INCORPORATING PHYSICAL-GEOGRAPHY INTO THE GUIDELINES MOVEMENT THEME

The introduction of the five themes has been instrumental in the revitalization of geography in the K-12 curriculum. Although four themes include key ideas from both physical and human geography, the movement theme virtually ignores physical geography as its subtitle, ''Humans Interacting on the Earth,'' suggests. We have developed a set of physical geography key ideas analogous to the human set and believe that these address the lack of physical geography in the movement theme in 7-12 Geography: Themes, Key Ideas and Learning Opportunities (GENIP 1989). We assert that physical geography is an indispensable and dynamic part of school geography. Furthermore we argue that contemporary physical geography, which emphasizes process, is a fundamental part of the movement theme. Thus, we argue that the inclusion of physical geography in the movement theme is appropriate and beneficial.