This book explores the growth of ‘character education’ in schools and youth organisations over the last decade. It delves into historical and contemporary debates through a geopolitical lens. With a renewed focus on values and virtues such as grit, gumption, perseverance, resilience, generosity, and neighbourliness, this book charts the re-imagining and re-fashioning of a ‘character agenda’ in England and examines its multiscalar geographies. It explores how these moral geographies of education for children and young people have developed over time. Drawing on original research and examples from schools, military and uniformed youth organisations, and the state-led National Citizen Service, the book critically examines the wider implications of the ‘character agenda’ across the UK and beyond. It does so by raising a series of questions about the interconnections between character, citizenship, and values and highlighting how these moral geographies reach far beyond the classroom or campsite. Offering critical insights on the roles of character, citizenship and values in modern education, this book will be of immense value to educationists, teachers and policymakers. It will appeal students and scholars of human geography, sociology, education studies, cultural studies and history.

South African cities were designed and legislated to enforce spatial marginalisation of Africans, coloureds and Indians to peripheral urban settlements. The legacy of this intentionally constructed racially segregated space has been reinforced in the post-apartheid period by market forces around property prices, informal settlement of land, and the unintended consequences of state housing policy, amongst other factors. Patterns of race-based spatial marginalisation have also been overlaid by income and gender factors, creating hostile conditions for women, and poor women in particular. Whilst there is a rich mine of literature on spatial exclusions due to race, very little study has focused on the gendered spatial experiences of women, and more particularly mothers, in South African cities. Mothers sustain a number of multifaceted roles through, and beyond, the care of and provision for their children. They engage in multiple spheres of work, home, education, community and politics. Straddling these various realms, mothers are increasingly active ‘users’ of a diversity of city spaces. In some cases, the daily routines of mothers are confined within a single neighbourhood, but most often mothers enact their many roles on a day-to-day basis in many different areas of the city. The nature of motherhood (as both a relationship of care and a role constructed in society) and highly unequal urban conditions often impose heavy burdens – financial, temporal and emotional. However, the choices mothers make in the city by traversing diverse spaces in order to fulfil their multiple roles, and the responsibilities and costs this inflicts, is not well understood. This Occasional Paper speaks to this ‘gap’ by exploring the spatial dynamics of mothers in Johannesburg. It investigates how women who self-identify as mothers navigate their own and their families’ daily lives in the city in facing a variety of challenges and obstacles. Methodologically the research involved studying the everyday practices and experiences of 25 mothers in the city, who agreed to in-depth interviews and mapping exercises. The participants were a diverse group in terms of geographic location, income, race, age, and family situation. The women narrated their daily lives and the routes they took through various places and spaces that made up their everyday experiences of the city. They discussed their decision-making around the choice of home, work, school, shopping and recreation and detailed the social and spatial dynamics of their support networks. Exploring these ‘moral geographies’ of motherhood provides valuable insights into a group of people who engage the city extensively in ways that are under-recognised. In turn, understanding the spatial negotiations that typify mothers’ lives exposes the depth of spatial inequality and poor urban management of our city-region in new ways. This Occasional Paper is the result of a partnership between the South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning (SA&CP) and the GCRO, and specifically involved a collaboration between researchers Yasmeen Dinath, Margot Rubin and Alexandra Parker. The insights presented here reflect results from a first phase of research that will be deepened through a larger study in 2018.

This book examines the intersections between children, education and geography. With a particular focus on children’s geographies and geographies of education, the book draws upon cutting-edge research to consider how geographical education can be enhanced through increased engagement with these fields. The book is underpinned by the position that the lives of children and young people are inherently geographical, as are educational institutions, systems and processes. The volume explores the ways in which the diverse relationships between children, education and geography can enrich research and work with, and for, children and young people. Chapters in this book consider how in/justices are (re)produced through education. Chapters also explore how insights generated by thinking in, and across, geography and education can be used to support and empower young people in both formal education and in their everyday lives. Ultimately, this book is written for children and young people. Not as the readership, but as people, often marginalised in decision making at a variety of scales in education, and who, we contend should be at the heart of all educational thinking. The book is of value to undergraduate and post graduate students interested in geography education and children’s geographies, as well as teachers of geography, both new and experienced.

The book examines the power of young people’s social relationships in schools to transform, or more often, to continue, differences that pervade societies: mind-body-emotional diff erences or Special Educational Needs and Disability, gender, poverty, race/ethnicity, sexuality and their intersections. The book details extensive qualitative research with young people, foregrounding their accounts. In challenging educators and others to engage with young people’s own agencies and to make space for their socialities, the concepts of embodied social and emotional capital and young people as contextual bodies/subjectivities/agencies are developed, emphasising both young people’s agencies and how these are socio-spatially situated, constrained and enabled. The book is most concerned with how and when young people challenge and change enduring differences. The concept of ‘immersive geographies’ outlines the potential of change inherent in the repeated coming together of the same people in space, doing similar things that are, however, always provisional and always with the potential to be done diff erently. Examples of when diff erence is transformed are presented. The book marks a major interdisciplinary contribution to geographies and social studies of children, youth and education, child development, social work, social policy and education studies. Furthermore, it is of appeal to anyone interested in young people, social reproduction and sociality: from educators, policy makers, youth workers and social workers to parents.

This book provides a practical illustration of the skills, knowledge and understanding required to teach in the secondary classroom. As well as discussing concepts and ideas, the book gives a critical examination of some of the key issues, and will encourage the reader to engage with the ideas and consider their views and beliefs. It is an invaluable resource for those who are learning to teach or for those teachers who wish to reflect on their teaching practice.

This book is a research guide for implementing contemporary playground strategies to promote active, healthy students. A number of school playground strategies have succeeded in reducing the decline in students’ activity levels by introducing equipment and policies that encourage further engagement. The book outlines these strategies and ideas and offers insights into their multiple levels of influence on engaging students in school playground activities that can promote student health. It also discusses previous investigations into the effect of playground strategies on students’ activities and the differences between structured and unstructured playground activities; investigations that have explored the translatability and feasibility of specific school playground strategies and potential recommendations for future school playground research. It also provides observations on the features students desire in their playgrounds and what features are important in terms of safe activities, enjoyment levels, which in turn offers suggestions for future research directions.

This book introduces an emerging area of research exploring the influence of extreme weather events on school systems. Chapters explore a range of extreme weather events such as snowstorms, bushfires, extreme winds, heavy rainfall and prolonged heat waves, and their potentially widespread impacts. It also covers key challenges faced by schools, including how to protect students, levels of teacher preparation to counter extreme weather conditions and how students' learning is impacted by extreme weather patterns. Drawing on a broad range of research in this field, this book will appeal to environmental and educational researchers, as well as those currently studying or practising in education.

Outdoor recreation refers to recreation/activity executed outdoors, most commonly in natural settings. At least in many high-income countries, outdoor recreation is by many considered as an attractive activity during spare time or holidays. People actively seek out activities such as walking in the mountains, climbing, hunting, horseback riding, skiing, etc., which are very often difficult to accommodate in ordinary working days. Some people find outdoor recreation attractive to the extent that they take several months or a year off from work in order to spend time in nature. Outdoor recreation stimulates a healthy lifestyle and increases public health, and it is important to develop outdoor activity habits from early childhood, a habit that should last for an entire lifetime. This book will take you through the definitions of outdoor recreation and different types of recreation. Furthermore, the book will also give you a snapshot of the physiological and psychological effects of outdoor recreation and why outdoor recreation is important for development in children and adolescents, and for adults and the older population, in addition to descriptions of some of the major and maybe the most used outdoor activities.

Schools are complex institutions. They do not easily reveal themselves to researchers who rely on only one or two methods. Understanding a school, its neighbourhood and its students requires a researcher with a more complex repertoire of verbal, statistical and visual research strategies. Place-Based Methods for Researching Schools shows how multiple methods can be used together to research schools, rather than dealing with decontextualised methods, one by one. Taking a novel theoretical approach to the school as a 'place', the book offers grounded illustrations of schools as places from real case study and ethnographic research conducted in both Australia and the UK. A practical guide, this book explores the on-the-ground questions researchers are likely to face in the order they are likely to face them. The chapters not only look at data generation approaches, but also address analysis of the data and writing about the school, topics that are often ignored. Methods explored for use include those drawn from urban planning and geography to explore neighbourhoods, visual surveys, mapping, classroom observation, ethnographic observation, interviews, focus groups, sociograms and linguistic corpora. Including research tips from the authors, case studies, a glossary and annotated further reading list, this book is essential reading for students and scholars approaching their research project.

There are many books about teaching in Geography, but this is the first dealing specifically with Pedagogic Research, its methods and practices. Pedagogy research concerns the processes of learning and the development of learners. It is a learner-centred activity that aims to evaluate and improve the ways that students learn and learn to manage, control and comprehend their own learning processes, first as Geographers in Higher Education but equally as future educated citizens. This book collects together some key research papers from the Journal of Geography in Higher Education. They concern original research and critical perspectives on how Geographers learn, critical evaluations of both new and traditional frameworks and methods used for Pedagogic research in Geography, and some case studies on the promotion of self-authorship, learner autonomy, in key Geography Higher Education contexts such as fieldwork and undergraduate project work. This book is a compilation of articles from various issues of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education.