for 14 years in Illinois and Texas.

I cherished instructing geography and felt passionately about its worth to college students in constructing key citizenship expertise, however developed a priority about studying. What might I do to higher assist my college students study to assume geographically? This led me to finish a Ph.D. in geography emphasizing schooling. My profession as a geography educator has led to many nice adventures and tasks working to reinforce the standard and amount of geography schooling in Okay-12 and better schooling. Regardless of retirement I proceed to analysis and work significantly with early profession school on instructing and studying points. Journey, knitting, and mountaineering are my enjoyable actions.

2. What was your driving pressure behind the creation of Human Geography: A Spatial Perspective, and what facets of this inaugural version are you most enthusiastic about?

I had the privilege to work with an inspiring set of authors. Every of us had one thing particular we emphasised. My explicit ardour was to function the work of a spread of geographers within the e book, matching their analysis to the subjects mentioned, linking the precise work of geographers to instructing introductory human geography. I like to think about the e book as much less of a textbook and extra of a view into the scholarship and scholarly achievements of geography.

3. Human geography encompasses such an enormous array of subjects and cultures. In what methods does your textbook supply one thing distinctive and differentiating to the sector?

Our philosophy was to mix and emphasize two of the good traditions of geography — human-environment interplay and spatial evaluation — to arrange the content material. As a professor, I at all times taught this course because the story of some key ideas which may clarify how the world works. We every must develop a grand narrative and inform a narrative to assist college students additionally make sense of the ways in which geographers see the world. It’s a problem — our college students are used to pondering chronologically, not spatially. However buying that spatial behavior of thoughts could be very highly effective. I hope the e book helps college students on this endeavor.

4. Given the ever-evolving nature of human geography, how does your textbook focus on the complexities of present occasions and fashionable points to stay related and impactful for college kids, and what are they?

I feel by emphasizing key ideas and ideas of geography, college students can purchase a framework that explains the important thing processes at work on this planet at the moment and the spatial patterns produced by these processes. It’s as much as instructors to current native and well timed examples that assist college students in seeing the relationships between world traits and native circumstances and occasions.

5. How do you see this textbook deepening college students’ understanding and fostering a extra lively engagement with its core ideas?

Clearly the work of the featured NatGeo Explorers is inspiring and motivating. Their work connects the ideas of geography with real-world discoveries and supplies examples of the facility of geographic evaluation.

6. With learners from various tutorial backgrounds, how does your textual content accommodate each these specializing in geography or earth science, and people encountering it by way of common schooling?

Geography is what known as a discovery main, that’s, very only a few college students come to increased schooling dedicated to majoring within the topic. However that first introductory course, taught by a passionate and expert teacher, can seize the creativeness and curiosity of some who discover that the topic has nice explanatory energy and is compelling. We designed this e book to be accessible to a spread of learners, with gorgeous visuals, clear writing, and intriguing options.  The intent is to offer a stable basis for the final schooling scholar and be a instrument to recruit the following technology of geographers.

7. What do you hope instructors will take away from this textbook that may improve their instructing?

That includes the work of up to date explorers illustrates ways in which school can join thrilling scientific discoveries with foundational ideas of geography. A second innovation that may switch into the pedagogical practices of instructors is using the analysis of up to date geographers.

8. Lastly, what do you hope is probably the most important takeaway college students will carry with them after utilizing your textbook?

That geography’s distinctive and explicit views on the world can present them with the information, expertise, and attitudes to make them higher residents and on a regular basis decision-makers. Geography has super mental and sensible worth, and I would like extra college students to benefit from this highly effective topic.

Sarah Witham Bednarz is a Professor Emerita of Geography and previous President of the American Affiliation of Geographers. She served as Affiliate Dean for Tutorial Affairs within the School of Geosciences, Texas A&M College, from 2008 to 2014 and as Principal Investigator on two main curriculum and academic analysis tasks. Lately she cochaired the Geography Schooling Analysis Committee (GERC) of the twenty first Century Street Map for twenty first Century Geography Schooling Mission.

Wish to know extra about “Human Geography: A Spatial Perspective” by Sarah Witham Bednarz, Mark Bockenhauer and Fred Hiebert?  Discover this primary version right here.