Teaching Hazards Geography and Geographic Information Systems: A Middle School Level Experience

Abstract

Hazards are taught with the belief that knowing something about their occurrence might help us avoid their consequences. The integrative nature of hazards – physical and social systems bound together – is attractive to the student and the instructor alike. Answering why we teach hazards is fairly straightforward. A more pressing question at present is this: how should we teach about hazards? To a large degree, attention towards how we teach hazards in a K-12 environment has been sparse. In this paper we explore the challenges faced when introducing hazards geography in a pre-collegiate setting. Following a review of the status of teaching hazards and the use of geographic information systems as an instructional aid, we outline a hazards course taught successfully for middle school students and discuss implementation obstacles for the traditional classroom.

Keywords:

• hazards
• geographic information systems
• middle school education

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the editor and the three reviewers who provided constructive critiques of this paper. Additional thanks are due to Susan Wise, Monti Caughman and David Virtue for their helpful comments. The course on which this paper is based on was made possible by the Carolina Master Scholars Program within the Summer and Youth Academic Programs at the University of South Carolina.

Notes

∗Earth Science (ES) is typically taught in the ninth grade, but this does vary in some parts of the state.

∗All sessions were 2.5 hours in length; additional time was made available for project preparation.

∗The components of each GIS&T body of knowledge topics listed were not comprehensively taught; rather, those topics related to concepts taught in the course are identified. DiBiase et al. (2006).

1 .FEMA has worked recently to determine the education needs of professional emergency managers as well. See Thomas and Mileti (2003).

2. The track record is not much better in other countries as only 33 of 82 nations that have reported to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction indicate that disaster-related subjects form a part of their national school curricula. See Briceno (2007).

3. The simulation game instructions can be found in Mitchell and Cutter (1997). A variation on this theme is found in Valussi (1984).

4. All maps displayed within this paper were constructed by the students.

5. WhetherGIS is capable on this point is debatable.Aconsiderable amount of attention is now focused on identifying spatial thinking skills for assessment and subsequent training and materials development. See Gershmehl and Gershmehl (2006).