Effective: 2023-05-01

Course Description

The course outline below was developed as part of a statewide standardization process.

General Course Purpose

This course emphasizes geographic literacy, awareness of and engagement with global issues, and cultural diversity. The course uses a thematic approach and requires students to think critically about and apply geographic concepts to contemporary topics, appreciating the impacts of individual and collective actions.

Course Objectives

• Critical Thinking
• Analyze the interrelationships among societies and culture, politics, economics, and space.
• Identify locales impacted by climate change and describe how climate threats vary across space.
• Scientific Literacy and Quantitative Reasoning
• Read and interpret quantitative and qualitative geographic data represented in maps, tables, charts, graphs, landscapes, and images (e.g., satellite, photographs, cartoons)
• Interpret data and construct explanatory hypotheses.
• Explain how maps, images, and landscapes illustrate or relate to geographic principles, processes, and outcomes
• Civic Engagement
• Evaluate impacts of human activity on the environment.
• Discuss the relevance of one?s own actions in a globalized world.
• Written Communication
• Conduct analysis through written and/or oral communication.
• Human Diversity
• Evaluate diverse human societies in terms of their economic activities and environmental sustainability.
• Demonstrate an appreciation and respect for the diversity of perspectives, world-views, and cultures.

Major Topics to be Included

• Geographic literacy
• Some learning outcomes that could satisfy this topic include:
• Use geographic tools such as latitude and longitude to identify specific locations on Earth.
• Read and interpret various types of maps.
• Describe and explain various geospatial technologies and their uses.
• Explain how Geographers use Land Use Land Cover Change to analyze human?s impact on the Earth?s surface
• Geography Concepts
• Some learning outcomes that could satisfy this topic include:
• Apply geographic concepts to explain real-world scenarios. Concepts include: region, place, location, site and situation, networks, mobility, diffusion, human-environment relationships, scale and scales of analysis, globalization, cultural landscape.
• Demographics: Population and Migration
• Some learning outcomes that could satisfy this topic include:
• Use quantitative data represented in maps and charts to describe global population distribution and composition.
• Identify population patterns and trends across space and time.
• Interpret population pyramids to discuss growth and decline of generations and the economic significance of different age structures.
• Explain theories and models of population growth and decline (e.g., Malthusian, the demographic transition model).
• Explain how changing gender roles has demographic consequences in different parts of the world.
• Identify and explain causal factors of migration.
• Describe examples of voluntary and forced migration (e.g. refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons).
• Discuss effects of human migration (e.g. legal, environmental, demographic, cultural).
• Cultural Geographies
• Some learning outcomes that could satisfy this topic include:
• Describe the distribution and the diffusion of major languages and religions around the world.
• Explain patterns and landscapes of language, religion, ethnicity, and gender.
• Political Geography
• Some learning outcomes that could satisfy this topic include:
• Define and identify examples of the different types of political entities: states, nations, nation-states, stateless nations, multinational states, multistate nations, and autonomous and semi autonomous regions.
• Define and describe concepts of political power and territoriality through, for example, shatterbelts and choke points.
• Identify boundary types and explain the function of international and internal boundaries.
• Explain how different forms of governance, unitary and federal states, affect spatial organization.
• Identify and define factors that lead to the devolution, or fragmenting, of states.
• Explain how concepts of centrifugal and centripetal forces apply at the state scale.
• Agriculture & Food
• Some learning outcomes that could satisfy this topic include:
• Explain the connection between physical geography, political economy, and agricultural regions.
• Identify the major centers of origin for domestication of plants and animals, and explain how plants and animals diffused globally.
• Describe the timing and major innovations of the three agricultural revolutions.
• Identify regions where foraging is a continued practice and describe the advantages of relying on multiple and traditional food sources.
• Explain the consequences of the Agricultural Revolutions (e.g., First through Third, Green and Gene) and discuss issues of economic and environmental sustainability.
• Using the concept of supply chains, explain the interdependence among regions of agricultural production and consumption.
• Discuss causes of food insecurity and possible solutions.
• Urban Geography
• Some learning outcomes that could satisfy this topic include:
• Use the geography concepts of site and situation to explain the processes that initiate and further urbanization and suburbanization.
• Explain how cities embody processes of globalization.
• Use urban geography models to explain the internal structure of cities.
• Discuss historical causes for residential segregation (for example, redlining, blockbusting).
• Identify and discuss the impacts of different urban design initiatives.
• Discuss challenges to urban sustainability and identify response strategies.
• Economic Development
• Some learning outcomes that could satisfy this topic include:
• Describe the origins of the Industrial Revolution, the early diffusion of industrialization, and the relationship to the distribution of natural resources.
• Define the five economic sectors.
• Describe the spatial and landscape patterns associated with industrial production.
• Use social and economic measures of development to discuss levels of development around the world.
• Describe inequalities and unevenness in development as related to gender and place.
• Explain different theories of economic and social development (e.g., Rostow, Wallerstein, dependency theory).
• Explain how sustainability principles relate to and impact industrialization and spatial development.
• Human-Environment Interactions
• Some learning outcomes that could satisfy this topic include:
• Identify and discuss major issues of human impact on the environment (e.g., climate change, soil erosion, air quality, water scarcity) and practices for environmental restoration.
• Compare and contrast renewable and nonrenewable energy resources
• Describe evidence for and causes of current climate change.
• Discuss individual and collective strategies to address climate change.
• Identify locales impacted by climate change and evaluate the (economic, security, or other) impacts of these changes.