Geographical and environmental education – reflections on the inclusion of two fields in one journal

The question of why the flagship journal of the International Geographical Union Commission on Geographical Education (hereafter referred to as the Commission) has both geographical education and environmental education in its title has been at the back of many readers’ minds over the last three decades. The more active members of the Commission have had the opportunity to raise and discuss this with the previous and current editors at symposia or conferences of the Commission. However, there are still several readers who have not had this opportunity and the editors feel that it is perhaps important to have the reasoning described in an article within the journal so that we can refer to it in future as the discourses on geographical and environmental education will continue to evolve given the unprecedented changes in both our human and natural environment.

When the inaugural editors of IRGEE, Rob Gerber and John Lidstone, started the journal in 1992, there weren’t any other journals dedicated to environmental and geographical education. Entitled International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education (IRGEE), it was designed to be the repository and access periodical for research in geography and environmental education.

Joe Stoltman recounted in the Commission’s history (IGU-CGE, 2016) that environmental education was included in the title to incorporate the “persuasive voice” of the commission’s business meeting in 1988. The environmental education movement in the 1980s in many countries was one key reason for this decision by the Commission. While environmental education drew on some of the knowledge and skills from geography education, its objectives were much broader. The Commission argued that geography education could contribute to environmental education as a curriculum focus, “but geography education should not relinquish it responsibility for research and curriculum development as a discipline”. To this end, the Commission started a project to develop a document that could guide the work of geographical education worldwide. Consequently, the commission launched the International Charter on Geographical Education in 1992 as a manifesto of what geography could achieve in education and how it could be achieved. The charter was written with geography as its disciplinary context but with direct reference to the UN and UNESCO documents concerned with international understanding and environmental education. These developments also shaped the expectations of both authors and readers of IRGEE as the proportion of geographical and environmental education papers was roughly similar throughout the last 30 years. Indeed, in the analysis by Kidman & Papadimitriou (2012) and later by Chang & Kidman (2018), it was found that the proportion of geographical education and environmental education remained almost the same at half-half. This is by no means due to chance, as the substantive content of geography and environmental education are similar.

Geography as a discipline is concerned with the relationship between humans and their environment, as well as the spatiality of this relationship across scale and time. Geographical education utilizes a wide range of methods and techniques to examine the natural environment, human impacts on the environment, environmental influences on human behaviour, and cultural perceptions of the environment across different scales (local, regional, and global) (McKeown-Ice, 1994).

Environmental education focuses more explicitly on understanding the environment and fostering attitudes and behaviours that contribute to environmental conservation, management and sustainability. It is usually associated with education for sustainable development, which refers to UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals (Lee, 2021). While environmental education is concerned with the knowledge, skills, and dispositional learning outcomes of environmental concerns; geography education provides both teachers and learners with a front-row perspective from which the discussion of issues in environmental education can take place.

In terms of the themes and coverage in curricula, geography education often incorporates environmental concerns in its curriculum, including topics such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and natural resource depletion within the context of spatial patterns and human-environment interactions. “Geography is much more than learning many facts and concepts. Its focus is on the patterns and processes that help us to understand an ever-changing planet” (International Geographical Union – Commission on Geographical Education, 2016, p. 11). Environmental education usually includes discussion on environmental stewardship, conservation practices, and sustainability issues, with developing a sense of responsibility towards the environment as a key outcome (Lee, 2021). In addition, environmental education integrates concepts from various disciplines to address sustainability and environmental issues. The educational challenge in teaching and learning from this interdisciplinary approach lies in effectively combining these perspectives within educational settings to promote holistic understanding and problem-solving skills (Chang & Kidman, 2018). Thus, we consider geography education and environmental education as closely related.

Regardless of its original intention, the happy marriage of geographical and environmental education in IRGEE has become a hallmark and offers a unique value proposition to the field. In addition, there is an increasing trend where sustainability discourses have extended beyond environmental sustainability to cultural, social, economic, and political sustainability issues, which are well discussed in geographical education. Serendipitously or by design, IRGEE thus serves the current needs in sustainability education by extending the discussions beyond traditional environmental education to discussions around the human condition.

In this issue of IRGEE, the articles present challenges in fostering spatial thinking, environmental awareness, and sustainability. Mette Mechlenborg and Maja de Neergaard’s work introduces Lefebvre’s Spatial Triad as a teaching model to enhance spatial thinking in children within classroom settings through empirical evidence collected from students in two Danish schools. This is complemented by Eva Feldbacher and her team’s investigation into Austrian school students’ knowledge and awareness of climate change on different levels of complexity, suggesting a need for curricular reform to address these deficiencies. The potential of blended learning and geo-inquiry methods in conducting fieldwork during the COVID-19 pandemic is examined by Dwi Angga Oktavianto et al., discussing the challenges and opportunities posed by remote learning. In particular, the study found that cultural and religious factors influenced the perceptions of students and group preferences in the study. Further, Nurbanu Sapanova and colleagues delve into Kazakhstani high school students’ environmental knowledge and attitudes, offering insights into students’ perceptions and the effectiveness of current educational strategies. Lastly, Elizabeth Rushton and her team advocate for the use of intergenerational dialogue as a method to encourage adults and youths to the thinking of others to support education for environmental sustainability. The collection of articles also highlights the essence of the discussion in this editorial. These articles outline the importance of adaptive educational strategies in preparing students to engage in the complex issues of environmental change and sustainability. In closing, the editors would like to reiterate the aims of the journal and continue to encourage authors to submit articles in both the fields of geographical and environmental education, or those that encompass both fields.

Chew-Hung Chang
National Institute of Education,Nanyang technological University, Singapore[email protected]
Gillian Kidman Monash University, Australia

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).