Instruction in Spatial Demography

Abstract

In December 2011 a specialist meeting on Future Directions of Spatial Demography brought together specialists from multiple disciplines to discuss the state of the science in spatial demography, emergent geospatial data and measurement issues, and spatial statistical methods (for further details on this specialist meeting see Matthews SA, Janelle DG, Goodchild MF, Future directions in spatial demography specialist meeting: final report, 2012). It is not the intent to review and update the discussions that took place at this meeting but rather to focus on arguably the most important cross-cutting theme that emerged from the meeting: instruction in spatial demography. In this chapter I will begin by discussing spatial perspectives in demographic research; this is both a selective review and as an introduction to emergent trends in geospatial data and methods. This opening section illustrates a major challenge associated with instruction in spatial demography, namely the breadth of topics that legitimately fall under an umbrella of spatial demography. Next I describe available instructional resources (courses, textbooks, software and other resources), few of which focus on demographic research, and then transition to a discussion of potential new directions and strategies (action items) in instruction in spatial demography.