Content uploaded by Derek H. Alderman
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Derek H. Alderman on Dec 14, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjog20
Journal of Geography
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjog20
On the Disciplinary Achievement Gap: Implications
of Social Disparities in NAEP Student Outcomes
for Diversity and Decolonization in Geography
Education
Derek H. Alderman
To cite this article: Derek H. Alderman (2021) On the Disciplinary Achievement Gap: Implications
of Social Disparities in NAEP Student Outcomes for Diversity and Decolonization in Geography
Education, Journal of Geography, 120:6, 244-248, DOI: 10.1080/00221341.2021.1968472
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00221341.2021.1968472
Published online: 01 Sep 2021.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 60
View related articles
View Crossmark data
COMMENTARY
On the Disciplinary Achievement Gap: Implications of Social Disparities in NAEP
Student Outcomes for Diversity and Decolonization in Geography Education
Derek H. Alderman
Department of Geography, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
ABSTRACT
Social disparities in NAEP student outcomes with respect to geography provide further evidence of
how far the discipline of Geography still must go to address issues of diversity, equity, inclusion.
Addressing these issues requires difficult but necessary conversations and planning of initiatives along
with a more fundamental re-envisioning of what Geography education is, for whom the learning of
geography matters and why, and a commitment to decolonize curriculum and pedagogical
approaches. Such reform has the promise of not only making Geography education more responsive
to social difference and justice, but it also ultimately will increase the intellectual and political efficacy
of our profession.
KEYWORDS
decolonization; diversity;
educational equity; gender;
geography curriculum;
NAEP; race;
student outcomes
I am grateful to comment on this impressive large-scale ana-
lysis of the National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP) in terms of geography achievement among 8
th
grade
students. I whole-heartedly agree with Solem et al. (2021)as
they assert the urgency of paying more attention to national-
level assessment data and the implications of that analysis for
the development of wider educational policy and approaches.
Indeed, these discussions need to occur well beyond commun-
ities specializing in school geography practice or pedagogical
research per se. I regret to say that in serving two terms on
the Council of the American Association of Geographers
(AAG), including one as President, the Association’sgovern-
ing body seldom had deep discussions about the NAEP or
geography education at the K-12 level.
Two noted exceptions to this pattern of neglect come to
my mind. The first is Jan Monk, who served as AAG
President from 2001 to 2002 and is a widely recognized
advocate for greater equity and inclusion in geography edu-
cation (Monk 2002). Troubled by early NAEP results show-
ing social disparities in student outcomes and the invisibility
of geographic scholarship on gender and race in classroom
practices and materials, Monk along with noted colleagues
such as Rickie Sanders (2000), Pamela Wridt, Julie Tuason,
and Michal LeVasseur headed in the late 1990s a NSF-
funded project called “Finding a Way.”That project sought
to “help teachers stimulate interest and achievement in geog-
raphy among …[female students] of diverse racial and eth-
nic backgrounds”(Monk 1997, 7). The second exception
was Sarah Bednarz’s AAG Presidency from 2015 to 2016,
when she documented the inconsistent treatment of geog-
raphy education among the Association’s highest leaders his-
torically (Bednarz 2017). She has also argued that geography
education is key to civic education, the creation of active,
participatory, and emancipated youth and the making of a
more just world. Bednarz does not see the powerful social
capacity of geography education as self-evident or inevitable,
but instead it requires teachers—and really all of us within
the field of geography—to be accountable for realizing that
potential. As part of that accountability, Bednarz joined
Monk and others in calling for educators to address more
forthrightly, “the conditions under which many young peo-
ple struggle to achieve equality, inclusion, and a sense of
personal agency”(Bednarz 2019, 520-21). While this clarion
call applies to all levels of geography education, it especially
resonates when we examine NAEP results. Solem and his
colleagues document a disturbing and continuing pattern of
social disparities in 8
th
grade student proficiency from 1994
to 2018. They identify across time consistently lower
achievement levels in geography among students who self-
identify as female, Black, Hispanic, and as coming from a
less privileged socio-economic level.
For my commentary, I wish to focus on the shared
responsibility that all of us have in the state of geography
education and specifically the wider implications that these
inequalities in student outcomes in the NAEP have for geog-
raphy as a field of study and professional community. First,
I encourage us to consider what is at stake in terms of social
justice and disciplinary innovation when we place social dis-
parities in 8
th
grade student proficiency in conversation with
the discipline’s long-standing challenges or achievement gaps
with regard to diversity and inclusion. Second, as we think
about how to respond meaningfully to inequalities in NAEP
student outcomes, I encourage us to consider ways of fur-
ther reforming the geography classroom as a welcoming and
productive social space for historically under-represented
groups. It is true that many factors shape inequalities in
CONTACT Derek H. Alderman dalderma@utk.edu Department of Geography, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA
ß2021 National Council for Geographic Education
JOURNAL OF GEOGRAPHY
2021, VOL. 120, NO. 6, 244–248
https://doi.org/10.1080/00221341.2021.1968472
student achievement and opportunity to learn, some of
which are unrelated to the quantity and quality of geography
education a young person receives—which can vary so
widely by state and school district. Yet, I seize upon the con-
tention made by Solem and colleagues’(2021) that future
reforms of school geography must pay closer attention to
educational equity and the diversity of student identities and
experiences. Such reform means rejuvenating long dormant
equity programs in geography and supporting emerging ini-
tiatives. Yet, there must also be a more foundational decolo-
nizing of geography pedagogy and a refashioning of
curriculum, teacher training, and disciplinary dialogue that
centers the geographical experiences and knowledge con-
structs and needs of students labeled as lower achieving.
What is at stake?
While the Solem-led research team (2021) focuses ostensibly
on gaps in student performance, the NAEP is also an import-
ant glimpse into the performance of our discipline as a
whole—it is our own report card to some degree and an
important indicator of the health and sustainability of our
profession. What happens in 8th grade classrooms may seem
a world away from many of my colleagues at college and uni-
versities, but, in reality, it matters to all of us. There is a
mutuality of scale at work in geography education that seems
lost on more than a few university professors—a dangerous
assumption that their jobs and programs in higher education
are somehow separate from and not impacted by geography
at the primary and secondary levels. This unfortunate blind
spot partly explains why so few geographers have published
analyses of NAEP or applied these assessment results to peda-
gogical development (Solem and Stoltman 2020).
Our field proceeds at its own peril by not actively assess-
ing and taking seriously the state of geography across mul-
tiple levels and spaces of learning. Beyond the obvious fact
that some 8
th
graders eventually become college students
and potentially populate our rosters of undergraduate and
graduate students at colleges, there is the less selfish reality
that proficiency in geography can be of value to a wide spec-
trum of people regardless of their final chosen career. It is
our obligation to prepare and empower citizens to make
critical spatial judgements about issues and problems affect-
ing communities and regions, national and world affairs,
and built and natural environments. Yet, how can we play a
role in forming critical, empathetic global citizens when we
have such obvious racial, ethnic, gender, and class disparities
in student opportunities to learn and achieve in geography?
The inequalities in student achievement identified and
analyzed by Solem and colleagues (2021) have a strong
potential bearing on the diversity of the discipline of geog-
raphy and impinge upon our field’s ability to broaden the
community of spatial thinkers at workplaces, universities,
and within the general public sphere. These inequalities are
also suggestive of the broader achievement gaps that still
stand in the way of geography moving beyond its historical
identity as a largely white, male discipline.
Adequately understanding the significance of social dis-
parities in geography achievement at the 8
th
grade level
requires that we recognize that they are part of rather apart
from wider inequalities in the field. While an analysis of
gender, racial, and socio-economic inequalities in NAEP
results is valuable in its own right, it becomes even more
critical when we consider that a significant male bias
remains among members of the AAG, K-12 geography
teachers, university geography faculty, and geography under-
graduate majors and graduate students (AAG 2018a). A
strong lack of racial and ethnic diversity also continues in
the ranks of the AAG (65% White), university geography
faculty (70% White), undergraduate geography majors (72%
White), and graduate students (57% White). The value of
putting 8
th
grade proficiency in conversation with larger dis-
ciplinary audits of diversity and inclusion is something we
should have been doing much more over the years and
regrettably it will not be possible for the immediate future
since the National Assessment Governing Board has
removed geography from the 2019-2029 NAEP assessment
schedule (Solem and Stoltman 2020).
Linking the state of geography in the 8
th
grade to this
larger disciplinary picture does not dismiss the specific factors
at schools, homes, communities, and in social studies teaching
conditions and practices that no doubt contribute to student
scores. Yet, by placing NAEP results in this broader context
does suggest that there is something structurally unjust and
perhaps even path-dependent at work in who is able to access
and benefit from geography skill building and the opportuni-
ties that may materialize from those educational experiences.
Opportunity to engage fully and deeply in geographical think-
ing can be consequential to lives and livelihoods. Disparities
in student proficiency in geography potentially point to a pat-
tern of disinterest or disenfranchisement that can later limit
certain marginalized social groups from being able to take
advantage of the rapid growth in jobs in GIS and sustainabil-
ity science and then to leverage those skills for social and
environmental good. Recognizing the power of these institu-
tional barriers, initiatives such NorthStar and the Youth
Mappers’Let Girls Map campaign are seeking to create more
inclusive mapping communities and increase the representa-
tion and belonging of Black people and females in the geo-
spatial field, respectively.
It is my belief that inequalities in school geography per-
formance among females, people of color, English language
learners, and those from lower income families do not just
handicap the students’educational and vocational options,
but they also very much harm our discipline of geography.
Greater achievement in geography by historically excluded
groups, which can possibly lead to greater interest and partici-
pation in geography as a profession, is necessary for our field
to innovate. The experiences and worldviews of a diverse
array of students (and later professionals) are essential to
expanding what counts as geographic knowledge, for whom it
matters, and fully grounding a geographic perspective in the
lived realities, struggles, and landscapes of all people.
The spatial thinking and experiences of traditionally
under-represented groups can greatly expand and enrich our
JOURNAL OF GEOGRAPHY 245
understanding of the role of geography in social life. That is
one of the foundational points of the growing Black
Geographies movement, which argues that many years of
Black innovations in space and place “have not always been
recognized as ‘properly’geographical and have thus been
systematically excluded from the formal canon of disciplin-
ary geography”(Hawthorne 2019, 1). For instance, there is a
long history of indigenous, Black, and female-led contribu-
tions to map-making and geospatial analysis seldom dis-
cussed in geography education (Lucchesi 2018; Tyner 2019;
Alderman, Inwood, and Bottone 2021a). Paying closer atten-
tion to the needs of a greater diversity of 8
th
graders and
their relationship to geographic content and skills is not
simply an act of fairness or altruism but critical to our dis-
cipline being socially and politically relevant and epistemo-
logically vibrant.
Toward a decolonized school geography
Thankfully, we see a growing focus on diversity, inclusion
and equity issues in some geography university programs,
professional organizations, and individual K-12 schools, but
the landscape of systemic reform and advocacy is still quite
uneven and not always long lasting. For example, even
though the National Council for Geography Education
(NCGE) launched in 1991 a path-breaking task force on gen-
der and racial/ethnic equity, it is difficult to find on the
organization’s web page even a passing acknowledgement of
social disparities in geography achievement and opportunity
not to mention any ongoing association-level discussions and
initiatives to address these inequities. Also striking is the
absence of these discussions in some of geography education’s
major reports and meetings. For example, words such as
“race,”“gender,”“ethnicity, and “disparity”made no appear-
ance in a Grosvenor Center report detailing a 2019 national
roundtable discussion on “The Future of Geography
Education”(Boehm and Solem 2020). To be fair, this round-
table was just one of a series of meetings and reports to
address various aspects of geography education. I am heart-
ened to learn that the Grosvenor Center plans to hold a long
overdue summit in 2022 to address rebuilding geography edu-
cation around equity and student outcome and needs.
Important to this summit and other future conversations
and strategic planning will be more forthrightly discussing
the intersection of geography education, student achieve-
ment and opportunity to learn, and a recognition of the
social differences and inequalities within which schools and
learning are situated. Holding such discussions at profes-
sional conferences, teacher development workshops, and
leadership summits is a modest but key path to intervention.
It is reassuring to see that the National Center for Research
in Geography Education recently organized a symposium on
leveraging large-scale federal geospatial and assessment data-
sets to study inequalities in K-12 student outcomes in geog-
raphy and other social studies areas—but there is much
more work to do. Key to these future discussions is includ-
ing a broad cross-section of geographers and other public
stakeholders who can speak to the educational experiences
and needs of female students, Black, Hispanic, and AAPI
students, students from indigenous communities and lower
income families, and those whose native language is not
English. Also important is being explicit and direct in our
language. When we talk about educational equity, let’s not
use it as euphemism and fail to explicitly address by name
the structural poverty, racism, sexism, and xenophobia at
work in America’s schools and communities along with how
these lines of oppression intersect with each other.
I would suggest that my recommendation to hold more
discipline-wide discussions about the status of geography
education and inequalities in student outcomes is not simply
about improving metrics. Rather, those discussions should
respond to growing calls to decolonize the field of geography
and geography education (Daigle and Sundberg 2017).
Important to this project is to challenge the dominance of
white, male, Euro-centric worldviews and center the lives
and perspectives of those traditionally excluded from domin-
ant framings of geographic knowledge and practice. It resists
calls to inculcate students with a falsely unifying and
redemptive story of society that disavows the social and spa-
tial realities of living with and against racism, sexism, and
colonialism—all with the goal of creating what Fritzsche
(2021) calls an “anti-oppressive pedagogy.”How can the
field of geography realistically expect to push such an
agenda if we do not respond to the dramatic racial, ethnic,
and gender inequalities in educational progress and opportu-
nities identified by Solem and his fellow researchers? While
the work of decolonizing geography education should hap-
pen at universities classrooms and professional meetings and
in academic journals and books, it must also happen in
elementary and secondary education.
Of course, I recognize the pedagogical and political chal-
lenges facing the decolonization project in K-12, especially at
time when conservative political leaders and some vocal
parents seek to limit discussions of social justice in the class-
room. Indeed, recent efforts by a number of state legislatures
to ban the teaching of slavery and critical race theory—or
really any discussion of racism’simpact—is indicative of not
just how these issues can be controversial for teachers but,
more importantly, the lengths to which the experiences of
students of color will be sanitized if not disregarded
altogether. Also complicating the decolonization project is the
ongoing dilution and elimination of geography curriculum in
many schools and the National Geographic Society-induced
weakening of the State Geography Alliance movement, trad-
itionally the front-line of teacher training and curriculum
materials development for our discipline. Yet, in the face of
these difficulties, we must nonetheless chart a course forward
for our discipline to consider the complicity of our own dis-
ciplinary practices in creating the disparities documented
from the NAEP by Solem et al. (2021).
Discussions of the decolonization of geography education
are thus far more prominent in countries such as Australia,
Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom than the
United States. Our international colleagues might suggest
that thinking critically about racial, ethnic and gender dis-
parities in student outcomes in geography requires a
246 D. H. ALDERMAN
fundamental rethinking of what is geography education and
the social work it does (or fails to do) for certain student
groups over other student groups. Geography education is
more than acquiring and applying a set of objective content
and skills. Thus, achievement and performance are not ideo-
logically neutral sets of standards—as much as national level
assessments might suggest that this is the case. Geography
learning is socially constructed, meaning that it is shaped by the
identities of students and their relations with teachers, the wider
interests of society and the state, and the conditions of power
within which that learning happens (Alderman et al. 2021b).
The Solem-led team’s analysis of the NAEP found that
school type and location are not as consistent or as strong
predictors of student achievement in geography as student-
level characteristics. Yet, these levels of weak statistical
significance do not mean that the social geographies and cli-
mates of individual classrooms or even entire schools do not
have an impact on how well students perform, especially
students from historically minoritized groups. The literature
on “critical geographies of education”argues, in fact, for
paying closer attention to schools as sites through which
identities of privilege and marginality are expressed, rein-
forced, and hopefully disrupted (Nguyen, Cohen, and Huff
2017). These studies also suggest that schools are key places
for historically perpetuating patriarchy and White suprem-
acy, which invariably shape student outcomes and how we
should interpret and respond to the documented social dis-
parities in NAEP.
From this critical perspective, when I look at these
important findings about racial, ethnic, gender, and class
disparities in student outcomes, I am prompted to consider
what role mainstream geography curriculum plays (or does
not) in allowing marginalized groups to fulfill their achieve-
ment potential. Does the way we teach geography skills and
knowledge actively disenfranchize the very student groups
we are seeking to bring into the fold of the discipline? I am
reminded of Mona Domosh’s(2015) AAG presidential col-
umn, in which she asked the important question: “Why is
our geography curriculum so white?”She was suggesting
that even the most progressive and innovative of us do not
expose and question often enough the racialized and coloni-
alist assumptions (and I would add gendered assumptions)
that shape what and how we teach geography and even how
we frame the geographic knowledge assessed through stand-
ardized tests. Latoya Eaves (2020) advocates for reframing
what counts as official geographical knowledge and peda-
gogical practice through a Black Geographies approach, a
framework that “require[s] reckoning with the interlocking
[and intersectional] oppressions that Black people and com-
munities encounter and how Black people and communities
shape and transform landscapes and environments”(p. 227).
As we proceed toward re-envisioning a geography educa-
tion more responsive to NAEP disparities and the project of
decolonizing how we teach geographic concepts and skills in
general, I ask readers to consider the following questions
and some insights provided by Black scholars. Among
female students, students of color and students from poor
households, to what extent do they really see themselves,
their worldviews and lived realities in their geography
instruction or even what is represented to the public as geo-
graphical knowledge? If certain marginalized student groups
cannot see a place for themselves in geography, then how
can we expect them not only to perform well but also to see
our discipline as welcoming and salient? LaGerrett King
(2019) powerfully makes the point that the tired assertion
that students of color are not invested in their education is
inaccurate if not also racist. King asserts that students of
color distrust an overwhelmingly White social studies cur-
riculum “that continually miseducates who they are both
culturally and historically [as well as who they are geo-
graphically]”(p, 92).
According to King (2019), students of color yearn for a
social studies education that speaks to their humanity and
their daily struggles. This yearning prompts us to consider
what kinds of places of learning we are creating for Black,
Hispanic, and female youth within and through the geog-
raphy classroom. Are our schools, classrooms, and academic
departments, in words of Jenkins (2021), places of curricular
and pedagogical violence and exclusion or places of healing
and possibilities? Sharif El-Mekki (2021), a former school
principal and founder of the Center for Black Educator
Development, prompts us to consider that many educators
are poorly prepared to teach Black and Brown students and
transform the classroom into an emancipatory space. He calls
for greater cultural competency and diversity in teacher prep-
aration programs. Almost six decades ago, the famous Black
author James Baldwin, when speaking to a group of teachers
in 1963, also noted the obligation that educators have in facil-
itating social change and confronting the problems and
oppressive conditions shaping the lives and self-images of
Black students (Smith 2017). When we teach about the effi-
cacy of a geographic perspective at the primary and secondary
levels, do we project an image of the discipline that empowers
excluded student groups to make sense of and challenge their
oppression and which values their historical and contempor-
ary contributions to the building of America? Are we creating
geography classrooms that leverage geocapabilities in response
to environmental racism, the violent control of national bor-
ders, food deserts, police profiling and brutality, gender and
sexual discrimination, and structural inequalities embedded in
the COVID pandemic?
The work to do
For university professors such as me, there is considerable
work to do in making greater use of NAEP assessment data
and addressing student achievement disparities from a
shared disciplinary sense of responsibility. Doing so perhaps
requires us to resurrect dormant programs like “Finding a
Way,”which sought to empower teachers to make interven-
tions in the racial and gender climate in classrooms and
schools and to critique shortcomings in the extent to which
instructional strategies and materials engage the lives of a
full range of students, especially from historically under-rep-
resented groups (Monk 1997). There is also room for us to
contribute to new initiatives such as “Powerful Geography,”
JOURNAL OF GEOGRAPHY 247
which carries great potential for addressing disparities in
student outcomes because it emphasizes liberating curricu-
lum and leveraging various datasets to tailor geography edu-
cation to students’everyday lives and wider contexts and
needs (Boehm, Solem, and Zadrozny 2018). Fully realizing
this potential requires joining this powerful framework with
a“critical geographies of education”perspective and a quali-
tative understanding of exactly how local school and com-
munity social relations and settings shape student sense of
belonging, opportunity to learning, and connection with (or
alienation from) geography as a subject and skillset.
While past and existing efforts are good avenues for
reform, a more dramatic change in advocacy needs to occur
among members of our wider professional community if we
are to rebuild geography education. This requires, for
example, that many of us at colleges and universities pay
greater attention to the pedagogical practices at multiple
grade levels in the school districts where we live, work and
vote. We need to determine to what extent our state curricu-
lum standards, teacher-training programs, and classroom
cultures are “anti-oppressive.”Are they culturally responsive,
inclusive, and affirming of the lives, histories, and geogra-
phies of other social groups—especially those groups with
the greatest inequalities in student outcomes and opportuni-
ties to learn with respect to geography. Geographers across
social and educational hierarchies should consider what they
can do—individually and collectively—to work with K-12
teachers and organizations, including the remains of the
State Alliance Network, to help create curricular materials
and instructional practices that center the well-being and
social studies needs of young women, Black and Hispanic
students, and those from less privileged socio-economic
backgrounds. Finally, such efforts will no doubt need the
assistance of our professional organizations in geography
and their members and leaders—even those who do not
often engage in educational assessment matters—to hold dis-
cussions of NAEP and geography education more broadly
while devising formal initiatives, reports, and teaching mate-
rials related to decolonizing the geography classroom.
ORCID
Derek H. Alderman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5192-8103
References
Alderman, D. H., J. F. Inwood, and E. Bottone. 2021a. The mapping
behind the movement: On recovering the critical cartographies of
the African American Freedom Struggle. Geoforum 120:67–78. doi:
10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.01.022.
Alderman, D., R. Narro Perez, L. E. Eaves, P. Klein, and S. Mu~
noz.
2021b. Reflections on operationalizing an anti-racism pedagogy:
Teaching as regional storytelling. Journal of Geography in Higher
Education 45 (2):186–200. doi: 10.1080/03098265.2019.1661367.
American Association of Geographers (AAG). 2018a. Geographers by
gender summary report. http://www.aag.org/galleries/disciplinary-
data/Geographers_by_Gender_summary_report_2018.pdf
American Association of Geographers (AAG). 2018b. Geographers by
race and ethnicity summary report. http://www.aag.org/galleries/dis-
ciplinary-data/Geographers_by_Race_and_Ethnicity_summary_report_
2018.pdf
Bednarz, S. W. 2017. Locating geography education. AAG past presiden-
tial address. Boston, MA: Annual Meeting of the American
Association of Geographers.
Bednarz, S. W. 2019. Geography’s secret powers to save the world. The
Canadian Geographer / Le G
eographe Canadien 63 (4):520–9. doi:
10.1111/cag.12539.
Boehm, R. G., and M. Solem. 2020. A report on a roundtable discus-
sion of the future of geography education. Research in Geographic
Education 22 (1):1–10.
Boehm, R. G., M. Solem, and J. Zadrozny. 2018. The rise of powerful
geography. The Social Studies 109 (2):125–35. doi: 10.1080/00377996.
2018.1460570.
Daigle, M., and J. Sundberg. 2017. From where we stand: Unsettling
geographical knowledges in the classroom. Transactions of the
Institute of British Geographers 42 (3):338–41. doi: 10.1111/tran.
12201.
Domosh, M. 2015. Why is our geography curriculum so white.
Association of American Geographers Newsletter, 1 June, p. 1. http://
news.aag.org/2015/06/why-is-our-geography-curriculum-so-white/
Eaves, L. E. 2020. Interanimating Black sexualities and the geography
classroom. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 44 (2):217–29.
doi: 10.1080/03098265.2020.1753029.
El-Mekki, S. 2021. Far too many educators aren’t prepared to teach
Black and Brown students. Education Week, 6 April. https://www.
edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-far-too-many-educators-arent-
prepared-to-teach-black-and-brown-students/2021/04
Fritzsche, L. 2021. Integrating contemplative pedagogy and anti-oppres-
sive pedagogy in geography higher education classrooms. Journal of
Geography in Higher Education:1–18. DOI: 10.1080/03098265.2021.
1946766
Hawthorne, C. 2019. Black matters are spatial matters: Black geogra-
phies for the twenty-first century. Geography Compass 13 (11):
e12468. doi: 10.1111/gec3.12468.
Jenkins, D. A. 2021. Unspoken grammar of place: Anti-blackness as a
spatial imaginary in education. Journal of School Leadership 31 (1-2):
107–26. doi: 10.1177/1052684621992768.
King, L. J. 2019. Unofficial and unconventional social studies spaces for
students of color. The Journal of Social Studies Research 43 (2):91–5.
doi: 10.1016/j.jssr.2019.03.001.
Lucchesi, A. H. E. 2018. “Indians don’t make maps”: Indigenous carto-
graphic traditions and innovations. American Indian Culture and
Research Journal 42 (3):11–26. doi: 10.17953/aicrj.42.3.lucchesi.
Monk, J. 1997. Finding a way. New Zealand Journal of Geography 104:
7–11.
Monk, J. 2002. Who’s teaching whom? And how? Association of
American Geographers Newsletter 37 (4):3–4.
Nguyen, N., D. Cohen, and A. Huff. 2017. Catching the bus: A call for
critical geographies of education. Geography Compass 11 (8):e12323.
doi: 10.1111/gec3.12323.
Sanders, R. 2000. Gender equity in the classroom: An arena for corres-
pondence. Women’s Studies Quarterly 28 (3/4):182–93.
Smith, C. 2017. James Baldwin’s lesson for teachers in a time of tur-
moil. The New Yorker, 23 September. https://www.newyorker.com/
books/page-turner/james-baldwins-lesson-for-teachers-in-a-time-of-
turmoil
Solem, M., and J. Stoltman. 2020. The NAEP geography assessment:
Will it come back? Journal of Geography 119 (4):136–9. doi: 10.
1080/00221341.2020.1773903.
Solem, M., P. Vaughan, C. Savage, and A. De Nadai. 2021. Student-
and school-level predictors of geography achievement in the United
States, 1994-2018. Journal of Geography. 120 (6):201–211.
Tyner, J. 2019. Women in American cartography: An invisible social his-
tory. New York: Lexington Books.
248 D. H. ALDERMAN
