Teaching Hazards Geography and Geographic Information Systems: A Middle School Level Experience
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Jerry T. Mitchell; Mathew C. Schmidtlein; Kevin A. Borden
- Source
- International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education. 17:170-188
- Subject
- International research
Economic growth
Geographic information system
business.industry
Geography, Planning and Development
Traditional classroom
Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Education
Environmental education
Geography
Social system
Political science
ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION
Information system
Mathematics education
School level
Comparative education
Natural disaster
business
Environmental planning
Curriculum
- Language
- ISSN
- 1747-7611
1038-2046
Hazards are taught with the belief that knowing something about their occurrence might help us avoid their consequences. The integrative nature of hazards – physical and social systems bound together – is attractive to the student and the instructor alike. Answering why we teach hazards is fairly straightforward. A more pressing question at present is this: how should we teach about hazards? To a large degree, attention towards how we teach hazards in a K-12 environment has been sparse. In this paper we explore the challenges faced when introducing hazards geography in a pre-collegiate setting. Following a review of the status of teaching hazards and the use of geographic information systems as an instructional aid, we outline a hazards course taught successfully for middle school students and discuss implementation obstacles for the traditional classroom.