Renewing the purpose of geography education: Eco‐anxiety, powerful knowledge, and pathways for transformation

Abstract

Concerns about the decline in uptake of secondary geography education continue despite arguments supporting the value of geography education, the power of geographical thinking, and geography’s critical role in preparing students to deal with complex challenges. Already constrained by neoliberal politics of disadvantage, young people must plan and prepare for chaotic futures. Consequently, young people are becoming distressed and worried about their futures and feeling powerless as society fails to adequately address these issues. In this article, we ask what schools and universities can do as place‐based public institutions to serve young people to effectively respond to eco‐anxiety and build capacities to surf the unrelenting waves of change. We draw on journeys that brought three young doctoral candidates to study geography. From their stories, we sketch what a geographical education could offer in terms of relevance, practicality, and engagement with transformative system change. We think that under current world conditions, this is a moment to revive geography education and give it renewed purpose to encourage young people to develop skills and competences to tackle wicked problems.

Responsibilities of geographers: Are we role models or hypocrites?

“…Head (2016, p. 170), for example, has encouraged us to find and build community in flexible ways, so we can "maximise the conditions under which diverse life can flourish." Examples also include decolonising through diversity (Lobo, 2021;Williams et al, 2021), teaching about more-than-human communities and communitybased approaches to environmental management (Davidson et al, 2023), and increasing bush fire preparedness by raising neighbourhood communication and awareness (Lucas et al, 2022). Surely we have some responsibility to act on such knowledge as those calling for diverse communities.…”

“…Gillespie (2020) and Verlie (2022) have written beautiful accounts of how to navigate our changing climate using honest and regenerative storytelling that empowers us to face ongoing transformations of our world. Meanwhile Davidson et al (2023) have grounded similar concerns with a passion to rearticulate key concepts in geography for a new generation of school students by drawing on examples from three members of a new generation of university geographers. Pulling together strands from these various works, I focus on the future of geography and geographers to discuss our responsibilities outside of research from sustainable practices to diverse community building.…”

Emergent landscapes of research publishing

“…That paper is followed by an article by Davidson et al (2023) that sets an important agenda for geography education. The authors invite readers to consider how young people might be more effectively served by those of us working in schools and universities as we respond to their expressions of eco-anxiety in the face of unrelenting change.…”