Image above: An excellent poster which diagrammatically tries to show the essence of geography and geographically thinking. A useful resource! Related links to Spatialworlds Geogaction Spatialworlds website Australian Geography Teachers' Association website 'Towards a National Geography Curriculum' project website Humsteach blog GeogSplace blog Geographical thinking Scoop.it Spatial literacy Scoop.it History and geography Scoop.it Spatial Education and technology Scoop.it Follow Spatialworlds on Twitter Email contact: [email protected] 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.
