Further Considerations

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From Concrete to Abstract

In addition to the discussion of what geography’s key concepts are, it is also important to consider where various geographical concepts sit on a continuum of ‘concrete’ to ‘abstract’.

Concrete vs abstract

Concrete concepts relate to things / events / phenomena that we can experience through our senses whereas abstract concepts we cannot (Roberts, 2013).

Student interpretation

However, what is a concrete concept to one student can be highly abstract for another (Brooks, 2018) depending on their previous geographical learning and the everyday geographies they bring to the classroom.
For example, ‘place’ will mean different things to different people.

Dynamicism

As mentioned previously, the concepts of your curriculum cannot be static in the long-term. Geography is a discipline that is in a constant state of becoming and involves creating new concepts in response to changes in the nature of the world (Lambert & Morgan, 2010).
New concepts need to be accounted for.