Overview
INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE AND COURSE MATERIALS
Welcome to the Geog 401 Environmental Research at EOU. Through this course you will use the text and other web based materials for background to complete a series of lessons that are identified with each of 4 units. In this unit you need to take the time and familiarize yourself with the course materials and especially consider the report that you will produce for this course. That report will be generated through the efforts of your research and the support of your instructor.

Each unit will be set up with a series of questions. These questions can be responded to by reading the text(s) and any outside materials that you might find (and cite) during your inquiry of the question. The readings associated with each unit are listed in the format of the assignment. Remember to MAKE SURE YOU USE THE standard Geography Assignment Protocol (GAP) in turning in your unit assignment(s) When you are finished with these unit assignments, make a copy for yourself and send it in the mail to the EOU DDE department. (Please remember to quote the questions to which you are responding to on your unit assignment. Also, this course is writing intensive and requires your responses to questions to be concise, but substantive. The responses are to be produced in essay style. In strictly pragmatic terms, the essay aspect of this course is the centre of judgment for the grade and sets the tone of academic decorum appropriate for this level of study. The quality of these essays dictates the level of student's salient connection with the course content. In pedagogical terms, the substance of these essays drives the learning.

YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH REPORT
The title of this course, "environmental research" might suggest that what this course is about is, indeed, research on or about some aspect of the environment. In some respects the course does fulfill that aspect. However, the focus of this course is not about writing a report on the environment. The focus of this course is about the processes of research that are the foundation of any scientific geographic research. A better title for this course might be Geographic Research, because although that title might express the same thing on the surface in context the term "geographic" lends itself to a farther reaching scope of study than simply the environment. "Geographic" means spatial, and implies something that not only includes the environment but also perceptual interpretations of the space. Again, however, the structure is of this course is not on the writing of geographic reports, but rather an analysis of the process of doing geographic research. In order to accomplish this the student needs an exposure to the qualitative and quantitative processes of research methodology. Perhaps that's what this course should be titled, Geographic Research Methods. (but who would want to take a course named that?)

Thus, "the report" in this course will not be a re-hash of an environmental topic. Rather, this course will study the structure of the research surrounding specific geographic (environmental) questions and problems. In addition the first four units of this course should help you reach an understanding of what to look for in the context of your "report".

Reports should be both analytical and descriptive and should focus on a subject of interest to the student. The collection of primary based data is not necessary, however, it can be a part of the process of the report. The student is encouraged to evaluate the existing research base on the topic of choice. Care should be taken to structure the report in such a way that reflects the elements of either a normative, experimental or historical scientific investigation. Reiterating, this report is a heuristic attempt by the student to provide analysis of existing data and research in some field of interest. For an overview of report writing in general please see chapter 8 of the text, Introduction to Scientific Research. The proposal format for this report should entail the following:

• Cover Sheet USE GAP make sure your telephone number is on this sheet
• Summary of the proposal with introduction
• Problem statement
• Objectives
• Design methods
• Evaluation Plan

Your initial proposal should be in the instructors office no later than 17 April.

The scientific method is discussed in both the Haring text as well as the pamphlet on the SM14 methodology by Edmund. Some have questioned as to whether a method such as this actually exists or not. Others suggest that there is a range of methodology. Prof. Steve Dutch discusses this somewhat in his discussion on What Pseudoscience Tells us About Science.
Nevertheless, a system does exists at some level that suggests an order to investigation of phenomenon...call it the scientific method or whatever. The outcome of this system of investigation tries to find, truth.

(Truth, a term that I dealt with directly while teaching philosophy at the University of Texas, and indirectly teaching geography for the U.S. Military, indeed everywhere I've taught this word has come up. It seems education as a whole seems to be in the truth business. No doubt the term has epistomological implications for this course, yet, for convenience sake, is only an operational definition in this curriculum; and in this curriculum means: something that can be proven.(?))

Norman Edmund takes this idea of the Scientific Method and, based on his concern that it is no longer being taught as a fundamental approach to science, restructures it, re-visits it, practices some scientific replication, and models it into something somewhat more practical. It has been supplied as reading in this course to expose you in a popular way (if Edmund is right and you haven't been exposed) to a highly practical application of (and one more way of looking at) a method called the scientific method, or what Edmund calls the SM-14. It is interesting how Edmund introduces "non-logical" methods in ingredient number 12.

As I write this outline the Terri Schiavo case is unfolding before my eyes. Mechanistically speaking there is a debate as to what the science is suggesting about the potential outcome of this woman's problems. In the world of the non-logical there are "state-rights" politicians, arguing about the implication of the federal governments involvement in the case. (This, of course is the same federal government that acknowledges the right of the state to exist and the argument) There are passionate positions by politicians suggesting that the federal government has no business invading family rights issues with the effect of producing emotional misery on a family. But of course this is the same federal government which in the last two years has managed to produce plenty of personal emotional misery to the families of those who have died in Iraq. Morality, the Law and Science, all comes together in this issue. The scientific method, predicates the life potentials for this woman. The law relies on it for truth, yet morality and emotion, the stuff the quantitative mechanistic world can't measure, ironically is the stuff that drives the opinions of humans on both sides of this issue. There was once a science called determinism which proved that the Aryan race was the perfect race. On the basis of that science laws were created to deal with all those who did not fit the parameters of the perfect race. The laws allowed for the extermination of thousands of people, deemed not human by the science, by the law. My grandfather was one of them, He died here.

Steve Dutch writes,

"It's considered hubris - probably rightly - to think we will ever apply the methods of science to all human affairs, but we can go much further than we presently do in testing ideas. A couple of examples:

Does gender-free language reduce sexism?
We might try looking for languages that have, for example, a single pronoun for he, she and it. Turkish does: the single word "o" means he, she or it. In fact, Turkish has no grammatical gender at all. Anyone care to argue that Turkey has gender equality? Going further, it turns out that most languages lack the concept of gender; Indo-European and Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) are the two great families with gender, one of the reasons linguists suspect they share a common remote ancestor. Now it may or may not help our own society to reduce gender-specific terminology (in most cases it can be done so smoothly it's not even noticed) but it's also clear that the most shrill advocates of gender-free language have, at best, a superficial knowledge of language.

Was Piss Christ meant as an attack on Christianity?
The work Piss Christ generated a firestorm of controversy when it was exhibited, in part with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Defenders of the work, a photo of a crucifix in a jar of urine, claimed it was not intended to insult Christians. Bypassing the rich question of how anything so juvenile came to be taken as serious art, the intent of the work strikes me as eminently testable. Create a similar work, a photo of Martin Luther King in a jar of urine, and call it Piss King. See if defenders of Piss Christ react in the same way. Exhibit the work in a black community. Can you predict the response? Would it be justified?"

In this course we approach the scientific method systematically and in that context we also consider one of the most important aspect of a scientific study, that is, the limitations of the science. A integral part of any study is its admission to limitations. Sometimes this admission is objectively founded and reasonable, sometimes not (for the later consider World War II) And given these limitations to a study then it follows there must be inherent limitations to this system, whatever it's called.

Consider, for a moment, the opposite side of the rationalist fence, interpretivism. Yvonna Lincoln, who I worked with as a graduate student at Texas A&M, assisted in the development of an alternative research paradigm which came to be known and Naturalistic Inquiry. Is this really the other side of the fence...when outcomes that are produced, are in essence the same? Well, on to pragmatism ......here's the assignment.

END OF ASSIGNMENT 1.