Negotiating applied and critical perspectives within the geography curriculum

Abstract

Changes that have impacted higher education systems internationally in recent years have included growth in participation rates accompanied by fee and funding reforms that have passed the financial burden of higher education from the state to the individual through higher student fees, increased marketisation and competition between disciplines and institutions, and increased scrutiny through metrics linked primarily to student satisfaction, graduate outcomes and employability. These changes have thrown the question of the “value” of a university education into ever sharper relief, where value is increasingly measured in terms of graduate employability and earning potential, but also, perhaps, through the contributions of universities and their graduates to the social (and environmental) good. There is, then, growing pressure on university courses to demonstrate this value through both their relevance to addressing real world challenges and to producing graduates equipped with skills appropriate to rapidly changing and increasingly precarious job markets. Within Geography this highlights the ongoing relevance of long-standing debates about the potentials of applied geographies (Boyle et al., 2020; Coppock, 1974; Harvey, 1974; Pacione, 2004) and their incorporation into Geography higher education curricula. However, it also raises questions of how these applied perspectives might sit alongside more critical, theoretical perspectives within curricula. Most fundamentally it raises questions of the balance between applied and critical perspectives within Geography higher education curricula and whether one becomes privileged over the other. Exploring this further, we might imagine other pressing questions. Do these critical and applied perspectives sit alongside each other in situations of constructive dialogue, suspicion and hostility, or indifference? What does the co-presence of these perspectives say about the coherence of Geography curricula now, and what are the student experiences and understandings of this? Can, and how might, critical and applied perspectives work productively together and enhance the student experience and understanding of Geography and what challenges do they raise? Are there particular “spaces” in the curriculum where these perspectives are most productively deployed and explored