Download The Eighteen National Geography Standards

The Eighteen National Geography Standards
The World in Spatial Terms
Standard 1: How to use maps and other geographic representations, tools, and
technologies to acquire, process, and report information.
Standard 2: How to use mental maps to organize information about people, places, and
environments.
Standard 3: How to analyze the spatial organization of people, places, and environments
on Earth's surface.
Places and Regions
Standard 4: The physical and human characteristics of places.
Standard 5: That people create regions to interpret Earth's complexity.
Standard 6: How culture and experience influence people's perception of places and
regions.
Physical Systems
Standard 7: The physical processes that shape the patterns of Earth's surface.
Standard 8: The characteristics and spatial distribution of ecosystems on Earth's surface.
Human Systems
Standard 9: The characteristics, distribution, and migration of human populations on
Earth's surface.
Standard 10: The characteristics, distributions, and complexity of Earth's cultural
mosaics.
Standard 11: The patterns and networks of economic interdependence on Earth's surface,
process, patterns, and functions of human settlement.
Standard 12: The process, patterns, and functions of human settlement.
Standard 13: How forces of cooperation and conflict among people influence the division
and control of Earth's surface.
Environment and Society
Standard 14: How human actions modify the physical environment.
Standard 15: How physical systems affect human systems.
Standard 16: The changes that occur in the meaning, use, distribution, and importance of
resources.
The Uses of Geography
Standard 17: How to apply geography to interpret the past.
Standard 18: To apply geography to interpret the present and plan for the future.
Source: The Eighteen National Geography Standards
http://www.ncge.org/publications/tutorial/standards/.
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What Should We Know About Geography?
The Five Geography Themes
Prior to the development of the National Standards, the Geographic Education
National Implementation Project (1987) developed the Five Geography Themes for
teaching geography. The following elaboration on the themes by Richard Boehm and
James Peterson (1994) offers an excellent combination of Information and Procedural
Knowledge.
Location
Position on the Earth's Surface Location is the most basic of the fundamental themes.
Every geographical feature has a unique location—its global address. A number of
geographic factors give significance to a location. A rich geography lies beyond location,
yet the concept of location is crucial to geographical understanding. Location is a basic
prerequisite to higher-level geography, just as addition and subtraction are basic
prerequisites to advanced mathematical understanding and competency.
Absolute Location
Absolute site has a fixed location on the planet. The most common way of identifying its
location is by longitude and latitude coordinates.
Using Grids
Every site has a unique location on planet Earth (or in space).
Location can be defined in relation to a reference grid, such as longitude and latitude, or
perhaps an alphanumeric grid.
Different Types of Maps and Globes
Maps and globes can be used to find location, but they also show other geographic
elements such as pattern and process. Thematic maps provide the location and
distribution of a factor: population, economic systems, climate zones, political divisions,
and settlement patterns. Road maps and navigational charts show the routes for travel
from one location to another.
Map Projections
Map projections are necessary to transfer information from a spherical Earth to a twodimensional map sheet. The process of map projection often leads to distortion in
distance (size), direction, or shape.
Earth-Sun Relations
The Earth's movement and position relative to the Sun is important in determining
climate, seasons, and time zones. Key concepts include: solstices, equinoxes, tilt of the
axis, daily rotation, and annual revolution.
Relative Location
Relative location is a way of expressing a location in relation to another site. For
example, Peoria, Illinois, is 125 miles southwest of Chicago, or Australia is in the
southern hemisphere, or the Rocky Mountains are between Denver, Colorado, and Salt
Lake City, Utah, or Canada is north of the United States.
Locations Have Geographical Explanations
Why are certain features or places located where they are?
Relative location can be explained in terms of locational factors of history, economics, or
other physical or human factors.
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The Importance of a Location Can Change with History
Even though the absolute location has not changed, its relative importance may have
increased or decreased because of its changing role in local, national, or world affairs.
Place
Physical and Human Characteristics. Location tells us where, and place tell us what is
there. All places have a set of distinctive characteristics, the features that make them
different from or similar to other places. Geographers often divide these characteristics
into physical and human phenomena that are spatial and can be mapped. Characteristics
of place often can be explained by the human and physical processes that define the
geographic patterns of our planet. The geography of a place is a mosaic of factors,
including the patterns and processes that define the three remaining fundamental themes:
human-environmental relations, movement, and regions.
Physical Characteristics
Landforms
Landforms and the processes that shape the landscape: erosion and deposition by rivers,
waves, glaciers, and wind; mountain-building, volcanoes, earthquakes, and plate
tectonics.
Climate
Patterns of temperature, humidity and rainfall, cells of air pressure, wind and ocean
circulation: the climate of a place affects landform processes, soils, water availability,
vegetation, and animal life.
Soils
Natural fertility, suitability to agriculture types and crops, and relations to climate are all
important factors of soil.
Natural Vegetation (Flora)
Type of environment: desert, tropical rainforest, tundra, or savanna, and the relationship
to factors of soil and climate.
Animal Life (Fauna)
Relationship to environment, climate, soils, and vegetation.
Water
Water bodies, the hydrological cycle, availability of fresh water, areas of water deficit
and surplus.
Human Characteristics
Religion
Human belief systems and their imprints on places
Languages
Human communication and its imprint on places: names of places and features are often
geographically descriptive in their original language.
Population Factors
Description, distributions, density, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, and economic
structures, rates of birth, death, and population growth
Settlement Patterns
Urban, rural, suburban, wilderness areas, and the form of settlements
Economic Activities
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How people make a living, including agriculture, industry, forestry, fishing, and
providing services, the imprint of an economic system on the landscape.
Human-Environmental Relations
Relationships Within Places. Spatial patterns and processes develop from the complex
interactions and relationships that occur between humans and their physical
environments. The geography of our planet is a dynamic system of interacting
environmental factors, affected by both natural and human processes.
All environments offer geographical advantages and disadvantages as habitats for
humans. How humans behave according to the advantages and limitations that an
environment offers can greatly affect a landscape. Key sub-themes include:
The Earth as an Environmental System
Interrelationships Between Humans and Environments
Physical and human environments are interconnected, woven together by their
interactions and influences. Change in one almost certainly involves charge in the other.
The Role of Technology
Humans apply technology to modify their environment.
Modification of the environment occurs through agriculture, industry, settlement,
lifestyles, and other forms of human activity.
The Problems of Technology
The application of technology can create problems as well as benefits.
Air and water pollution, waste disposal, toxic materials.
Environmental Hazards
Human often cope with hazardous environmental conditions.
Environmental hazards can result from either natural or human factors, although usually
both are involved to some extent. Examples may be natural: e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes,
floods, volcanoes, tsunamis; or human induced, e.g., nuclear disasters, oil spills, heat
pollution of water bodies.
Environmental Limits
All environments have limiting factors, e.g., availability of water, land, and other natural
resources, management of environments (coastal zones and lands).
Adaptation
Humans have many ways of adapting to various environments. People in deserts live
differently than people in humid tropics or the polar regions.
The influence of the environment: ways of making a living, house types, ways of life, and
the appearance of the human landscape.
Ethics and Values
Issues Relating to Management and Protection of Environmental Resources
Environmental protection or stewardship can conflict with economic development. Do
we want bigger and faster cars or expanded industrial capability, or do we want clean air
enough to pay the cost?
Different cultural attitudes about the environment and its resources
Cultures often have different attitudes toward use and conservation of the environment.
One use of the environment may be detrimental to other uses of the same resource.
Movement
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Human Interacting on the Earth. Regions and places are connected by movement or
human interactions. Humans are increasing their levels of interaction, in communication,
travel, and foreign exchange. Technology has allowed us to shrink space and distance.
People migrate and travel out of curiosity, economic or social need, as a response to
environmental change, or because they have been forced to move for other reasons.
Physical processes are also expressions of movement, e.g., traveling weather patterns,
ocean and wind currents, flowing water, plate tectonics, and volcanism.
Movement: Its Form and Stimulus
Transportation Modes
Private transportation (air, rail, bus, auto, other)
Public transportation (air, rail, bus, auto, other)
Freight transportation (air, rail, truck, barge, ship, pipeline, other)
Movement in Everyday Life
Individual travel behavior, e.g., journey to work or school, shopping trips
Networks of communication, flows of ideas, diffusion of culture
Spatial organization of society
Spatial efficiency within market areas in the public and private sectors
History of Movement
Movement is an important theme in both history and geography.
Migration, history of settlements, frontiers
Voyages (and expeditions) of discovery and exploration
Economic Stimulus for Movements
Economic factors can often stimulate or influence movement.
Colonization, mercantilism, current migrations
Energy and Mass Induced Movements
Movements associated with the hydrologic cycle (including weather, wind, and ocean
currents); tectonic movements (including folding, faulting, and warping); movements
associated with volcanism; mass movements such as landslides and soil creep; and
movements within ecosystems
Global Interdependence
The economies of the world are interrelated, and nations depend on each other for:
Movement of Goods, Services, and Ideas
Where do raw materials come from, where are they shipped to?
Where do certain products (technologies, services, or ideas) come from? Why?
Foreign Trade
Trade partner countries, tariffs, hinterlands, ports
Common Markets
Shared labor, markets, production facilities
Models of Human Interaction
These provide simplifications that help us analyze how humans interact over space, and
make rational predictions for how similar interactions will occur in the future. Examples
include:
Gravity Models
Interactions based on the size of places and distance.
Central Place Theory
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Size and spacing of urban areas and the relationship of cities to the surrounding region
(hinterlands or trade areas).
Regions
How They Form and Change. Regions are geographical tools. They are mental
constructs designed to help us understand and organize the spatial characteristics of our
planet. Regions may be larger than a continent or smaller than your neighborhood.
Regions can have sharp boundaries that are well defined (such as a state, e.g.,
California or Illinois), or may have gradational or indistinct boundaries (such as the
Pacific Basin, the Great Plains, Silicon Valley, or the Kalahari Desert).
Many regions are familiar to us because of television or the newspapers, or
because they are related to other subjects that we study. For the geographer, regions
represent a core element of the discipline and are of fundamental importance.
We define our regions by stating criteria and then drawing boundaries. Regions
may be based upon crops, types of agriculture, climate, landforms, vegetation, political
boundaries, soils, religions, languages, cultures, and economic characteristics. Subthemes include:
Uniform Region
Uniform regions are defined by some uniform cultural or physical characteristic.
Examples include the Wheat Belt, Latin America, the Gulf-Atlantic Coastal Plain, the
Bible Belt, the Sun Belt, New England, the Rocky Mountains, or a country, county,
parish, or township, or Cajun country in Louisiana.
Functional Region
A functional region has a focal point (often a city) and is the organized space surrounding
that central location.
Examples would be a metropolitan area, such as greater New York City, Chicago, Los
Angeles, or the San Francisco Bay Area. The Bureau of the Census calls these functional
regions Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs).
Other functional regions include market areas served by a particular store and districts
around schools.
Cultural Diversity
Understanding regions can lead to understanding human diversity.
Regions are an excellent means for illustrating the cultural differences and similarities
between areas of the world and groups of people.
Examining and analyzing the cultural characteristics of places and regions lead students
to understand the rich diversity of people and the ways they live. Such understanding will
lead to more compassionate and nonjudgmental attitudes toward other cultures.
Students will also understand ways in which national, racial, or ethnic groups interact
with each other in a local, national, or regional context.
Source: Boehm, R. C., and Peterson, J. F. (1994). An Elaboration of the Fundamental
Themes in Geography v58 n4 p211-18 Apr-May 1994 Social Education ERIC: EJ487186
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