Context, control, and characteristics of place: An educational critique of the geography content standards in Colorado

The Goals 2000: Educate America Act identified specific content areas for which world-class standards would be developed and used in K-12 public education by the year 2000. In compliance with this legislation and with directives from the National Education Goals Panel, subject area content standards were developed for geography. Based on the method of educational connoisseurship and criticism, the purpose of this study was to provide descriptions, interpretations, evaluations and thematic generalizations of the State of Colorado's model content standards for geography, one Colorado school district's responses to them, and their educational significance in two seventh grade social studies classrooms.;Four essential questions guided this effort. First, what were the intentions of the geography content standards? Second, what were one Colorado school district's responses to the state mandate to "meet or exceed" these standards? Third, what was the educational significance of the geography content standards as exemplified in the two classrooms under study? Fourth, what could the geography content standards mean for school communities and social studies classrooms across Colorado?;Text analyses of Goals 2000 legislation, geography content standards documents, and other archival documentation were modeled after Johnson's relations of power method (1987, 49-50) and helped render a picture of the standards that included multiple perspectives. Field observations, site-visits, surveys, and interviews were used for data collection and analysis in the school district and in the classrooms. Eisner's (1991) five dimensions of schooling also provided the framework for observation and analysis in this study. Similarities and differences in the impact and implementation of the geography content standards between the classrooms were examined and interpretations of the substance and implications of the geography content standards were discussed in order to shed new light on the relationship between the state, the district, and the classroom levels of implementation. Finally, thematic generalizations were drawn to determine what the geography standards could mean for school districts and social studies classrooms across Colorado.