Critical Citizenship Education Through Geography

In a current globalized world, citizens are expected and encouraged to understand cultural diversity and respect individual differences. Furthermore, they are also expected to become responsible citizens for recognizing and actively participating in issues on social justice and human rights at local to global scales. That is, our diverse society demands “critical” citizens who are interested in public affairs, concerned about inequality and injustice, and motivated to change and improve our society. In response to an increased need for actively engaged and participating citizens in a today’s world, critical citizenship education has been suggested as a new framework for the existing citizenship education. Among several related subjects, geography education can play an important role in critical citizenship education. This paper first introduces the background of critical citizenship and critical citizenship education, and then it presents how geography education can contribute to forming critical citizens. At the end, this paper discusses ways to promote geography education for critical citizenship in the future

Qualitative Analysis of Users’ Negative Reviews on TripAdvisor: International Tourists’ Reviews on Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul, Korea

With the rise of Internet, many people have shared quantitative and qualitative feedback on their travel experiences on travel websites. As the largest travel site, TripAdvisor allows users to post reviews; conduct discussions with other users; and rate destinations, hotels, restaurants, and attractions. Through thematic and discourse analysis of user reviews on TripAdvisor, this study gives tourists’ negative reviews of visiting Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul, Korea. The study findings show that tourists evaluated the palace was not real, impressive, interesting, tourist friendly, and neither was it worth visiting. The findings of this study may be helpful in expanding research scopes in Korean tourism studies. They also provide useful resources for the Korean tourism industry and improve the quality of its services and products

Are We Ready?: A Review of Getting College Ready: Latin@ Student Experiences of Race, Access, and Belonging at Predominantly White Universities

Getting College Ready: Latin@ Student Experiences of Race, Access, and Belonging at Predominantly White Universities by Julie Minikel-Lacocque describes the pre-college and college experiences of six Latin@ college students (four female and two male) at a specifically predominantly White flagship higher education institution in the Midwest United States. By delivering those six Latin@ students’ voices through the author’s interpretation based on the lens of Critical Race Theory, she presented their challenges applying to college, maintaining enrollment, and being successful at the college as underrepresented minority students, most of whom were first-generation college students. The author also discussed effective ways to help those students become successful college students

Does Postsecondary Education Attainment Matter in Community Service Engagement? Evidence from Across 18 OECD Countries

This study is concerned with the central issues of community service engagement (CSE) in 21st century democratic societies around the world. To examine the factors influencing postsecondary education attainment’s relationship to CSE, this study utilized data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries using ordinary least square (OLS) and two-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) methods, including various factors for each country’s individual and country levels. The results show that attainment in postsecondary education at the individual level and investment and enrollments in tertiary education both have an influence on increasing CSE in 18 OECD countries. The present study is expected to contribute to an understanding of the relationship between postsecondary education and CSE across the world

Geography Education, Spatial Thinking, and Geospatial Technologies: Introduction to the Special Issue

This special issue contains six papers on the development of students’ knowledge, skills, and practice of geospatial thinking in a variety of educational contexts. Each of the papers addresses an aspect of the research gap that deserves timely attention in the field, focusing on curriculum design, pedagogical approaches, exemplary resources or tools, and strategies to move forward for the promotion of geospatial teaching and learning. We encourage continued research efforts to accumulate knowledge about curriculum, instruction, and assessment, as well as teachers’ professional development that can help students become 21st-century citizens equipped with geospatial literacy. Further research is recommended on the theories that can help explain and guide the development of students’ geospatial knowledge and skills in both formal and informal education, and effective ways to incorporate geospatial thinking into teacher preparation programs

The Use of Middle School Atlases in the Social Studies Classroom in South Korea

Middle school atlases are supplementary textbooks for social studies learning in South Korea. Although atlases are developed and designed to provide various useful resources for students’ social studies learning, especially geography, atlases have not been frequently used in actual social studies classrooms, and sometimes they are never used. This study reports the causes of low adoption rates of middle school atlases in Korean social studies classrooms through the analysis of survey responses from both teachers and students. This study also addresses ways of increasing the use of atlases in the classroom

Web-based GIS for Middle School Teachers: Using Online Mapping Applications to Promote Teacher Adoption

One factor underlying the use of information and communications technologies (ICT) in schools is the interest and willingness of teachers to learn and adopt these technologies in their teaching. Previous studies of geographic information systems (GIS), as one type of ICT, indicate that the lack of teacher training is one of the key barriers to adoption. This project addresses this issue by employing a user-centered design (UCD) methodology to plan, design, and develop teacher-centered and teacher-friendly web-based GIS training materials for middle school social studies teachers. This three-step method involved a user needs analysis, tutorial development, and evaluation. The user needs analysis used semi-structured interviews to collect input from 23 teachers. They made suggestions about the tutorial topics, their scope and activities, as well as the types of help the teachers would like to have available. The tutorial development step also involved 23 participants. They made a variety of suggestions about content, formats, and terminology. The final versions of the training tutorials were published on the web and evaluated by 55 participants. Of the 55, 11 teachers reported that they implemented web-based GIS technologies in their classrooms with students. The teachers rated the tutorials positively but also made suggestions about factors that might help them adopt GIS more readily, such as context-sensitive help and tutorials designed specifically for teachers with varying levels of ICT ability. This suggests that although the current project, within the limitations of its methodology, was able to address some of the barriers to adoption of ICT in schools, other issues still prevent greater classroom implementation of GIS technologies

The Knowledge Base for Geography Teaching (GeoKBT): A Preliminary Model

Funded by the National Center for Research in Geography Education, this study investigated the nature of the knowledge needed for geography teaching. Informed by existing research about science and mathematics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), the research group developed a conceptual model of the knowledge base for geography teaching, identifying six key components: (a) orientations toward teaching geography, (b) knowledge of geography curricula, (c) knowledge of students’ understanding of geography and responses to geography learning, (d) knowledge of instructional strategies appropriate to learning geography, (e) knowledge of assessment of geography learning, and (f) knowledge of educational contexts. The conceptual model was refined and revised according to the results of case studies of four expert geography teachers. Data analyzed included classroom observations, teacher interviews, geography lesson video-recordings, teachers’ lesson plans and reflections, and student work samples. The resulting preliminary model (GeoKBT) is offered to the geography education community to inform both geography teacher education and further research on geography-related pedagogical knowledge

TAZ Suppresses NFAT5 Activity through Tyrosine Phosphorylation

Transcriptional coactivator with PDZ-binding motif (TAZ) physically interacts with a variety of transcription factors and modulates their activities involved in cell proliferation and mesenchymal stem cell differentiation. TAZ is highly expressed in the kidney, and a deficiency of this protein results in multiple renal cysts and urinary concentration defects; however, the molecular functions of TAZ in renal cells remain largely unknown. In this study, we examined the effects of osmotic stress on TAZ expression and activity in renal cells. We found that hyperosmotic stress selectively increased protein phosphorylation at tyrosine 316 of TAZ and that this was enhanced by c-Abl activation in response to hyperosmotic stress. Interestingly, phosphorylated TAZ physically interacted with nuclear factor of activated T cells 5 (NFAT5), a major osmoregulatory transcription factor, and subsequently suppressed DNA binding and transcriptional activity of NFAT5. Furthermore, TAZ deficiency elicited an increase in NFAT5 activity in vitro and in vivo, which then reverted to basal levels following restoration of wild-type TAZ but not mutant TAZ (Y316F). Collectively, the data suggest that TAZ modulates cellular responses to hyperosmotic stress through fine-tuning of NFAT5 activity via tyrosine phosphorylation.open3