Disaster Risk Reduction Education in School Geography Curriculum: Review and Outlook from a Perspective of China

Abstract

In order to investigate the content evolution of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in the school geography curriculum in China, this research used the five dimensions of DRR learning framework, namely knowledge, response, action, participation, and integration, as a platform and a conceptual premise upon which to review the primary and secondary school geography curriculum standards from 1986 to the present. Geography as a carrier subject had been an integration approach of DRR in the national curriculum in China. Using the method of qualitative content analysis with the support of the software NVivo 12, we came to the following results: the DRR-relevant content in the geography curriculum standards that used for analysis in this research had undergone constant changes and finally reached a relatively stable state; the changes of DRR-relevant contents in primary school, middle school, and high school curriculum presented different characteristics. In the future geography curriculum reform, it is necessary to realize that the term disaster does not describe the natural event per se, but instead its impact on/consequences for infrastructure and society. It is bound to add more DRR-relevant content that belongs to the “action” dimension and the ‘participation’ dimension, especially at the primary and middle school stages, and to systematically incorporate the DRR-relevant content of the “integration” dimension into the school geography curriculum.