Image above:
An excellent poster which diagrammatically tries to show the essence of geography and geographically thinking. A useful resource!
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Continuing to think about geographical thinking
During this
year during workshops on the Australian Curriculum: Geography I have spent considerable time helping teachers to define geography and the nature of geographical thinking in the classroom. This has involved using the 7 concepts of the curriculum to
help articulate ‘what makes geography geography?’ Recently I came across an
excellent article from the National Geographic people that cited the following
aspects of looking at something which make it a geographical look. The aspects
are:
* Interaction: systems interacting
* Connexion : people with place and between each other
* Implication: how we interact with the world and make decisions
The article says that such a look
helps develop the geography literacy of students. That is, develop ‘their ability to use geographic
understanding and geographic reasoning to make far reaching decisions.’
Although not
the Australian Curriculum: Geography key concepts, there is an obvious synergy
between these three aspects and what is being promoted as geographical thinking
in the Australian Curriculum: Geography. Go to the Australian Curriculum portal for details on the 7 concepts.
Needless to
say that the 7 key concepts of the curriculum; Place, Space, Environment, Change, Interconnection, Sustainability and Scale are proving extremely useful in
supporting teachers to think geographically.
Concept Wheel: Copyright Malcolm McInerney 2012
Using the Concept Wheel above, the workshops have been
a fun away to work with teachers in deconstructing and distilling what
geographical thinking (and geography) is all about.
What stimulated this posting is that I recently
came across the poster shown at the beginning of this post. It was a really
interesting take on visually showing what geography involves and certainly
provides plenty of ideas and angles to discuss about geographical thinking. I will
certainly use it to help teachers to make sense of geographical thinking in the
future.
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