This study analyzed the effects of a professional development program on integrating generative AI into geography inquiry activities, using a mixed-methods design with 36 secondary school teachers. Post-program surveys and interviews revealed significantly improved perceptions of AI's educational use. Teachers valued the program for enhancing student-centered inquiry and its practical efficiency, but identified structural constraints and a lack of specific guidelines as key challenges. Crucially, teachers recognized their role must shift from "knowledge transmitter" to "designer of thinking processes." These findings suggest a well-designed, subject-specific program is vital for fostering this redefinition of teacher roles in the AI era.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) represents a major leap forward in AI technology, offering the potential to reshape education in various aspects. This paper explores the transformative potential of GenAI in geography education, focusing on its impacts across curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and fieldwork, through the lens of the Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition (SAMR) model. In curriculum development, GenAI enables automatic generation and personalization of geographic content. Pedagogical approaches are evolving from text-based instruction to data-driven learning experiences where students analyze geographic phenomena using GenAI tools. Assessment methods are shifting to adaptive evaluation systems with continuous feedback, while fieldwork benefits from real-time data processing and opportunities for global collaboration. Nevertheless, these advancements are accompanied by substantial risks, including challenges such as overreliance on AI, content inaccuracies, biases, and data privacy concerns.

In geography education, geospatial technologies have been actively researched and widely used in combination with classroom inquiry and fieldwork. Recently, emerging data sources and technologies, such as open data, big data, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), are now gaining attention for their educational potential. In this study, both existing and emerging data and technologies are combined and grouped into four categories: (1) Geospatial Web service, (2) open data and big data, (3) fieldwork using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), (4) AI and coding. And based on these, geospatial inquiry activities for learning high school Korean Geography were developed. Learning to use these data sources and technologies is expected to equip students with essential 21st century skills.

The acquisition of spatial skills/thinking is essential for both everyday functioning and academic purposes; therefore, valid and reliable assessment of this capability is an important task. However, to date, there have been few assessment instruments developed for spatial skills/thinking, and measures and approaches vary across disciplines and from study to study. The goal of this chapter is to review and synthesize peer-reviewed articles on the measurement/assessment of spatial skills/thinking. A search informed by systematic literature review protocols was conducted using Web of Science and Google Scholar as well as a manual search of well-known journals. A total of 19 papers were selected for full review with four broad trends in research identified: (1) measuring spatial skills/thinking on a small scale without any specific context, (2) measuring spatial skills/thinking on an environmental scale in everyday life contexts, (3) measuring spatial skills/thinking on a geographic scale in geoscience contexts, and (4) spatial skills/thinking self-assessments in everyday life contexts. This review broadens the understanding of spatial skills/thinking assessment across disciplines and provides directions for future research.

What does professionalization mean for a geography teacher? We have invited authors from across the globe to address this question, contributing essays in four relevant areas: (I) the qualification, described in the section “Pathways of professionalization as geography teacher”, (II) the institutions, explained in “Institutionalization, networking, and informal learning”, (III) the various fields in geography education, named in “Special fields and discourses of geography teacher education”, and, finally, (IV) different praxis in a section on “Methods and practices under the lens”.

This book presents contemporary approaches of geography education from different countries, making the international dimension of geography teacher education accessible to various geography educators in different parts of the world. This chapter provides an introduction into this field of research and praxis, summarizing the state of the art concerning teachers' professionalisation and current challenges to geography education. Furthermore, the chapter introduces the book's structure that is constructed along discourses of geography education and geography teacher professionalization that are relevant globally but answered with nationally different strategies. In doing so, each chapter is summarized briefly, providing a comprehensive overview of the book.

The study aims to understand the characteristics of community mapping education being conducted in elementary and secondary schools, and to investigate teachers' perception and satisfaction with community mapping education. For this purpose, 28 cases implemented through the Community Mapping Center were collected and analyzed. There were some preferred topics such as safety issues, but community mapping were linked to various topics related to the daily life of students and community issues such as accessibility of the disabled, tourism resources, smoking prevention, and village information. The elements and stages of student activity constituting the community mapping were also diverse and classified into 7 types. Teachers' satisfaction with community mapping education was overall very high, and they evaluated that participation in community mapping increased students' understanding of GIS, and interest and understanding of local geography and social issues. The community mapping to be continuously used in school education and to expand the educational effect, not only teachers' active participation in the design and implementation process is required, but also cooperation with various agencies outside the school is required. This study is important in that it sees community mapping, which was considered an interesting event, in terms of teaching and learning strategies, and presents the comprehensive understanding of community mapping activities in elementary and secondary schools.

The objectives of this research are, first, to find mobile technology–informed ways of designing inquiry-based fieldwork, in support of students’ inquiry processes and, second, to evaluate how a technology-integrated fieldwork project can affect students’ knowledge and experience. In order to achieve these objectives, the study adopted a set of core design principles and guidelines for the creation of inquiry-based fieldwork projects, detailing tips and an example (i.e., the Yangdong Village Project) of these principles and guidelines’ application. In addition, this study used a questionnaire to determine the influence of the project on students’ understanding of the investigation area and their inquiry-related behaviors. It also analyzed conversation between students, to examine how students’ learning processes are supported in fieldwork through use of mobile technology. A total of 86 high school students (ages 17–18), from four schools located in the Seoul metropolitan area, participated in the project. The results of the analyses showed that participation in the project helped students become better informed about the area they investigated. While they were conducting the field tasks, they showed more inquiry-driven behaviors, such as being more active and adventurous, more talkative, and more responsible (88.7%). Technological support for the process of field inquiry was prominent in three situations: location identification, data capture, and monitoring. The functionalities of mobile technology that students used during the field inquiry would reflect not only the characteristics of the task, but also the types of mobile technology involved in the project.

Like all school textbooks, geography textbooks are authored. Almost all textbook research in and beyond geography has neglected their authors. This questionnaire-based multinational research project investigated the perceptions of 71 primary and secondary school geography textbook authors from seven countries in five continents. Though not intended as a definitive study, the findings identified several values and areas of expertise which many textbook authors in different countries held to be important for their work. While there were variations across country contexts, there was much that was shared by the authors. Authors valued enabling students to develop geographical perspectives, knowledge and skills and informed attitudes about the world when learning in real world contexts and making connections with everyday life. It was notable that the focus of authors on subject knowledge, the pedagogy of textbooks and the students who will use the textbooks aligned with these same key elements which are central to curriculum making. Authors can be said to perceive their role as creating a geography curriculum, albeit externally to any specific geography classroom, through their textbooks

Geography educators have been, and continue to be, interested in spatial thinking, especially since they have been convinced of its importance in their students' ability to learn and do geography. As they developed strategies to improve students' spatial thinking, they searched for assessment instruments to evaluate their interventions' effects. Because they and we found existing psychometric tests of spatial ability lacking, we developed the Spatial Thinking Ability Test. This article reviews 22 research studies that have used the test to assess spatial thinking. Both instructional strategies or methods and individuals' characteristics that lead to, or are associated with, improved spatial thinking are identified. Suggestions for further research are offered.

This study investigated the perspectives of seven English authors, on aspects of their geography textbook writing for schools in England, through a questionnaire-based enquiry. This investigation asked about the features that geography textbook authors consider to be the most important when designing student activities, and which criteria they used to select and develop case studies for their textbooks. The authors emphasized the geographical content and key concepts for developing pupils' knowledge base, rather than the learning processes. The key criteria identified by the majority of the authors were the geographical relevance of the case studies, coverage of the national curriculum requirements, and geographical balance.

Key purposes in teaching geography are developing pupils’ geographical knowledge and thinking, informing them about the world and encouraging their understanding of geography’s key concepts. Textbooks are a traditional resource for promoting and developing pupils’ geographical understanding and thinking, widely used around the world. There is much research into the nature and uses of school geography textbooks, though with negligible focus on the perspectives of their authors. Textbook authors are important: they mediate geographical knowledge. They have the power to shape pupils’ geographical thought, though it is unclear how much this has been their intention. This research investigated writers’ purposes, as well as subject and pedagogical expertise. The study examined the perspectives of a sample of English authors of primary and secondary school geography textbooks, inquiring into their aims for and valuing of geographical learning, and their approaches to engaging pupils’ understanding and thinking. Open-ended questions and a rating scale were used in a questionnaire to seek authors’ views, drawing on a convenience sample. Analysis of their responses identified that these authors were interested in developing pupils’ geographical knowledge and thinking, which they saw as the subject’s key curriculum purpose. They felt that their up-to-date subject knowledge was vital for textbook writing, as was their pedagogical skills to develop geographical thinking progressively in individual textbooks and through series. They intended to encourage the role of geographical thought in pupils’ awareness and knowledge of the world, to show the value of the subject and to give pupils greater insight and understanding.

There has been much research into the nature and uses of school geography textbooks as teaching resources, yet the perceptions of their authors have been neglected. This study investigated the perspectives of a sample of authors of English primary and secondary school geography textbooks on their experiences as textbook authors. It enquired into their motivations and valuing of geographical learning, expertise in textbook writing, influences on and challenges they faced in textbook development, and their sense of the future for geography textbooks. Findings indicate that these authors valued geography for intrinsic and extrinsic reasons, including its curricular strengths. Textbook writing in England today is influenced and constrained by geography national curricula and publishers' requirements, which can enhance or inhibit the nature and quality of the sources, visual and other materials, and the learning activities authors include. Important for textbook writing are authors' up-to-date subject, curriculum and pedagogical knowledge, alongside their skills in textbook structure and design, and their capability in developing geographical understanding progressively through a single textbook and/or a series. These facets of textbook writing indicate the importance of pedagogical content knowledge for textbook authors as much as for classroom teachers. Authors are wary about the future for textbooks, given the increasing use of digital and virtual resources alongside print materials, though they see a continuing future for textbooks.

The purpose of this article is to examine recent changes in the geography national curriculum in South Korea through the lenses of three curriculum components that often find themselves in competition – subject content, educational processes and national/social purposes. In recent years, the prevailing national and social aims outlined for the school curriculum, coupled with newly introduced educational processes, have dominated debate about curriculum development in South Korea. These trends have created an essentially unhealthy environment for geography education – the number of students opting for geography courses has declined; the geography curriculum is in danger of being restructured around new axes of competency; and only certain aspects of geographical subject content (such as territorial issues) are selectively promoted. We conclude that with South Korean education policies being strongly influenced by neoliberal and market forces, geography teachers may need to adopt a more proactive stance with regard to curriculum change. The grassroots reform movement ‘Sipsiilban’, initiated by a handful of Korean geography teachers, has recently taken geography curriculum matters into their own hands and developed alternative geography curricula and textbooks.

This article introduces the development and validation of the spatial thinking ability test (STAT). The STAT consists of sixteen multiple-choice questions of eight types. The STAT was validated by administering it to a sample of 532 junior high, high school, and university students. Factor analysis using principal components extraction was applied to identify underlying spatial thinking components and to evaluate the construct validity of the STAT. Spatial components identified through factor analysis only partly coincided with spatial concepts used to develop the questions that compose the STAT and with the components of spatial thinking hypothesized by other researchers.

This paper begins with a short discussion of concepts of spatial thinking skills and the instruments available to measure them. Next, the paper briefly describes the development of the Spatial Thinking Ability Test (STAT). Differences in the performance of 446 junior high, high school, and university students are explored and tested for statistical significance. In addition, the test scores are analyzed using factor analysis to identify underlying spatial thinking components and to determine if the identified components support the structure of spatial thinking proposed by other researchers. Students at all levels displayed similar performance patters; scores for all students were uniformly higher for some questions than others, offering some support for the argument that spatial thinking is composed of more than one skill or ability (in addition to the widely accepted spatial visualization and orientation abilities). We hypothesized that factor analysis would identify independent components of spatial thinking by generating factors that reflected the eight components of previous researchers’ spatial thinking conceptualizations that were represented by questions in the STAT. Our analysis of STAT scores, however, offers relatively little support for the existence of the independent spatial thinking components hypothesized in the literature. The analysis does suggest that spatial thinking is almost certainly not a single ability but comprised of a collection of different skills. Based on the clusters indentified by the analysis, the following spatial thinking components emerge: map visualization and overlay, identification and classification of map symbols (point, line, area), generalized or abstract Boolean operations, map navigation or way-finding, and recognition of positive spatial correlation.

A spatial-skills test is used to examine the effect of GIS learning on the spatial thinking ability of college students. Eighty students at a large state university completed pre- and post- spatial-skills tests administered during the 2003 fall semester. Analysis of changes in the students' test scores revealed that GIS learning helped students think spatially. These improvements were the result of the connection between students' GIS activities and experiences and the tested spatial thinking skills. Strong correlations were observed between the participants' spatial thinking and their achievement in the GIS course.

Introduction Teacher preparation has been called the bete noire of geography education in the United States (Boehm et al., 1994). Despite progress in other areas of geography, teacher education remains a significant issue affecting the quality of geography instruction nationwide. It is a multifaceted, multidimensional problem tied inextricably to national trends in education and teacher education reform. Some problems have resulted from a spatially dispersed and decentralised system of teacher education and certification (Bednarz & Bednarz, 1995; Wang et al., 2003; Winston, 1984; Wilson et al., 2001). US teacher programmes vary widely. More than 1300 institutions prepare teachers. Today, however, many of the tensions within teacher education are the result of ideological arguments that have become highly politicised, pitting conservatives against liberals, Republicans against Democrats, in increasingly polarised discussions. As a consequence, geographers and professional geography societies have less influence in teacher preparation. This paper will briefly explore some of the significant issues affecting teacher preparation in the United States. We focus first on the volatile national context, particularly on changes in the last decade. The implications on teacher preparation of recent federal legislation entitled No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in general, and geography education specifically, are explored. Next, we describe the changing models of teacher education, including alternative certification, and the implications for geography education. We conceptualise teacher preparation as a three-stage process, and describe mentoring and professional development in geography education in the induction and early professional development stages. We conclude by reviewing the issues geography educators face in the next decade, suggesting research that may address them. Because of the limited space available, we will concentrate on aspects of teacher preparation as they affect geography teachers. For an excellent general review of US teacher preparation, see Preparing Teachers Around the World by Wang et al. (2003). One must remember that geography is a strand of the social studies curriculum in the IRGEE 158f