1. Geography has evolved from a descriptive field study in the early 1900s to a more scientific discipline that uses quantitative techniques to study processes rather than just describe phenomena.
2. By the 1960s, geography was composed of four traditions: spatial studies, area studies, human-environment interaction, and earth science studies.
3. Geography became established in universities in the late 19th century in order to train teachers and advance the field academically. This helped geography gain recognition and establish itself in school curriculums.
1. Geography has evolved from a descriptive field study in the early 1900s to a more scientific discipline that uses quantitative techniques to study processes rather than just describe phenomena.
2. By the 1960s, geography was composed of four traditions: spatial studies, area studies, human-environment interaction, and earth science studies.
3. Geography became established in universities in the late 19th century in order to train teachers and advance the field academically. This helped geography gain recognition and establish itself in school curriculums.
1. Geography has evolved from a descriptive field study in the early 1900s to a more scientific discipline that uses quantitative techniques to study processes rather than just describe phenomena.
2. By the 1960s, geography was composed of four traditions: spatial studies, area studies, human-environment interaction, and earth science studies.
3. Geography became established in universities in the late 19th century in order to train teachers and advance the field academically. This helped geography gain recognition and establish itself in school curriculums.
ASSIGNMENT ONE DEPARTMENT: EDUCATION AND COUNSELLING TREMISTER: 1 ST 2014/2015 PROGRAM: SCHOOL BASED COURSE TITLE: GEOG 101 INTRODUCTIONS TO GEOGRAPHY GROUP: GROUP 4 STUDENTS NAMES: 1. MASITSA CATHERINE .T. EDU-1-3670-3/2013 2. GITONGA NGUNYI PURITY EDU-3679-3/2013 3. SIAMPALA JOSEPH LETVYA EDU-1-2619-2/2013 4. MUTUA ANGELA MUTUA EDU-1-3684-3/2013 LECTURER: DR PAULINE MWANGI TASK: DISCUSS THE EVOLUTION OF GEOGRAPHY FROM 1900 UP TO DATE
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Geography refers to study of the earth as the home of man and its spatial discipline that seems to understand patterns on the earth and processes that created them. During the first 50 years of the 1900s, many academics in the field of geography extended the various ideas presented in the previous century to studies of small regions all over the world. Most of these studies used descriptive field methods to test research questions. Starting in about 1950, geographic research experienced a shift in methodology. Geographers began adopting a more scientific approach that relied on quantitative techniques. The quantitative revolution was also associated with a change in the way in which geographers studied the Earth and its phenomena. Researchers now began investigating process rather than mere description of the event of interest. Today, the quantitative approach is becoming even more prevalent due to advances in computer and software technologies. In 1964, William Pattison published an article in the J ournal of Geography (1964, 63: 211-216) that suggested that modern Geography was now composed of the following four academic traditions: Spatial Tradition - the investigation of the phenomena of geography from a strictly spatial perspective. Area Studies Tradition - the geographical study of an area on the Earth at either the local, regional, or global scale. Human-Land Tradition - the geographical study of human interactions with the environment. Earth Science Tradition - the study of natural phenomena from a spatial perspective. This tradition is best described as theoretical physical geography. Geographys original characteristics were formulated by a small number of 19th-century French and German scholars, who strongly influenced subsequent developments in the United Kingdom and the United States. Since 1945, while retaining its focus on people, places, and environments, the discipline has expanded and changed considerably. Geography is one of the few academic disciplines, particularly in Europe, to have been established in universities as a result of pressure to produce people who could teach it in schools. As the demand for geographical information increased, more people required a foundation of INTRODUCTION TO GEOGRAPHY 3
geographical knowledge (Physicalgeography.Net, 2013). There was also growing recognition of the role geography could play in creating national identities, making people aware of their particular situations through contrasts with environments and peoples elsewhere. Geographical knowledge was important to citizenship, especially if it showed the superiority of ones own people and environment. Geographys links with mercantilism, imperialism, and citizenship were the basis of claims for geographical instruction in schools. For example, geographical societies lobbied successfully for their subjects inclusion in the curricula associated with universal school education, especially in northwestern Europe. Specialist bodies, such as the Geographical Association in the United Kingdom, continued to promote the disciplines educational role. Sustaining the teaching of geography in schools required programs to train teachers and institutions where geographical knowledge could be codified and its scholarship advanced. Geography needed a presence in universities to give it academic credibility, and societies petitioned to secure it there. Some of this lobbying was successful by the end of the 19th centurythe height of European imperialism. In Prussia, for example, a royal decree in 1875 established professorships of geography in 10 universities (Physicalgeography.Net, 2013). In The Netherlands, the Royal Dutch Geographical Society was founded in 1873, largely to sponsor major expeditions to the Dutch East Indies. The societys first endowed chair, at a private university in Amsterdam, was specifically in colonial geography. In Russia, St. Petersburgs Imperial Russian Geographical Society promoted the discipline in a variety of ways, establishing it early at Moscow State University. The Italian Geographical Society was founded in 1867, following the creation of the first university professorships in 1859; it too promoted exploratory geography and the teaching of geography in schools. In the United Kingdom in the late 1880s, after such courses had been discontinued at the University of London, the Royal Geographical Society convinced Cambridge and Oxford to provide instruction in geography, with the society funding instruction for several decades (though degree courses were not introduced until the 1920s and 30s). As more British universities were founded, they too were pressed to provide instruction in geography. At some, private donations secured the appointment of lecturers. At others, a need for geography instruction was recognized in cognate disciplines, such as economics, geology, and history, although few of those appointed to do the teaching had any formal training in the discipline. This was also the case with the first professors of geography, appointed in the early 1930s at Cambridge and OxfordFrank Debenham and Kenneth Mason, respectively. Many of the first geography teachers were located in INTRODUCTION TO GEOGRAPHY 4
departments of disciplines that introduced geography teaching, but as the demand for courses grewmainly from students who intended to teach the subject in schoolsseparate geography departments and degree programs were soon established. By 1945 there was a geography department in nearly every British university and in many of the universities and university colleges throughout the British Empire. It is thus not surprising that these accounts, which reflected the widening geographical horizon, continued to form the essential part of the histories of geography down to the beginnings of the 20th century; histories which some authors now considered part of the history of science, and particularly useful in the study of the discipline because, as Vivien de Saint Martin wrote: "simply by following science as it passes through its successive stages one can see the place it occupies in the general development of humanity". In the second half of the 19th century, coinciding with the spectacular growth of the scientific community of geographers, the history of geography turned its attention to new topics. The resonance of the Historical Essay conceming the Progressive Development of the Idea of the Universe, which was published in Alexander de Humboldt's Cosmos (1845-1862), and the development of physical geography, brought to these histories the evolution of ideas about the physical structure of the world and about the interrelationship between different natural phenomena. At the same time as developing a growing interest in human concerns which was to lead to the creation of a systematic human geography attention was also directed towards the history of the techniques and procedures used to establish the wealth and population of countries. At the same time, the development of a new regional geography in the second half of the 19th century implied the search for antecedents in order to delimit the chorographic units. In this respect, certain 18th century geographical contributions, such as those of Buache or the geographers of the Reine Geographie, could now be highlighted. Meanwhile, the issues of the theoretical foundations of the discipline in relation to other scientific fields led to a study of figures in the past, such as Varenius, who had reflected on the contents and methods of this science. From the end of the 19th century, every important theoretical change in the science of geography, and every debate concerning its foundations and methods, has been accompanied by incursions into the history of the discipline with a view to using arguments from the past to support one or other of the contesting conceptions. Important theoretical works, like those of Alfred Hettner or Richard INTRODUCTION TO GEOGRAPHY 5
Hartshorne, also contain a historical dimension which seeks to illuminate current thinking "in the light of the past". Our discipline had a difficult struggle towards the end of the 19th century in order to achieve recognition in the universities; moreover, because of its situation at the crossroads between the natural sciences and the social sciences, it has not only had serious problems with its foundations, it has also had numerous critics and competitors. This underlies its felt need for a justification of the discipline and the affirmation of its dignity and independence from the other natural and social sciences. Introductions to university handbooks as well as longer and shorter compendia have approached this task, and frequently there has also been a debate concerning its relations with the sciences that are adjacent or auxiliary to geography. In general, as in other disciplines, one has attempted to show the route that has led to modern, truly scientific geography. However, as one might expect in a subject with ancient roots, a powerful institutional development, and also a long tradition of historical studies, the histories of geography that have been written throughout the present century are richer and more varied. While it is true that a large number are written out of concern for current issues, there has also been, in past epochs, an important school of histories of geography that were directly linked to the history of science and the history of culture: specific research as well as general works on the geography of the ancient world, of the Middle Ages, of modern times, and of 19th and 20th centuries. Interest in the biographies and the individual contributions of the most illustrious geographers has more recently given way to the ambitious attempt to produce a complete biographical inventory of every geographer who has contributed to the science, and to a concern to collect the testimony of those still alive concerning their training and their ways of working. Emphasis on the origins and evolution of geographical ideas, as well as on their intellectual and social context, appears again -and with increasing intensity in certain works that have responded to the call that J K Wright made in 1926, and they continue, more or less explicitly, the line lay down in the works of Lovejoy. Anthologies of geographical texts have put at the disposal of students selected fragments from the most important geographers, in some cases alongside evidence of the geographical knowledge of other historical authors (poets, philosophers, theologians, travelers, etc.). The changes that have taken place since 1950 have caused a fissure in the unity, which the discipline had maintained since the beginning of the century, based on the acceptance by the whole scientific community of the regional paradigm and the historicist approach. These changes led to new generations of historical works, some of which have sought to recount the vicissitudes and the protagonists of the transformations that have taken place. INTRODUCTION TO GEOGRAPHY 6
All of this meant, first, greater attention on the present; second, a search for appropriate antecedents for each revolutionary change; and finally, a greater attention to geography's relations with the general evolution of the natural and social sciences, as well as with the general evolution of ideas and of philosophical frames of reference. It has also reinforced the tendency towards a shortened chronology of the history of the subject, one that restricts itself to contemporary geography, that is to say developments subsequent to the contributions of Humboldt and Ritter, who are solemnly considered by all sides as the fathers of present-day geography. The attempts that have recently been made to present in a global form the discipline's historical development since antiquity faithfully reflect, as always happens, the authors' standpoint vis-a-vis the changes that have been taking place. By way of an example, we only need to cite the case of Preston James's work published in 1972. The different chronology of the changes in different countries becomes evident if we compare this work with that of the German Hanno Beck published the following year. While in the latter the quantitative revolution is totally absent, in the work of James -some 20 years older than the German- we see reflected both his acceptance of the regional paradigm and also his sensitivity to the changes that had been taking place in the discipline in its Anglo-American context. James insists that geography deals with the differences in the earth's surface (geodiversity) and investigates "what things are combined in different places to produce the complex characteristics of the world's landscape"; this shows that James is set in the same line as Hartshorne, that is to say in the conception of a geography of regions and landscapes. However, at the same time, the allusions to the mental images, to the importance of relative location, and the statement that "scientists have formulated many different kinds of explanations to make the mental images plausible and acceptable, and their explanations, in turn, often determined what features they choose to observe", all of which demonstrates that the work was written after the debates of the 1 950's and 1 960's. One sentence in particular reflects his awareness of, and his reservations about, quantitative geography: According to him, scientists sought and found mathematical regularities separate from the processes of change that nevertheless satisfied the urge to explain the images of geodiversity. In this we see how he unconsciously reflected his disqualification of those mathematical discoveries which, faced with the urgency to find provisional solutions, provide only momentary satisfaction. In other words, we see in him all the dissatisfaction of a traditional - though sensitive and open geographer with one of the fundamental aspects of the quantitative revolution. Thence arises an excellent history, conceived INTRODUCTION TO GEOGRAPHY 7
in a particular place and time (USA, 1970), with a wide perspective, and with great attention to the most recent developments (in the 1 960's), though at the same time without renouncing his own viewpoints. With all this evolution, the history of geography is today an extraordinarily rich and diverse field, with a long tradition of research carried out within the discipline. Ever since the first International Geographical Congress in Amberes in 1871, practically all meetings have devoted attention to these topics, usually in specific sections dedicated to "The History of Geography and Historical Geography". More recently (since 1968), within the International Geographical Union a commission devoted to "The History of Geographical Thought" has been formed; this has stimulated new research, and there have been discussions on reports of the most varied types: journeys, the history of ideas, philosophical frames of reference, biographies of scientists, history of the language and methods of geography, institutions, etc (B.Edu, 2013). As one might expect, in all these works there is a mixture: of those who approach history from concerns that arise in current scientific or professional practice, and those whose interest is in history itself; those who use traditional historical techniques, and those in search of new ways, using philological, bibliometric or iconographic techniques; those who aim to set their research in the most general area of the history of science, alongside those who still see their research as serving to legitimize and dignify the discipline.
Currently geographers make use of various tools to teach and learn Geography. For instance, they make good use of maps, geographical information system, photographs, and real objects. For instance, the Kenya national examination council uses photographs to test students on various Geographical objects. There are also various Geography labs which are used to store useful tools for teaching and carrying out research in Geography. In conclusion, the evolution of Geography has resulted in various developments. For instance, it is included in most countries school curriculum.
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References Physicalgeography.Net (2013). Introduction to Geography. Retrieved from: http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/1a.html [Accessed: 19 Dec 2013]. B.Edu (2013). The history of science and the history of the scientific disciplines. Retrieved from: http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/geo84.htm [Accessed: 19 Dec 2013]. William, P. (1964). Modern Geography. J ournal of Geography (63: 211-216)