Human-Environment Geo-Capabilities As Actionable Criteria for Student Evaluation At the University Level

The way in which geography students are evaluated and assessed has changed considerably in the past decade. Modern geographical pedagogy is moving away from traditional, rigid sets of "standards" and towards the geo-capability model of curriculum construction. Focus on powerful geographic knowledge and creating "geo-capable" students has shifted to the forefront. However, current geo-capabilities research and publications have focused on broad spanning sets of geo-capabilities aimed at the secondary or post-secondary level of education and has yet to see the practice honed into specific sub-disciplines of geographic study. This study seeks to continue expanding the geo-capabilities model by creating a new set of human-environment specific geo-capabilities with the intent of using them as a set of actionable evaluation criteria in a human-environment geography competency evaluation survey tool targeted at university level students.First, a literature review of capability and geo-capability publications is conducted to summarize and interpret the process by which previous researchers have generated sets of capabilities and geo-capabilities. Next, literature covering the major or significant themes of human-environment geography is conducted as a method to generate human-environment geo-capabilities. The findings of these two reviews are combined to generate five new human-environment focused geo-capabilities. Following this, competency testing and evaluation literature is reviewed, with specific attention paid to those focused on educational or geographical models, to create a competency framework through which to employ the five human-environment geo-capabilities as the actionable evaluation criteria. Finally, a pilot study is run on the human-environment geography competency survey tool and the results of that study analyzed statistically and qualitatively.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Alabama Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Sink, Carter Douglas

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Magliocca, Nicholas R.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Curtin, Kevin
• Devine, Jennifer A
• Solem, Michael
• Weber, Joe

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved by the author unless otherwise indicated.

Language dc:language.iso

en_US, English

Dc Identifier Other

1233605

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ir.ua.edu:123456789/18058