'Producing global citizenship through geography education': New Zealand geographical imaginations

Abstract

This research explores the ways in which the New Zealand National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) secondary school geography prepares students to function in a ‘global’ world through the provision of knowledge and skills that enable students to become ‘global citizens’. Geography is the study of the world. As globalisation continues to influence the formation of the geography discipline, and there is a need to question curriculum knowledge, investigating the influence of globalisation on the school geography subject in terms of change in content and objectives is significant. Thus, this research investigates the conceptions of globalisation within the geography discipline, school geography curriculum documents and teaching community in New Zealand. Geographical imaginations and spatial discourses that underpin conceptions of globalisation in the geography discipline, subject and pedagogy are examined. This is done through content, textual, discourse and thematic analysis of New Zealand academic geography articles, school geography curriculum documents and interviews conducted with five geography teachers in Auckland secondary schools. The research findings illustrate how there is a lag between the geography discipline and subject in New Zealand and that they are both characterised by various geographical imaginations and spatial discourses. However, as the identity of geography as a world discipline changes, there are important implications for school geography in New Zealand. The school geography curriculum has to be designed with inputs from the academic geographers and school teachers to re-connect the discipline with the subject. The knowledge included in the geography curriculum should elicit students’ geographical awareness of their place in the world through developing a sense of place and academic understanding of globalisation. Geography teachers’ education programs should raise their awareness of the significance of their own geographical imaginations in determining the way they represent the world to students. It is important for geography teachers to imagine their students’ place as an opportunity to be expanded. This would allow students to move beyond their necessarily limited experiences of places to consider new perspectives and conceptions about their local and global worlds. Keywords: geography education, global citizenship, geographical imaginations, spatial discourses, academic discipline, school subject, teaching, knowledge