ABSTRACT
In the last two decades a series of efforts have aimed to revive and transform K-12 geography education. Alarmed by reports about the geographic illiteracy of young American (e.g., A Nation at Risk, 1984; National Geographic Society, 1988), politicians, business leaders, geographers, and educators initiated calls for reform in geography education (Binko & Neubert, 1996; Salter, 1986). A number of legislative, organizational, and curricular initiatives helped put geography back on the “map” and produce what some (Bettis, 1995; Boehm, 1997) have termed a “renaissance” in geographic education. The rst of these initiatives was the publication of Guidelines for Geographic Education in 1984, identifying the ve themes of geography and providing the rst clear content and skills framework for K-12 education (Petersen, Natoli, & Boehm, 1994). In 1989, President Bush and the nation’s state governors included geography as one of the ve “core subjects” in the National Education Goals. Those were later signed into law by President Clinton in The Goals 2000: Educate America Act. By 1990, Congress authorized a new geography assessment, to be conducted in 4th, 8th, and 12th grade by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). And in 1994, and as part of the Goals 2000 initiative, a coalition of the U.S. Department of Education and four geographic associations published Geography for Life (Geography Education Standards Project, 1994), setting out 18 national geography standards specifying what students, at each grade level, should know and be able to do (Gandy & Kruger, 2004). Though the degree to which such initiatives have in uenced what takes place in geography classrooms is still unclear (Bednarz, Downs, & Vender, 2003), they have nonetheless impacted geography education in some ways. In 1989 not one state had standards for geography, and only 13 states tested geography in their state exams; by 2004 all states, other than Iowa and Rhode Island, had established some form of geography standards (often under the umbrella of social studies), and the number of states including geography in their state exams had, by 2002, risen to 27. Additionally, more than 40 states now offer Advanced Placement Human Geography tests (Daley, 2003).1
