Five themes of geography
The five themes of geography are an American educational framework for teaching geography. Adopted in 1984 by the National Council for Geographic Education and the Association of American Geographers, the five themes were published in the NCGE/AAG publication Guidelines for Geographic Education, Elementary, and Secondary Schools. Most American geography and social studies classrooms have adopted the five themes in teaching practices.[1]
The five-theme organizational approach was superseded by the National Geography Standards, a set of eighteen standards promulgated in 1994. However, the five themes continue to be used as an educational approach in many educational outlets.[2][1]
Contents |
[edit] Themes
The five themes of geography are;
- Location
- Place
- Human-environment interactions
- Movement
- Region
[edit] Location
Location can be described in two different ways:
- Absolute location, a location as described by its latitude and longitude on the Earth. For example, the coordinates of Albany, New York is 42°39′9.34″N 73°45′26.33″W / 42.6525944°N 73.7573139°W
- Relative location, a location as described by where it is compared to something else. For example, Albany, New York is roughly 150 miles north of New York City.
[edit] Place
Place is the description of what it is like to live in a certain place. Examples are government types, climate, diet, etc.
[edit] Human-environment interaction
How people interact with the environment, and how the environment responds. Scientists currently are debating how much the environment has changed in response to how humans have emitted certain pollutants into the atmosphere. -Dependency -Adaptation -Modification
[edit] Movement
] is the travel of people, goods and ideas from one location to another or political events. Examples of movement include America's westward expansion, the Information Revolution, and immigration. New devices such as the airplane and the Internet allow physical and ideological goods to be transferred long distances in short time intervals. The travel of oneself from place to place, and the actions they do there, is also considered movement.
[edit] Region
Regions consist of subregions that contain clusters of areas that are distinctive by their uniformity of description based on a range of statistical data, for example demographic, and locales. In astrophysics some regions have science-specific terms such as galactic clusters. ex. The United States is a POLITICAL region because it shares the same government system
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b Karen Ganzel (2010-04-27). "Geography Lesson Plans Using Google Earth" (HTML). Lesson Planet. http://www.lessonplanet.com/directory_articles/elementary_math_lesson_plans/27_April_2010/337/geography_lesson_plans_using_google_earth. Retrieved 2010-04-29.
- ^ Matt Rosenberg, The Five Themes of Geography, at About.com
