Building Geography Knowledge – Model Teaching

Introduction

Imagine a middle school teacher finishes a unit on East Asia. Students had been working on identifying and locating physical and geographic features on a map, like landforms, bodies of water, and urban centers, as well as identifying the location of countries around the world. In this unit, the teacher described the region’s monsoon climate, and students learned why its rivers support a denser population than in other areas. While students are engaged in the content throughout the unit and analyze a map of the region as they discuss its features, they have a hard time identifying geographic features on their own. For example, when the teacher projects a blank map onto the board and asks students to identify the Yellow Sea or label countries like China, Japan, and North and South Korea, many students are unable to do so, even though they discussed these areas in class extensively.

She realizes that her students need more practice retrieving foundational concepts like locations of countries, rivers, and other regions, so they can not only identify these areas themselves in the future but also engage in deeper analysis and understanding of the region by being able to visualize exactly where they are in the world. Because of this realization, she begins to pair her units with explicit practice and memorization of the countries, rivers, deserts, and mountain ranges of the regions she teaches for each unit.

Why Geographic Literacy is Important

Geographic literacy is generally defined as an individual’s ability to understand and evaluate how different places and systems on Earth are connected. In order to truly and deeply understand our world, students need to understand history, the local economies, current events like conflicts in different areas, how geographic features shape regions, and, of course, where regions are actually located in relation to one another.

On the 2018 National Assessment of Educational Progress in geography (the last time geography was tested and reported), only about 25% of eighth graders scored at or above the proficient level, and scores declined compared with 2014 test results. (https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/geography/)

The NAEP tests Space and Place, Environment and Society, and Spatial Dynamics and Connections. Students are required to have a deep understanding of geographic regions, cultures, and connections across countries, but must also recall facts and connect their knowledge to analyze how one might solve real-world problems.  Being able to recall the locations of countries and land features like rivers, mountains, or deserts becomes an important component of geography literacy and serves as the backbone of deeper geographical reasoning. Without a mental map of where places are, students will not be able to make deeper connections to world events or determine patterns and relationships between countries without having that foundational knowledge in place first.

Foundation Geography Practice for Greater Understanding

A consistent body of research in cognitive psychology shows that there are specific and effective ways to move information into retrievable memory. Once knowledge is stored in your memory, those ideas can be more easily used for deeper thinking and to make connections across topics.  Focusing first on storing foundational information is a critical component of many subjects, but especially important in geography, where landmass features and country locations are essential to understanding before more complex connections can be made. With this in mind, let’s review a few research-backed memory strategies that allow for storage of ideas into long-term memory to justify to you that requiring students to memorize countries and other geographic features can be beneficial.

First, retrieval practice is an attempt to recall concepts from memory, which helps retain information better than simply re-reading or studying material. Also known as the testing effect, repeated self-testing, such as with quizzes or flashcards, strengthens the information’s retention in memory.  An example of this effect was shown in a 2013 paper that evaluated primary school children studying geographical facts, with or without retrieval practice (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0078976 ). The retrieval practice group recalled more facts when tested both one and five weeks later.

Spaced repetition (https://citl.indiana.edu/teaching-resources/evidence-based/spaced-practice.html) is the practice of repeating retrieval practice over a longer time period.  In space repetition, a student will revisit the same concept and retrieve the information from their memory at spaced intervals, like once a week, and then perhaps every few weeks or every month. This helps retain the information and strengthen your memory. In addition, when practice is distributed across several short study sessions over time rather than focused on one or very few long sessions, students retain more. In short, this means that a repeated recall of the same set of countries or features across a week or several weeks tends to produce better recall and stronger memory than something like a single extended study period.

Finally, dual coding is a third concept we will briefly touch on that is highly relevant to geography. Paivio’s dual coding theory (1986) states that when you pair and learn verbal information with a visual representation of that information, it creates strong memory.  This idea complements the study og countries and regions perfectly, since you are studying a country’s name and later important facts about the country alongside its location on a map.  This combination of a verbal and a visual cue supports strong recall from memory.