Edexcel A comprises four core units which ‘cover discrete themes of physical and human geography, while the option units integrate these themes and give the opportunity to look at interrelationships between people and the environment’. Candidates choose two of the four options. Key Ideas are expanded in the content section. This specification does attempts to suggest links between the units. The Pilot GCSE, however, goes a step further in trying to bring all the underlying concepts together into its three themes.
My Place
There are opportunities to access the concepts underpinning the ‘My place’ theme by linking fieldwork in the local community to Unit 2A, 2.3 and adopting the Pilot GCSE’s enquiry question approach. Section 2.2 provides a way into some of the big geographical issues in the UK today such as migration. If C8 ‘Managing urban areas’ option is chosen, both 8.1 and 8.3 would allow further consideration of these issues and their underlying concepts of uneven development, interdependence, globalisation and futures. The Teachers’ Resource Guide has an exemplar based on Royston (pages 19-23) of how these ideas could be developed into a teaching scheme.
An Extreme Environment
The theme ‘An extreme environment’ provides a focus for ‘the study of the landscape, the study of physical processes and an exploration of human adaptation and responses’. The specification’s core and option approach does not lead easily into considering one particular environment. However, there are opportunities to use some of the Pilot GCSE’s ‘contexts for study’ and enquiry questions by choosing Unit B5 ‘Managing the Environment’ and Unit C7 ‘Managing Tourism’. Selecting the Sahara Desert enables the River Nile and its valley to be chosen to illustrate 5.2 and in 5.3 the Sahel as an example ‘of a selected smaller example of a typical landscape’. Both would have links with 3.2 on ‘Farming systems’, whilst links with 7.3 would introduce the concepts of sustainability and futures. Ideas from this theme (such as using historic records, expedition reports, paintings and music) could also be interesting starters for work on the ‘study of a tropical rainforest system’, especially if Amazonia is the chosen example. The Teachers’ Resource Guide (pages 25-28) includes an exemplar scheme using that applies this approach to the Arctic Ocean and Svalbard Islands.
People as Consumers
You might think about linking 3.3 in the core topic ‘The economic world’ with 7.1 and 7.2 in ‘Managing tourism’ to provide access to some of the enquiry questions and contexts in the Pilot GCSE ‘People as consumers’. It would be feasible to choose the spatial impact of ‘a particular product and named service’ within the content of the Edexcel A specification. Where this is linked into the holiday industry in Unit C7 there are opportunities to access the ethics of consumption within this context, as well as developing the concepts of globalisation, sustainability and interdependence.
As Edexcel A does not use an ‘enquiry question’ approach you might consider using the enquiry questions in the Pilot GCSE’s themes which match the Edexcel A’s Key Ideas, as starters for teaching aspects of the course.
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Pilot GCSE: Links to Edexcel A 1312
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