As the Pilot GCSE develops we will provide you with the curriculum development initiatives and candidate and teacher creativity via these web pages.
The resources on the core theme and optional units pages are designed to support Centres engaged in the development of the Pilot GCSE and others who are interested in using the ideas. All of these refer to the Teachers’ Resource Guide and most include downloadable resources and planning material.
Core themes
Optional units - Option 1: Coastal mangement (4957)
- Option 2: Geographical information systems (4958)
- Option 3: Geography in the news (4959)
- Option 4: Travel and tourism (4960)
- Option 5: Planning where we live (4961)
- Option 6: Urban transport (4962)
- Option 7: Investigating geography through fieldwork (4963)
Part of the rationale of the GA is to support practitioners within the geography community. If you are not already a member and would like to support us in this endeavour we would be pleased to hear from you.
Do you have teaching and learning ideas related to any aspects of the specification? Email them to
Phil Wood - we’ll consider adding them to these pages.
To explore each of the themes and units fully, it is necessary to range across the scales of enquiry. In this way, scale is used to support learning and the understanding of concepts. However, within each section scale is addressed in a slightly different way.
Theme 1 (My Place) takes a personal perspective, beginning at a local/personal scale and moving outward to take in national, international and global, as appropriate to understanding.
Theme 2 (An Extreme Environment) starts with the close geographical focus of the region or area chosen for study, moving up and down the scales for explanation, comparison and generalisation.
Theme 3 (People as Consumers) attempts to look at the big picture of consumption as a global phenomenon, but in order to do so it is necessary to study at the personal and local scale, and to examine regional and national examples.
Any study that starts and stops at one scale is unlikely to satisfy the demands of a geography specification for the twenty-first century – or Geography 21.
Geography 21 also requires teachers to highlight the significance of the personal scale; making explicit to candidates their connections with the wider geography. Individuals who are confident about relative and absolute location are more likely to participate actively in both their local and global communities.
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