Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
18.3.2
Reevaluation of Regional Geography Education
in Social Studies Education: Focus on World
Geography
As mentioned previously, geography plays an important part in developing scientifi c
social awareness that forms the foundation of value judgments and decision making
needed to improve society. For this purpose, regional geography, which studies
specifi c phenomena and facts from an ESD perspective, has much to contribute.
The following presents an ideal state of world geography.
The 2008 revision of the National Curriculum Standards introduced a regional
study of Japan and the world to the geography portion of junior high school Social
Studies. Regional geography education should not merely explore separately the
characteristics, natural environment, industries, and culture of a region. Instead, the
author believes it is essential to explore and construct, from an ESD perspective,
specifi c case studies that reveal the lifestyles and ideas of people living in specifi c
regions. In particular, a role of geography within Social Studies education is to pro-
vide an enriched world-level knowledge base. International content is well entrenched
in geography instruction; however, it is less representative in the area of history, since
Japanese History is the subject taken by most students. Given this, world-level
regional geography education becomes essential to raising global awareness.
It is diffi cult to radically change the views of senior high school students, which
have become somewhat entrenched by the time they reach high school. Thus, dem-
onstrating the value of geography education in junior high school is especially criti-
cal to provide students with suffi cient knowledge and perspective to form their own
view of the world, such as understanding that the world has diverse cultures and
environments that differ from those of Japan.
What is the best time to introduce international learning content? From the lower
grades to middle grades of elementary school, there is a sense of accomplishment
gained by simply remembering facts. Therefore, at this level, it would be effective
to teach the names and locations of countries around the world, for instance, by
linking them with national fl ags. What is essential in this practice is for students to:
(1) regularly use maps and globes; (2) become familiar with maps from the lower
grades; (3) focus on the distributions of continents, oceans, and the locations of
countries; and (4) develop a spatial perspective.
For some time, the National Curriculum Standards has designated “The ways of
life of people in Japan and people in countries that are deeply connected economi-
cally and culturally to Japan” as the fi nal study topic for the sixth grade. It has been
argued that world geography should also be taught from the middle grades onward.
According to Iwamoto et al. (
2010
), this argument is based on the grounds that bud-
ding interest in and concern about foreign countries is seen in middle grade-level
students. Children's sense of belonging (i.e., “I am Japanese”) begins to develop
from this period; once they reach higher grades in school, their ideas about specifi c
foreign countries typically become fi xed.
For a long time, the predominant view in geography education was that since
children's spatial interests begin at a small scale (i.e., their local community), it is
best for instruction to align with their cognitive development and start from the local
