Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T05:12:03.049Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Adolescent Students' Conceptions of Different Environments Through Photographs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

Rod Gerber  and
Tammy Kwan
Rod Gerber
Affiliation:
University of New England, Armidale
Tammy Kwan
Affiliation:
The University of Hong Kong
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Photographs of familiar and unfamiliar environments are used extensively in studies about areas around the world. The study reported here describes a pilot investigation of how 27 Australian secondary school adolescent students understood and interpreted a familiar environment (represented by Australia) and unfamiliar environments (represented by Singapore and Hong Kong) through 18 coloured photographs. Few of these adolescent students had visited Singapore or Hong Kong, but most of them have travelled in their home country, Australia. They have viewed more of the Australian environment than the Asian environments through media such as television.

The results from this pilot study revealed considerable variation in their understanding of Australian as opposed to Asian environments. The familiar Australian environments were described in physical and human terms whereas the less familiar Asian environments were described in human and cultural terms. Qualitatively different conceptions were also derived from the adolescent students' interpretation of land use and environment from these photographs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 17 , 2001 , pp. 9 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

References

Barnes, T.J. and Duncan, J.S. (eds) 1992, Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape, Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Burgess, J. 1990, ‘The production and consumption of environmental meaning in the mass media: A research agenda for the 1990s’, Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 139–161.Google Scholar
Dahlgren, L. and Fallsberg, M. 1991, ‘Phenomenography as a qualitative approach in social pharmacy research’, Journal of Social and Administrative Pharmacy, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 150–155.Google Scholar
Eisenstadt, N. and Braun, D. 1985, What is a Family? Photographs and Activities about Families in Britain, Development Education Centre.Google Scholar
Gerber, R. 1989, ‘Teaching graphics in geography lessons . in Fien, J., Gerber, R. and Wilson, P. eds, The Geography Teachers' Guide to the Classroom, Macmillan, Melbourne, pp. 179–195.Google Scholar
Gerber, R. and Kwan, T. 1994, ‘A phenomenographic approach to study of pre-adolescent students' uses of maps in a wayfinding exercise in a suburban environment’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol. 14, pp. 265–280.Google Scholar
Golledge, R. 1992, ‘Place recognition and wayfinding making sense of space’, Geoforum, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 199–214.Google Scholar
Harrison, M.E. 1995, ‘Images of the third world: Teaching a geography of the third world’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 285–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hermann, D. and Chaffin, R. (eds) 1988, Memory in Historical Perspective: The Literature before Ebbinghaus, Springer-Verlag, New York.Google Scholar
Johansson, B., Marton, F. and Svensson, L. 1985, ‘An approach to describing learning as change between qualitatively different conceptions’, in Pines, A. and West, L. eds, Cognitive Structure and Conceptual Change, Academic Press., New York.Google Scholar
Kwan, T. 1996, ‘Understanding children's intuitive experience and their familiar environments in the teaching of maps’, in Gerber, R. and Lidstone, J. eds, Direction and Development in Geographical Education, Cambridge University Press, pp. 197–224.Google Scholar
Marton, F. 1986, ‘Phenomenography – A research approach to investigating different understandings of reality’, Journal of Thought, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 28–49.Google Scholar
Matthews, M.H. 1992, Making Sense of Place: Children's Understanding of Large-scale Environments, Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead.Google Scholar
Miller, W.L. and Crabtree, B.F. 1994, Clinical Research. In Denzin, N.K. and Lincoln, Y.S. (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research, pp. 340–352, Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Robertson, M. 1994, Adolescent Students' Experience of Place: A Study of Thinking in Context, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of Tasmania.Google Scholar
Said, E.W. 1993, Culture and Imperialism, Chatto and Windus, London.Google Scholar
Stokols, D. and Shumaker, S. 1981, ‘People in places: A transactional view of setting’, in Harvey, J. ed, Cognition, Social Behaviour and Environment, Erlbaum, Hillside, N.J., pp. 441–488.Google Scholar
Walford, R. and Haggett, P. 1995, ‘Geography and geographical education’, Geography, vol. 80, no. 1, pp. 3–13.Google Scholar