Elevating Teacher-Faculty Professional Development to Move Secondary Geography Education Forward: A Southeast Texas Case Study

Abstract

High school geography in the U.S. continues to face many challenges. Recent research argues for increased faculty engagement with teachers and students to broaden participation and promote career opportunities. Here, we sought to better understand teachers’ challenges in ninth-grade geography classes in Southeast Texas, including addressing students’ negative perceptions of geography from a baseline survey. To address student perceptions, teacher and student focus groups highlighted challenges and interests. Results suggest that student interests do not align with teachers’ insights. These data can be used to work with teachers to enhance secondary geography education and improve student perceptions.

Keywords:

• Geography
• education
• high school outreach
• teachers
• students

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the high school teachers and students for their time and insights during the course of this project. We would also like to thank GIS M.S. alumna Melissa Moya for her work on Google Earth content and Bri Smith for developing our website with geography teacher resources (https://www.shsu.edu/academics/environmental-and-geosciences/national-geographic/index.html). We also wish to thank the editor, several anonymous reviewers, and Michael Solem for providing helpful comments that greatly improved this mansucript. Finally, we must thank Camy Dawson for helping these projects run smoothly. This human subjects work was approved through SHSU IRB-2020-152 and SHSU IRB-2021-348.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The geography teacher and student focus group work in this project was funded by the National Geographic Society. The student survey work in this project was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation Award # 2022878.

Notes on contributors

Ross J. Guida

Ross Guida is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Geosciences at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, USA. He is a physical and human-environment geographer with a specialization in environmental modeling and flooding.

Velvet Nelson

Velvet Nelson is a professor in the Department of Environmental and Geosciences at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, USA. She is a human geographer with a specialization in the geography of tourism.

John B. Strait

John Strait is a professor in the Department of Environmental and Geosciences at Sam Houston State University. He is a sociocultural geographer with interests in racial and ethnic identities, urban residential dynamics, diaspora studies and the ways they manifest via music, urban street art, and religion.

Ava R. Fujimoto-Strait

Ava Fujimoto-Strait is an instructor in the Department of Environmental and Geosciences. She is a physical geographer with research interests in biogeography, soils, and geography education.

Hailey N. Richardson

Hailey Richardson is a PhD student at the University of Alabama. Her research interests include GIS and geospatial intelligence.

David K. Moss

David Moss is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Geosciences. He is a palaeobiologist with expertise in bivalve sclerochronlogy.