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The Rise of Powerful Geography

Richard G. Boehm, Michael Solem & Joann Zadrozny

To cite this article: Richard G. Boehm, Michael Solem & Joann Zadrozny (2018) The Rise ofPowerful Geography, The Social Studies, 109:2, 125-135, DOI: 10.1080/00377996.2018.1460570

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00377996.2018.1460570

Published online: 21 May 2018.

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The Rise of Powerful Geography

Richard G. Boehma, Michael Solemb, and Joann Zadrozny c

aJesse H. Jones Distinguished Chair in Geographic Education, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA; bDirector of Research, Texas StateUniversity, San Marcos, TX; cSenior Research Assistant, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX

ABSTRACTThe Grosvenor Center for Geographic Education and National Center for Research in GeographyEducation propose a new framework for geography called Powerful Geography, whichrevolutionizes the traditional notion of standards in geography education. Combining Amartya Senand Martha Nussbaum’s principles of human capabilities, Michael Young’s theory of powerfuldisciplinary knowledge, and Wesley Null’s concept of a liberating curriculum, Powerful Geographyoffers a new conceptual approach to professional development for teachers. The approach aims tohelp teachers model geographic knowledge and skills that offer a diverse group of students thebest preparation needed to attain personal and career goals and aspirations. This article argues thelogic and value of Powerful Geography, sets up the rationale for Powerful Geography, describeshow it builds on prior research, and presents a multiyear research and development plan involvingsocial studies teachers.

KEYWORDSLiberating curriculum;GeoCapabilities; geographystandards; PowerfulGeography

Introduction

Geography education in grades K–12 in America’sschools has not fared well over the last two deca-des. Figure 1 shows overall scores on the geographyportion of the National Assessment of EducationalProgress (NAEP). Essentially, there has been nogain in geography learning in schools as a whole,and scores for underrepresented groups, while upslightly, are not statistically significant increases.We also know that there has been no gain in thenumber of states that require a stand-alone geogra-phy course for high school graduation across theschools of America. For example, in 2009 six statesrequired a stand-alone geography course, while in2017 that number remained at six states requiringa stand-alone geography course (Grosvenor Centerfor Geographic Education, 2009; Zadrozny, 2017).

There are many possible reasons for this; per-haps most prominently is the clear emphasis by thefederal government and state education agencies onteaching and learning in the STEM (science, tech-nology, engineering, and mathematics) subjectareas. One can look at this unequal emphasis fromthe perspective of federal appropriations by subject

area from 2002 to 2012 (Figure 2). Geography hasbeen left out in the face of competition fromSTEM subjects, but also English Language Arts(ELA), history, the arts, and foreign language sub-ject areas.

Other factors also may be considered. A significantdichotomy has existed between university and schoolgeography, with university geography departmentsemphasizing process-oriented physical geography andgeospatial technology, while in the schools geographycontinues to be part of the social studies (Boehm,2015). Poor pre-service teacher education in geogra-phy continues to plague the subject area in schools. In2006 in a survey of 1,106 geography teachers in theDallas–Fort Worth Metroplex area, 92% had threehours or less of university-level geography courses intheir certification programs (Boehm, Brysch, Mohan,& Backler, 2012).

We believe that a serious handicap to sensible anddynamic geography education in America’s schools isthe widespread difficulties of Geography EducationStandards Project, (1994), Heffron and Downs, (2012)to guide the geography component of the social stud-ies standards at the state and local school district level

CONTACT Joann Zadrozny j_z37@txtstate.edu Senior Research Assistant, Texas State University, 601 University Drive, San Marcos, TX 78666, USA.

Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/vtss.© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

THE SOCIAL STUDIES2018, VOL. 109, NO. 2, 125–135https://doi.org/10.1080/00377996.2018.1460570

(Bednarz, 2003; Munroe & Smith, 1998; Munroe &Smith, 2000). This disconnect may be seen as one ofthe major reasons for a failed alignment betweennational standards and assessment and curricular pro-tocols at the state level, a clear problem in identifyingthe geography that is of greatest importance to teach-ers and students.

We believe that the time has come for a newapproach to geography education that will produceacademically rigorous national and state standardsin geography that address the goals/aspirations ofeach individual student. Present “top-down,” one-size-fits-all standards, such as Geography for Life,

have failed to serve the educational needs of stu-dents in our nation’s schools, from rural Americato our largest urban school districts. We need tomodel geographic knowledge for the overwhelmingnumber of teachers who are non-specialists so thatthe subject is understandable and of great utility toall of their students. Powerful Geography will dothis while capturing the imagination and ambitionsof individual students, a learning group displayingvery diverse social, economic, racial, and ethnicbackgrounds.

We begin with a historical survey of geographyin American education since the mid-1980s, aperiod that represents the modern reform era ofthe discipline in schools. Our review highlights themajor initiatives that have occurred in geographycurricula and teacher education, the good thatcame out of those developments, and a frank dis-cussion of their shortcomings. With that as context,we introduce a new framework for geographyteacher education that, we believe, is necessary tocarry the subject forward well into the future. Weexplain how the Powerful Geography frameworkand approach, by threading together Amartya Senand Martha Nussbaum’s principles of human capa-bilities, Michael Young’s theory of powerful disci-plinary knowledge, and Wesley Null’s concept of aliberating curriculum, is attuned to the professionaldevelopment needs of teachers and the educationalneeds of students in all of America’s diverseschools and communities.

Figure 1. Average Eighth-grade NAEP Geography Test Scores by Race, 1994–2014.

Figure 2. Federal Funding Totals for No Child Left Behind CoreAcademic Subjects, FYs 2002–2012.

126 R. G. BOEHM ET AL.

The reform movement in U.S. geographyeducation

Approximately 1,500,000 teachers may be responsiblefor teaching geography in the United States, either aspart of social studies in grades K–6, as a stand-aloneor combined course in Grades 7–8, or as a stand-aloneor combined course in Grades 9–12 (GENIP, 2004).Allowing for variations in certification requirementsacross states and by grade level, most teachers willonly take one or two geography courses during theirteacher education program. Typically, these coursesare introductory-level, aimed at either a general edu-cation audience or intended as a first course in amajor. Because of this brief and often inadequatepreparation, teachers have long found it difficult toteach geography in a manner that is consistent withthe intentions of national and state curriculum stand-ards (Anderson & Leinhardt, 2002; Bednarz, 2003;Chiodo, 1993; Diem, 1982; Reinfried, 2006; Schell,Roth, & Mohan, 2013; Segall & Helfenbein 2008).

It is widely acknowledged that the modern nationalreform movement in geography education began withthe publication of the Guidelines for Geographic Educa-tion: Elementary and Secondary Schools (Joint Commis-sion on Geographic Education, 1984). Instructionalguidelines were organized around five fundamentalthemes (location, place, relationships within places,movement, and regions) and keyed to a traditionalsocial studies curricular structure for grades K–6. Forsecondary schools, geography was identified as a tradi-tional stand-alone subject, strengthened by a set ofskills having to do with acquiring, analyzing, and pre-senting geographic information.

The five themes quickly became the content focus forK–12 teachers, a situation strengthened enormously bythe organization and rapid expansion of the NationalGeographic Society-sponsored Alliance program.National Geographic’s Network of Geographic Alli-ances consisted of state-based partnerships between uni-versity professors and schoolteachers to, as Gilbert M.Grosvenor stated, “return geography to its rightful placein America’s schools.” Eight Alliance states were desig-nated in 1985, and seven more were added each yearafter that. Hundreds of workshops and summer insti-tutes followed to improve in-service teachers’ knowl-edge of geography and to help them pass this knowledgeon to their students. The five themes quickly became thecontent structure followed by the Alliance program.

Further authentication for the five themes emergedwhen they blended so effortlessly into the NationalCouncil for the Social Studies (NCSS) curriculumstandards, Expectations of Excellence, (NCSS, 1994),seeming to correlate effectively with the Bradley Com-mission-authored Building a History Curriculum(Bradley Commission, 1988) while also informing thefirst edition of Geography for Life: National GeographyStandards (Geography Education Standards Project,1994). While the five themes were seen by many as ateaching framework, they clearly formed the basis fora national curriculum in geography, and to someextent the social studies. Over 30 years since their pub-lication, many teachers continue to use the five themesas a framework for their lesson plans and teachingstrategies.

Geography, as a discipline, has evolved signifi-cantly since the five themes were adopted sowidely. University geography has tilted heavilytoward process-oriented physical geography andgeospatial technology, paradigms that can be quiteunfamiliar to social studies teachers (Boehm, 2015).This dichotomy is clearly visible in the 2012 editionof Geography for Life, which shows heavy emphasison spatial analysis, geospatial technology, and phys-ical geography. These matters are quite importantat the university level in Departments of Geogra-phy but have difficulty finding their way into theteacher education programs serving future socialstudies teachers, even though the content of geog-raphy courses in middle schools and high schoolsoften include topics related to earth science andhuman impacts on the environment.

Standards work in geography has now had morethan two decades to seep into state social studies cur-riculum frameworks. This journey has been veryuneven (Bednarz, 2003; Munroe & Smith, 1998; Mun-roe & Smith, 2000), with states writing their ownstandards resulting in vastly different geographyrequirements across the nation. As we indicated ear-lier, the U.S. National Assessment of EducationalProgress (NAEP) has repeatedly reminded us since1994 that students at the 4th, 8th, and 12th gradeshave made very little gains in proficiency in geography(GAO, 2015; NAEP, 2015). NAEP data show thatmajorities of students have failed to advance theirknowledge of geography ever since the standards wereintroduced in 1994, with barely any upward trajectoryin exam scores, despite the efforts of teachers and the

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heavy investments of time, leadership, and money bythe National Geographic Society-supported state-based Alliance program. Indeed, 8th graders havenever collectively scored at the Proficient level on theNAEP Geography assessment (defined as solid aca-demic performance), with Hispanic and Black stu-dents as a whole barely performing at the Basic level(defined as partial mastery of subject matter).

While the ongoing flat performance is certainly dis-appointing, we suppose the fact that the NAEP datadepict no regression in student performance over twodecades can be viewed as a silver lining of sorts. Inany case, we cannot afford another 20 years of NAEPtelling us the same old story about young people andgeography. The time has come for new thinking.

Powerful geographic knowledge for a liberatingcurriculum

From 2013 to 2017 the Grosvenor Center for Geo-graphic Education and the National Center forResearch in Geography Education have been engagedin research to generate a new thoughtful and effectivepathway for students to learn geography in K–12 edu-cation. Such a framework must begin with acknowl-edgment of geography’s central role and place in thesocial studies curriculum but also its cross-cuttingconcepts and practices with science, math, andtechnology.

The next section discusses the principles underlyingthe Powerful Geography curriculum framework andhow it is designed to build on prior reform efforts,such as the Guidelines for Geographic Education (FiveThemes) and Geography for Life (National GeographyStandards). Powerful Geography envisions a 5- to 7-year research project in which the design of the frame-work is based on the expansion and practical applica-tion of the principles of human capabilities andpowerful geographic knowledge, using contemporaryworkforce data to illustrate these principles for teach-ers and students.

Powerful Geography has its roots in an interna-tional research collaboration known as GeoCapabil-ities (Lambert & Solem, 2017). The GeoCapabilitiesproject originated in 2012 with a grant from theNational Science Foundation to support a new trans-atlantic collaboration between the United States, Eng-land, and Finland (Solem, Lambert, & Tani, 2013).Since that time, the project has attracted additional

funding from the European Union and has inspired arobust and extensive international dialogue about thepotential and significance of powerful geographicknowledge in the lives of young people.

GeoCapabilities research has attempted, with a tar-get group of geography educators in different coun-tries, to define those elements of geography that havehigh value, both to an individual’s well-being and tosociety as a whole. Inspired by Amartya Sen and Mar-tha Nussbaum’s principles of human capability devel-opment (Nussbaum, 2013; Nussbaum & Sen, 1993),GeoCapabilities “is concerned with the essential con-tribution geographical knowledge makes to the educa-tion of all young people (or, put another way, howweak geographical knowledge acquisition in schoolcontributes in a particular way to the deprivation ofindividual capabilities)” (Lambert, Solem, & Tani,2015, p. 730). In this view, young people stand to gainsubstantive freedoms in life when they are taught prin-ciples of powerful knowledge in school, enabling themto think geographically about the myriad social andenvironmental problems defining modern times. Thiscapability afforded by geography education is an argu-ment for ensuring all students have an opportunity tolearn geography.

GeoCapabilities has produced a collection ofteacher-training resources that frame the goals ofgeography education in terms of Sen and Nussbaum’sprinciples of human development. This conceptualframework is designed to provide teachers with an ori-entation to teaching geography that emphasizes thecharacteristics of geographic knowledge that expandopportunities and freedoms of all people to achievewell-being. This special type of knowledge is referredto as “powerful knowledge” and means understandingand interpreting the world by using information andconcepts derived from academic disciplines (Young,2008). A curriculum based on powerful knowledgeencourages productive, rigorous, and critical thoughtas developed in subject specialist communities, suchas geography. Because powerful knowledge is oftentheoretical, abstract, contested, and highly specialized,it is unlikely to be acquired or learned incidentallythrough everyday life experiences. For this reason,young people are unlikely to encounter powerfulknowledge unless it is taught—an especially dauntingresponsibility for the vast majority of American geog-raphy teachers with little academic preparation in thesubject.

128 R. G. BOEHM ET AL.

Some of our colleagues in geography educationbelieve that the most productive approach to address-ing the present challenges in our nation’s geographyeducation system might be to issue a third major edi-tion of the national geography standards and researchways of facilitating their adaptation and implementa-tion in each state. Prior editions published in 1994and 2012, in their own ways, represent a form of pow-erful knowledge. Any field of science probably benefitsfrom having a series of subject standards that set chal-lenging and ambitious academic goals for K–12 stu-dents. But over 20 years of experience has shown thatin most schools the curriculum envisioned by thegeography standards is rarely enacted as intended(Bednarz, Heffron, & Solem, 2014).

Because of the limited time available to teach geog-raphy in most U.S. schools, we argue for a “bottom-up” approach that fits the unique curricular contextsand requirements of each state, while maintaining aclear focus on the educational needs of all young peo-ple and why geography is worth teaching in the firstplace. This is something that a set of national stand-ards cannot do in and of themselves. Powerful geo-graphic knowledge depends on teachers as curriculumleaders, but it should also be a guiding principle forcurriculum framework preparers. Lambert et al. state:

“… national jurisdictions have attempted to lay downthe ‘standards’ for the school curriculum, including itsgeographical component … they are blunt and often failto take account of the nuances of context” (p. 731).

The authors further argue this point by stating that“a national curriculum or nationally agreed standardsfor geography, although useful, in themselves achievecomparatively little, not least from the learner’s per-ceptive. The words on the page require interpretationand application into a coherent teaching program”(2015, p. 731). Thus, teacher leadership requiresteachers to become the curriculum arbiter. We wouldgo a step further and ask that the teachers provide thecontext for powerful geographic knowledge and thatcreative application be flexible enough to fit each stu-dent and thus provide a useful means of learning thegeography that is capable of uplifting each individual.

GeoCapabilities is consistent philosophically withcurriculum theory advanced in the work of WesleyNull, Professor of Curriculum Foundations of Edu-cation at Baylor University. Lambert et al. arguethat powerful geographic knowledge, carefully sifted

and delivered in an educational environment, willlikely yield “some specific emancipatory educationaloutcomes.” It has the ability of “developing humanpotential expressed through growing individualautonomy and agency” (2015, p. 731). Comparethis curriculum thinking with Null’s notion of aliberating curriculum:

A liberating curriculum transforms students internallyso that they can lead lives of reason, reflection, anddeliberation. A liberating curriculum also is a course ofstudy that draws upon all of the talents and abilities ofstudents to make them more humane and compassion-ate. A liberating curriculum connects students with thetraditions that provide the foundational knowledge nec-essary for understanding social and political life. It alsoprepares students to deliberate wisely, extend the bestaspects of tradition, and lead communities towards theideas they uphold (Null, 2017, p. 8).

Examples of resources for teachers

How exactly can geographic knowledge liberate theminds of young people? Let’s consider a briefexample related to one of the most pressing envi-ronmental challenges of our times: climate change.Every time a new climate treaty is proposed, thequestion arises, “Who is responsible and who isgoing to pay?” In the ensuing debate, it is quitecommon for policymakers to display a chart similarto the one depicted in Figure 3, which ranksnations on the basis of their total carbon dioxideemissions from fuel combustion. internal carbonemissions from energy consumption.

At first glance it seems obvious that countries likeChina are polluting more than countries like theUnited Kingdom; thus, the Chinese should beexpected to pay a greater share of the costs of curbingcarbon emissions. This may seem fair and comfortingif you happen to live somewhere other than China,but is this a reasonable interpretation from a geo-graphic perspective? What the chart does not showare the many ways the countries are interconnected ina global economy. China exports goods to countriesall over the world, while many foreign-owned multi-national corporations manufacture goods within Chi-na’s borders. Investors across Europe and theAmericas hold stock in these companies, while theirnational economies shift from secondary manufactur-ing to more service-oriented and knowledge econo-mies. All of these economic transformations

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contribute to higher levels of internal carbon emis-sions in some places and lower levels in others, whileimplicating everyone in a process of global environ-mental change.

Having this geographic understanding about theworkings of the world economy would enable any stu-dent to participate more effectively as autonomouscitizens in debates about climate change. They gain acapacity to think geographically about data, such asthe emissions chart in Figure 3, leading them to moreinformed and reasoned judgments than they wouldotherwise have based simply on taking the chart atface value. This climate vignette is one small but pow-erful example of the many ways geographic knowledgeadvances human capability in an era of massive globalchange.

Readers of this article whose interest is piqued areencouraged to visit the GeoCapabilities Web site(www.geocapabilities.org) for additional vignettes ofpowerful geographic knowledge developed for teachertraining in a wide array of nations. The vignettes weredeveloped through a research process involving teach-ers and teacher educators, and all are published on aWeb-based “story map” powered by ArcGIS onlinetechnology.

Social studies educators can find additional U.S.-based examples of powerful geographic knowledgeon the GeoCapabilities story map. One U.S. vignette

focuses on the topic of environmental justice (Solem,2018). This example draws on the pioneering researchof Dr. Andrew Szasz and Dr. Michael R. Meuser of theUniversity of California at Santa Cruz, who investi-gated accusations of environmental injustice in SantaClara County, CA, an area that includes the city ofSan Jose and Silicon Valley (Figure 4).

Szasz and Meuser’s mapping supported claims thatthe presence of environmental toxins was muchhigher in low income, African American and Hispanicneighborhoods. However, questions remained aboutthe underlying causes of the observed patterns.Indeed, Szasz and Meuser’s maps were just the start ofa detailed analysis of the historical geography ofindustrial siting, residential development, and otherprocesses that produced environmental inequity inSanta Clara County. This historical-geographicalapproach found that the environmental inequalitiesobserved in 1990 were not the result of intentional sit-ing decisions. Rather, they were the result of risingreal estate costs, unregulated development, anduneven mobility stemming from racial and ethnic dif-ferences in education, occupation, and income.

This environmental justice vignette illustrates theimportance of knowledge of historical geographyfor interpreting maps of industrial pollution andinner-city ethnic neighborhoods. Without thisknowledge, people are prone to misinterpret the

Figure 3. Example of a Common Figure Displayed when Discussing Global Climate Change Policy. Data: IEA. Image: Union of ConcernedScientists. (https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html#.Wl5nw6jtzIU).

130 R. G. BOEHM ET AL.

data that maps depict. One-off studies that examinesocial and industrial geographies at a single pointin time tell us little about the processes that gener-ate unequal risks of exposure to contamination,even when these studies find a significant relation-ship between race and/or class and proximityto toxic materials. While a map depicting thesecorrelations might suggest bias, by itself it is incon-clusive. Knowledge of historical geography is “pow-erful” because it uncovers layers of informationthat are not immediately observable on maps, suchas those depicted in Figure 4.

Nationalism is the topic of another U.S.-basedvignette on the GeoCapabilities story map (Klein &Solem, 2018). This example is situated in the Dakotas,an area of the United States that the Lakota Siouxview as their ancestral homeland (Figure 5). Thevignette communicates the “power” of geographicconcepts, such as nation, identity, and place for inter-preting political movements, such as the LakotaSioux and other American Indian tribal claims to

sovereignty and self-determination in certain regionsof the country. These geographic ideas give students away of thinking systematically about ethnic national-ism and political developments in other countries,including the creation of the Nunavut territory by thenative Inuit peoples of northern Canada, territorialconflicts between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims withinSyria and Iraq whose boundaries were defined byEuropean colonial powers, and separatist movementsin Canada, Spain, Ukraine, Nigeria, the former Yugo-slavia, and Northern Ireland.

Other topics and themes currently featured in theGeoCapabilities story map include vignettes onnational park conservation, coastal geomorphology,earthquakes, world biomes, and urban change. Likethe climate, environmental justice, and nationalismexamples, each of these vignettes provides a teacherwith an example of a geographic concept or idea inthe context of a social or environmental issue, fol-lowed by a discussion of what makes that geographicconcept or idea “powerful” taught by the lesson. The

Figure 4. Environmental Justice Vignette: Presence of Environmental Toxins in Santa Clara County. (Source: Szasz and Meuser, 2000).

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goal is to help teachers quickly grasp the significanceof geographic knowledge for developing the capabili-ties of all students to participate in debates about theglobal challenges of our times.

A pragmatic geography framework for teachingand learning

Our goal in Powerful Geography is to adapt thecapabilities approach to fit the unique arena ofgeography and the social studies in U.S. educationand the myriad teacher education challenges thatentails. We see Powerful Geography as the secretto attaining a liberating curriculum for all studentsand a new way of teaching for all teachers.Powerful Geography will rely on a research-basedidentification of the most important content andskills state by state. This work will create the con-ditions necessary to transfer powerful geographic

knowledge from a set of national standards intoaligned state-level curricula, assessments, andteacher education programs. Students will benefitfrom such a curriculum and will develop a greaterpotential to fulfill their individual goals and ambi-tions, enter the workforce, and engage and improvethe society in which they will live.

A liberating curriculum such as Powerful Geog-raphy must begin with a simplified content frame-work. Harkening back to the memorable structureof the Five Themes, the content of the PowerfulGeography framework consists of four domains(human geography, physical geography, environ-ment and society, places and regions) (Figure 6).Limiting the framework to four overarching syner-gistic content areas will enhance the likelihood thatmembers of both the academic and educationalcommunity understand it and agree to its disciplin-ary relevance to schools and society.

Figure 5. National Identity Vignette: Lakota Sioux Homeland (Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sioux01.png).

132 R. G. BOEHM ET AL.

The Powerful Geography framework avoids a short-coming of the five themes by emphasizing the integrativenature of the discipline across the content areas (Ruther-ford, 2005). No one aspect of geography exists in splen-did isolation from the rest. One cannot study “places” or“regions” without some sense of how environment andsociety interact. “Location”may be an absolute measure-ment or a characteristic of “place” or “region.”

The lack of recognition of the synthesizing natureof geography was not only a weakness of the fivethemes but also somewhat limited the usefulness ofthe “six essential elements” of the two editions ofGeography for Life. Two of those elements (The Worldin Spatial Terms and The Uses of Geography) featuredprocess standards for spatial thinking and appliedgeography that were presented as stand-alone stand-ards from the content standards in the other four ele-ments (Human Systems, Physical Systems, Places andRegions, Environment and Society). Separating cogni-tive processes and geographic practices from geo-graphic knowledge in this manner tends to result inone of two outcomes: (a) an experience of geographyas the rote learning of trivial facts or (b) a geographylesson featuring adventurous and active pedagogiesbut treats geographic knowledge as arbitrary.

The Powerful Geography framework seeks to avoidthese outcomes by integrating geography’s “meta-con-cepts” for thinking geographically, such as space, place,region, interconnection, and globalization, within eachof the four content domains. Similarly, the PowerfulGeography framework illustrates how geospatial tech-nologies and geographic skills to gather, analyze, andpresent geographical information are cross-cutting withthe four content areas. This integrative aspect of the dis-cipline will be modeled for teachers and students

through the use of workforce data aligned with statestandards in each content area.

Future work

The Powerful Geography project now enters a 5- to 7-year research plan that will yield data-based curricu-lum guidelines and standards in every state, thus offer-ing a new and vastly more accessible pathway tolearning in geography. The Powerful Geographyframework will be the first of its kind to align powerfulgeographic knowledge with state standards, aided bydata collected from surveys and interviews with aca-demic geographers, employers, and geography gradu-ates in every state. This new approach to curriculumthinking is sensitive to variable state requirements andgoals for geography in schools. Every state sets differ-ent expectations for what students should know andbe able to do in geography. Although many statesshare goals for content knowledge about contempo-rary issues, such as global climate change, states stand-ards also specify geographic content that is unique toparticular states.

For example, the concept of precision agriculture, thatis, farming with the assistance of geospatial technology,will likely be of greater interest and of greater workplacevalue in states like Nebraska and Indiana than in Con-necticut and New Jersey. This variation is also reflectedin the content standards for geography that states pre-scribe. Why not, then, focus geography instruction onteaching Nebraska’s and Indiana’s children powerfulgeographic concepts and skills that enable them to thinkgeographically about agriculture, while focusing instruc-tion on urban issues and other topics as called for in thestandards of the northeastern states?

For a practical example of learning materials usingthe Powerful Geography approach visit www.geoteach.org for a collection of modules that teachers canuse for professional development in geography. Cur-rently, there are four modules (precision agriculture,urban heat islands, tornado alley, and water resour-ces), which include lesson plans, videos, and contentenhancements that reflect on the powerful geographicknowledge of each module and how students canthink about careers in each field. For example, stu-dents in Indiana can learn about precision agricultureand the various career options in agriculture providedby geographic information systems that were not thereten years ago. The module on urban heat islands, a

Figure 6. Powerful Geography Framework for Teacher Education.Geography’s Meta Concepts Will Support Geographic ThinkingActivities in Each Domain.

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growing environmental threat in large cities, discussesthe jobs available for students in urban planning, engi-neering, and green-specific jobs based on the powerfulgeographic knowledge covered in the lesson. Themodules include videos of geography teachers discus-sing how they would present this information to theirstudents during a geography/social studies class.

We are not suggesting that youth in our nation’scities should never learn about agriculture, or ruralstudents should not know how to reduce heat vulnera-bility, but simply that the notion of learning a “bushelbasket” of geography is not addressing the needs ofthese young people, nor is it focusing on the realitiesthat presently limit the amount of geography educa-tion in schools. We can better serve teachers and theirstudents by tailoring geography instruction to the con-tent of standards at the state level, focusing teacherpreparation in those states on that content, and orient-ing teachers on the characteristics of geographicknowledge that make it powerful for understandingthat content.

Conclusions

The Gilbert M. Grosvenor Center for GeographicEducation and the National Center for Research inGeography Education have jointly proposed a newcurriculum framework for K–12 geography. Thecontent framework has evolved from the “fivethemes” to the “six essential elements” to the newparadigm called Powerful Geography, which offersease of understanding of a fairly complicated sub-ject matter and changes the teaching and learningperspective from top-down to bottom-up. PowerfulGeography emanates from a vigorous researchfoundation in GeoCapabilities. GeoCapabilities tellsus that geography, by focusing on powerful disci-plinary knowledge, offers a pathway for students’intellectual growth, college and career preparation,and personal satisfaction.

GeoCapabilities, as a fundamental approach tocurriculum thinking, is validated by education the-ory and the concept of a liberating curriculumwhere teaching and learning focus on the individ-ual student and his/her personal goals, ambitions,and life aspirations.

ORCID

Joann Zadrozny http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6681-2445

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