Teaching GIS and other geospatial technologies to in-service teachers

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, geospatial technologies (GSTs) have been reported as effective and useful instructional tools in K-12 education to improve students' learning and enhance their critical thinking, spatial thinking, and problem solving skills. However, the number of teachers who are implementing those technologies in their classrooms is still pretty low. Among various identified barriers, the major ones are teachers' lack of background and lack of time to learn, practice, and develop lesson plans using GSTs. In order to solve these barriers, many researchers and professionals in different countries have been providing various kinds of training for in-service teachers. In this chapter, six models of in-service teacher training of GSTs-project-based learning, community partnership, iterative training, minimal Geographic Information System, snowball dispersion, and online training-are introduced and reviewed with exemplary case studies conducted in several countries. The future direction of the effective and useful in-service teacher training is also discussed.