J-READING Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography

Re-reading William D. Pattison’s Four Traditions of Geography: A Critical Assessment

Davide Papotti — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A few years ago, in this same section, Teachings from the Past, we presented and commented on the address that John Kirtland Wright delivered on December 30, 1946, as the Presidential Address at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the American Geographical Society held in Columbus, Ohio. This time, we will comment on an essay that begins with a 1905 quotation from the first President of the Association, William Morris Davis. We continue, therefore, to reflect on the legacy of the American debate concerning the epistemological status of geography and its influence on the teaching of the discipline.

A journey through time into the “real world” of ancient Pompeii. The 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius relived to raise risk awareness and as an opportunity for experiential learning

Lisetta Giacomelli, Cristiano Pesaresi — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which “destroyed-preserved” Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae and Oplontis, left in its wake a huge number of various artifacts, data and documents that continue to come to light during archaeological excavation campaigns, giving back the eloquent features of the daily life and urban, economic and cultural organisation of the towns affected. This paper looks at a series of aspects relative to their social life, as well as elements from the casts that have made it possible to add new information regarding the eruptive phases and resulting phenomenology and the reactions of the inhabitants, found in all too telling positions that indirectly describe what they must have experienced and what action they decided to take. From a geographical point of view, the symbolic and material meanings steeped in the 79 AD eruption take on exceptional connotations when considering that at present the Naples Metropolitan city records very high building and population density, so that the risk level for a possible resumption of activity increases dramatically, making it necessary to glean as much information and insight from that tragic event in order to raise awareness to the issues of geodynamic risk. Among the objectives of this work is that of providing various cues which highlight the significance of fieldwork in the Pompeii site, aimed at making people understand, in a process of research-action and active and participatory didactics, what it means to live in a context in which in the past the absolute protagonist, Mount Vesuvius, offered a vivid testimony of Plinian eruption, which even today can be revisited in its most important phases in a dramatic and engaging journey in time.

Salt lingers in the blood. A geographical dialogue on the Oceanic Sense of Place

Chiara Certomà, Federico Fornaro — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper presents an enquiry into the possibility of defining an Oceanic Sense of Place, drawing upon critical ocean studies and engaging with geographical scholarship on place-making. It explores how the experiences of seagoing people contribute to the emergence of an Oceanic Sense of Place, grounded in emotionally felt and collectively elaborated attachments to the sea – expressed through imaginaries, narratives, symbols, jargons, and systems of life – and in the kinship between human and non-human communities and the Ocean. The paper unfolds as a dialogue—an imaginary navigation into our relationship with the Ocean, relies on reflective, qualitative embodied and embedded research which produced an auto-ethnographic and theory-informed dialogue upon place-making in the high sea. In line with Haraway’s call for “stories (and theories) that are able to gather the complexities and keep the edges open” (Haraway, 2016, pp. 100-101), this paper unfolds as a imaginary navigation into our relationship with the Ocean. The creation of distinctive entanglements prompts a series of questions and suggests (embodied, embedded, and culturally constrained) responses: Can we consider the sea our home? How does this sense of place differ from land-based experiences? What technological translations and sensorial engagements are mobilised to render specific portions of the ocean recognisable? And, finally, how might this fluid, transient, and temporally grounded sense of place offer new perspectives on exclusionary practices tied to belonging and appropriation?

Teaching Geography facing current and future challenges. Cross perspectives. Introduction

Fabio Fatichenti, Philippe Charpentier — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The teaching of Geography, like all other school subjects, changes in whole or in part according to the new challenges and issues that scientific Geography has to deal with (Bagoly-Simó, 2021; De Vecchis et al., 2020; Giorda, 2019; Shin and Bednarz, 2019; Legardez and Simonneaux, 2011). Despite this, national programmes or guidelines are sometimes lagging behind in transposing both the progress of the reference science and the issues arising from social, economic and political changes. And what about the transposition of these programmes into the proposals of school textbooks? (Charpentier and Fatichenti, 2023). This said, although “we are all geographical beings” as stated by Joublot-Ferré (2018, p. 10) and “Geography’s objective as a social science is to study the relationship between societies and the space around them” (Collectif, 2020), what kind of teaching do we want to offer to the students of today’s primary and middle schools? Should this teaching practice evolve? How and under what conditions? For what purposes? As a rule, in many countries school curricula are developed by joint committees. But what is the opinion of geographers in this regard, assuming they take part in these committees?