Learning as a Geographical Process

     The topic of how we as humans learn is increasingly prevalent in our world today. As the field expands, theorists find themselves asking—is learning as a geographical process the correct way to think about learning?

     There are many reasons to ask such a question, one being that the field of human geography is so diverse and divided by so many sub disciplines that there is a lack of communication. Categories can range from cultural geography to GIS, and anything and everything in-between. The question at hand unites all disciplines and gives them a common problem to discuss. According to Simandan, the problematic of geographic learning should concern all geographers equally.

     Humans’ ability to learn is the attribute central to our species that singles us out from others, which is why its study should be of the utmost importance to geographers. Before, it has been focused on as the foreground of other intellectual pursuits rather than the focus, and learning has never been firstly geographical. The centrality of representations, more specifically the representationalist views that memory is the environment of thought versus the nonrepresentationalist views that environment is the memory of our thought, is just one topic that needs to be examined. Behavioral geography is another, particularly the cognitive process in special decision making and human geography.

     There is much to be learned from the theme of learning as a geographical process. It connects two disciplines, learning and geography, in many creative and diverse ways that have much to contribute to both fields alike. One may look forward to the discoveries and breakthroughs that may come from their studies!

Alte Buecher. 2006. Photograph. Wikimedia Commons. Commons.wikimedia.org. 15 Feb. 2006. Web. 02 Feb. 2013.

Simandan, Dragos. "Learning as a Geographical Process." The Professional Geographer(2012): n. pag. UTD Austin. Web. 18 Feb. 2013.