Geographers

• Analyse relationships between events to identify causal relations (e.g. make connections between the local and the global).
• Are familiar with the ​‘big ideas’ of the subject, which the Geographical Association suggests help to organise and attach significance to the vocabulary. Some of these ​‘big ideas’ include space, place, scale, and interdependence.
• Recognise that tier 2 words (high-frequency words found in many different subject disciplines) often have a different meaning in geography and in other subjects (polysemy) – e.g., relief.
• Synthesise and analyse information across a range of geographical contexts (e.g. physical, human, environmental) and identify the potential political agenda or national viewpoint in the source where appropriate.
• Use case studies to draw out contextual factors (e.g., who, what, where and when).

These are suggestions rather than a definitive list and can be used as a starting point to support and prompt curriculum discussion around disciplinary literacy.

A framework for reading in Geography

• Space and place: although places are unique, they are connected to other places. The flows between places and through places are important.
• Scale and connection: This is the ​‘zoom lens’ of geography. Decisions and events at a local level can have global consequences – and global processes can have different effects locally.
• Proximity and distance: This is not just physical distance, but perceptions of distance as well. In the digital age, geographers have had to adopt more flexible understandings of distance.
• People and environment: Geographers like to link the physical and human world and keep the world ​‘whole’.
  

Lambert, D, (2017) ​‘Thinking geographically’ in Jones, M. (ed) The Handbook of Secondary Geography, Sheffield: Geographical Association.