China’s revised edition of the new geography curriculum standards for compulsory education (hereinafter the new China’s standards) formulated by the Chinese Ministry of Education (CMoE) in 2021 [1] replaced the 2011 edition. Yet, the new edition has no significant difference from the old one. According to the China’s standards, modern society requires citizens to scientifically and fully understand the importance of the coordinated development of population, resources, environment and society, establishing the concept of SD and constantly explore and follow scientific and civilized production methods and lifestyles. This puts forward the reform of geography curriculum that should help students form positive attitudes, values, behaviors and habits and build their ability to deal with population, resources, environment and development issues. In other words, geography curriculums should help cultivate active and responsible citizens for the environmental protection and SD of the country and the world. The nature of a geography curriculum reflects both natural and social principles and has five major characteristics: regional, comprehensive, ideological, life and practical (see Table 1 for details). Teachers should design a curriculum for students based on the following three basic considerations: (1) learning geography that is useful for life, (2) learning geography useful for lifelong development and (3) constructing an open geography curriculum (see Table 2 for full description).

Similar to overseas counterparts (e.g., [2]), the core concepts in geography education in China involve space, place, landscape and sustainability. Each geography curriculum in compulsory education is further divided into four parts: earth and maps, world geography, Chinese geography and rural geography [1]. Among them, "Earth and Map" is the basis for learning regional geography. In principle, a curriculum at the junior level should not involve deeper issues of geography. Geographical elements are listed separately and combined with regional geography. For example, the natural part of world geography only lists climatic elements, while other physical geography elements are included in the relevant regional content. In the regional part of world geography and Chinese geography, except for the regions specified in this standard, other regions are selected by the textbook writers and teachers. This standard only lists the basic geographical elements of the region and the basic knowledge and basic skills that must be mastered to learn regional geography, as well as the number of required regions. Rural geography can be used not only as a part of the whole curriculum, but also as the core of comprehensive learning. Students can use their geographical knowledge and skills to conduct exploratory practical activities centered on environmental and development issues through collecting information around them. The general goal of the compulsory education phase of geography learning is to master basic geography knowledge, acquire basic geography skills and methods, understand environmental and development issues, enhance patriotic affection and form global awareness and the concept of SD. Table 3 lists the three important aspects, which form an organic whole in the implementation process.

Cai [3] provided some insightful views of both seventh and eighth grades on learning geography. She commented that compared with other core subjects like mathematics, geography is a brand new subject for seventh graders. Students learn the time and space of geographical science. The abstract knowledge of celestial bodies, coupled with the complicated earth movement and the resulting geographical significance, makes junior students feel extremely confused. This difficulty may increase when Chinese students learn the urban spatial structures that are mainly explained by the post-modernist discussions that focus on apparent forms rather than substantive contents [4]. Although capable students can adapt well to the situation, other students may find it difficult to learn the subject. Therefore, how to help seventh graders adapt to geography learning is particularly important. In the eighth grade, geography plays the role of letting students know the motherland affectionately, leading them to “travel” the mountains and rivers of the motherland, admire the rich traditions of various places and experience the unique charm of ethnic minorities. Therefore, in the classroom, geography teachers should let students experience the richness and happiness of geography classes while learning geography knowledge.

According to the new standards, compulsory education geography aims to help students acquire geographical knowledge, skills and methods, understand the geographical environment, guide students to actively participate in geography practice activities and encourage students to identify and solve geographical problems. Cai [3] attempted to understand the difficulty level of studying geography at junior middle schools. Through the analysis of the learning objectives in terms of knowledge, skills, processes, methods, attitudes and values in the junior geography curriculum standards, she identified the main words that described the learning objectives. Table 4 exhibits the number of occurrences of these words. She found that the level of the overall curriculum objectives was quite shallow. According to the Bloom’s Taxonomy [5], the curriculum was mainly set at the lower-order level. Teachers engaged in junior geography teaching should carefully grasp the requirements of the curriculum standards in order to properly guide their teaching.

Moreover, Cai [3] also investigated into the situation of junior students’ learning of geography. She randomly selected classes of seventh and eighth grades from the school in which she was teaching and established a sample of 72 students at the seventh grade and 60 students at the eighth grade. Their responses to a set of questions, including the level of difficulty and usefulness, were recorded. It can be seen from Table 5 that more than 70% of the seventh grade students thought that the geography subject was very difficult or difficult to learn; only a few respondents said that the geography subject was easy to learn. More than 90% of junior school students thought that the geography subject was useful, and it was positively related to the proportion of people who liked the geography subject. It shows that junior school students were full of interest in geography learning. In terms of teaching methods, students were more inclined to the use of learning activities. It is interesting to find that the eighth grade students were engaged in more self-learning, indicating that students had adapted to the study of geography and started feeling that the knowledge was not difficult to understand. In terms of teaching aids, it is more inclined to integrate modern computer technology as well as the use of geography teaching equipment. The term “digital wisdom” raised by Prensky [6] has been used to define a digitally intelligent person who “uses digital technologies and available techniques to enhance his or her mind, as well as other human capabilities” [7] (p. 169). Therefore, more teaching equipment and computer technology should be introduced in geography teaching of junior middle schools. In terms of classroom practices, the humorous style of teaching was preferable by most of the students.

As stated in the new China’s standards, the nature of the geography curriculum at the compulsory education stage is to understand the geographical environment and form geographical skills and SD concepts [8]. As noted by Çifçi and Koybaşi [9], “in the context of education, gaining geographical consciousness can be employed as a key to sustainability” (p. 53). Thus, SE has already become a part of the standard geography curriculum. Teaching geography for SD is perceived as critical geography education, which challenges the traditional way of teaching the subject [7]. According to Yli-Panula et al. [10], SE in geography should involve SD learning that can generate holistic experiences around philosophical, theoretical and practical sustainability issues.

Zhang et al. [11] provided examples showing how the concept of SD can be infiltrated in teaching. They mentioned that after learning the content of themes of “continents and oceans” and “transformation of land and sea”, geography teachers can organize students to conduct research and discussion on the theme of “various seas and connecting straits” and learn about crustal movement and the formation process of the continents and oceans, as well as what impacts these will have on human beings. For example, the hazards caused by the violent movement of the earth’s crust, such as the Ya’an earthquake, will not only cause a lot of damages, but will also bring benefits to mankind, such as new energy sources. Further expanding the classroom teaching to let students learn how to avoid danger in an earthquake, protect life and property as much as possible and use geographical knowledge to serve life better may be considered.

Moreover, teachers should let students jump out of the normal textbook content and walk into the life around them. Zhang et al. [11] used “changeable weather” as an example to illustrate that practical activities can be carried out on relevant festivals, such as World Environmental Day on the fifth of June, requiring students to collect relevant news reports regarding the occurrence of haze in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities and arranging role- playing dramas in the class to understand the impact of environmental pollution on daily life. It is crucial to guide students to actively find solutions to problems. Under the guidance of teachers, students may launch special lectures on environmental protection through cultural performance activities, campus broadcasts, green campuses and other forms of publicity in the school, calling for more students to participate in environmental protection, so that they can understand the environment and the importance of protecting it.

Yet, SE is argued to be a complex and controversial approach, and therefore it is a challenge for subject teachers [12]. SE serves as a multi-faceted form of education that will train students in different ways for addressing different sustainability issues [13]. Clearly, there are different approaches that can be used to teach sustainability [14]. For Roberts [15], “it is easier to determine what geography teachers teach than to influence how they deliver the content” (p. 237). Therefore, in order to teach successfully, teachers should help students set up effective learning activities and should be able to evaluate the use of these teaching and learning strategies to bring about the desired aspects of learning in geography [16].

4. Conclusions