Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

Some backgroundFor a number of years throughout the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, our departmentorganised and hosted so-called “Intensive Programmes” about the geography of Europeanintegration, co-funded through the EU Erasmus Programme. The focus wasgenerally on issues of regional development and regional policy. Among the partnerswere students and staff from Spain, Finland, Norway, France and the United Kingdom.Three things became very clear in this experience. In the first place, students foundit extremely stimulating to learn about and from each other’s national and personalperspectives on Europe. Students delivered papers about regional development andpolicy issues in their home regions and were active in joint debates about the desirablefuture directions of European regional policy. Conflicting (national) perceptions andinterests, as well as (im)possibilities for compromise, became very evident in thesedebates. Secondly, students were very positive about the inclusion in the course ofEuropean (regional) policy as a contested arena, and showed special interest in futureorienteddebates about it. Thirdly, the active learning strategies adopted, with debate,student-led seminars and presentations, and study visits to experts in Brussels forfurther presentations and discussions, made the intensive programmes work.The very successful intensive programmes came to an end for a number of reasons:the disappearance of the traditional disciplinary Erasmus networks as a result ofpolicy shifts in Brussels; and probably also fatigue with the annual paperwork forIP applications and evaluation reports to the European Commission. The idea ofa module about European integration, with an active and collaborative learningapproach, an international student group and with a focus on European policy issues,was taken further, however, by a group of Utrecht staff members, lead by politicalgeographer Jan Groenendijk. This resulted in the “European integration” course thathas now been operational for over five years.DesignAny university course in Utrecht takes place over ten weeks, with a study loadof 7,5 ECTS credits, or 200 hours, or 20 hours of work per week (half time; thereis always a parallel course), with an average of 6 to 8 contact hours per week forlectures, seminars, presentations, fieldwork, etcetera. The average “European integration”course will have approximately 60 students, one third to one fourth ofthem exchange students (mostly from European countries), and a teaching team offour members of staff. The course starts in a rather conventional way, with a seriesof lectures about aspects of the European integration process that may be relevantfor the students’ project later during the course (see further down). Parallel to theselectures, the students have some small simulation exercises that make them sensitiveto the importance of national interests and positions in European negotiations anddecision making processes. Thus they start orienting themselves to their projects,that will really take off after the exam (fifth or sixth week, related to the lecturesand reading materials).The project has a number of phases. During the first phase, multinational studentgroups of four produce country reports – supported by sub-national regional analyses284