How do students learn about distant places? A critical analysis of how students’ perceptions of Ghana change over a unit of work

This thesis draws upon poststructuralist theory, case study methodology, and multiple research methods to explore children’s representations of distant places, particularly African places such as Ghana. It investigates the ways in which a particular group of children’s representations of Ghana can be understood as exemplifying an ‘exoticist’ way of thinking explored by Edward Said in his seminal studies Orientalism (1978) and Culture and Imperialism (1993), and it explores how and to what extent these representations shifted over the course of a unit of geography teaching on Ghana. The research agenda presented here thus focuses (as Said puts it) on the ‘ideas, … forms, … images and imaginings’ of contemporary geographies of otherness, and considers geography education furthermore as a form of ‘struggle over geography’ in which different approaches to distant places come into contact, with some approaches becoming more dominant than others. The findings from this thesis therefore help to illuminate contemporary challenges in geographical education regarding distant places, and African distant places in particular.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Kennedy, Claire Anne

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Taylor, Elizabeth
• Ruthven, Kenneth

• Geography education
• Distant place teaching
• Africanism
• Ghana

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/01cfbb38-21d3-4900-b559-598a5bb6e030/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.17680

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/270725