Teaching Economic Geography in Two Contrasting Asian Contexts: Decentering Anglo-American Economic Geography in China and Singapore

Abstract

Teaching economic geography outside Anglo-American countries presents a particular pedagogical challenge, as theories and concepts developed in these countries might not be directly applicable outside their intellectual and national contexts. In this paper, the authors show how the peculiar institutional and development environments in China and Singapore have shaped the ways in which the economic geography curriculum is developed and taught in institutions of higher education. They also examine how students respond to the intellectual challenges presented to them. In their view, successful pedagogy in teaching economic geography requires a significant degree of localization of the curriculum.

Keywords:

• Anglo-American economic geography
• China
• Singapore
• institutional contexts
• localization

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the panellists and participants in the ‘Teaching Economic Geography’ sessions at the Denver meeting of the Association of American Geographers in April 2005, and Elsbeth Robson and the JGHE reviewers for their helpful comments on a previous version of this paper. They would like to acknowledge the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China (IGSNRR Director Grant W202) for funding their research collaboration that has culminated in this paper. All errors and mistakes are, however, the authors' own responsibility.