Lindsey McEwen

Co-learning: Re-linking Research and Teaching in Geography

What might geography in ‘the universities’ look like if geographers seriously confronted the growing dichotomy between research and teaching? This challenge goes to the heart of ‘the university’ as a site of learning. The authors argue that the globalizing character of higher education gives urgency to re-charting the university as an environment that prioritizes co-learning as the basis for organizing educational activities in geography and potentially beyond discipline boundaries. By co-learning is meant systematic approaches to maximizing the synergies between research and teaching activities to capitalize on prior learning and experiences of all involved. The authors argument is that feedback gained through co-learning will reshape the nature and quality of both research and teaching environments as we know them. Four methodological framings of co-learning, derived from established practice in geography, are presented, to highlight possible directions of development that are especially strategic in the current context of globalizing higher education. It is suggested that with strategies that explicitly maximize co-learning, the development of geography could occur in distinctive ways that would not happen if research and teaching were progressed in isolation.

Managing leadership in the UK university: a case for researching the missing professoriate?

This article offers a critical review of literature dealing with the topic of educational management and academic leadership as applied to the role of the professor or professoriate in the UK. The review identified a range of leadership issues and associated contemporary developments in the ‘management’ of higher education. The subject of the professor as educational leader, however, stands out as an area of little or no research activity. For example, there was a notable silence on a range of issues to do with recruitment, appointment, productivity, value and succession planning for the role, engagement, operation and work of the professor and the professoriate. The article concludes that there is a case for research on the role of the professoriate across different disciplines and institutions in the UK, which would focus explicitly on the leadership role, but also explore the lived experience of the professor in UK universities.

Dismantling the Ivory Tower: Engaging Geographers in University–Community Partnerships

University–community partnerships offer synergistic spaces for communities to address difficulties and universities to meet their missions. Geographers are well positioned to participate in these partnerships, owing to the disciplines integrative nature, spatial perspectives and analytic approaches, and its attention to social and environmental issues at many scales. This paper endeavours to assist geographers interested in these partnerships by illustrating three case studies of geography–community partnerships. We reflect critically on the mutual benefits from, and barriers to, these partnerships. On the basis of case studies and literature review, the paper recommends ways to enhance university–community partnerships to help dismantle the ivory tower.

Strength in Diversity: Enhancing Learning in Vocationally-Orientated, Master's Level Courses.

Postgraduate education in geography, especially at the Masters level, is undergoing significant changes in the developed world. There is an expansion of vocationally oriented degree programmes, increasing recruitment of international students, integration of workplace skills, and the engagement of non-traditional postgraduate students as departments respond to policies for a more ‘inclusive’ higher education. This paper sets the context by outlining some programmatic changes in selected countries (Australia, the UK, and the USA). The authors briefly reflect on how postgraduate ‘bars’ or ‘levels’ are defined and explore in detail what ‘diversity’ or ‘heterogeneity’ means in these new postgraduate settings. They then explore some practice examples drawn from their own experiences, recognizing that relevance will vary in other contexts. Finally they consider how diversity can be harnessed as a strength that has potential to enhance taught elements of contemporary postgraduate education in and beyond the discipline.

Holocene Gorge Excavation Linked to Boulder Fan Formation and Frost Weathering in a Norwegian Alpine Periglaciofluvial System

Landform-sediment-process assemblages associated with four gorges and their corresponding downstream boulder fans in the alpine periglaciofluvial system of the Storutla river, Jotunheimen, southern Norway, are described. The potential volume of frost-weathered sediment excavated from the gorges is compared using a sediment-budget approach to calculate the volume of angular sediment within the fans accumulated during the Holocene. Fan volumes represent an estimated 18 to 53% of the total gorge volume. Allowing also for the volume of relatively small caliber material flushed through the system, 24 to 97% of the gorge volume is accounted for by an estimated minimum long-term Holocene rate of gorge excavation of 0.002 to 0.010 m3 m–1 yr–1 (minimum long-term Holocene gorge incision rate of 0.15–0.39 mm yr–1) Most of the remaining gorge volume is attributed to substantial pre-Holocene subglacial gorge incision by meltwater action. These rates of Holocene periglaciofluvial erosion of bedrock appear to exceed those characteristic of temperate fluvial systems unaffected by tectonic uplift. The implied rates of frost weathering (macrogelivation) are less than those under optimum conditions in arctic-alpine environments but support the efficacy of frost weathering in locations susceptible to the annual freeze-thaw cycle.

Evaluating the ‘postgraduateness’ of vocational taught Masters environmental courses: student perspectives

Abstract A survey of students on taught vocational courses finds that the student group is diverse, in terms of prior learning and cultural experiences, and in terms of expectations and priorities. There are high levels of student motivation and engagement, and staff time needs to be used differently than on undergraduate programmes. The most frequent student expectations of a postgraduate taught programme are that it will increase their personal ‘commercial capital’, specialist knowledge and transferable skills. Others include satisfaction and self-esteem. Postgraduate taught provision can be strengthened by exploring areas of commonality with staff perceptions of ‘postgraduateness’ and skills development.

LANDSLIDE-GLACIER INTERACTION IN A NEOPARAGLACIAL SETTING AT TVERRBYTNEDE, JOTUNHEIMEN, SOUTHERN NORWAY

Abstract. A tongue‐like, boulder‐dominated deposit in Tverrbytnede, upper Visdalen, Jotunheimen, southern Norway, is interpreted as the product of a rock avalanche (landslide) due to its angular to subangular boulders, surface morphology with longitudinal ridges, down‐feature coarsening, and cross‐cutting relationship to ‘Little Ice Age’ moraines. The rock avalanche fell onto glacier ice, probably channelled along a furrow between two glaciers, and stopped on the glacier foreland, resulting in its elongated shape and long runout distance. Its distal margin may have become remobilized as a rock glacier, but a rock glacier origin for the entire landform is discounted due to lack of source debris, presence of matrix, lack of transverse ridges, and sparcity of melt‐out collapse pits. Lichenometric dating of the deposit indicates an approximate emplacement age of ad 1900. Analysis highlights the interaction of rock‐slope failures and glaciers during deglacierization in a neoparaglacial setting, with reduced slope stability due to debuttressing and permafrost degradation, and enhanced landslide mobility due to flow over a glacier and topographic channelling. Implications for the differentiation of relict landslides, moraines and rock glaciers are discussed and interrelationships between these landforms are considered in terms of an ice‐debris process continuum.

Real World Experiences

Abstract How can vocational degrees prepare postgraduate students effectively for the demands of the workplace? This article reports the findings from a multi-institution pilot study that has investigated the strengths and limitations of practitioner engagement on three vocationally-oriented environmental Masters courses. These courses possess strong links between university study and the ‘world of work’ by working closely with practitioners. The perceptions of practitioner engagement among current and past postgraduate students are compared. Contrasts are made between what knowledge and skills students perceive they need as preparation for the workplace and what they value in hindsight when they actually get there.

Book Review: Rivers and floodplains: forms, processes, and sedimentary record

Scientific and academic whodunits are becoming ever more popular and, whilst it may not quite match The Da Vinci code, Maps, myths, and men is a very detailed and involved unravelling of a mystery that has been around ever since the Vinland Map appeared almost 50 years ago. Before rushing out to solve Christmas-present problems for relevant relations, however, it is necessary to recognize that this is much more than the solving of, or at least the provision of a plausible explanation for, a cartographic mystery; it is a very academic book with a lot of context and detail. Thus, although we all get there in the end and the probable perpetrator of the fake is unmasked in the final chapter, a wide range of issues from worm holes to the nature of Norse societies in the North Atlantic is tackled along the way. The author is at great pains to leave no stone unturned in the hunt for the origins of the map and in looking under these stones reveals much about the nature of cartographic provenance and rivalries and intrigues within different institutions. The book may be said to be as much about men as maps, as almost all the protagonists, with the exceptions of the estimable Eila Campbell and Helen Wallis in the UK, were men. Nevertheless, the impetus of the hunt for a source for the map is kept up with clues along the way reinforcing the likelihood of it being a fake and explaining just why wellestablished scholars would have been likely to fail to recognize it as such. In some ways, Maps, myths, and men: the story ofthe Vinland Map falls between two stools; it is very much a careful academic uncovering of a probable fake that became widely known in the decades following its first appearance, but at the same time it tries to keep a popular side ie, it is at the hard end of what might be classed as popular science literature. There is a lot of quite minute detail on technical issues such as the worm holes in the manuscript and the nature of ink through the centuries, sections over which it is possible to skim whilst retaining the main points that are being made, and there