| State and national standards for social studies and geography, as well as the Geography Education National Implementation Project's (GENIP) five geographic themes, provide a framework for what students should know and be able to do in the classroom; however, these curricular benchmarks are based upon assumptions of what students should know and be able to do, rather than on understandings of "where students are" (Martin, 2005). Only recently have researchers begun to listen to young peoples' voices in an attempt to better identify their current levels of knowledge, understanding, skills, and attitudes. In an effort to contribute to this growing body of literature, this study looks at how some 8th- and 12th-grade students in the central region of a state in the upper South think geographically and ascribe meaning to geographic and environmental phenomena.; Providing students with Jorg Muller's, "The Changing Countryside," a set of visual images depicting human-modification of a natural environment over time. I investigated what nineteen students know and believe about the GENIP theme---human/environmental interaction. Qualitative, in-depth interviews afforded students opportunities to participate in dialogue and thus, "show what they know" rather than what they don't, as is the case with many traditional types of assessments and surveys. Findings suggest that these 8th- and 12th-grade students do, in fact, know something about geography and even more specifically, about the theme of human/environmental interaction. Despite a reported lack of formal geography training, these students made sophisticated comments about the environment, as well as discussed geographic themes and concepts. While students showed knowledge of geographic and environmental phenomena, they commonly struggled in two ways. First, students failed to use a geographers' vocabulary and second, while students recognized negative implications of human-modification to the natural environment, they expressed limited agency---"their belief in the power to act" (Barton & Levstik, 2001, p. 192). |
