Using GIS to teach beyond curriculum

• In Event: Poster session IV
  In Poster Session: Poster session 4

Proposal

In the past few decades, English has enjoyed its high status all over the world, including Vietnam. In Vietnam, English has been the first and nearly the only foreign language to be taught since 1986 when the Vietnamese Communist Party initiated its overall economic reform known as Doi Moi (Renovation) with the open-door policy (Hoang, 2011). Despite its special status in Vietnam and the government policies to introduce English as a compulsory subject, Vietnamese students’ ability of using English, especially to communicate is still questionable (Hoang, 2011). There is a myriad of reasons for this problem. However, I would like to focus on possible issues related to the curriculum by studying a lesson in a unit in English textbook for 11 graders and propose using geospatial tools to partially fix those issues if existent.

I chose to study Lesson One in Unit 5 titled ‘Being Part of ASEAN’ and see if there is any possible mismatch between the lesson content and what students may care and find more relevant to their real life. This lesson is dedicated to getting students familiar with the topic of the unit and help students (1) get to know words and phrases related to ASEAN, its aims, member states, and activities; (2) listen for gist and specific information about ASEAN and the ASEAN Charter; (3) and talk about ASEAN member states . In lesson one, through listening to a conversation with a girl and her father, students learn (1) what ASEAN stand for, (2) when it was formed, (3) how many members it has, (4) its aims and purposes, (5) ASEAN sports activities, and (6) ASEAN Charter and its main principles. After listening to the conversation, students answer questions relevant to the conversation and to a word matching exercise to learn words and phrases related to ASEAN. The images accompanying this lesson include (1) image of the ASEAN emblem, (2)image of the flags of ASEAN member states, (3) image of students participating in a competition on ASEAN and the ASEAN Charter, (4) image of a girl conversing with her father, and (5) image of ASEAN headquarters.

The results from the study of this lesson identify certain issues of the lesson. The contents, activities, and images seem to support only two levels of learning: “remembering” and “understanding” in the Bloom’s taxonomy (https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/). Higher levels of learning like learning to apply, to analyze, to evaluate, and to create are not supported in this lesson. What matters to students is be guided to the right direction to gain knowledge on their own based on their “interpretations of experiences in the world (p.217)” (Jonassen, 1999) and use that knowledge to apply, to analyze, to evaluate, and to create rather than be treated as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge like a piggy bank (Freire, 2000).

The relevance of the contents, activities, and the images in the lesson to students’ world outside the classroom is questionable. This lesson has no mention at all to Vietnam in its relation with ASEAN while the target students of this book are Vietnamese high school students. Students, therefore, can not associate with what they have learned in their context to see its relation with other contexts. Knowledge transmitted in this way has been abstract and decontextualized. The lack of real word contexts in practice activities may hold potential to hinder students’ translating the language they learn into genuine and meaningful communication when needed. The illustration images also do not reflect what students commonly experience or observe in their life. For example, the competition on ASEAN and the ASEAN charter is not popular in Vietnam.

In order to partly solve the aforementioned issues, I propose to use GIS tools to help students learn and think beyond what is delineated in the curriculum so that they can learn what matters and what is relevant to them. I do not recommend overhauling the whole lesson but encourage using GIS tools as a way to keep students more engaged and learn in a more authentic context.

The maps I designed can be used for warm-up activities of the lesson. The main purpose of the map is to help students have a general picture of ASEAN and of Vietnam in that bloc. Further goals include triggering students’ critical thinking, spatial analysis skill, and interests in GIS technology for future learning and activities.
Map 1: ASEAN member states and their areas.
This map is designed with the hope that students can easily see that there are 10 members in the bloc and compare the area size of the countries.
Map 2: Compare the size of Vietnam to the other countries in the bloc.
This map is created with a view to helping students to use what that know about the area size of Vietnam to compare it with that of the other countries in the bloc. Also, the activity related to this map is like asking trivia game question. And students love to play games.
Map 3: Area and population
Students can use the map to comment on the population size of each country in relation to its size and in comparison with the other countries.
Map 4: Joining Year
Students can make use of their knowledge in history to discuss the growth of the bloc over time.
Map 5: Civil Liberties and Press Freedom
Students can express their views on civil liberties and press freedom in the ASEAN countries , utilizing what they learn in history, geography, and from the social media.
References:
Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Bloomsbury.

Hoang, V. V. (2011). The current situation and issues of the teaching of English in Vietnam. 立命
館言語文化研究, 22(1).
Jonassen, D., & Carr, C. (2000). Mindtools: Affording Multiple Knowledge Representations for
Learning. In Computers as Cognitive Tools, Volume 2: No More Walls. (Chapter 6). Retrieved from http://web.missouri.edu/jonassend/Mindtoolschapter.pdf

Author

• Minh T. Pham, University of Missouri