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Inquiry methodologies

As was mentioned earlier, the first sentence of Section 8.1 on p.15 of the syllabus begins by saying "Geographical inquiry is fundamental to all topics in the Preliminary and HSC courses". Studying geography is not intended to be a passive exercise where you only copy out notes or absorb information from your teacher. You are encouraged to be active learners, working out how to ask geographical questions and answer them, and learning how to apply the tools and skills used by geographers.

Inquiry skills are so important that they are covered in three different parts of the syllabus:

• Outcomes H8, H9, H10, H12 and H13 are all outcomes which are based on skills that you are expected to develop throughout the course (see page 11 of the syllabus and at the beginning of each course topic).
• In each topic there is a subheading labelled " Students learn to:" which provides a sample of skills relevant to that topic.
• Section 8.1 (pages 15-16 in the syllabus) summarises the inquiry skills under the heading "Geographical Inquiry Methodologies".

Section 8.1 then divides these Methodologies, or if you like “methods” or “ways of going about doing things”, into two subsections on Geographical Investigation and communication and Geographical tools and skills.

Two points are worth making about the material on learning to investigate geographically:

• The first dot point outlines the range of questions you might ask in setting up a geographical investigation, either as an exercise involving the collection of primary data (e.g. fieldwork), or one using secondary sources. You could use these dot points, for example, to investigate an economic activity in the topic, People and economic activity. If your economic activity is rice production, for example, then you could start by asking: What different forms of rice cultivation are there and where is rice grown?
• This part of the syllabus highlights that you will be developing your ability to evaluate information sources for their usefulness, reliability, relevance and validity (Outcome H9), and putting the information together in a coherent way (Outcome H8).

The syllabus highlights the importance of being able to transmit information to others or communicate graphically, using a variety of forms of communication. A large part of the HSC examination is spent doing exactly that! An important point to make here is the advice given in the reports of the HSC Geography Examination Committee over the past few years about the importance of being able to "write geographically". Moreover, 40% of the internal HSC Geography assessment is based on geographical writing (Syllabus p.40). The file on Writing geographically will help you with developing that skill.

Geographical tools and skills are divided into map interpretation, analysis of graphs and statistics, photo interpretation and conducting fieldwork. At the end of this subsection on page 17 of the syllabus there is a note to say that "these skills and tools may be applied and assessed in any of the course topics". When you look at the “Students learn to:" part of the content, there are examples given of some of the skills and tools you might use in investigating that topic.

What's important is that these lists are examples only of the application of these skills. You could apply any and all of the skills in each of the three HSC topics.

So there's a lot about geographical inquiry in this syllabus and, to geographers, that's one of the features which makes the course interesting and exciting.