Junior high school Chinese students' images of the geographer: a study of their drawings

摘要

Geographical education has been primarily centering on curriculum, teaching and learning, research about the images that students perceive of the geographer is under presented. Missing out on such research is akin to losing a piece integral to a whole mosaic pattern. Drawing on previous approach, this study explored students' images of the geographer by administering a Draw Geographer Test (DGT) to 212 seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade students from China. Findings suggest that the geographer is prominently imaged as a Han Chinese, male and physical geographer wearing casual clothes with a magnifying glass, maps, books and/or a globe around and observing, surveying and/or exploring in mountains and valleys. It is suggested that geography education should mitigate the strongly gendered image, duly expose students to more doings of the human geographer, current geographical technology and various working contexts, raise an inclusive perspective of the geographer's ethnicities, deliver students specific information about geographical career as well as translate positive images into a possible geographical career.