10
Portals to
Geographic Thinking
Kamilla Bahbahani and Roland Case
W
e believe that an important way to meet the challenges of effective geography instruction is by
problematizing geography. While there are many
examples of innovative and engaging instruction in the discipline, geography has unique characteristics and a history that
often lead to more traditional instructional methods. This
traditional approach, in general, has not fulfilled the promise
of the discipline to engage students in active learning about
the world around them. We begin by looking at the challenges
to effective geography instruction, and the need to invite secondary students to think critically about the geography curriculum. We then discuss and provide illustrative examples of
six concepts that we refer to as “portals” that can be used to
engage students in thinking geographically.
rize imports, exports, and capital cities; colour in maps; and
decipher contour lines. Geography instruction often breaks
down into a series of discrete, disconnected lessons.
Taught in this manner, geography becomes largely a
matter of learning factual information about the human
and physical environment. Answers to the questions posed
already exist in textbooks. As a result, students have few occasions to question or problematize the subject matter. This
approach does not encourage students to see geography as
a body of conclusions that must be constructed, interpreted,
and assessed, or as an opportunity for problem solving that
has relevance to their lives and the world around them.
Instead of embracing geography as a stimulating subject,
many students are bored by it. The challenge is not simply
to find ways to make geography more relevant to students.
It is, more importantly, a matter of making the study of geography more intellectually active. If students remain passive
recipients of geographical facts instead of inquirers into the
dynamic nature of geography, they are less likely to be engaged. Involving students in thinking geographically is more
likely to excite students because it is inherently more appealing to be invited to draw original conclusions about challenging situations than simply to find answers that others have
produced.
The Challenges of
Geography Teaching
Geography is a wide-ranging subject, addressing issues from
natural physical processes to urbanization, from protection
of the environment to economic disparities. It offers insight
into the most pressing issues of the day: global warming,
migration and settlement, environmental degradation and
conservation, and international aid and development. As a
discipline, it has both strong historical roots and exciting new
research in many spheres. And if this were not enough, geography also connects us with diverse corners of our increasingly interdependent world, providing insights into how our
neighbours on the planet live, and why they make the choices
they do.
Despite these strengths, geography struggles to find a
prominent and engaging place in the high school curriculum. In part, this is because geography is usually folded into
general social studies education, and few teachers are trained
specifically in geography. As a result, geography is often reduced to factual knowledge and basic skills: students memo-
Current Attention to
Thinking in Geography
The most notable attempts to identify the key concepts in
geography education are the National Geography Standards
(NGS) of the Geography Education Standards Project (1994)
developed for American teachers, and their counterpart, Canadian Geography Standards (Semple 2001). These standards
provide a useful organizing framework for the vast subject
matter of geography. As the authors of the American standards explain, they “are benchmarks against which the con-
109
tent of geography courses can be measured.” However, these
standards do not provide much direction for inviting students
to inquire into geography. They do not require that students
interrogate the concepts, evaluate the validity of claims, assess
the relative merits of different accounts of similar phenomena, or extrapolate from the given information to consider its
implications in new situations. In other words, their focus is
more on the key knowledge outcomes of geography than on
knowledge-building and geographic thinking.
Despite its educational value, geographic thinking is not
particularly well represented in curriculum documents. For
example, the “geographic thinking” outcomes of the Alberta
social studies curriculum for grade 8 are largely limited to interpreting and constructing maps and using multimedia applications and technologies, such as Geographic Information
Systems (GIS) software, to prepare graphs and maps (Alberta
Education 2007, 6). In the Ontario grade 8 geography curriculum, the expectations for map and graphic skills involve
creating and interpreting maps, graphs, and population pyramids (Ontario Ministry of Education 2004, 75). These activities do not explicitly elicit analysis of the values inherent in
representations and interpretations. Similarly, in the Canadian Geography Standards, we find the following description
for sample learning activities for map, globe and atlas use for
grades 9 to 12:
Develop maps, tables, graphs, charts, and diagrams
to depict the geographic implications of current
world events (for example, maps showing changing
political boundaries and tables showing the distribution of refugees from areas affected by natural disasters) (Semple 2001, 46).
While students will learn to represent concepts in graphical form, they are not necessarily engaged in critical analysis
of the content represented, or assessing the importance or
soundness of the data represented.
Geography as Critical Inquiry
Students can learn to see the study of geography as a genuine inquiry where their task is not merely to find out what
others know (they must, of course, also do this) but to reach
conclusions and solve problems using the available information. Even if others already know the answer, in a genuine
inquiry, students’ task is to make their own assessments and
not simply locate the conclusions offered by others. Students
will learn to think geographically if they are regularly invited
to make reasoned judgments about the most justifiable conclusions or interpretations emerging from the material presented to them.
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The Anthology of Social Studies
The difference between factual questions that expect
students to find an answer and critical inquiry questions that
invite students to reason through the material is illustrated by
Table 10.1. In the left-hand column are the six essential elements of geography identified in the Canadian Geography
Standards (Semple 2001). In the middle column are learning
activities suggested in the Canadian Standards for Geography
to teach a particular outcome associated with one of these essential elements. The right-hand column suggests how teachers might address these sample outcomes by inviting students
to work though a critical inquiry—either a task, question, or
problem requiring that students reason with and about the
information.
Each of the critical inquiries listed in Table 10.1 problematizes the content described in the learning outcome.
They convert the factual content of geography into an issue
for analysis or a problem to be resolved. The benefits of such
an approach, we believe, are heightened student engagement,
deeper levels of understanding, and increased ability to apply geographic ideas beyond the textbook. Ultimately, this
Study each of the paired examples in Table 10.1. Try to
identify the key difference between each paired example in
terms of expected student thinking. Discuss whether or not
the critical inquiries are likely to have the results suggested
by the authors—heightened student engagement, deeper
levels of understanding, and increased ability to apply
geographic ideas beyond the textbook.
approach turns students into geographers—or at least, gets
them thinking more like geographers.
In the rest of this chapter, we discuss six “portal” concepts for geographic thinking that can help teachers regularly
problematize the curriculum. A portal is a beckoning entryway—a channel into the heart of new territory. Portals to
geographic thinking are entrances through which students
are asked to think about geography and geographic content.
The concepts we introduce here build on the work of Peter
Seixas in historical thinking (Denos and Case 2006; Seixas
and Peck 2004). We propose this parallel framework to better understand how to engage students in thinking critically
within the discipline of geography—in other words, to help
students learn to think geographically.
Geographic Importance
What can we conclude about the importance of various geographic features or aspects that make them worthy of ex-
Table 10.1 FROM INFORMATION GATHERING TO CRITICAL INQUIRY
Sample learning activities
Critical inquiries
The world in spatial
terms—location
Explain the recent shift in retail shopping from
original CBDs (central business districts) or
suburban shopping centres to retail parks such as
Bayer’s Lake Park as part of the multiple nuclei
model of development
(grades 9–12).
Considering three time periods (the past year, the
past 15 years, the past 50 years), what are the
most significant changes in the location and type
of retail shopping in Canadian cities?
Places and regions
Explain why places have specific physical and
human characteristics in different parts of the
world (for example, the effects of climate,
tectonic processes, settlement and migration
patterns, site and situation components) (grades
9–12).
Considering climate, tectonic processes,
telecommunications, and other physical and
cultural factors, decide which of the identified
options is the best place to locate a global
response centre that deals with natural disasters
and social unrest?
Physical systems
Explain how extreme physical events affect
human settlements in different regions (for
example, the destructive effects of hurricanes
in the Caribbean basin and the eastern United
States, the ice storms in eastern Canada, and
earthquakes in Turkey, Japan, and Nicaragua)
(grades 9–12).
In light of the effects of extreme physical events
on human settlements, assess when and if it
might be justifiable to permit human settlement in
areas of anticipated natural disasters (for example,
hurricanes, ice storms, earthquakes)?
Human systems
Compare Canada and an economically less
developed country using natural increase, crude
birth rate, crude death rate, and infant mortality
(grades 6–8).
Considering natural increase, crude birth rate,
crude death rate, and infant mortality, determine
the most ethical and economically viable strategy
for bringing the population growth of an
economically less developed country in line with
the global replacement rate.
Environment and
society
Explain the ways humans prepare for natural
hazards (for example, earthquakes, floods,
tornadoes, snow storms) (grades 6–8).
Prepare a report card assessing the adequacy of
your family’s preparedness for three common
natural hazards.
Uses of geography
Examine the historical and geographical forces
responsible for the industrial revolution in England
in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries (for example, the availability of
resources, capital, labour, markets, technology)
(grades 9–12)
Create an annotated pie chart rating the relative
influence of five forces (availability of resources,
capital, labour, markets, technology) on the
advent of the industrial revolution in England
in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries.
amination and attention? Teachers can involve students in
considering geographic importance through critical inquiries
such as these:
•
•
For an assigned region, rank order the three most significant industries in terms of their political, social, environmental, and economic importance.
You have been commissioned by the local chamber of
commerce to produce a map to entice senior citizens
to move to your area. What are the five most important
types of features to include and the two most important
categories to leave off?
Questions of importance are foundational to thinking
about geography. They involve making judgments about relative significance or value from among a range of options (for
example, mining over farming, or planning cities to sustain
beauty over economic benefit). The need to think about geographic importance arises because inevitably we are exposed
to partial accounts constructed for specific purposes. As Wolforth explains, “We do not see Iran, Indo-China or Israel ‘as
they are’ rather how others have chosen to present them to us”
(1985, 79). Students must learn to recognize and explore the
factors that influence what gets represented (is deemed important) and omitted (is deemed less important). Only then
Portals to Geographic Thinking
111
will they appreciate the selective nature of geographic information and understand why there can never be the geography
of a place or region. As Werner (2000, 197) explains “A travel
account, for example, describes much more than a ‘place’; it
also implicates the traveler’s interests, curiosities, priorities,
sensibilities, fears, longings, and stereotypes, which in turn
tell us about the writer’s cultural and political milieu, and his
or her assumptions regarding the expectations of audiences.”
National Geographic magazine, for example, was wellknown in the past for representing the exotic and primitive
aspects of many cultural groups. Why were these features
profiled and not others? Similar questions can be asked about
the choice of what to represent in maps. Maps and mapreading are possibly the most common element in geography instruction, and the feature most people remember when
looking back on their geography classes. No map can present
all that is known—geographers must be selective in the topics
to address and the details to omit. Like statistics, maps can be
made to say just about anything. The purpose of a map drives
the choice of what features are important to include. Consider the difference between presenting the parks and cultural
features of a region versus the incidence of crime and traffic
accidents. As suggested by the example in the highlighted text,
comparing different maps of an area can provide a window
on mapmakers’ decisions about geographic importance.
The controversy between the Mercator and Peters projections illustrates the inevitability of decisions about representing what is important, geographically speaking, and how these
influence our understanding. How do we decide whether a
geographic feature is significant? Thinking about importance
helps students learn the decisions that geographers must
make about what to report and study in geography and to
recognize that the very nature of geographic representation
is open to critique.
Judging importance from maps
In this activity, students are presented with four maps of the
same city (Smithers, British Columbia). In exploring the implied
importance attributed to various features, students might
undertake the following tasks:
• draw inferences about the map-makers' purposes (for
example, to attract people to local business; to make
Smithers seem like an accessible location);
• determine what information was excluded and included
(for example, excluded the location of similar businesses;
MAP 1
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The Anthology of Social Studies
excluded or included streets either to ease navigation or to
make the city appear larger; included natural amenities and
sports facilities in the area);
• identify possible biases of the map-makers (for example,
exaggerated the relative size of the city in the region);
• discuss the impressions these maps would create about
the city (for example, that Smithers is a small town, or that
Smithers is located in a mountainous region).
MAP 3
MAP 2
MAP 4
Evidence and Interpretation
How adequately does the geographic evidence justify the interpretations offered, and what interpretations might plausibly be made from the evidence provided? Teachers can involve
students in considering evidence and interpretation through
critical inquiries such as these:
•
•
Determine what the maps of North America drawn by
early European explorers reveal about their beliefs and
world view.
Assess the evidence for global warming on a scale from
highly speculative to completely convincing.
The concepts of evidence and interpretation are conPortals to Geographic Thinking
113
cerned with the reliability, validation, and use of various primary sources (for example, surveys, maps, GIS, counts, aerial
photos, geologic surveys, satellite images, architectural and
city plans, interviews) and secondary sources of geographic
information. Interest in these notions emerged with the “new
geography” espoused by educators such as James Fairgrieve
in Britain and Neville Scarfe in Canada in the mid-1900s. In
the new geography, students were to “learn how people live
in other countries by investigating the evidence of maps, illustrations, statistics, travellers’ tales and other direct sources
of information” (Wolforth 1985, 71). This portal invites students to scrutinize the information found in various kinds of
sources, and to think carefully about the interpretations made
of the available evidence.
It is useful to distinguish geographic evidence from geographic information—information becomes evidence only
when it is examined in the context of conclusions to be drawn
or assessed. As suggested by the example in the highlighted
text, issues of evidence invite questions such as: How do we
know what a place is really like? What can we legitimately
conclude from the data? Are the conclusions plausible?
differences within and between groups. These pattern generalizations can be viewed at different scales of time (geologic,
historic) and space (global, regional, local).
The purpose of this portal is not to describe the models and present the generalizations, but to invite students
to develop models themselves, or to use existing models to
draw new insights and fresh conclusions about the nature of
regions and driving phenomena for constancy and change.
For example, students might study historical trends related
to resource exploration, extraction, and depletion in various
regions to help predict the likely pattern over the next twenty
years for various resource development projects (for example,
oil sands or wind energy).
Interactions
How do particular human and environmental factors and
events influence each other? Students can be invited to consider interactions through critical inquiries such as these:
•
Constancy and Change
What can we conclude from the patterns and distribution of
geographic phenomena over time and space? Teachers can involve students in considering constancy and change through
critical inquiries such as these:
•
•
What different patterns might you notice about changing
climate if you used the following temporal scales: geologic time (10,000 years), historic time (200 years), recent
history (last 10 years), or current events (last month)?
Based on immigration trends, develop a population profile for Canada in 2050.
The concepts of constancy and change are significant
notions in geography. They undergird geographers’ attempts
to look for patterns and trends in spatial arrangements over
periods and across regions and places. They include efforts
to develop models (such as the idea of hinterland) to explain
and predict patterns. Geographers explore constancy and
change to understand the driving forces that maintain or shift
patterns across space and time. Understanding these driving
forces assists them to extrapolate so as to predict constancy
and change into the future, in light of changing conditions,
for varied regions. The focus of these investigations spans a
multitude of topics, including regional disparity, patterns of
resource use, communications and road networks, innovation diffusion, species and ecosystem change, and cultural
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•
Rank order the impact of the following on desertification in the southwestern United States: diversion of major rivers, expanding population, industrial agriculture,
climate change, fuel prices, and recreational and lifestyle
patterns.
If Vancouver was an American city, how might its social
and economic development have been different?
Humans, the natural environment, and the built environment continuously interact across space and time in complex
ways. Underlying the notion of interactions is the dynamic of
mutually reinforcing physical and human factors that shape
the world and which, in turn, are shaped by it. Questions of
interactions must go beyond listing the ways in which a group
or place has been influenced by various climatic, economic,
and geographic factors. Rather, we want to encourage students to identify and rate for themselves the influences that
have shaped the world, and to extrapolate from knowledge of
interacting forces how the world might have been otherwise
and what we might expect in the future. Understanding of the
reciprocal, cyclic nature of many of these interactions encourages students to probe for complex understandings of system
functioning. The highlighted example of assessing responses
to the Indonesian earthquake of December 2004, “Interacting with Natural Disasters,” can help students understand the
functioning of interacting forces in the natural and human
world.
Predicting immigration patterns
Invite students to use demographic statistics from Statistics
Canada databases and other sources of information to
draw conclusions about the economic, political, social, and
geographic factors that attract potential immigrants to
various Canadian regions. Students can record their evidence
and conclusions for each region on a chart similar to the
one depicted below. Based on these findings, students
draw conclusions about the likely appeal of each region for
potential immigrants. Referring to profiles of representative
immigrants to Canada such as the two following examples
(adapted from Misfeldt and Case 2002, 113), students might
identify factors that would influence these people’s decisions
about where to relocate, and determine which region is most
likely to attract each potential immigrant.
Wai Wing Li is a Hong Kong Chinese who has done
very well in the manufacturing trade over the past
20 years. Since China has repossessed Hong Kong,
he wants to move to Canada to more freely pursue
business opportunities. He hopes to be free to run
his company as profitably as possible. His children
were educated in Canadian private schools and both
now attend university in Canada. Li is in his 40s and
wishes to invest his money in new business ventures
in Canada, preferably in shipping and transportation.
While his English is passable, Li feels he may need
to rely on the skills of the employees he hires for
communication.
Katiana Jean currently lives in Haiti and wants to
immigrate to Canada to improve her standard of
living. She is 20 years old and unmarried. Katiana has
completed high school and is fluent in French and
speaks a little English. She has a strong work record,
is in good health, and has a little money saved. She is
hoping to find a community where she will be able to
meet other people who have migrated from Haiti.
Finally, students might gauge the plausibility of their
conclusions about the likely destination for each profiled
immigrant by comparing their results with actual immigration
patterns.
Identifying Factors Affecting Immigration
Region
Factors
Supporting evidence (fact)
Impact on Decision (inference)
•
Economic
•
•
•
Political
•
•
•
Social
•
•
•
Geographic
•
•
Portals to Geographic Thinking
115
Interacting with natural disasters
Invite students to assume the role of a consultant asked
to carry out an impact assessment of possible long-term
responses to the earthquake and ensuing tsunami that struck
Indonesia in December 2004. Their job is not to recommend
an approach, but to tease out the implications of four
possible scenarios and the likely consequences for each type
of intervention.
Scenario 1: No major investment by the government; focus
on reliance on external aid from foreign governments,
international agencies and international non-governmental
organizations.
Scenario 2: Development of a tsunami alert system in the
region.
Developing this spatial perspective requires understanding the
social, cultural, and physical features and identities that characterize a place or region. Without a sensitive understanding
of the realities of place, students may unintentionally develop
mistaken or “foreign” impressions of the experiences and
characteristics of other places. We see this with the Romanization of many parts of the world by early explorers and subsequent travellers who imposed their own culture and language
onto those regions they inhabited, and interpreted those regions and language through their own culture. As suggested
by the highlighted example of a tea plantation in the Kerola
region of India, taking on the perspective of a place requires
more than acquiring the geographic facts about a place—it
requires developing a tangible sense of what it means to “inhabit” the space.
Scenario 3: Relocation of affected populations to new areas.
Scenario 4: Development of new building codes and flood
management systems.
Geographical Perspective-Taking:
A Sense of Place
What are the social, cultural, and physical features and identities that characterize a place or region? Teachers can involve
students in taking on geographical perspectives through critical inquiries such as these:
•
•
What would be the three biggest differences in lifestyle for
middle-class Chinese-speaking teenagers living in Kowloon (Hong Kong) and Richmond (British Columbia)?
From the collection of internet photographs of your assigned regions, select the five most representative images
and the five most atypical images. Explain your choices
and describe the difference in perceptions derived from
the two sets of images.
Everything is situated in a particular physical milieu. Locations are unique clusters of influences that give rise to a particular sense of place. These locations can vary in size, from
a sense of what makes your town or city special to broader
characteristics that might define a continent such as Europe.
A important part of the “regions” focus in geography beginning early last century was that
areas of the earth’s surface are to be studied in terms
of the particular character resulting from the phenomena, interrelated to each other and to the earth,
which fill the areas (Hartshorne 1939, 57, cited in
Wolforth 1985, 71).
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The Anthology of Social Studies
Geographical Value Judgments
How desirable are the practices and outcomes associated
with particular geographic actions and events? Teachers can
involve students in offering and assessing geographical value
judgments through critical inquiries such as these:
•
•
What would be the most effective and responsible ways to
combat rising sea levels in small Pacific Island nations?
Negotiate a consensus proposal acceptable to key stakeholder groups (local citizens, oil and gas companies, the
provincial government, the federal government, environmental organizations) for developing the Alberta
oil sands. Prepare proposals for development of the tar
sands based on assigned positions, and meet with other
stakeholder groups to reach consensus on a win-win
solution.
Value (norm-based or normative) judgments in geography arise in the context of drawing conclusions about desired
actions and effects. Other portal concepts invite students to
inquire into the ways things are and the reasons they occur.
The role of value judgments is to engage students in considering what should happen or whether what has happened is
desirable. Interest among geographers in making value judgments arose in what is sometimes referred to as welfare geography: “evaluating different spatial arrangements in terms of
the extent to which they contribute to or detract from human
welfare” (Wolforth 1985, 77).
Geographic value judgments can be offered through various lenses—including economic, environmental, cultural,
political, and ethical—and from various groups’ perspectives. For example, the “development” of the western prairies
during the nineteenth century might be considered a good
Imagining a Sense of Place
Invite students to describe the experience of living and
working on a tea plantation in the Munnar district of Kerola,
India based on the photographs presented here. Help students
explore the unique sense of this place using the following
prompts:
• What can you infer about the local inhabitants’ world
view—their views about what is important, their
relationships to others and to the environments, the
purpose of life?
• What is the standard of living in this area? What is the
quality of life in this area?
• What is the basis local economy?
• What is the climate?
• What is the terrain?
• How connected is this place with the rest of the world?
• What types of activities would people typically engage in
on a daily basis?
Portals to Geographic Thinking
117
thing from a political lens viewed from a “central Canadian”
point of view, yet from the First Nations perspective, especially through cultural and environmental lenses, the “expropriation” of their homeland was a significant loss. Similarly,
preservation of traditional cultural and linguistic practices
may make good sense if viewed through personal and social
lenses, but not from political and economic standpoints.
Overlapping Inquiries
There is, of course, considerable overlap between these six
concepts. For example, questions of evidence and interpretation may arise in the context of uncovering the interactions
among phenomena or investigating a particular sense of
place.
The sample lesson found in chapter 25 illustrates how
the six portals can be used as multiple entry-ways into the
same topic. In this lesson, students reflect on changes in the
Nlaka’pamux world view as a result of initial contact with
Europeans in the early 1800s in British Columbia. Students
learn about the earlier Nlaka’pamux world view by studying
a map attributed to this group prior to the arrival of Europeans. They then learn about the changes brought about by
contact and try to imagine a map drawn by a Nlaka’pamux
map-maker 70 years after the fact.
Depending on the portal used, students can be invited to
examine many aspects of aboriginal-European contact:
•
•
•
•
•
•
118
Geographic importance. Based on the Nlaka’pamux
map, what seem to be the most important aspects of their
surroundings? How does this differ from what European
map-makers of the time saw as important to include in
their maps?
Evidence and interpretation. What conclusions can
you infer from the Nlaka’pamux map about their world
view?
Constancy and change. Based on what has been included in the map, and your knowledge of the impact
of colonialism on aboriginal peoples, what would have
changed over the seventy years and what would have remained relatively constant?
Interactions. Which aspects of European influence (trade,
disease, religion, power) most affected the Nlaka’pamux
way of life? What features of the Nlaka’pamux way of life
had an impact on European explorers and early settlers?
Sense of place. What are the main features of place depicted by this map? What would it have been like to live
there before contact?
Geographic value judgment. Based on the nature
and ramifications of European interactions with the
The Anthology of Social Studies
Nlaka’pamux, what is a responsible response to presentday aboriginal land claims and calls for linguistic and
cultural autonomy and support?
As can be seen, while each portal offers students a different way of problematizing aboriginal-European contact,
they all work together to draw students more deeply into the
topic.
Concluding Thoughts
Geographic instruction has enormous potential to activate
students intellectually and socially. Through its attention to
humans’ place in the world and current social and environmental issues, geography can create aware citizens with the
knowledge and ability to take action for positive social change.
However, geography as a vehicle for change is dependent on
its ability to arouse critical awareness in students. The portals
described above offer a vehicle for students to inquire critically into important issues facing society; to develop complex,
contextualized, and grounded understandings of issues; and
to see the many dimensions of problems, from understanding
the varied sources of available data to awareness of the moral
implications of knowledge and actions. We hope these portals
assist teachers in approaching the fertile content of geography
in ways that create meaningful and enjoyable classroom experiences, and enhance student learning.
Select a topic from the curriculum involving some aspect
of geography. Use at least three of the portal concepts to
identify several activities that would help students think
about this topic in geographically meaningful ways.
acknowledgment
We are grateful to Stan Garrod, whose unpublished article
“Learning to think like a geographer” has informed our writing of this chapter.
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