Addressing Weak Links in Challenges Facing Geography Education

Major challenges in geography education have existed and continue to exist today. Through three significant challenges, this dissertation examines how geography pedagogy can be changed to help fight university geography enrollment declines. The first challenge analyzes an introductory geography course and the motivational impact of gamifying the class grading scale. In particular, this research examines student responses to questions related to a point-accrual approach. The second challenge looks to K-12 teachers who teach geography but have no official university geography training. This research strategy is two-fold: first, surveys taken by participants and their individual developed lessons in the 2018, 2019, and 2022 Alliance Summer Geography Institutes (ASGIs) were analyzed; second, pathways of out-of-field retired teacher consultants (TCs) who have gone on to teach “social studies methods” courses in Arizona’s colleges of education were examined. The third and final challenge investigates the use of a K-12 educational website before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. The study focuses on the Arizona Geographic Alliance resource heavy website which provides lesson plans, maps, activity books, and more to educators around the globe. Two research questions incorporated into this section of the dissertation are: (i) generally, how did the COVID-19 pandemic impact use of the Arizona Geographic Alliance website? and more specifically, (ii) could the analysis of the website usage be used to help the recruitment of new college geography students by providing K-12 teachers appropriate resources about geography as a career? The results of this research identify and address weak links facing the future of geography education, with the hope that encourages education intervention to increase the number of interested geography students and inspires further geography education research to continue developing solutions to these and other ongoing challenges.