Connections

Subject connections | Pathways

Connections between geography and other school subjects

Students need opportunities to develop connections across a wide range of experiences, supporting the skills necessary for lifelong learning.

They need to understand how their learning in geography can connect to and build on other learning areas, and life outside and beyond school. When they do, it is a powerful tool to motivate, engage, and enhance the relevance of their learning.

Geography has particularly close links with history, education for sustainability, biology, agricultural and horticultural science, earth sciences, senior social studies, sociology, tourism and economics. For example, cross curricula courses incorporating geography with other subjects could focus on the local environment for learning. Achievement and unit standards from a range of subjects could provide opportunities to assess students. See the Education for sustainability guide for ideas for cross curricula design. Geography also provides an authentic context for students to apply skills and understandings from their learning in statistics.

'There is a limit to how much education you can sustain for no obvious reason…but if they are starting to develop a view that what is am doing will lead me to this area of that area, if they see the connection, it gives them a reason to continue to learn their English, to develop their maths or whatever they need… that there is a purpose for it….'

Dr Stuart Middleton, Manukau Institute of Technology

Learning pathways

'How’s this subject going to help me?', 'I won’t be doing this when I leave school'.

Students need to understand how their learning in geography can connect to and build on other learning areas, and life outside and beyond school. When they do, it is a powerful tool to motivate, engage, and enhance the relevance of their learning.

At school

A student might take geography for 1, 2 or 3 years. Whatever level they take it, geography offers students the opportunity to learn a range of skills and knowledge that they can apply in their everyday lives. Most school geography programmes involve students in field trips where they explore their natural and cultural environments beyond the school gate.

Beyond school

Geography can be a pathway to tertiary education and a broad range of careers. At tertiary level students might concentrate on physical geography or cultural geography or other related subjects such as geology.

Career pathways

There are many types of positions that fit well with geography qualifications. A geography job is any work that focuses on location.

Geographers work in a wide range of fields, from:

• urban and regional planning
• industrial location and marketing
• environmental monitoring and resource management
• community development at home and abroad

as researchers, analysts, consultants, technologists and planners.

The ability to work with data is becoming increasingly important in geography, due, in large part, to technological advances. For example, much of our information about where things are located comes from satellites that continuously beam coordinates to global positioning devices on Earth.

Government and commercial satellites greatly increase the accuracy and amount of geographic data available. At the same time, new Geographic Information System (GIS) software can process those data with greater speed and flexibility. This technology creates new career possibilities for people who understand geography and who can process and use geographic information.

A few geography jobs are based almost entirely on the study of location. Remote sensing specialists, photogrammetrists, and surveyors gather data about where things are on Earth. GIS analysts review these data and sometimes use them to make maps. And planners help to determine where buildings and roads should be located.

Many maps rely on photographs or other data taken from airplanes, jets, and satellites. Remote sensing specialists oversee the collection of this information and interpret satellite images. Photogrammetrists interpret the more detailed data from jets and planes.

Learn more – Geography Jobs (PDF 2.12MB)

Last updated May 9, 2022

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