A Powerful Geography Approach to the Curricular Transformation of the Undergraduate Geography Program at the Universidad de Costa Rica

Abstract

The school of geography at the Universidad de Costa Rica started in 2015 a revision of the undergraduate geography program, ending in 2018 with the approval of a new and renewed curriculum. This process involved a “bottom-up” participatory method leaded by the “teaching committee”, where faculty members, administrative staff, students, potential employers, and international external reviewers offer their knowledge, opinions, and feedback. This approach ended up in the epistemological definition of the discipline, the challenges in which geographers are called to actively participate at different scales and contexts, the objectives of the geography’s undergraduate program, and the potential employment opportunities of future professionals. The committee ended up proposing the curricular structure and organization that will allow student’s knowledge acquisition, and the pedagogical approach that will guide geographic learning. The purpose of this article is to analyze how powerful geography concepts and ideas can contribute to understand the changes that the school implemented in this new curriculum. In this way, we discuss on how powerful geography arguments are useful to understand the nature of the changes made to the undergraduate geography program.