GEReCo UK IGU-CGE

Geography Education Research Collective / UK Commission on Geographical Education of the International Geographical Union

Category: Award

  • Live Global Voices in the Geography Classroom

    Florence Smart

    Can ‘live’ international video calls with pupils create a collaborative, more globally minded, and up-to-date approach to geography lessons? Florence Smart shares her MSc research in which she created a new impactful learning environment and pedagogy from beyond the confines of the classroom. 

    International Video Calls in Lessons

    In this MSc study, video calls (via Microsoft Teams) were used across a sequence of geography lessons with year 8 pupils in a senior school in London and their international peers at a school in Bangkok. The calls included instances of group discussion, 1:1 conversations and whole class collaboration aiming to recognise that ‘empowering and engaging the voice of students is vital’ (Breslin 2011: 59). Qualitative data were collected from staff and pupils in London, using a base-line test, post-intervention questionnaire and a group interview. 

    The research found that video calls could enhance learning and help widen viewpoints while bringing case studies alive. Video calls can be used to contribute to blended digital lesson activities to ‘check-in’ with pupils abroad, mutually discussing their own learning and everyday experiences. The real time video calls also sought to decentralise the teacher as the ‘sage on the stage’ and invite more perspectives and authenticity from first-hand accounts. 

    Amidst the ‘galloping variables’ of globalisation (Bennis, 1970), digital shifts have transformed the spatial constraints of the classroom opening the potential of live global interaction and collaboration. Jones (2010) finds that authentic voices can also help counteract the onslaught of potentially biased, inaccurate media coverage or outdated textbooks. Her research suggests that students value intercultural dialogue too for future employability, personal growth and well-being. Therefore, cross-cultural interaction should be more routine and ‘risk free’, putting students at ease (Jones 2010). This may be particularly significant too for marginalised students who struggle with a sense of belonging at school (UNESCO 2017).

    Rationale

    Rationale for the video call intervention in this research came from speaking to colleagues frustrated with resources that used outdated language, or those that papered-over nuances of lived experiences (Anderson, 2021). Teachers also wanted to help students resist commonplace misconceptions created by heightened media coverage and social media.

    Promoting participation and inquiry helps create critical thinkers and improves a sense of ownership of learning which has been at the forefront of policy in the UK (Wasner, 2016) and the SDGs – Goal Number 4 (UNSDGs, 2023). This intervention also responds to what Russel (2023) described as the ‘anti-education’ system, where rote learning for academic success can stifle curiosity. Arguably, soft skills like leadership and collaboration will help ‘future proof’ children’s education as well as to overcome potential issues posed by artificial intelligence.

    Reinforcing opportunities to share ideas, but only with like-minded individuals, may, however, only widen the echo chamber. This speaks to Wasner’s (2016) questions of, how teachers ‘decide whose voices to listen to, and how?’. In terms of bringing a plurality of voices into the classroom, she suggests that it should no longer be considered ambitious to introduce a greater range of perspectives.

    I believe geography teachers should enable students with new ways of seeing the world with a greater emphasis on the geographies of everyday life. Freire’s (1970: 53) concept of a ‘banking model’ is long gone, which equated teachers as clerks who would plainly ‘deposit’ information into children. Educators should be both ‘simultaneously teachers and students’ and a live dialogue through video calls allows for all of those in the classroom to be learning collaboratively.

    The Intervention

    In the calls, students asked questions such as ‘What are you studying at the moment?’, ‘Do you consider your homeland to be a democratic country?’, ‘How much free time do you have?’, ‘Do you own a guitar?’. The latter, follows on from Hans Rosling’s quirky ideas to measure development – guitar ownership per capita. He argues that this shows that individuals in the country have enough disposable income for the guitar, for lessons, free time to practise, and are exposed to a range of musical influences suggesting social mobility. In the study this question, provided the most fruitful responses and encouraged discussion about music and cultural similarities and differences.

    International collaboration was also built into the supra-curriculum alongside the study to embed challenge and curiosity. This involved letter writing within a geography club and a Geographical Speaker Programme. In the latter, one guest speaker on Teams was a marine biologist in the Maldives, giving pupils a direct insight into life working there, and another was a British diplomat working for the foreign office in Shanghai, speaking on foreign relations and careers.

    Findings

    In the base-line questionnaire and early sections of the group interview, students tended to refer to ‘us and them’ – in, perhaps, an unintentional or unconscious process of ‘Othering’. In the post-intervention questionnaire, there are more phrases such as ‘we are…’, ‘our geography lessons…’ and ‘first-hand voices’, which allude to a greater sense of group collaboration, self-awareness of being united as learners. This links to what Fielding (2001) suggests is a favourable element to learning – engendering pupils with a ‘significant voice’.

    The analysis of the cross-section of answers relayed a sense of sameness. The results found that the students consumed some of the same media, for example. There was also discussion about other aspects of consumption such as drink and music. While this is unsurprising given the context of the two schools – one being the international counterpart of the other – another view was that friendships were being built and a sense of cultural difference or othering was eroded. Quotes from the post-intervention questionnaire, include ‘I made friends’, ‘I would like them to come to visit us, or me to them’, and ‘even though they are far away, we are very similar’. Collins (2014: 300) says that school rituals of community buildings have key consequences – ‘optimism, confidence and initiative’ – the video calls in this study may be regarded as a useful, addition to assemblies, ‘form’ times or activity days.

    Challenges and Ethical Considerations

    Because this study focusses on an immeasurable skills-based intervention, it is difficult to track cause and effect. One year 8 participant, however, noted that he valued that the discussions were open-ended and there was no assessment.

    Practical implementation of the project was also limited by time constraints, time differences, language barriers, access to technology and space in the curriculum for ‘non-examined’ study. The lessons took place during ‘form time’ in the UK and the last period of the day in Thailand and required significant teacher input and support to ensure effective learning in the digital sphere.

    Ethical concerns about ‘looking in’ must also be considered alongside safeguarding and data protection. The study received CUREC ethical approval from BERA with informed consent from the head teacher, parents and the participants. There was no data collected from the pupils at the international school and no recording of the Teams calls. Safeguarding in the digital sphere involved two members of staff present in the calls and close following of policy. Partly because many students may show less restraint or inhibitions on communication behind the keyboard (Hardaker, 2015), I was clear in my behavioural expectations with the classes and had oversight of the conversations being had verbally and in the ‘chat’ function. Questions posed by pupils must be non-judgemental and students should be guided on the best ways to approach each other politely and appropriately.

    Conclusions

    This research points to the potential of seizing the opportunities that digital technology can provide for live interaction and cross-cultural learning through hearing from voices beyond the confines of the classroom. Looking ahead, pupils could be linked up in lessons with other students, businesses, conservationists or charities (after taking into account ethical and practical considerations).

    References

    Anderson, N. (2021). Why Do We Need to Decolonise Geography?. Available: https://decolonisegeography.com/blog/2021/02/why-do-we-need-todecolonisegeography/. Last accessed 13/04/22

    Bennis, W. G. (1970). American bureaucracy, Transaction Publishers.

    British Educational Research Association (BERA) (2018) Ethical guidelines for Educational Research. [Online] Available on: https://www.bera.ac.uk/publication/ethical-guidelines-foreducational-research-2018 [Accessed on 14 July 2023].

    Bragg, S. (2007). “Consulting young people.” A review of the literature. Open University for Creative Partnerships. www. creative-partnerships. com/content/gdocs/cyp. pdf.

    Breslin, T. (2011). Beyond ‘student’voice: The school or college as a citizenship-rich, human scale and voice-friendly community. The student voice handbook: Bridging the academic/practitioner divide, 57-72.

    Bunnell, T. (2021). “The elite nature of International Schooling: a theoretical framework based upon rituals and character formation.” International Studies in Sociology of Education 30(3): 247-267.

    Collins, R. (2014). “Interaction ritual chains and collective effervescence.” Collective emotions: 299-311.

    Fielding, M. (2001). “Students as radical agents of change.” Journal of Educational Change 2(2): 123-141

    Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Harmondsworth, Penguin.

    Hardaker, C. (2015), ‘“I refuse to respond to this obvious troll’: An overview of responses to (perceived) trolling”, Corpora, 10 (2): 201–229.

    Jones, E. (2010). Internationalisation and the Student Voice Taylor & Francis e-Library, Routledge.

    Rosling, H. (2023). Factfulness. Flammarion.

    Russell, J. (2023). Our anti-education system stifles curiosity. May 29th 2023, The Times.

    Skidmore, D. (2002). “A theoretical model of pedagogical discourse.” Disability, Culture and Education 1(2): 119–131.

    UNESCO. United Nations Educational, S. a. C. O. (2017). Accountability in education: meeting our commitments; Global education monitoring report, 2017/8. Paris, France.

    UNSDGs – United Nations Educational, S. a. C. O. (2023). “UNSDGs Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” Access from https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4

    Wasner, V. (2016). “Critical service learning: A participatory pedagogical approach to global citizenship and international mindedness.” Journal of Research in International Education 15(3): 238-252.

  • To what extent can online coaching software help trainee geography teachers to summatively assess pupils’ GCSE Geography examination answers?

    Martin Sutton writes about his Highly Commended dissertation, submitted as part of his MAEd (Geography) from UCL Institute of Education.

    Teaching about summative assessment with trainee teachers has long intrigued me, especially the tension between accurately assessing work and the inherent challenges that any assessment process can entail. My interest in geography assessment, coupled with my joint roles of being both a PGCE teacher educator and also a secondary school geography teacher, meant that I could draw upon both perspectives to inform my research. I have often wondered how trainee teachers are ‘taught’ to summatively assess work and how well they can transfer what they have learned into practice.

    Popham (2011, p.267) used the phrase ‘assessment literacy’ to describe the understanding and ability of an educator to grapple with the theoretical and practical demands of this field. This study set out to investigate assessment literacy with both trainees and also their school mentors. The relationship between mentor and trainee is well researched (Lord, Atkinson & Mitchell, 2008; Rehman & Al-Bargi, 2014; Roberts, 2019; Healy et al. 2022). The mentoring role is clearly valued by the DfE, who have constructed non-statutory Mentor Standards (DfE, 2016) which stipulate that trainees should receive support from mentors around assessment and marking. My research addressed how this mentor-trainee interaction worked in terms of summative assessment literacy.

    Lambert (2011, p.5) summarises the geography assessment landscape when he claims that “assessing progress is particularly challenging in a subject like geography which is not learned in a cumulative or linear sequence.” This is a notion to which many classroom teachers can empathise with. The interconnectedness of the subject has been widely agreed upon from Massey’s “a sense of the global” (2014, p.36) with porous boundaries, to Jackson’s “geographies of connection” (2006, p.199). It is this synoptic characteristic which makes assessing progress in the acquisition of knowledge and skills a demanding task, as the Geographical Association has for many years attempted to clarify (GA undated).

    The discussion around formative assessment (for learning, rather than of learning) is a well-trodden path. Black and Wiliam’s (1998) seminal meta-analysis of assessment for learning, sparked the publication of geography specific assessment research, by Weedon and Lambert (2006). They champion the use of formative feedback in a subject specific context and point to further work that suggests that feedback should not be accompanied by a mark or grade (Butler, 1987). In line with work of their predecessors (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Bloom, 1969; Popham, 2008), Weedon and Lambert (2006) outline the advantages of peer assessment, self-assessment and encouraging the pupils to reflect on their own work (such as the use of traffic lighting their own performance, confidence or knowledge). Pupils were positioned at the heart of the assessment process, in line with later work by Weedon, co-authored with Hopkin (2006; Figure 1). However, there is relatively little literature that concentrates on summative assessment or the assessment of learning (although, see Lambert and Lines, 2000).

    Dempsey et al. (2009) identified a clear need for improved assessment skills among trainee teachers and tested a web-based coaching software to address this. They found that by exposing the marker to short prompts and hints, coupled with the marks from peers, could help trainee teachers to better assess children’s work at a primary school level. Inspired by their work, my study investigated whether a similar tool could benefit UK trainee geography teachers and their school mentors.

    Considering the time constraints reported by both mentors and trainees, I conducted research to evaluate the potential effectiveness of a web-based solution in this context.  

    By using a collection of carefully designed coaching comments, the 15 trainee teachers were exposed to a coaching intervention in an attempt to teach them how to mark examination answers. The trainees were shown an exam answer and asked to suggest both a raw score out of 9 and also a more general level (1-3), based on a rubric written by the exam board. The software then displayed a coaching suggestion for the trainee to read, that was specifically written for the question, prompting them to look at a specific part of the rubric. These statements were written based on the feedback from a cluster of qualified teachers. The trainee then had the option to re-score the answer if they wished to.

    The research focused on measuring both the self-efficacy and also the accuracy of the trainees’ marking, across a set of 7 sample GCSE examination answers. Additionally, the views of 37 qualified geography teachers, who all work in teacher teaching, was collected and analysed.

    By undertaking a pre- and post-questionnaire, the trainees’ change in self-efficacy was found to have significantly improved (p<0.05). Furthermore, their ‘gain scores’ could be calculated by comparing their judgement before and after the coaching intervention. The trainees were shown to have significantly improved their marking accuracy when they were shown a coaching comment, when they were a mark or more away from the ‘correct’ score (p<=0.01). The teachers were asked for their opinion on the coaching software in comparison to their current practice and reported a strong preference for this novel pedagogy (p<0.05). Although nothing can replace to experience gained through actually becoming an examiner, it appears that this coaching intervention was valued as opening up this particular ‘black box’.

    The trainees and teachers cited an increase in independent practice and time efficiency as the two main strengths of the experience. They suggested that the face-to-face element of a post task discussion should be maintained in future practice. The study suggests that online coaching software should be used within the ITT year and additionally across the wider subject community, such as the RGS or the GA, to deliver powerful geography CPD to trainees and qualified teachers.

    It has become clear to me that since submitting my dissertation, that there has been a recent explosion in the use of generative Artificial Intelligence in education. It would be perfectly feasible for this technology to be coupled with the software that I have designed, so that the intervention statement given to the trainee was generated by AI, based upon their view of the work itself. This would lead to an exceptionally bespoke supportive prompt that would demand more research and thought into its use in geography education.  

    Note: Please feel free to contact the author should you wish to know more about the software that he developed as part of his research. m.sutton@reading.ac.uk

    References

    Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi delta kappan, 92(1), 81-90.

    Bloom, B.S. (1969). Some theoretical issues relating to educational evaluation. In Educational evaluation: New roles, new means. The 63rd yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, part 2 (Vol. 69), ed. R.W. Tyler, 26–50. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Butler, R. (1987). Task-involving and ego-involving properties of evaluation: Effects of different feedback conditions on motivational perceptions, interest, and performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 79(4), 474.

    Dempsey, M. S., PytlikZillig, L. M., & Bruning, R. H. (2009). Helping preservice teachers learn to assess writing: Practice and feedback in a Web-based environment. Assessing writing, 14(1), 38-61.

    DfE (2016). National Standards for school-based initial teacher training (ITT) mentors. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/536891/Mentor_standards_report_Final.pdf (Accessed: 05/06/2024).

    Geographical Association (undated) Progression in geographical learning, Geographical Association. https://geography.org.uk › students-learning-in-geography

    Jackson, P. (2006). Thinking geographically. Geography, 91(3), 199-204.

    Healy, G. Hammond, L., Puttick, S., and Walshe, N. (eds) (2022) Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School. Abingdon: Routledge

    Lambert, D. (2011). The Geography National Curriculum: GA curriculum proposals and rationale. Geographical Association. Available at: https://www.geography.org.uk/download/ga_gigcccurriculumproposals.pdf  (Accessed: 05/06/2024).

    Lambert, D. and Lines, D. (2000) Understanding Assessment: purposes, perceptions, practice. Abingdon: Routledge

    Lord, P., Atkinson, M. and Mitchell, H., (2008). Mentoring and coaching for professionals: A study of the research evidence. Variations, 1(4).

    Massey, D. (2014). Taking on the world. Geography, 99(1), 36-39.

    Popham, W. J. (2011). Assessment literacy overlooked: A teacher educator’s confession. The Teacher Educator, 46(4), pp.265-273.

    Popham, W.J. (2008). Transformative assessment, Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

    Rehman, A. A. & Al-Bargi, A. (2014). Teachers’ Perspectives on Post Observation Conferences: A Study at a Saudi Arabian University. Theory and practice in Language Studies, 4(8), p.1558.

    Roberts, R.L. (2019) in Hickman, D. (ed) Mentoring English teachers in the secondary school: a practical guide. London: Routledge.

    Weedon, P., & Lambert, D. (2006). Geography inside the black box: Assessment for learning in the geography classroom. Sheffield: The Geographical Association.

    Weedon, P., and Hopkin, J. (2006). Assessment for learning in geography. In Jones, M. (2017). Handbook of Secondary Geography. Geographical Association.

  • GEReCo Masters Dissertation Prize Awarded!

    We are delighted to announce the outcomes from the inaugural GEReCo Masters Dissertation Award! This annual award is designed to celebrate and amplify the voices of emerging researchers who are shaping the future of geography education.

    Many congratulations to Florence Smart (MSc Learning and Teaching, University of Oxford) for being awarded the Winning dissertation prize for a thesis titled: Postcolonial Pedagogy: An investigation into live global voices in the geography classroom.

    The selection panel considered the thesis to be original and timely, contributing to work around education and the postcolonial and ‘global classroom’. initiatives. There was an impressive engagement postcolonial theory, geography and geography education, and critical attentiveness to the context of the school that was the site for the research. The design of the project was well considered with a thorough engagement with research ethics. We thought the study had significance in its contribution to post-colonial studies and theorisation, children’s geographies and geography education. It has the potential to prompt significant thought and further development of an ethics of care, respect and equity in the practice of global voices/classroom initiatives.

    Many congratulations also to Martin Sutton (MA Education Geography, IoE/UCL) for the Highly Commended dissertation, titled: To what extent can online coaching software help trainee geography teachers to summatively assess pupils’ GCSE Geography examination answers?

    The selection panel felt this investigation into online tools to support teachers’ assessment skills was very timely, as online technologies supporting assessment (including AI) are likely to become more common. The committee was particularly impressed by the careful location of the study in the field of assessment in geography education, including an excellent literature review. The research design and rigorous quantitative analysis was impressive, leading to impactful findings and conclusions. We felt this study had significance both by evidencing the benefit of online coaching for teachers’ assessment efficacy, and because it could inspire further research into the potential of online tools for developing geography teachers’ assessment capabilities.

    Look out for further information on both research projects, including through blog posts on the GEReCo site.

  • Geography Education Masters Dissertation Award

    We are delighted to announce that applications are now open for the inaugural GEReCo Masters Dissertation Award!

    Through this new annual award GEReCo seeks to celebrate and amplify the voices of emerging researchers who are shaping the future of geography education.

    For more information and to apply, please see: https://www.gereco.org/about/gereco-masters-dissertation-award/