The Power of Geography for Education in Brazil

In this chapter we seek explore the value of geography in terms of how it can contribute to the development of human potential in Brazil, addressing the following core propositions: allowing teachers/professors to enact a liberating curriculum in geography; emphasizing learning geography to do something to improve modern society; showing how Powerful Geography can encourage diverse students to learn geography; and enabling students to use geography to achieve their life and career aspirations. We carried out this investigation at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, UERJ), at two levels of education, that are strongly interrelated: engaging students of the secondary level of the Instituto de Aplicação Fernando Rodrigues da Silveira (CAp-UERJ), a primary and secondary school; and geography undergraduates from UERJ who are doing a supervised geography internship at CAp-UERJ. The analysis is based on a central question: How can geography teaching at Brazilian schools be developed from the perspective of geography as providing powerful disciplinary knowledge for the education of citizens? To achieve these goals, using a protocol provided by the Grosvenor Center at Texas State University, this chapter is organized into four parts. In the first part, we analyze students’ aspirations through a questionnaire administered to those two groups of students, CAp-UERJ students, and geography undergraduates from UERJ. The second part reports on an interview with a geographer working in mapping/zoning area, the geography students’ primary area of ​​interest, seeking to identify the knowledge and skills geographers need in their professional activities. In the third part, a class is planned and was given to upper secondary students at CAp-UERJ, with the aim of developing the knowledge and skills identified by the interviewee. The last part of this text reflects on the possibilities of incorporating the fundamentals of powerful geographic knowledge into teacher training in Brazil. We could notice that mapping and geoprocessing, if used appropriately, taking an analytical perspective anchored in appropriate scientific concepts and methodological procedures, can serve the needs of Brazilian citizens, revealing chronic and pre-existing problems and proposing novel ways to tackle them. In that way, we believe that the proposed scope of the Powerful Geography research project provides ample opportunity to reflect on the geography education and teacher training from the perspective of powerful geography, which is centered on addressing student aspirations and harnessing geography to tackle the big issues of modern society.