ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to open up debates over the position and relationship of physical geography with cognate subject disciplines and with the broader collective of ideas within geography. It provokes questions over the construction of knowledge and methods that can influence discourse, thinking and approaches to teaching physical geography in schools. Concerns about the 'weakening' of physical geography in the school curriculum have surfaced periodically. The rise of humanistic geography and the emergence of environment as a focus of political concern led to a drift towards 'concentrating attention on human geography in the school curriculum' considered as 'potentially damaging'. The chapter focuses on the process and production of (new) knowledge in physical geography. The challenge for geography teachers is to critically examine their own biographical knowledge of physical geography so as to evaluate decisions over how to help students envisage and develop understanding of the 'naughty world'.
