2020 Volume 72 Issue 2 Pages 149-161
In recent years, Spatial Citizenship Education (SCE)—proposed as a counter draft of the classical geographic information system (GIS) education—has received much attention in geography and social studies education in Western countries. This research aimed to clarify the research trends and characteristics of SCE within Western geography and social studies education, by employing a literature review. SCE focuses on the key concepts of geography, i.e., space, place, scale, power, and human–environmental relationships, and aims to develop citizens who can participate in the social decision-making process. In doing so, the geo-media, i.e., geographical spatial information and GIS, are important. As concrete efforts to promote SCE, learning is not only comprised of using geo-media in primary and secondary education but also teacher education programs, such as competence and training curriculum for geography teachers. Based on this analysis, the contributions to Japanese geography and social studies education are as follows: 1) there is a need for geographers, geography educators, and social studies educators to tackle with SCE studies based on each researcher’s expertise and 2) it is necessary to promote research on teacher education.
