Geography Field School Alumni
University of Sydney
Geography overseas Field Schools have their origin in a 3 week trip to Thailand led by Phil Hirsch in January 1988. 10 geography students attended. Subsequent field trips to Thailand (1989, 1995, 1996); to Thailand and Laos (1992); to Malaysia (1990); and to Indonesia (1994) were all associated with specific units of study and carried a relatively small assessment loading. All were focused on understanding development in situ and in thematic context, with a range of geographical themes including environmental change, natural resource management, rural development and urbanisation.
The success of the international field program was evident in its popularity. A shortcoming of the program was its only partial integration into the main teaching program, both because it was only possible to take a portion of those enrolled in the relevant units of study, and because of the difficulties in assimilating field material into mainstream coursework.
The annual Field School has provided an innovative solution to the limitations of supplementary field trips. The five week field school involves a self-contained Unit of Study for 20-25 students that involves a program of fieldwork, classroom-based teaching, readings and assignments that are carried out as part of an integrated program worth 12 credit-points. Students carry out fieldwork with peers at universities in the host countries, allowing cross-cultural peer-based learning and giving access to village level fieldwork that would otherwise be difficult in such different cultural and linguistic circumstances.Phil Hirsch ran the Southeast Asia Field School in Vietnam, Laos and Thailand in 1997, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2005 and 2006. From 1999, John Connell and Eric Waddell established a South Pacific Field School to provide an option for students in alternate years, and John also ran this in 2000, 2003, 2004 and 2007. He will run it again in early 2008.
The essence of the field school is a framework of experiential learning to give students a field-based understanding of development, environment and rural social change at the village level, and to foster learning with and through peers at universities in host countries.
See links below for an articles on the Field School:
Connell (2006) 'I can't eat that, it's purple': a Geography field course in Vanuatu and Fiji