Supporting undergraduate teaching in quantitative geography: making the connections between schools, universities and the workplace

地理学科在定量方法的开创性研究和教学方面有着悠久的传统。它在地理信息系统、地质统计学、空间统计学、空间计量经济学和在科学可视化中使用地理信息等领域拥有高端专业知识。它仍然相信有共同的行为模式，理解这些模式对于欣赏社会至关重要。正是从地理数据中提取知识的能力为循证公共政策（包括犯罪或疾病绘图）以及私营部门战略（例如，由ESRI或Experian等大公司支持的地点决策）提供了信息，然而，它与许多相关学科一样，面临着社会科学研究中量化方法的普遍去技能化、放弃和怀疑。对这些方法的误解和低估是一个恶性循环，会从一代人传给下一代人。我们对这种情况的回应是加强学校、大学和工作场所之间的联系。重要的是学习经验的连续性，让学生和学生在早期就认识到，定量方法既是地理学的重要组成部分，也是有助于未来职业选择的重要可转移技能。（与英国地理学家研究所合作），采取了一项战略，专门帮助定量方法的研究人员和教师让学生参与这些方法，并提供学习、支持和知识交流的同侪网络。它将通过以下方式做到这一点：（1）对教师的经验、对定量方法的熟悉程度和理解、高中和大学低年级课程对教师的重视程度、学习障碍是什么以及如何克服这些障碍进行范围研究。(2)为定量方法的教师（在大学和学校）制作一系列网络案例研究和插图，展示定量方法在地理研究和地理学生可能进入的各种工作中的重要性。(3)对可用资源进行编目，以支持教师的定量方法，特别是在高等教育中，并提供一个简单的网站作为这些资源的入口点。(4)发展一个同行网络，以支持教师和地理定量方法的教学，在RGS-IBG年度会议上举行面对面会议和特别会议。虽然该项目将对地理学科产生明显的好处，但其影响将更加广泛。这是因为在英国超过20，000名全日制本科生中，近三分之一的学生会继续学习广泛的科目，而不仅仅局限于地理，因为地理专业的学生会进入广泛的工作岗位，包括零售，商业，金融，政府和公共服务，保护和环境，IT，健康，媒体，教学和研究。它有机会为关于地理课程的讨论提供信息，说明正在研究什么以及可以做些什么来支持从A级开始的定量方法教学。它有机会指导地理学和相关社会科学QAA基准声明的未来更新，强调定量方法的重要性，如描述性，推理性和关系统计，数值建模，遥感，地理计算和地理空间分析明确。因为他们知道这样做将更广泛地传播到社会科学和工业部门。

The discipline of geography has a long tradition of pioneering research and teaching in quantitative methodologies. It has high-end expertise in areas such as GIS, geostatistics, spatial statistics, spatial econometrics and the use of geoinformation in scientific visualizations. It retains the belief that there are common patterns of behaviour, the understanding of which is critical to appreciating society. It is the ability to extract knowledge from geographical data that feeds into evidence-based public policy (including crime or disease mapping) and also to private sector strategies (e.g. locational decision-making supported by large firms such as ESRI or Experian).Nevertheless it, like many allied subjects, has faced a general deskilling in, abandonment of and suspicion towards quantitative methods in social scientific research. Misunderstanding and under-appreciation of these methods is a vicious circle that gets transmitted from one generation of learners to the next.Our response to this situation is to strengthen the connections between schools, universities and workplaces. What is important is continuity in the learning experience, and for pupils and students to appreciate at an early stage that quantitative methods are both an essential part of what it means to do geography and a vital transferable skill that will assist in future career choices.To that end this research, with the backing of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), adopts a strategy targeted specifically at assisting researchers and teachers of quantitative methods to engage pupils and students with those methods, and to offer peer networks of learning, support and of knowledge exchange. It will do so by:(1) Undertaking a scoping study of teachers' experience, familiarity and understanding of quantitative methods, of the importance given to them in upper secondary school and early years undergraduate curricula, what the barriers to learning are, and what might be done to overcome them.(2) Producing a range of web-enabled case studies and vignettes for teachers of quantitative methods (at University and in schools) demonstrating the importance of quantitative methods in geographical research and in the sorts of jobs geography students might go into.(3) Cataloguing the resources available to support teachers of quantitative methods, especially within higher education, and to provide a simple website as a point-of-entry to those resources.(4) Developing a peer network to support the teachers and teaching of quantitative methods in geography, meeting face-to-face and with special sessions at the RGS-IBG annual conference.Whilst the project will have obvious benefits to the discipline of geography, its impact will be more widely felt. That is because almost one third of the more than 20 000 full-time undergraduate students in the UK go on to further study in a wide range of subjects not solely limited to geography, and because geography students go into a wide range of jobs including retail, business, finance, government and public service, conservation and environment, IT, health, media, teaching and research.The project is timely: it has the opportunity to inform discussions about the geography curriculum with information on what is being studied and what could be done to support quantitative methods teaching beginning at A-level. It has the opportunity to direct future updating of the QAA benchmark statements for geography and related social sciences, emphasising the importance of quantitative methodologies such as descriptive, inferential and relational statistics, numerical modelling, remote sensing, geocomputation and geospatial analysis explicitly.In summary, the projects aims to support change in the quality of quantitative methods teaching within geography, knowing that to do so will diffuse into the social sciences and into industrial sectors more widely.