Concept+Formation



After, reflecting on the reading on the chapter from //Larson & Keiper//, on concept formation, I decided that a geography lesson that I would want to teach and that I think is important for students to understand would be a lesson on human geography. When following the eight-step process in developing a concept formation strategy for a lesson, as //Larson & Keiper// noted, it is helpful to, “identify five or six topics that are critically important for your students to learn” (Pg 156). A few topics that I think would be important for students to understand and that have concepts that are relatable to each other for a human geography lesson would be: 1. Population: where people live, dynamics, distribution, and migration. 2. Political organization. 3. Urbanization/cities developments. 4. Cultural landscape: language, religion, and identity. 5. Agriculture/industry/services. After, coming up with these important topics within human geography, I choose to focus on was the main idea of cultural landscape, which in geography is used to describe the visible imprint on the landscape of human activity and culture. I felt that this was an important element of human geography and that there were many concepts that I could develop from this topic to help students understanding of the big ideas. From the main idea of cultural landscape, I could develop concepts such as; sequent occupance, placelessness, time-space compression, ethnic neighborhoods, hierarchical diffusion and global-local continuum.

For the focus questions related to the concept of cultural landscape, I would provide students with a chart to fill out (see below). For each of the focus questions, students would need to fill in the chart with examples from different levels of scale; local, state, national and global. The questions I could provide students to address are; “What do you notice about the cultural landscape in the layers of buildings, roads, churches, fields, homes?” “Through history the people that occupy the landscape have transformed the land, with their own traditions and ways of living thus the cultural landscape has layers of influence from human activity, what are some examples of this that you can think of?” “Today, many cultural landscapes tend to blend together, making many places no longer unique and different from another, what are some examples of this loss of uniqueness of place in the cultural landscape that you can think of?” “By studying local cultural landscapes, how might this help one understand the social structure of the local people?” “How does the cultural landscape of our local area reflect the identity of the society?” I would want students to be able to have an understand of this concept at a variety of scales to help them see how the cultural landscape of places is an important element of geography. I think by teaching students about cultural landscape, it can help students understand why cultural landscapes change as cultures change over time and that when studying different regions of the world you can see how humans have left their cultural imprints on the landscape. However, by having an understanding of the concept of cultural landscape it will help students develop a deeper understanding of the history, culture, people and trends of different places. As well as, how differences of cultural landscape is what makes places unique.


 * || **//Local Scale//** || **//State Scale//** || **//National Scale//** || **//Global Scale//** ||
 * “What do you notice about the cultural landscape in the layers of buildings, roads, churches, fields, homes?” ||  ||   ||   ||   ||
 * “Through history the people that occupy the landscape have transformed the land, with their own traditions and ways of living thus the cultural landscape has layers of influence from human activity, what are some examples of this that you can think of?” ||  ||   ||   ||   ||
 * “Today, many cultural landscapes tend to blend together, making many places no longer unique and different from another, what are some examples of this loss of uniqueness of place in the cultural landscape that you can think of?” ||  ||   ||   ||   ||
 * “By studying local cultural landscapes, how might this help us understand the social structure of the local people?” ||  ||   ||   ||   ||
 * “How does the cultural landscape of our local area reflect the identity of the society?” ||  ||   ||   ||   ||

After reflecting on each of the three articles on different concepts of geography, I think that each of these articles illustrates an idea of how as teachers we should teach students not just about how we think about geography and not the standard ideas about the subject but rather in a more engaging and a different approach to geography that allows students to develop a deeper understanding of the concept.

One such way this is done is in the article, //“Maps as Stories about the World”,// the author explains as the teacher when presenting the lesson we should use, “guiding questions to help students read maps more critically, exploring the assumptions they make, the interest they serve, and the world views they promote.” (Pg. 2). By using guiding questions we can engage students as well as, allowing them to think more critically about the concept (in the article it is maps). Students will develop an interest when they are able to apply their prior knowledge and personal opinions to help guide them in their thinking to understand the purpose of the concept.

The other two articles, “//Who Lives on The Other Side of That Boundary”// and //“Our World of 7 Billion”.// I think also demonstrate effectively the idea as teachers we need to teach not just teach ideas of geography. When teaching concepts of geography, it is helpful for teachers to pose guiding questions to students about the particular concept. By doing this it allows students to become engaged in the lesson as they take into consideration the different questions you ask them. This allows students to begin thinking about the concept in a way they may not have thought of before. I think that in my lesson I created I could incorporate the first suggested activity from the article, “//Our World of 7 Billion”// into my lesson for students. However, instead of writing about how their articles are related to population trends, I would have students write about how their article is related to local, state, national or global cultural landscape.