Binaries and Silences in Geography Education Assessment Research

This introductory chapter, written by two of the editors of this volume, surveys the landscape of assessment in geography education. After initially outlining the purposes of geography education and reviewing critical terminology with regards to the concept of assessment, the chapter that follows is divided into three sections. In Section I, a recap of the findings of a review of papers associated with assessment in geography education published between 2000 and 2016 is provided. Then, the review is updated to include publications between 2016 and the present. Analysis of this new literature in Section II reveals shifts around both assessment type and the scale of the research—what we have referred to as binaries. This section also illuminates the silences in geography education research. The chapter proceeds to argue that these binaries and silences need to be addressed if the field of assessment in geography education is to move forward in meaningful ways. Finally, Section III showcases the chapters that make up this volume, work that has already gone some way to working through the existing binaries and silences.