WACE Breadth & Depth Requirement:

List A

Prerequisite

65% in HASS Standard.

The Year 11 Geography ATAR course is made up of the following two units:

Unit 1

Natural and Ecological Hazards

Natural and ecological hazards represent potential sources of harm to human life, health, income and property, and may affect elements of the biophysical, managed and constructed elements of environments. This unit focuses on understanding how these hazards and their associated risks are perceived and managed at local, regional and global levels.

Risk management, in this particular context, refers to prevention, mitigation and preparedness. Prevention is concerned with the long-term aspects of hazards, and focuses on avoiding the risks associated with their reoccurrence. Mitigation is about reducing or eliminating the impact if the hazard does happen.

Preparedness refers to actions carried out prior to the advance notice of a hazard to create and maintain the capacity of communities to respond to, and recover from, natural disasters. Preparedness starts at the local community level, but may branch out to national and international levels through measures such as planning, community education, information management, communications and warning systems.

Building on their existing geographical knowledge and understandings, students explore natural hazards, including atmospheric, hydrological and geomorphic hazards, for example, storms, cyclones, tornadoes, frosts, droughts, bushfires, flooding, earthquakes, volcanoes and landslides. They will also explore ecological hazards, for example, environmental diseases/pandemics (toxin-based respiratory ailments, infectious diseases, animal-transmitted diseases and water-borne diseases) and plant and animal invasions.

Students develop an understanding about using and applying geographical inquiry tools, such as spatial technologies, and skills, to model, assess and forecast risk, and to investigate the risks associated with natural and ecological hazards. The potential for fieldwork depends on the hazard selected, such as a visit to the town of Meckering to study earthquakes, or the impact of a specific cyclone, flood or bushfire on a town or region.

Unit 2

Global Networks and Interconnections

This unit focuses on the process of international integration (globalisation) and is based on the reality that we live in an increasingly interconnected world. It provides students with an understanding of the economic and cultural transformations taking place in the world today, the spatial outcomes of these processes, and their political and social consequences. This is a world in which advances in transport and telecommunications technologies have not only transformed global patterns of production and consumption but also facilitated the diffusion of ideas and elements of cultures.

The unit explains how these advances in transport and communication technology have lessened the friction of distance and have impacted at a range of local, national and global scales. Cultural groups that may have been isolated in the early twentieth century are now linked across an interconnected world in which there is a ‘shrinking’ of time and space. Of particular interest are the ways in which people adapt and respond to these changes.

Students have the opportunity to explore the ideas developed in the unit through an investigation of the changes taking place in the spatial distribution of the production and consumption of a selected commodity, good or service and the study of an example of cultural diffusion, adoption and adaptation. They also investigate the ways people embrace, adapt to, or resist the forces of international integration. While the scale of the study in this unit begins with the global, locally based examples can be used to enhance students’ conceptual understanding.

The scale of the study for both depth studies, unless specified, can range from local to global, as appropriate. Students develop an understanding about using and applying geographical inquiry methods, tools (such as spatial technologies), and skills to investigate the transformations taking place throughout the world.

WACE Breadth & Depth Requirement:

List A

Prerequisite

None.