Teaching a regional concept: The home state geography course
Abstract
It seems axiomatic that with most individuals, cultures, and societies, the territory they inhabit becomes the emotional and intellectual center of their world. Aspects of social science education are explicitly or implicitly oriented toward reinforcing an individual's identification of his or her home with his or her political region (state, nation, or other) and the generation of better informed, more responsible, and effectively involved citizens of that region. For nearly a century, geographic educators have attempted to make advantageous use of the relationship between an individual and the inhabited political region known as the home state. If, as Hartshorne suggests, regions are "mental constructions," then the home state is, essentially, a symbolic, areal representation, with an identifiable spatial scale. Since the geographic education process involves transfer of meaning and relevance among macro-environments at various scales, this research is based primarily in transfer theory as conceived in psychology. By exploring past and present approaches to teaching of the home state geography course, it was discovered that the identical, or highly similar elements required for transfer have been, and continue to be, an intrinsic part of such a course. Drawing on subsidiary theories of "optimal stimulation" and "universal mapping," along with the use of cognitive sketch maps, the research demonstrates that the perceived home regions of student groups in seven states are not coincident with the boundaries of the respective home states. Based on these data, normative recommendations are made regarding an "optimally scaled" regional unit at which to begin instruction based on scaled familiarity and familiar representation.
Subject Area
Recommended Citation
Gregory Alan Reed,
"Teaching a regional concept: The home state geography course"
(January 1, 2001).
ETD Collection for Texas State University.
Paper AAI3005915.
http://ecommons.txstate.edu/dissertations/AAI3005915