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Rationale
The Geography ATAR course provides a structured, disciplinary framework to investigate and analyse a range of challenges and associated opportunities facing Australia and the global community. These challenges include dealing with natural and ecological hazards, the impacts of globalisation, rapid change in physical environments and the sustainability of places.

Geography as a discipline values imagination, creativity and speculation as modes of thought. It provides a systematic, integrative way of exploring, analysing and applying the concepts of place, space, environment, interconnection, sustainability, scale and change. These principal geographical concepts are applied and explored in depth through unit topics to provide a deeper knowledge and understanding of the complex processes shaping our world. The ability of students to apply conceptual knowledge in the context of an inquiry, and the application of skills, constitutes ‘thinking geographically’ – a uniquely powerful way of viewing the world.

Students learn how to collect information from primary and secondary sources, such as field observation and data collection, mapping, monitoring, remote sensing, case studies and reports. Fieldwork, in all its various forms, is central to geographical inquiries as it enables students to develop their understanding of the world through direct experience.

Students develop a range of skills that helps them to understand the physical world, interpret the past, scrutinise the present, and explore sustainable strategies for the future care of places. They are able to understand recent and future developments, such as hazard risk management, the unequal distribution of resources throughout the world, cultural diffusion, land cover change, urban planning and sustainable development practices.

The Geography ATAR course promotes students’ communication abilities by building their skills of spatial and visual representation and interpretation through the use of cartographic, diagrammatic, graphical, photographic and multimodal forms. In addition, students communicate their conclusions by written and oral means.

Course Overview
Geography draws on students’ curiosity about the diversity of the world’s places and their peoples, cultures and environments. It enables them to appreciate the complexity of our world and the diversity of its environments, economies and cultures and use this knowledge to promote a more sustainable way of life and awareness of social and spatial inequalities.

Through the study of geography, students develop the ability to investigate the arrangement of physical and human phenomena across space and time in order to understand the interconnections between people, places and environments. As a subject within the Humanities and Social Sciences, geography studies spatial aspects of human culture using inquiry methods that are analytical, critical and speculative. As a science, geography develops an appreciation of the role of the physical environment in human life, and an understanding of the effects human activities can have on environments. As a result, it develops students’ ability to identify, evaluate and justify appropriate and sustainable approaches to the future by thinking holistically and spatially in seeking answers to questions. Students are encouraged to investigate geographical issues and phenomena from a range of perspectives, including those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Course Description
This syllabus is divided into two units.

Unit 1 - Natural and Ecological Hazards
In this unit, students explore both natural (i.e. hydrological, geomorphic and atmospheric) hazards and ecological (i.e. biological and chemical) hazards, the impacts they have on people, place and environments and the risk management of these hazards. Risk management is defined in terms of preparedness and mitigation.

Unit 2 - Global Networks and Interconnections
In this unit, students explore the economic and cultural transformations taking place in the world – the diffusion and changing spatial distribution and the impacts of these changes – that will enable them to better understand the dynamic nature of the world in which they live.

Retrieved from: School Curriculum and Standards Authority. 29 June 2023.