Geographers use many skills to assist their study of the world. The AQA A Level integrates these skills into the other examination papers. This page offers a summary of the skills that students may need in exams. The AQA's skills checklist page can be found here.
Or as the AQA puts it:
- Competence in geographical skills should be developed during study of the course content, in an integrated way and not as a separate theme or topic. While the relative balance of quantitative and qualitative methods and skills will differ between each of the core elements and the options, students must be introduced to a roughly equal balance of quantitative and qualitative methods across the specification.
During their A-level course students should:
- understand the nature and use of different types of geographical information, including qualitative and quantitative data, primary and secondary data, images, factual text and discursive/creative material, digital data, numerical and spatial data and other forms of data, including crowd-sourced and 'big data'
- collect, analyse and interpret such information, and demonstrate the ability to understand and apply suitable analytical approaches for the different information types
- undertake informed and critical questioning of data sources, analytical methodologies, data reporting and presentation, including the ability to identify sources of error in data and to identify the misuse of data
- communicate and evaluate findings, draw well-evidenced conclusions informed by wider theory, and construct extended written argument about geographical matters.