British Columbian Geography in Historical Perspective

Abstract

This paper explores how Geography's position in British Columbia (BC), Canada's school social studies curricula has been affected by changes in educational cycles over the twentieth century. The amount of instructional time, the importance assigned to the subject and the content of the subject have varied in accordance with the pre-eminence given to particular philosophies of education, particularly that of progressivism. The alterations described are presented in a chronological narrative and contextualised within historical frames that describe relevant international, national and local educational events. Trends in BC illustrate significant correlations with educational trends in the United States. The paper includes a general theoretical framework through which findings were interpreted. It illustrates how international trends played out in one context that has been open both to reform and to new educational philosophies of international significance.

Keywords:

• Canadian geography education
• curriculum reform
• curriculum studies
• geography studies
• history of education
• history of geography education

Notes

As changes to curriculum guides often took time to be fully implemented across all grades and were often implemented in ‘experimentary form’ first, the final curriculum guide was used.

The same publication (FORED BC, 1999) mentioned the Council of Ministers of Education statement centred on the importance of citizenship education.