Teaching the Geographies of Urban Areas: Views and Visions

Abstract

This paper reports on empirical research in four countries on the growing interest in the perceived ‘gap’ between school and university human geography. Focusing on urban geography, we investigated the views of teachers and academic geographers about key elements of the field and those that were important for geography education. These views were compared with the urban geography in each country's curriculum and two sets of textbooks for the lower secondary age group. Findings suggest that there is indeed a ‘gap’ between the urban geographies taught at school and university level, at least as represented by the sources we accessed. The teachers' responses to curriculum change in this aspect of geography were mixed–some were keen to embrace new topics, others were happy with the current material. A further stage of the research will examine children's views about, and interests in urban geography, in order to inform curriculum development.