Geography draws on students’ curiosity about the diversity of the world’s places and their peoples, cultures and environments. It enables students to appreciate the complexity of our world and the diversity of its environments, economies and cultures. Students can use this knowledge to promote a more sustainable way of life and awareness of social and spatial inequalities.

In the senior secondary years, Geography provides a structured, disciplinary framework to investigate and analyse a range of challenges and associated opportunities facing Australia and the global community. These challenges include rapid change in biophysical environments, the sustainability of places, dealing with environmental risks and the consequences of international integration.

Geography as a discipline values imagination, creativity and speculation as modes of thought. It provides a systematic, integrative way of exploring, analysing and applying the concepts of place, space, environment, interconnection, sustainability, scale and change. These principal geographical concepts are applied and explored in depth through unit topics, to provide a deeper knowledge and understanding of the complex processes shaping our world. Taken together, the ability of students to apply conceptual knowledge in the context of an inquiry, and the application of skills, constitute ‘thinking geographically’ – a uniquely powerful way of viewing the world.

The subject builds students’ knowledge and understanding of the uniqueness of places and an appreciation that place matters in explanations of economic, social and environmental phenomena and processes. It also develops students’ knowledge about the interconnections between places. Nothing exists in isolation. Consequently, the subject considers the significance of location, distance and proximity.

Through the study of Geography students develop the ability to investigate the arrangement of biophysical and human phenomena across space in order to understand the interconnections between people, places and environments. As a subject of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Geography studies spatial aspects of human culture using inquiry methods that are analytical, critical and speculative. In doing so, it values imagination and creativity. As a Science, Geography develops an appreciation of the role of the biophysical environment in human life and an understanding of the effects of human activities on environments. As a result, it develops students’ ability to identify, evaluate and justify appropriate and sustainable approaches to the future by thinking holistically and spatially when seeking answers to questions. Students are encouraged to investigate geographical issues and phenomena from a range of perspectives including those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

In Geography, students investigate geographical issues and phenomena at a variety of scales and contexts. This may include: doing comparative studies at the same scale, studying the same issue or phenomenon at a range of scales, or seeking explanations at a different scale to the one being studied. The ability to perform multiscale and hierarchical analysis is developed in the senior years.

Students apply geographical inquiry through a more advanced study of geographical methods and skills in the senior years. They learn how to collect information from primary and secondary sources such as field observation and data collection, mapping, monitoring, remote sensing, case studies and reports. Fieldwork, in all its various forms, is central to such inquiries as it enables students to develop their understanding of the world through direct experience.

The Geography course is written under The HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES FRAMEWORK 2019: BSSS HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES Framework

Achievement Standards for HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES courses can be found within the Framework.

Humanities and Social Sciences is the study of how people process and document the human experience and their place in it. It empowers students to better understand humankind, society and culture and communicate ideas for the future.

Natural and Ecological Hazards

Natural and ecological hazards represent potential sources of harm to human life, health, income and property, and may affect elements of the biophysical, managed and constructed elements of environments.

This unit focuses on identifying risks and managing those risks to eliminate or minimise harm to people and the environment. Risk management, in this particular context, refers to prevention, mitigation and preparedness. Prevention is about things we can do to prevent a hazard from happening. Mitigation is about reducing or eliminating the impact if the hazard does happen. Preparedness refers to actions taken to create and maintain the capacity of communities to respond to, and recover from, natural disasters, through measures such as planning, community education, information management, communications and warning systems.

Building on their existing geographical knowledge and understandings, students examine natural hazards including atmospheric, hydrological and geomorphic hazards, for example, storms, cyclones, tornadoes, frosts, droughts, bushfires, flooding, earthquakes, volcanoes and landslides. They also explore ecological hazards, for example, environmental diseases/pandemics (toxin-based respiratory ailments, infectious diseases, animal-transmitted diseases and water-borne diseases) and plant and animal invasions.

This unit includes an overview of natural and ecological hazards and two depth studies: one focusing on a natural hazard and one focusing on an ecological hazard. The scale of study for this unit, unless specified, can range from local to global, as appropriate. The potential for fieldwork will depend on the hazards selected. In undertaking these depth studies, students develop an understanding about using and applying geographical inquiry, tools such as spatial technologies, and skills, to model, assess and forecast risk, and to investigate the risks associated with natural and ecological hazards.

Sustainable Places

This unit examines the economic, social and environmental sustainability of places. While all places are subject to changes produced by economic, demographic, social, political and environmental processes, the outcomes of these processes vary depending on local responses and adaptations.

At a global scale, the process of urbanisation is not only affecting the rate of world population growth and human wellbeing, it has created a range of challenges for both urban and rural places. How people respond to these challenges, individually and collectively, will determine the sustainability and liveability of places into the future.

The interconnected challenges faced in places, including population growth and decline, employment, economic restructuring, transport infrastructure needs, housing, demands for improved health and education services, and other matters related to liveability, are a particular focus of this unit.

In Australia’s metropolitan and regional cities, the challenges may also include managing economic growth, urban sprawl, car dependency, environmental degradation, abandoned land, and deficiencies in urban planning, service provision and management. In rural and remote places the challenges may include lack of employment for young people, lack of educational services, poor transportation connections to major centres, closure of a major industry, lack of service provision, isolation and remoteness.

Students examine how governments, planners, communities, interest groups and individuals try to address these challenges to ensure that places are sustainable. They also investigate the ways that geographical knowledge and skills can be applied to identify and address these challenges.

This unit includes an overview of places and the challenges faced by cities in the developed and developing world. The unit also includes two depth studies: one focusing on challenges faced by a place in Australia, and one focusing on challenges faced by a megacity in a developing country. The scale of study for this unit, unless specified, can range from local to global, as appropriate.

The scale of study in this unit begins at the global, through an examination of the process of urbanisation and its consequences, before focusing on the challenges facing places in Australia, with the opportunity to undertake a local area study. The scale of study then shifts to national and regional to investigate megacities in developing countries. This approach enables students to develop an understanding of the challenges for places in both the developed and developing worlds. It also enables them to compare and contrast the way in which the challenges are addressed at a variety of scales and in different contexts.

In undertaking these depth studies, students develop an understanding about using and applying geographical inquiry, tools such as spatial technologies, and skills, to investigate the sustainability of places.

Land Cover Transformations

This unit focuses on the changing biophysical cover of the earth’s surface, its impact on global climate and biodiversity, and the creation of anthropogenic biomes. In doing so, it examines the processes causing change in the earth’s land cover. These processes may include: deforestation, the expansion and intensification of agriculture, rangeland modification, land and soil degradation, irrigation, land drainage, land reclamation, urban expansion and mining.

These processes have altered local and regional climates and hydrology, damaged ecosystem services, contributed to the loss of biodiversity, and altered soils. The scale at which these processes now occur is so extensive that there no longer exist any truly ‘natural’ environments. All environments are, to a greater or lesser extent, modified by human activity. This focus on anthropogenic biomes differentiates Geography from Earth and Environmental Science. The processes of land cover transformation have also changed the global climate through their interaction with atmospheric processes, and climate change is, in turn, producing further transformations in land cover.

The unit integrates aspects of physical and environmental Geography to provide students with a comprehensive and integrated understanding of processes related to land cover change, and their local and global environmental consequences. It also examines and evaluates the ways people seek to reverse the negative effects of land cover change.

This unit includes an overview of land cover change and two depth studies: one focusing on the interrelationship between land cover and either global climate change or biodiversity loss, and one focusing on a program designed to address land cover change.

The scale of study for this unit, unless specified, can range from local to global, as appropriate. There is, for example, the requirement that students investigate the impacts of land cover change on local and regional environments; a local land cover change initiative designed to address the issue of climate change of biodiversity loss; and the evaluation of program to address land cover change. Each of these provides opportunities for fieldwork.

In undertaking these depth studies, students develop an understanding about using and applying geographical inquiry, tools such as spatial technologies, and skills to investigate human–environment systems.

Global Transformations

This unit focuses on the process of international integration (globalisation) as a conceptual ‘lens’ through which to investigate issues in human geography. In doing so, it integrates the sub disciplines of economic and cultural geography, and political geography. Economic geography involves study of the changing location, distribution and spatial organisation of economic activities across the world, while cultural geography focuses on the patterns and interactions of human culture, both material and non-material. Both sub disciplines make an important contribution to our understanding of the human organisation of space. Political geography examines the spatial consequences of power at all scales from the personal to global.

The topic provides students with an understanding of the economic and cultural transformations taking place in the world today, the spatial outcomes of these processes, and their political and social consequences. It will better enable them to make sense of the dynamic world in which they will live and work. It will also allow them to be active participants in the public discourses and debate related to such matters.

The unit is based on the reality that we live in an increasingly interconnected world. This is a world in which advances in transport and telecommunications technologies have not only transformed global patterns of production and consumption but also facilitated the diffusion of ideas and cultures. Of particular interest is the ways in which people adapt and respond to these changes.

Students have the opportunity to explore the ideas developed in the unit through an investigation of the changes taking place in the spatial distribution of the production and consumption of a selected commodity, good or service or the study of an example of cultural diffusion, adoption and adaptation. They also investigate the ways people either embrace, adapt to, or resist the forces of international integration.

This unit includes an overview of international integration (globalisation) and a choice of depth studies: one focusing on economic integration, and one focusing on international cultural integration.

While the scale of study in this unit begins with the global, locally based examples can be used to enhance students’ conceptual understanding. The scale of study for the selected depth study, unless specified, can range from local to global, as appropriate.

In undertaking these studies, students develop an understanding about using and applying geographical inquiry, tools such as spatial technologies, and skills to investigate the transformations taking place throughout the world.

Geography A/T/M 2014-2022   (924 KB)

Geography A/T/M 2014-2022 (333 KB)