The Educate America Act of 1994 names geography as one of nine subject areas in which high school graduates must achieve competency. The new competency requirements necessitate a broader, more complete education of our nation's pre-service social studies teachers. To date, very few comprehensive curriculum materials have been developed to facilitate teaching pre-service geography students. This proposal requests NSF funds for the development of a four-volume manual of module exercises covering each of the four core areas of geographic education-cultural, physical, geographic techniques, and world regional geography. The manual will be developed by teams of geographers, education faculty, technology consultants, and an advisory committee, with the goal of producing the Cultural and Physical volumes in year 1, and the Techniques and World Regional volumes in year 2. The manual will be ultimately tested by an advisory committee for its consistency with the philosophies and objectives of GEO-Teach, a pre-service geography education program funded by FIPSE and currently being implemented at Mankato State University. GEO-Teach strives to model for students successful approaches to interdisciplinary teaching and a content- and process-based pedagogy that integrates up-to-date technology instruction into the curriculum; it is expected that the same principles will be integrated into this four-volume manual. Two external evaluators will conduct testing in large and small university classes outside Mankato State University. It is anticipated that the final product will be available for distribution to other pre-service geography/social studies programs in the Spring of 1998.
