Integrating human and physical geography? Teaching a first year course in environmental geography

Abstract

The paper reports on the experience of designing and teaching a first year course in which both physical and human geography are used to study an environmental problem. It discusses the reasons for teaching the course, its content and structure, and some of the questions that had to be resolved in its design. It is suggested that key elements in the design of the course are its focus on only one environmental problem, the emphasis on explaining the causes of environmental problems through an examination of both physical and social processes, the methods used to integrate human geography and related social sciences into the course, and the avoidance of any clear division between a physical and a human component. The significance of these features is that they help to integrate the diversity of material and ideas in the course into a coherent whole.