Life without Fieldwork: Some Lecturers' Perceptions of Geography and Environmental Science Fieldwork

Abstract

Internationally, fieldwork is seen as intrinsic to geographical education. Fieldwork is here defined as any study of the environment that takes place outside the classroom. This paper extends a previous study of student perceptions of the impacts on their learning of a cancellation of fieldwork caused by an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the UK countryside (Fuller et al., 2003). This paper examines the same issue from the viewpoint of the students' lecturers, who were interviewed to discover their perceptions of the value of fieldwork as a pedagogic device. Textual analyses of transcripts suggest that the lecturers' main objectives for fieldwork are to put theory into context and to teach students subject-specific skills. The development of transferable skills is a secondary benefit. Fieldwork, while considered a vital teaching and learning tool, is not central to geography and environmental science education, which emphasizes the understanding and contextualization of subject theory, but more needs to be done to integrate fieldwork into pedagogic strategies.

Keywords:

• Fieldwork
• lecturer perception
• qualitative analysis

Acknowledgements

This research forms part of a wider programme of work on enhancing fieldwork quality through pedagogic research, which has been funded and assisted by the UK's Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (LTSN-GEES). The authors would like to thank the lecturers who were willing to participate in the telephone interviews. Particular thanks go to Professor Brian Chalkley and Professor Mick Healey for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.