What is Geography anyway?
Many geographers have opted for the "5 themes" approach to Geography - Location, Place, Human-Environment Interaction, Movement and Region. Personally, I find this too abstract and unconnected, exspecially for providing a cohesive framework for students to approach geographical studies.
Years ago, I came up with the definition below and it has served extrememly well in that it can be applied to any and every conceivalble topic of study moving students through levels of learning from the simple to the complex - from knowledge through to understanding, synthesis and analysis:
Geography is the study of physical and human features, processes and phenomena and how they interact in the environment at the local, regional and global scales in an attempt to answer four basic questions:
- What is the feature, process or phenomena?
- Where is is found?
- Why is it found there?
- How is it important to us?
– Terry McDonald
