THE PURPOSE, PRACTICE OF FIELDWORK IN GEOGRAPHY (EDUCATION PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
Chapter One
- Introduction and Background
Change has been present throughout the long development of geography; there have been a number of different phases or trends in the discipline. Throughout all these changes over the centuries, however, few things have remained constant. One is the fact that the subject matter has not really changed, since inception it has been concerned with the earth as the home of mankind. Secondly, geography has always been a discipline of observation. Observation is simply the most basic way of understanding the fundamental components of geography. Observation has formally been incorporated into geography through fieldwork.
Geographers regard fieldwork as a vital instrument for understanding our world through direct experience as well as fundamental method for enacting geographic education (Rodney and Goh 1998 in Foskett,1999).Geographic education is aimed at understanding the dimension of the use and alteration of the environment by man. And as such man – environment relationship is dynamic not static. Hence fieldwork in geographic education is to enhance the continuous comprehension of the changes in our environment to enhance practical understanding and permanent learning processes of geographical changes.
Fieldwork has a long history and tradition in geography. Just as science requires laboratory experimentation and making sense of the world, geography as the study of understanding human environments demand field enquiries. For most geographers, the importance and significance of fieldwork needs no reinforcement as it is a key component of their own personal biographies in the subject. (Mc Partland 1996, Foskett, 1999), the acquisition of real geographical knowledge takes place in the field as a result of interaction of physical, mental and emotional experiences.
Internationally, though the position of fieldwork in the geography curriculum is highly variable. Though there has been pressures of safety legislation and financial constraint on its development in Britain yet fieldwork still survives in most British Secondary Schools and the number of field study centres increase rapidly (Ginuwade & Thomas 1996; Foskett, 1999). Also, in Australia & New Zealand, its importance in the curriculum has been sustained until the development of integrated social science and humanities programme made its role less secure (Lidstone, 1988, Foskett 1999). In the USA, geography fieldwork has largely been ignored in curriculum development and in many states in Europe its role has been marginal.
