This theme centres on the candidate’s locality, but is not simply a locality study! Instead, candidates consider their place as a node, or point within a web of global flows. These global flows are of geographical processes. They could include aspects of trade, climate, migration, urbanisation, transport, etc. Candidates must explore the geography of some of these global patterns and processes.
The ‘local’ is interconnected with regional, national, international and global systems and flows. Any place has ‘porous’ boundaries, which enable other people and places ‘seep’ in and out of it. In this way the global is ‘as grounded’ as the local. The interconnections with global systems can help explain existing, past and future changes in a locality. This approach encourages an exploration - using scale as a tool - of the features of a local place.
Decisions made by individuals and community representatives in a place affect the global flows. Studying geography in this way helps to make some of these linkages transparent. It also helps make our place-based rights and responsibilities more geographically meaningful. Thinking about places in this way increases candidates’ awareness of other people’s and other place’s interconnections with their daily lives. Just because an issue is geographically distant does not mean that it is disconnected from us in our place. In fact quite the opposite is true.
Articles on the RGS-IBG’s Geography in the News may provide information for teaching and learning about the big issues. Depending on the issues, flows and processes that you select, the following articles might be relevant:
Pilot GCSE: My Place - Big Issues
| Article | Date | Issues/concepts |
| New Towns for New Times | 12 Jan 2004 |
Housing stock/futures/sustainability/ uneven development |
| The New EU | 01 May 2004 |
Migration/economic linkages/globalisation/ interdependence |
| The Big Picture | 14 May 2004 |
Climate change/global warming/sustainability/ futures |
| Migrating Jobs | 12 Dec 2003 |
Employment/migration/ interdependence/ globalisation/uneven development |
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