Teaching Geographical Information Handling Skills for Lower‐income Countries

Geographical Information Systems are seen by many as a quick ‘fix’ for the problems of lower‐income countries and people in those countries have been encouraged to adopt this perception, along with the technology. As teachers of students from LICs, we seek to avoid reproducing a contextless transfer of technical skills and rather aim to promote an education based on the limitations of the technology and on the nature and construction of information. While identifying GIS as one of many components of ‘geographical information’, we emphasise the importance of including ‘non‐GIS’ staff in the education process. We advocate a ‘problem‐posing’ approach to the teaching of ‘Geographical Information for Development’ and discuss some of the challenges which this raises, both for teachers and students.