Using "Autogeography," sense of place and place-based approaches in the pedagogy of geographic thought

This essay will discuss an approach in the pedagogy of geography that engages students with the interpretation, imagination, and the complex understandings and dimensions of geographic thought. My goal here is to make the explicit connection between place experiences (autobiography) and place, sense of place, and geographic thought. I underline how geographic thought should connect to (and draw on) students' lived experiences, as they become not only students of geography but cognitive and active participants of geographic thought. I offer a new guideline that students can draw upon and to show how they can engage and explore their own sense of place, autobiography, and more broadly, geographic thought. I combine two tasks here by establishing the importance of autobiography (experiencing place) as a method and as a pedagogical tool in student learning about place and sense of place; and through the work of engaging with place and sense of place as a tool of geographic analysis.