GEReCo UK IGU-CGE

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

Category: Research

  • The potential of knowledge-rich teaching

    David Lambert

    This brief memorandum provides a succinct summary of Future 3. It draws from a longer open access article published mainly for a German audience of geography educators: https://zgd-journal.de/index.php/zgd/issue/view/167 which provides more detail and importantly citations and references – these ideas do not just rise without trace. The International Geographical Union Commission for Geographical Education (IGU-CGE) is holding a panel discission to explore international perspectives on Future Three scenarios (August 25th 2024) which will focus on key emergent questions such as,

     1. What changes in teacher education and professional development are needed for teachers to enact a progressive knowledge-rich geography curriculum?

    2. How might these changes be implemented in the context of national policy for schools and the geography curriculum?

    3. How might these changes be sustained so that they are transformative?

    Hard Times, published 170 years ago, was Dickens’ satirical destruction of education based upon ‘nothing but facts’. It remains an eloquent revelation of capitalism’s power to reduce humanity to numbers and definitions. In educational terms this meant reducing learning to fact and reifying a pseudo-scientific ‘reasoning’ process that purported to be value-free, objective, and devoid of feeling, emotion, and intuition. Today, when many schools proclaim their curriculum as knowledge-led and/or knowledge rich, to what extent have we learned some of the lessons provoked by the narrow and harmful processes of education depicted in Hard Times? If there remains a shadow of Thomas Gradgrind then it is not for want of repeated attempts to move on from ‘nothing but facts.’ For instance, over 50 years ago Postman and Weingartner famously called for anew education‘to help all students develop built-in, shockproof crap detectors.’ The old education, they argued, was predicated on absolute, fixed and unchanging ‘truths’ and did not encourage critique. It was dominated by certainties, often binary rights and wrongs and did not encourage ambiguity.

    The new education emphasised learning more than teaching, focussing teachers’ attention not on teachable knowledge but on the learner. Gert Biesta has called this the ‘learnification’ of education, and while this may produce competent, socially skilful, and highly flexible human capital, it risks turning out young people who are in some ways significantly untaught. The ‘swing’ between old and new education, between traditionalist and progressive educational thought, between modernisers and conservatives, continues. With a potentially epochal election having now taken place we should ponder this carefully.

    It is possible to imagine a third option, which is exactly what Michael Young and Johan Muller attempted to do in their 2010 paper on three future curriculum scenarios. These are caricatures, but they contain enough veracity to facilitate meaningful and productive debate about the curriculum:

    Future 1 (F1) is a curriculum consisting of ‘given’ knowledge that is seemingly uncontested. The teacher delivers these authorised contents. It is a traditional curriculum of one-way transmission.

    Future 2 (F2) is a response to the deficiencies of a transmission model of the curriculum Subject boundaries are relaxed or even dissolved. Content becomes increasingly arbitrary, and instead generic and transferrable skills are brought to the forefront.

    Future 3 (F3) restores the responsibilities of teachers for ensuring pupils have access to knowledge (they are more than ‘facilitators of learning’). But unlike F1, knowledge is contested, dynamic and subject to argument. Students are encouraged to discern the reliability or dependability of knowledge claims. This is a curriculum of engagement with knowledge itself.

    F3 curriculum scenarios address the inadequacies of both F1 and F2. Thus, under F3 it is accepted that all knowledge is socially constructed – it is produced by groups of human beings – but this does not mean that all knowledge has equal claim to truth, rendering selections of what to teach arbitrary. F3 recognises the virtuous educational intent that can be present in both the ‘traditional’ F1 and the ‘progressive’ F2 scenarios. Thus, in F3 scenarios specialist disciplinary knowledge (sometimes referred to as ‘powerful knowledge’) is a curriculum principle, but the focus of attention is on how this knowledge is made (and by whom), how it gains (or loses) its warrant, and how it changes over time. Curriculum knowledge is not the same as the knowledge it draws on. In short, F3 thinking resolutely rejects the ‘old education’ but imagines the ‘new education’ focussed on teachers’ work and the quality of the enacted curriculum.

    F3 curricula:

    • ask ‘who are we teaching?’ This is to acknowledge and respect students’ lived experiences, aspirations, and drives as learners;
    • are mindful of the prime reason that schooling is compulsory – that there is important knowledge that students can acquire at school that is beyond their everyday experience, and that acquiring it is necessarily a voluntary action on the part of the learner;
    • recognise that there are different ways of ‘knowing’ the world. For example, although we learn much through our everyday experience, this is very different from learning to see the world as an object of study and it is this difference that pupils can pose the greatest difficulties for some students;
    • provide opportunities and encourages students to think about how we know what we claim to know;
    • seek to show the ‘power’ of different ways of seeing and thinking associated with different subjects.

    F3 thinking encourages a shift from the technical competence and efficiency of teachers to implement and deliver content, towards the kind of dialogue and conversation with and among students that demonstrates their engagement and encourages the search for new knowledge. Claims for curricula based on ‘powerful knowledge’ are easy to assert. However, if through their implementation such curricula achieve little more than short-term memorisation, then much of the emancipatory potential of knowledge-rich teaching is lost. This point is arguably of greatest significance for students of minoritised and/or socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

    A yet more ambitious claim is that a F3 curriculum might even begin to address how school curricula – and teaching itself – can face up to epochal challenges such as the rise of post-truth politics, conspiracy theories, the yet to be understood educational implications of artificial intelligence and the environmental and political crises that the climate emergency points to.

    Reference

    Lambert, D., Béneker, T. and Bladh, G. (2024) Teaching Quality in Geography: what are we trying to achieve? Zeitschrift für Geographiedidaktik, 51, 3, 156-159. DOI: 10.60511/51187

    https://zgd-journal.de/index.php/zgd/article/view/187/482

  • Early thoughts on ‘spatial computing’ through the lens of geography education

    Kenneth Y T Lim, National Institute of Education, Singapore; Bryan Z W Kuok, Independent scholar; Ahmed H Hilmy, National Institute of Education, Singapore

    Introduction

    By their very nature, virtual environments and immersive worlds suggest affordances for learning that geography educators have been particularly suited to speak towards, not least of which being the potential for dynamic, embodied, and multisensory learning experiences to sit alongside field studies in the physical world.  Such environments and their associated technologies are not new, having been marketed to consumers since at least the mid-2000s – and earlier if panoramic photographs are included.

    Virtual environments are, however, enjoying a recent resurgence of interest (see, for example, Zhao, et al., 2021), not only because of the recent pandemic but because of the introduction of the mixed reality headset from Apple in February 2024. In its rhetoric of marketing, the company is advancing the paradigm of what it terms ‘spatial computing’.

    In this essay, we share our early thoughts on the extent to which the spatiality of ‘spatial computing’ is a gimmick or something that might potentially whet the appetite of geography educators and our associated research community.

    The surfacing of geographical intuitions

    In the course of a typical school day, members of the school community – staff and students alike – traverse the campus several times a day, sometimes being exposed directly to the elements, while at other times in the shade. The paths we take as we traverse our campuses reflect our tacit responses to such exposure (Lim, et al. 2024). Through our own bodily experience, we therefore develop over time a textured map of our respective school campuses, which in turn influences our decision-making in subconscious ways.

    Perhaps a signifier of the skilful teacher is how to design for opportunities for such tacit ‘geographical’ knowledge to be made more explicit, in order for students to connect their everyday embodied lived experiences in authentic ways with the formal codified domain knowledge of the classroom.

    The moves we choose to make in our learning environments are constrained by a number of factors, one of which is the effective management of multiple digital devices during our lessons. We do not say this as shorthand for blind advocacy of affording each student access to their own device at all times – while there be some advantages to this, this model has its concomitant implications for classroom management. However, we see tremendous opportunities in digital tools that can serve as creative canvases for students to express their often nascent understandings of geographical concepts. For example, students could manipulate terrain in an immersive environment to depict features such as a river delta. These digital artefacts can then serve as focal points for teacher-facilitated classroom discussions, helping students connect geographical concepts with their own lived experiences.

    On Collaborative Observation

    In 2015, we published a paper (Cho & Lim, 2015) in the British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET) in which we advanced a pedagogical strategy we termed Collaborative Observation, as part of our work on the Six Learnings curriculum design framework (Lim, 2009). In this paper, we addressed the problem of how teachers could effectively manage and scaffold the learning experiences of pupils in large classes (typically, forty pupils per class), particularly when the learners are operating as avatars in an immersive environment. In that paper, we compared three different conditions, namely learners in a 1:1 ratio with a computer, learners in a 1:40 ratio sharing the use of a single computer, and traditional didactic instruction. With regard to the latter, we advanced the case for Collaborative Observation: namely, learners in a 1:40 ratio sharing the use of a single computer.

    Learner-Generated Augmentation

    In 2020, we followed up with a second paper in BJET, this time describing the construct of what we term as Learner-Generated Augmentation (Lim & Lim, 2020). The latter

    describes activities in which learners use Augmented Reality (AR) tools to annotate their local environments, giving teachers better insight into which aspects of their surroundings students find significant and meaningful. In this context, ‘augmentation’ refers to the addition of digital information onto the physical environment through AR technology. Through this process, students can express their emerging understandings of a topic by linking digital content to personally meaningful elements in their physical environment.

    For example, a student learning about local history might choose to digitally annotate a site within the neighbourhood with historical information, while the teacher may have chosen to augment the town hall instead. More often than not the elements in their environments which novices might choose to annotate would be different from those which the teacher (as domain expert) might choose. In the hands of a skilled teacher, such differences represent rich opportunities for discussion and mutual learning. Learner-Generated Augmentation acknowledges where the learners are coming from, helps make their otherwise tacit conceptions more visible to the teacher, and has applications in the sciences as well as in the humanities. For instance, in a geography lesson about their local community, students could be tasked with creating augmented reality annotations on a map to highlight landmarks, infrastructure, or environmental features that are personally significant to them. This would surface the students’ mental models of their neighbourhood to the teacher. The resulting student-created AR content could then serve as boundary objects for class discussion and collaborative knowledge building.

    Spatial computing and its implications for geography education

    The two papers published in 2015 and 2020 explored pedagogical strategies founded on distinct premises and contexts. Collaborative Observation, as described in the 2015 paper, involved multiple learners observing an expert (the teacher) perform a task in a virtual world, then collaboratively discussing and solving related problems. In contrast, the Learner-Generated Augmentation approach introduced in the 2020 paper tasked learners themselves with creating augmented reality artifacts to represent their emerging understanding of a topic, situated in personally meaningful real-world contexts.

    While these two approaches may seem conceptually oppositional in terms of who generates the virtual / augmented content (expert vs learner) and the technology used (virtual world vs AR), the affordances of the Apple Vision Pro allow for a convergence of these premises and contexts. The device’s advanced AR capabilities enable both expert-led demonstrations akin to Collaborative Observation and learner-driven creation as in Learner-Generated Augmentation, all within the learner’s immediate environment. This fusion is enabled by what Apple refers to as the paradigm of ‘spatial computing’.

    ‘Spatial computing’ refers to the ability of devices like the Vision Pro to understand and interact with the user’s surrounding physical space, blending digital content seamlessly with the real world. It leverages technologies such as advanced computer vision, real-time 3D mapping, and gesture- / eye-tracking to create immersive mixed reality experiences anchored to the user’s environment.

    ‘Spatial computing’ technologies like the Vision Pro foreground the role of the body in meaning-making and creative expression. By allowing learners to engage with digital content overlaid on their physical surroundings, these devices facilitate an embodied, multisensory approach to learning that bridges the physical and psychological dimensions. Learners can leverage natural interactions and familiar environmental cues to construct personally relevant understandings, moving fluidly between consuming and producing knowledge artifacts in a shared hybrid space.

    As a wearable, the Vision Pro lends itself naturally to the notion of embodiment, in that – in such cases – the learners’ auditory and visual sensory inputs are augmented by the affordances of whatever apps the learners are using, but also that the apps have a certain degree of geospatial permanence within the augmented world of the learner. The advanced AR capabilities of the device enable both peer-led demonstrations akin to Collaborative Observation and learner-driven creation as in Learner-Generated Augmentation, all within the learner’s immediate environment. There are competing technologies such as the Meta Quest 3 which is primarily focused on immersive VR experiences and Microsoft’s Hololens, although this appears to have more limited AR capabilities. While these competing headsets tend to be optimized for either VR consumption or basic AR annotations, Apple’s ‘spatial computing’ paradigm appears to better support both expert-guided collaborative experiences as well as open-ended learner creation within a unified device.

    Given the cost of the Vision Pro at the time of writing, it will be some years off before schools can afford the luxury of a 1:1 ratio of the Vision Pro (or its successors or future competitors) to pupils. Yet this is not to discount the potential of the Vision Pro today for socially constructed meaning-making in field-based activities in both physical and virtual sites. Thus, for example, it is perfectly possible to imagine the scenario of a field-based lesson in which the learners annotate their local environments as they explore their neighbourhoods, leaving digital notes (such as text and sketches) at locations and sites that they themselves consider significant. In the context of a lesson unit, learners could be tasked to cast or to record their screens as they explore their environments and annotate them, for subsequent post-activity discussion in either small groups or as a class, as facilitated by the teacher.

    Concluding remarks

    Geographers have a unique appreciation that space is a shared and contested construct and at the same time, understanding that space and place are deeply personal and tacit. One of the earliest attempts to tease these tensions and relationships out through digital means was Moed’s (2002) project: ‘Annotate space: interpretation and storytelling on location’. That project pre-dated smartphones, using early mobile phones in urban environments to document social constructions of space. In the two decades that have since passed, a new generation of geographers has the potential digital wherewithal to annotate space in new and exciting ways. How we as a community of educators interpret these affordances in geography education is a story yet to be written.

    References

    Cho, Y. H., and K. Y. T. Lim, (2015). “Effectiveness of Collaborative Learning with 3D Virtual Worlds” in British Journal of Educational Technology, 48(1) pp 202-211.

    Lim, I. J. E., Low, A. L. Y., and K. Y. T. Lim, (2024). “Optimising learning environments: a microclimate study of a school campus in Singapore using an integrated environment modeller simulation tool (IEMsim)” in Chova, L. G., Martinez, C. G., & Lees, J. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 18th annual International Technology, Education and Development Conference.

    Lim. K. Y. T., (2009). “The Six Learnings of Second Life: A Framework for Designing Curricular Interventions In-world” Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 2(1) pp. 4-11.

    Lim, K. Y. T., and R. Lim, “Semiotics, memory and Augmented Reality: History education with Learner-Generated Augmentation” British Journal of Educational Technology, special section on “Beyond observation and interaction: Augmented Reality though the lens of constructivism and constructionism”, 51(3) pp 673-691

    Moed, A. (2002). Annotate space: Interpretation and storytelling on location. Interactive telecommunications program, New York University.

    Zhao, J., Wallgrün, J. O., Sajjadi, P., La Femina, P., Lim, K. Y. T., Springer, J., and A. Klippel, (2021). “Longitudinal effects in the effectiveness of educational virtual field trips” Journal of Educational Computing Research, 60(4), 1008-1034.

  • Time to make more space for knowledge production in geography education?

     William Quirke, Dan Swanton, Sarah Trolley, Lauren Hammond, and Grace Healy

    Introduction

    Beginning in their very early years, children explore material and social spaces, asking questions and engaging with stories as they inquire in, and about, the world (Owens et al., 2023; Puttick, 2023). Geography speaks ‘directly to children’s curiosity, wonder and concern for the world around them’ (Owens et al., 2022, p. 20). From exploring the micro-ecological worlds of schools through citizen science (Dunkley, 2023) to participatory mapping with young people in cities (Swords et al., 2019), geography education in formal and informal education spaces can play an important role in nurturing this curiosity and (re)orientating young people’s attention in, and with, the world (Biesta, 2021). These illustrative examples highlight that studying geography involves developing deeper knowledge and understanding of the discipline, and increasing agency in inquiring in, and about, geography (Firth, 2014; Roberts, 2023).

    In this article, we consider the value of supporting students to engage with knowledge production in geography education through providing them with opportunities for thinking geographically, being geographers and doing geography. Geography education in schools has sometimes failed to engage with epistemic nature of geography, or the nature of geographical knowledge (Firth, 2014), meaning that knowledge production has – at times – been left under-explored in curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. This raises important questions about areas including, but not limited to; educators agency and confidence in teaching geographical methods; whether the nature of education spaces support students and educators in doing geography; and whether the geographical methods represented in geography curricula actively engage with disciplinary turns and thinking – for example, feminist, queer, decolonial and radical ways of inquiring – and how this shapes experiences and imaginations of knowledge production, as well as the representation of people and places in school geography.

    The article draws upon contributions to an online seminar organised through the Geography Education Research Collective (GEReCo) in Spring 2024. Following a merger in 2019, GEReCo acts as the UK’s sub-committee of the International Geographical Union’s Commission on Geographical Education (IGU-CGE). It is significant to note that all current members of the collective have a primary affiliation to an education institution/association based in England, with some (honorary) members also working/researching in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and/or internationally. GEReCo seminars seek to contribute to academic debate in, and about, geography education through engaging with people working in a variety of roles and spaces, and/or who have different perspectives on, and experiences of, geography education[1]. For example, the Spring 2024 seminar had contributions from colleagues working in England and Scotland to support critical consideration of how the construction of geography as a school subject in national education policy shapes how it is taught, learnt, and assessed.

    In the following section, William Quirke (Teaching Fellow: PGDE Geography & Sustainable Development Education in the Institute of Education, University of Strathclyde), Dr Dan Swanton (Senior Lecturer in Human Geography and Head of Teaching and Learning in the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh), and Sarah Trolley (Senior Social Researcher at Defra and a recent geography teacher and MEd student at the University of Cambridge) – share a vignette from their research/practice, as they engage with these debates. We conclude the blog by reflecting on the importance of these discussions for young people and educators, also suggesting next steps for this work.

    William Quirke: Opportunities and challenges for knowledge production in the Scottish geography classroom.  

    Scottish education is currently experiencing a period of reform instigated by a number of recent reports and national consultations (Hayward 2023, Muir 2022). As such, there is much thought about the purpose of education and the range of knowledge and skills that ought to be included and assessed in the Curriculum for Excellence, Scotland’s national curriculum.

    In relation to geography in the Broad General Education (BGE) phase in secondary school (ages 12-15), there are many opportunities for geography teachers to support learners in developing geographical skills to produce knowledge of their own. However, the extent to which this can be achieved is arguably supressed by current educational policy structures. Scotland has a robust policy foundation regarding the skills development of young people. To provide an example, published in 2009, Building the Curriculum 4 is a policy document which promotes ‘effective learning for children and young people enabling them to develop skills for learning, life and work across all aspects of the curriculum at all levels’ (Scottish Government, 2009). By focusing on nine key messages, the document highlights learner entitlements in this area and states the importance of learners being aware of and understanding the value of the skills they are developing within their educational careers. Although there is explicit mention of skills development in all curricular areas, my observations suggest that, in practice, this translates to a focus on the development of general skills such as time management, organisation, communication and leadership rather than distinct disciplinary skills related to a particular subject area such as disciplinary literacies or numeracies. This view is supported through other policy documents such as Developing the Young Workforce: Scotland’s Youth Employment Strategy (Scottish Government, 2014) and Developing the Young Workforce Career Education Standard (Education Scotland, 2015) which feature a focus on skills development in pursuit of future employability as opposed to the creation of knowledge.

    Thus, geography teachers in Scotland may find themselves in a situation where value is only placed on geographical skills that are interdisciplinary and transferable to the world of work. A consequence of this may be an incentive for teachers to deliver lessons that forgo opportunities to develop skills for geographical enquiry in favour of a ‘jug and mug’ or ‘chalk and talk’ model of teaching geographical knowledge where learners are passive recipients of teacher knowledge. There is only one Experience and Outcome (a statement which outlines progression in learning) mentioning geographical enquiry: ‘SOC 4-12b I can carry out a geographical enquiry to assess the impact and possible outcomes of climate change on a selected region and can propose strategies to slow or reverse the impact’ (Education Scotland, n.d. p10). Apart from this, there is little to mandate teachers to facilitate knowledge creation in BGE geography lessons. However, despite these challenges, it is important to note that there is a lot of flexibility within the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence and geography teachers have a high level of autonomy. They are free to choose their own case studies, examples, pedagogical approaches, and modes of delivery to engage with the curriculum and have the freedom to engage with learning through local, national and international contexts of their own choosing. With this in mind, there is opportunity for teachers to take full advantage of this autonomy and find their own ways to make space for knowledge production in their own geography classrooms.

    Dan Swanton: Using a zine assessment to make space for student curiosity

    In this vignette I share some reflections on a zine assessment (https://edin.ac/47U0aAa) that I use with Year 3 and 4 undergraduate students to assess fieldwork on an optional course on cities. In the course we read, make and share zines as part of fieldwork assessment.  The fieldwork element is designed to build student confidence in the key theories and ideas by inviting students to design a half-day group fieldwork project focusing on a neighbourhood in Edinburgh. The students then make individual zines to document and share their fieldwork experience.

    Zines are home-made, self-published magazines. They are made by folding a sheet of A3 paper into an 8-sided booklet. Making a zine typically involves folding, writing, drawing, collaging, cutting and pasting. Zines combine text with drawn and found images to create a visual and material artefact. One appeal is that zines offer a creative medium for students to document and reflect on their experiences of doing fieldwork and their responses to the ideas, methods, place, people and practices that they encounter. Another appeal is that zines are a type of participatory media. They are participatory in two senses. First, zines make space for personal and political stories that matter to whoever makes them.  Second, zines are participatory because they invested in public sharing (Piepmeier, 2008, p.58), zines are made to be shared and read.

    Inspired by the writing of Sarah Ahmed (2019) and Rosmarie Garland-Thomson (2011) I’ve come to think of zines as a misfit assessment. It’s a misfit because it is out of sorts with many of the norms, assumptions and infrastructures that have developed around assessment in higher education. Zines breaks plagiarism-detection software; they sit uncomfortably with grade-related marking criteria; they challenge expectations of student academic writing. But these misfitting qualities of zines are generative. The zine assessment makes space for student curiosity, creativity and collaboration.

    Zines make space for student curiosity in at least two ways. First, introducing zines and zine culture in an academic course can spark a searching and critical curiosity amongst students about different perspectives, voices and experiences. Zines can foreground people and stories that are often marginalised in curricula and encourage students to question the practices through which knowledge is produced and authorised contributing to important work decolonising and diversifying the curriculum (Gebrial, 2018; https://decolonisegeography.com/). Second, when paired with student-designed fieldwork the zine assessment makes space for co-creation allowing students to make their learning relevant to them personally and to others. Zines become a vehicle for embedding engaged and critical pedagogies that emphasises the ‘need to actively transform knowledge, rather than passively come to it’ and value the ‘experiences, histories, and resources that students bring to the classroom’ (Giroux, 1983, p.7). The zine assessment works helps moving away from what Freire (1970) characterised as a banking model of teaching. The assessments help break down barriers between the classroom learning and everyday life. The material form of the zine, alongside its place in participatory cultures of knowledge sharing and organisation, challenges the students to reflect on, and practice, an ethics and politics of knowledge production. The zines assessment follows a more hopeful, ‘life-affirming’ approach that values students as partners and co-creators. It makes space for student agency in the learning process and pushes them to think about how knowledge should be an active force in shaping. A more just world.

    Sarah Trolley: Beginning to explore A-level student’s ideas of knowledge in geography

    When welcoming new Year 12 students (16-17 years old) at the start of their A level course to the Geography Department one September, I asked the class a few questions to get to know them. One of my questions was ‘what is your favourite topic in geography?’. One student said they preferred human geography, their explanation was particularly interesting: they enjoyed human geography because it is ‘all opinions’, whereas physical geography is ‘all facts’.

    This made me curious. How do students’ view geography; specifically, how do they make sense of the nature of knowledge in human and physical geography.  This sparked a research project – as part of a Master in Education (MEd) course – consisting of 11 semi-structured interviews with Year 12 students. During the interviews students discussed their ideas about human and physical geography. One student, for example, said that for them human geography is like a ‘food web’ that has ‘no set place to start’, whereas physical geography was more like a ‘flow chart’. As I reflected on these ideas, I wondered where the student’s ideas had originated. Had I been teaching human geography as a ‘food web’ and physical geography as a ‘flow chart? It seemed clear, however, that the participating students held complex ideas about physical and human geography.

    This research made me more determined to discuss knowledge in my classroom and make space for students to question the nature of geographical knowledge. I am still pondering how to best integrate these discussions into lessons and schemes of work, but have so far found Non-Exam Assessment (NEA) lessons fruitful in discussing what it is possible to know in geography and where geographical knowledge comes from with students.

    Conclusions

    Professor Pat Noxolo’s (2017, p.319) argues that “knowledge is not ‘universal and independent of context’, but is always deeply imbricated in power, and in the contingencies of its time, location and relations of production”. This emphasises how fundamental teaching about and engaging with forms of knowledge production is for geographical education. Within the short seminar and this blog post, we cannot do justice to the breadth and depth of knowledge, perspectives and experiences that exist around knowledge production in geography, rather we see this as a contribution to provoke reflection and enable others to consider absences and challenges in discussions so far.

    We hope that if you engaged with the seminar and/or read this post, you might be able to reflect on your own research/practice as geography teachers/researchers/academics like Will, Dan and Sarah have about the space you give to engaging with knowledge production;

    Firstly, you might consider what shapes the ways you think about knowledge production, and what influences your practice. For example: Is it what is written in national curricula/specifications? Is it formal professional development or informal conversations with colleagues?

    Secondly, you might be inspired by the ways Sarah’s students were able to talk about their experiences and engage in discussions with children and young people about what they understand about knowledge production.

    Thirdly, you might think about the artefacts you use that provide insights into knowledge production (as Dan does) and the ways in which assessment demonstrates importance of this aspect of geographical education.

    References

    Ahmed, S. (2019). What’s the Use? Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

    Biesta, G. (2022). World-centred education: A view for the present. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Dunkley, R. (2023). Looking closely through environmental learning: Citizen science and environmental sustainability education. Hammond, L. Biddulph, M. Catling, S. McKendrick, J.H. (eds.) Children, education and geography: Rethinking intersections. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Education Scotland (n.d.) Curriculum for Excellence Social Studies Experiences and Outcomes. Retrieved 18/03/2024, from Social studies: Experiences and outcomes (education.gov.scot)

    Education Scotland. (2015). Developing the Young Workforce Career Education Standard 3-18. Retrieved 18/03/2024, from Career Education Standard (3-18) September 2015

    Firth, R.(2014). Disciplinary knowledge: Task design in geography. Thomson, I. (eds.) Designing tasks in secondary education: Enhancing subject understanding and student engagement. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Freire, P. (1970/2017). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin.

    Gannon, K. (2020). Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto. West Virginia University Press.

    Garland-Thomson, R. (2011) ‘Misfits: A Feminist Materialist Disability Concept’, Hypatia 26:3, pp.591-609.

    Gebrial, D. (2018). ‘Rhodes Must Fall: Oxford and Movements for Change’ in Bhambra, G., Gebrial, D., and Nisancloglu, K. (eds.). Decolonising the University. London: Pluto Press. pp.19-36.

    Giroux, H. (2020). On Critical Pedagogy. London: Bloomsbury.

    Hayward, L. (2023). The Independent Review of Qualifications and Assessment. Retrieved 18/03/2024, from Independent Review of Qualifications and Assessment: review and key recommendations – gov.scot (www.gov.scot) 

    Muir, K. (2022). Putting Learners at the Centre: Towards a Future Vision for Scottish Education. Retrieved 18/03/2024, from Putting Learners at the Centre: Towards a Future Vision for Scottish Education – gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

    Noxolo, P. (2017). Introduction: Decolonising geographical knowledge in a colonised and re- colonising postcolonial world. Area, 49(3), 317– 319.

    Owens, P. Rotchell, E. Sprake, S. Witt, S. (2022). Geography in the Early Years: Guidance for doing wonderful and effective geography with young pupils. Primary Geography. 109 pp. 19-22.

    Piepmeier, A. (2009). Girl Zines: Making Media: Doing Feminism. New York: New York University Press.

    Puttick, S. (2023). The geography teaching adventure: Reclaiming exploration to inspire curriculum and pedagogy. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Roberts, M. (2023). Geography through enquiry: Approaches to teaching and learning in the secondary school (second edition). Sheffield: Geographical Association.

    Scottish Government (2009). Building the Curriculum 4: Skills for Learning, Skills for Life and Skills for Work. Retrived: 18/03/2024, from Building the Curriculum 4: Skills for learning, skills for life and skills for work (education.gov.scot)

    Scottish Government (2024). Developing the Young Workforce: Scotland’s Youth Employment Strategy. Retrieved 18/03/2024, from  Developing the young workforce: Scotland’s youth employment strategy – gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

    Swords, J. Jeffries, M. East, H. Messer, S. (2019). Mapping the city: Participatory mapping with young people. Geography. 104(3) pp. 141-147.

    [1] You can access recordings of some of the previous seminars through the GEReCo blog: GEReCo Blog – GEReCo UK IGU-CGE

  • ‘Teaching for Sustainable Futures’ – a research informed professional development programme

    Dr David Mitchell, Associate Professor of Geography Education, UCL – Institute of Education

    On 13th July 2023 the UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education (CCCSE) launched the report of a national survey of teachers in England and its flagship professional development programme for teachers, Teaching for Sustainable Futures. In this blog piece, I hope to show how Teaching for Sustainable Futures is not only a response to evidence of accelerating climate change, eco-anxiety and a demand from many parents, children, and teachers for more education about climate change. It is also an outcome of sustained research efforts to explore the educational potential of geography for challenging and uncertain futures. Of particular significance to the approach taken by the geography part of the professional development programme are concepts and tools drawn from GeoCapabilities: in particular, its approach to curriculum making and ‘future 3 curriculum’ scenarios (Young and Muller, 2010; Lambert, Béneker and Bladh, 2021).

    The CCCSE’s 2023 teachers’ survey and an earlier survey of parents commissioned by the CCCSE in 2022, show that most parents and teachers want more opportunities for teaching about climate change and for sustainable futures.  The teachers’ survey showed that geography is the subject most likely to teach about climate change – which is no surprise, but it also revealed that 70% of teachers are self-taught when it comes to teaching about climate change and sustainability. There is a pressing need for more support for teachers and structured professional development in this area. In developing Teaching for Sustainable Futures, steered and supported by advisory teachers and academic colleagues, the intention is to connect research around why subject disciplinary knowledge matters in education, with some practical materials to support teachers.

    The notion of GeoCapabilities uses the ideas of powerful knowledge (Young 2008), powerful pedagogies (Roberts 2017) and curriculum making, all deployed towards the goal of human development, measured as human capabilities. Capabilities here means achieving the enabling power to think geographically, freeing the individual (intellectually at least) to make real choices about how to live (Lambert et al, 2015). When capabilities become an educational goal geography, through its distinctive knowledge structure, offers a powerful way to understand climate change and can enable young people to make sense of it, and be able to think and act for themselves, toward more sustainable futures.

    Concepts of place, space, environment, earth-processes and interconnection make up a key part of geography’s powerful disciplinary knowledge (Geographical Association, 2023). But knowledge is only powerful when teachers and young people are engaged with it. Teachers need access to rapidly evolving ideas which geographers play a part in developing and communicating: such as, the Anthropocene, the sixth mass extinction, and revisions on where we are in relation to keeping to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels (we are at 1.2 degrees at the time of writing). We believe that teachers also benefit from refreshing their understanding and use of the structure of the discipline itself, as this can be rather lost when the focus of teaching can be heavily on content coverage and generic ‘technique’ such as question practice to prepare students for examinations. A re-orientation to geography’s deeper potential (expressed as the ability to ‘think geographically’) supports teachers’ curriculum making so that young people can be more intrinsically interested and engaged, seeing significance in geography lessons beyond exam results. I believe Teaching for Sustainable Futures (TSF)exemplifies a ‘future 3’ curriculum in practice – one of engagement with an emancipatory view of geographical knowledge. Teachers can tap into geography’s potential to help young people to think, participate and ultimately make choices, around the big issues and questions of sustainable futures.

    Some geography teachers express a heightened awareness that teaching about climate change can communicate ‘doom and gloom’ for young people. This is corroborated by Alcock’s research (2019) in England which found that both geography lessons and media representations feed into young people’s minds, the majority of who answer ‘no’ when asked: is the world getting better? The programme addresses this by showing ways that the geographical lens can help to explore climate change and the wider crises of sustainability we face, realistically, critically, but also with hope. This reminds us that geographical knowledge has educational potential because knowledge is so entwined with values in the geography classroom (Mitchell, 2022). Both academic geographers (eg Castree et al, 2010) and educationists in the field (notably Hicks, 2007; 2014) have been pioneering thought about how ‘pessimism of the intellect’ (to borrow from the famous phrase usually attributed to Gramsci) can be obviated, and the TSF programme at least tried to avoid this ‘trap’.

    Geographical enquiry for action is a key pedagogy used and this is coupled with an emancipatory take on disciplinary knowledge for young people’s engagement in these issues. The programme draws on the Geographical Association’s curriculum framework (2023) amongst other research-informed materials including Huckle’s critical school geography (2022). Discussion questions and short activities are used and there is advice from classroom teachers, academics and others in the form of short video clips. Modules are free, online and can be accessed at any time. These are short courses, designed with busy teachers in mind to take about 90 minutes (or longer when the ‘going further’ options and links are followed). They can be taken individually, but taking them with colleagues, for example a geography department team, is encouraged for the discussion and collaborative curriculum making this supports.

    There are separate programmes for primary and secondary age phases. The programme has begun with modules for history and geography, extending later to address the teaching of mathematics and English. The initial geography modules explore the potential of teaching geography for sustainable futures. Potentials are then exemplified using worked-through examples of critical geography teaching, for example, using some lessons created and taught to a group of 12–13-year-old children which examine Arctic ice restoration through a form of ‘biomimicry’. Students are asked to evaluate this with a geographical lens, and critically compare it to other geo-engineering approaches for mitigating climate change.

    To access the programme, Teaching for Sustainable Futures, please click here. For the survey report, please click here.

    References

    Alcock, D. (2019) ‘Optimism, progress and geography – celebration and calibration’, Teaching Geography. 44 (3), pp. 118–121.

    Castree, N., Chatterton, P. A., Heynen, N., Larner, W. and Wright, M. W. (Eds) (2010) The Point Is To Change It: Geographies of Hope and Survival in an Age of Crisis. Chichetser: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Geographical Association (2023) A framework for the school geography curriculum. Online material. https://geography.org.uk/ga-curriculum-framework/ last accessed July 2023.

    Hicks, D. (2007) ‘Lessons for the future: a geographical contribution’, Geography, 92, 4, pp. 179–88.

    Hicks, D. (2014) Education for Hope: Climate change, peak oil and the transition to a post-carbon future. London: Trentham Books/Institute of Education Press

    Huckle, J. (2022) Critical School Geography. Self-published, online content https://john.huckle.org.uk/critical-school-geography/ last accessed July 2023.

    Lambert, D., Béneker, T. and Bladh, G. (2021) The Challenge of Recontextualisation and Future 3 Curriculum Scenarios: an overview. In Fargher, M., Mitchell, D. and Till, E. (eds) Recontextualising Geography in Education. Cham: Springer.

    Lambert, D. Solem, M. & Tani, S. (2015) ‘Achieving Human Potential Through Geography Education: A Capabilities Approach to Curriculum-making in Schools’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105, 4), pp. 723-735.

    Mitchell, D. (2022): GeoCapabilities 3: knowledge and values in education for the Anthropocene, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education.

    UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education (2023) https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departments-and-centres/centres/ucl-centre-climate-change-and-sustainability-education last accessed July 2023.

    Young, M. (2008) Bringing Knowledge Back In: From social constructivism to social Realism in the sociology of education. London: Routledge.

    Young, M. & Muller, J. (2010) Three Educational Scenarios for the Future: lessons from the sociology of knowledge, European Journal of Education, 45, 1, pp. 11-26.

  • What do we know about initial teacher education in geography?

    Simon Catling, Emeritus Professor Oxford Brookes University

    What do we know? Surprisingly little it seems, at least from scholarly articles and research.

    Though we have details about issues in teacher recruitment and entry into the workforce (Tapsfield, 2016; UCET, 2023), initial teacher education is not a well-researched area, as Butt (2020) indicates in his study of research in geography education in the UK.

    There has been some research during the past twenty to thirty years mostly in small scale and single institution studies and typically examining prospective teachers’ ideas about geography, their learning about teaching geography and teacher educators’ identities.  But there has been plenty of public debate on what should be included in geography teacher education programmes in universities or schools, frequently referencing Ofsted inspections, and government policies that determine broadly what should be in courses. Much of what we understand about geography initial teacher education is gained through geography teacher educators talking to each other, such as through publications and conference presentations. While longstanding key texts, such as Learning to Teach Geography in the Secondary School (Biddulph et al., 2021) provide invaluable guidance for pre-service geography teachers, they say little about the nature and impact of their courses for such prospective geography teachers. This is also true of those texts for future primary teachers, such as Mastering Primary Geography (Barlow and Whitehouse, 2019). 

    Perhaps it should be of concern to us that as geography teacher educators we know so little about learning to teach our subject from research, even though ‘research engagement’ is now de rigueur in the teaching profession. (Lambert, 2018)

    Secondary teacher education programmes are promoted with succinctly informative outlines of why they are of value in learning to teach geography. Such promotions identify what courses say they cover, including the time and focus of teaching and study in school. What we cannot get a sense of – though perhaps we need to investigate – is whether what is advertised about geography secondary courses is lived up to in the practice of the full programme. In comparison, primary initial teacher education programmes offer a different sales pitch, basing these courses in teaching the whole curriculum and developing younger children’s skills in the core areas of literacy and mathematics. Geography rarely gets a mention. We need to explore why marketing geography (and indeed other foundation subjects) in primary courses is rare and whether geography course provisions ought to be more evidently mentioned. 

    If we believe that learning to teach geography in certain ways is necessary and significant for future teachers, we need to research what this is and gather the evidence. Likewise, we should investigate what it is that prospective teachers of geography bring to these primary and secondary programmes. Why do they join the programme they do, as undergraduates or postgraduates? What is the range of understanding and experience pertinent to geography which they and tutors assume they have? How do geography tutors use such information in their courses, if they do? Again, we know positive approaches are enacted but largely through anecdotal discussions rather than thorough robust research investigation.

    While there are some commonalities across secondary and primary pre-service programmes there are also fundamental differences. A prospective secondary geography teacher will spend time in school (preferably more than one) working with geography colleagues and teaching geography lesson sequences, often (but not always) encouraged to bring stimulus and some novelty to lessons. Although it may well be that future primary teachers are able to teach lessons in a focused geography topic during their school experiences, it is possible they may not encounter geography teaching at all. We know such disparities exist, but we need research on the extent of the range of experience of future primary and secondary teachers in learning to teach geography in schools. What is the extent of such disparities and how do they affect future teachers’ potential and capabilities as teachers of geography? 

    Much has been made of the role of curriculum making in geography education (Biddulph, 2018). In what ways does this intellectual and practical activity feature in preservice courses and, if it does, how does it contribute to high levels of teacher agency (Biesta, Priestley and Robinson, 2015). More investigations into the work of geography mentors, given their important role, is also needed, to develop their work in secondary geography initial teacher education (Healey et al., 2022). It is also required to provide evidence of the practice (or its lack) by primary geography subject leads (Howells et al., 2021). Indeed, we might ask, who the primary geography mentors are and how are they chosen; and, if geography is well taught in the primary schools to which prospective teachers are sent for their school placements. Is there any evidence for example that primary schools which have earned the GA’s Primary Geography Quality Mark are better placements than those without? And why?

    These topics and issues are not simply matters for the countries of the UK. There is little available information about the nature of the course content in secondary and primary pre-service courses across the nations of the world. Overall, research is lacking across institutions and schools about how courses are taught and what their impact is, let alone about comparability between providers. With the increasing diversity of providers and their number, this is not a straightforward concern to research. Indeed, this diversity has become a legitimate matter of research in its own right as private individuals and groups have begun to take an entrepreneurial interest in teacher training – and in some settings with very little public accountability (eg Black, 2015).

    In much of the world, there appears to be negligible (comparative) analysis of pre-service geography courses, their staffing, their time provision, their resourcing and the placements of their prospective teachers of geography. There is little to draw on globally to help future research and comparison.

    The geography education research community debates curriculum questions and the question of geographical knowledge (eg Morgan and Lambert, 2023). Individuals share experiences, ideas and intentions about teaching pe-service teachers how to teach geography to infant children right through to A level students. Yet as a community we seem to find it difficult to research and draw well-grounded findings from teaching pre-service students and their courses, so that we can develop, (re)construct and be creative about the courses we provide. The community seems to have been more trusting of service and experience than of research, capable of critiquing preservice course strengths and limitations and of government proposals and policies, but reluctant to examine presumptions and claims through systematic and dispassionate research.

    Geography pre-service teacher education has been working in an environment of changing expectations and shifting requirements for many years, which seem to need constant shifts of focus and course revisions, if not closure. Before one set of changes can bed in and be properly reviewed for effectiveness or efficacy, the next set of changes seem designed to ensure that this is not possible to do, and so we move, poorly informed, from one set of changes to another. Does this really matter other than to ourselves? If it does, how can we fund and find the time in busy and over-pressed working schedules to do the research into our own practices?

    References

    Barlow, A. and Whitehouse, S. (2019) Mastering Primary Geography. London: Bloomsbury.

    Biddulph, M. (2018) Curriculum Enactment in Jones, M. and Lambert, D. (Eds) Debates in Geography Education.Abingdon: Routledge.

    Biddulph, M., Lambert, D. and Balderstone, D. (2021) Learning to Teach Geography in the Secondary School: A companion to school experience. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Biesta, G., Priestley, M. and Robinson, S. (20115) “The role of beliefs in teacher agency.” Teachers and Teaching21(6), 624-640.

    Black, L. (2015) Schools officials’ consulting raises questions of transparency. Chicago Tribune. October 23. https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/lake-county-news-sun/ct-educational-consulting-stevenson-met-20151023-story.html?fbclid=IwAR2Ff925lv5dZZqWTdzeiv77_fFh8yToKQVwtHz6SYle6OCvX0g8ZcGFkl0

    Butt, G. (2020) Geography Education Research in the UK: Retrospect and Prospect. Cham: Springer.

    Healey, G., Hammond, L., Puttick, S. and Walshe, N. (Eds) (2022) Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School: A Practical Guide. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Howells, K. and Lawrence, J. with Roden, J. (2021) Mentoring Teachers in the Primary School: A Practical Guide. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Lambert, D. (2018) Teaching as a research-engaged profession: uncovering a blind spot and revealing new possibilities, London Review of Education. 16(3) 357-370.

    Morgan, J. and Lambert, D. (2023) Race, Racism and the Geography Curriculum. London: Bloomsbury Academic

    Tapsfield, A. (2016) Teacher education and the supply of geography teachers in England. Teaching Geography, 41(2), 105-109.

    UCET (2023) Response to the Call for Evidence to the Education Select Committee: Teacher recruitment, training and retention. London: UCET.

  • Dialogue in Climate Engineering with Youth, or ‘DICEY’

    A new project funded as part of the UKRI / Royal Society of Arts ‘Rethinking Public Dialogue’ series.

    Dr Elizabeth Rushton (University College London’s Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education) and Dr Lynda Dunlop (University of York)

    In September 2022, the Royal Society of Arts and UKRI announced a series of nine projects to be funded over the next year focused on ‘Rethinking Public Dialogue’. One of these projects is ‘DICEY’ – Dialogue in Climate Engineering with Youth, co-led by Lynda Dunlop and Lizzie Rushton. DICEY is an innovative approach to public dialogue on emergent science and policy on climate interventions, focusing on question creation. As such, this project sits at the interface of geography and science and also draws on approaches and understanding from geography education and science education. DICEY’s participatory and collaborative approach  involves online workshops with under-represented publics (youth, aged 16-24), scientists, policy-makers and artists. Dialogue will result in the production of artist-illustrated ‘climate questions’ cards, to stimulate further online public dialogue. DICEY is intended to be inclusive and intergenerational, involving reciprocal relationships with participants, and inverting norms to make scientists and policy-makers the ‘public’ for youth questions.  

    DICEY builds upon existing research on dialogue in climate interventions and is set against the context in which young people report feelings of betrayal and anxiety associated with beliefs about inadequate government response to climate change (Hickman et al., 2021). In the context of climate interventions, the dominant approach to researching public engagement to date has been to ask participants (typically, adults) to appraise the acceptability of different proposals, often involving presentations by researchers ‘close to the science’. This presents a particular challenge for new technologies because public awareness tends to be low (Scheer & Renn, 2014), and so there has been a move towards deliberative approaches which introduce new ideas to various publics. Challenges associated with these approaches include deferral to scientific authority, even on non-scientific questions, and problematic framings (Corner & Pidgeon, 2015), for example natural framings (such as comparisons with volcanic eruptions) or those which favour fast-acting and impactful climate interventions (Mahajan, Tingley & Wagner, 2019). Dialogue is often structured around specific techniques with little consideration of alternative (social, political, economic) responses to climate change. Attempts have been made to respond to these challenges (cf. Bellamy et al., 2014) through a reduced role for scientists and the use of tentative language to design interventions. DICEY, in contrast, fully involves scientists and policy-makers in a different capacity – as accountable to youth questions and concerns – through public switching – and builds youth capacity to participate in dialogue. DICEY puts youth in the position of identifying their priorities, articulating concerns and creating questions for those who are in positions of influence – and engaging scientists and policy-makers directly with these questions. This mitigates impacts of issue framing and the presence of scientific authorities and allows youth to frame issues in ways relevant to them.

    DICEY builds on Lynda and Lizzie’s previous work, ‘Geoengineering: a climate of uncertainty?’ where, through a series of online workshops, they engaged youth (18-25 years) from across Europe in the scientific, ethical, social and political dimensions of climate intervention, resulting in the co-authorship of a policy brief and academic articles (Dunlop et al., 2021; 2022). This project forms an important baseline for DICEY, and the principles of reciprocity, co-authorship, questioning and dialogue, have been incorporated into the design of DICEY. Although ‘climate of uncertainty?’ was dialogic in its methods, the team is not involved in science or policy-making in geoengineering. DICEY makes this connection between youth, scientists and policy-makers.   

    Workshops with youth (16-24 years) will take place in late 2022, with a second phase of workshops with policy-makers and scientists in early 2023. If you would like to be involved in either series of workshops or would like to find out more about the project, please do get in touch with Lizzie (l.rushton@ucl.ac.uk) or Lynda (lynda.dunlop@york.ac.uk) or follow us on Twitter – @RushtonDr and @UYSEG. More information about the full series of projects can be found at @theRSAorg 

    References

    Bellamy, R., Chilvers, J., & Vaughan, N. E. (2014). Deliberative mapping of options for tackling climate change: Citizens and specialists ‘open up’ appraisal of geoengineering. Public Understanding of Science, 25(3), 269–286.

    Corner, A., Parkhill, K., Pigeon, N., & Vaughan, N. E. (2013). Messing with nature? Exploring public perceptions of geoengineering in the UK. Global Environmental Change, 23(5), 938–947.

    Dunlop, L., Rushton, E.A.C., Atkinson, L., Blake, C., Calvert, S., Cornelissen, E., Dècle, C.M.M., De Schriver, J., Dhassi, K.K., Edwards, R.P.R., Malaj, G., Mirjanić, J., Saunders, W.E.H., Sinkovec, Y., Stadnyk, T., Štofan, J., Stubbs, J.E., Su, C., Turkenburg-van Diepen, M., Vellekoop, S., Veneu, F. and Yuan, X. (2021). An introduction to the co-creation of policy briefs with youth and academic teams. Journal of Geography in Higher Education. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2021.2001793.

    Dunlop, L., Rushton, E.A.C., Atkinson, L., Blake, C., Calvert, S., Cornelissen, E., Dècle, C.M.M., De Schriver, J., Dhassi, K.K., Edwards, R.P.R., Malaj, G., Mirjanić, J., Saunders, W.E.H., Sinkovec, Y., Stadnyk, T., Štofan, J., Stubbs, J.E., Su, C., Turkenburg-van Diepen, M., Vellekoop, S., Veneu, F. and Yuan, X. (2022). Youth co-authorship as public engagement with geoengineering. International Journal of Science Education (Part B).https://doi.org/10.1080/21548455.2022.2027043

    Hickman, C., Marks, E., Pihkala, P., Clayton, S., Lewandowski, R. E., Mayall, E. E., … & van Susteren, L. (2021). Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey. The Lancet Planetary Health, 5(12), e863-e873.

    Mahajan, A., Tingley, D., & Wagner, G. (2019). Fast, cheap, and imperfect? US public opinion about solar geoengineering. Environmental Politics, 28(3), 523–543.

    Scheer, D., & Renn, O. (2014). Public perception of geoengineering and its consequences for public debate. Climatic Change, 125(3), 305–318.

  • Mentoring and the ‘production of space’: Research, practice and geographical futures

    Lauren Hammond, Grace Healy, Steve Puttick and Nicola Walshe

    Mentoring matters in, and for, geography education. Mentoring is critically important for inducting teachers of geography into teaching as a profession, and more broadly into the schools and communities that they serve. Mentoring is also invaluable for supporting the progression and development of experienced teachers, researchers and teacher educators throughout their careers. In our forthcoming (February 2022) edited collection Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School a wide range of geography educators – working in a variety of different settings – come together to explore mentoring (Healy et al., 2022). In this blog we have distilled their insights to offer a summary of arguments developed further in the book. We begin by critically examining the relationship between mentoring and the ‘production of space’, before exploring the relationships between geography and sustainability to consider the potential of mentoring for producing more just and inclusive futures in, and through, geography education.

    Since we submitted this book for publication, the socio-political landscape of teacher education in England – the national policy context in which we all work – continues to be a space of contestation and debate. In Taylor and Healy’s (2021, n.p.) words, ‘teacher education has been shaped by neo-liberal political agendas that dispute the role of the university within the knowledge base for teaching, while supporting the advancement of the private sector within a teacher education ‘market’’. The recent Market Review of ITT (DfE, 2021) has resulted in significant concerns being raised about the role of the state in (decision-making about) Initial Teacher Education (ITE), including  – but not limited to – the role of disciplines (e.g., geography or history) in ITE (Hardman, 2021). For example, in their response to the Market Review consultation, the Geographical Association (2021) express that they are:

    concerned by the level of prescription and limits to academic agency within the report’s recommendations, which risk undermining a critically-engaged professional ITE environment that allows for subject/phase-specific development of geography teachers. Longer-term, this would have significant implications for the status and professionalism of geography teaching.

    Concerns raised by the Geographical Association and others across the sector (see for example, CCT, 2021; NASBTT, 2021; UCET, 2021) build upon pre-existing concerns about ITE policy. Particularly that the ITT Core Content Framework (CCF) (DfE, 2019) is framed by selective reading of a narrow research base which has the potential to remove prospective teachers of geography from the ‘reservoirs’ (Bernstein, 2000) of knowledge and expertise that exist in, and are supported by, disciplines in universities. Put another way, they contribute to what Taylor and Healy (2021, n.p.) term a space of ‘deeply contested policy-making’, with some universities considering the ethical and professional implications of continuing to support teacher education in this landscape (see for example, responses from UCL, 2021; University of Oxford, 2021). 

    Stepping back from the particular challenges facing ITE in England, Morgan (2022) situates ITE amid fundamental intersecting crises facing the Earth as our shared home. These crises include, but are not limited to, the CV-19 pandemic, anthropogenically induced ecological and climate crises, and systemic and everyday injustices faced by people in different spaces because of their intersectional identities. Here, active consideration of the affective and embodied nature of community, and the disciplines of geography and education (and the relationships between them) is of critical importance.

    Community in geography education is multifaceted, and we use it to foreground:  the communities we work within and serve (hooks, 2003); the colleagues we work with in schools, universities, or other educational spaces; and the disciplinary communities we draw upon and contribute to (Kinder, 2022). These communities enable us – in different ways and at different times – to: seek support; to engage in critical discussion, practitioner inquiry and research; to challenge one-another’s thinking and (potentially) to develop shared philosophies and practices; and to advocate for change where needed. Mentoring in geography education has a vital role in introducing beginning teachers to these communities, nurturing professional development, and in collectively addressing global, and local, challenges in, and through, geography education.

    We draw upon Lefebvre’s (1991) work on the ‘production of space’ to frame our examination of mentoring. This is because ‘social space is a social product’ (p.26), and through mentoring and teaching mentors actively (re)produce the kinds of futures they want for their students, their mentees and for the world. Applied to geography education, the production of space offers a valuable and ambitious view of mentors’ agency: 

    Freedom and liberatory politics cannot be pursued, we may conclude, without active human agents individually or collectively producing new spaces and spatio-temporalities, making and remaking places materially as well as in a different image, and producing a new second nature and thereby revolutionising their socio-ecological and environmental relations.

    (Harvey 2009, p.259)

     

    Mentors can, and do, shape presents and futures as agents in communities and the world. Through actively engaging with different ideas and theories about geography and education, teachers of geography become more informed in their practice and thinking about the presents and futures they want to shape in, and through, education. These are ambitious aims, and involve active consideration of the relationships between mentoring and geographical futures.

    Framing his chapter around the question ‘what sort of mentoring for what sort of geography education?’ Morgan argues that ‘there is an urgent need for mentors to engage colleagues in sustained conversations about the theory and practice of geography education’ (Morgan, 2022, p.46). This profound question recognises the significance of mentoring to teachers’ professional growth and well-being, and also offers a typology of ways in which mentoring might be conceptualised and understood. This typology (Table one) offers mentors a way to critically consider the nature of their mentoring and the possible impacts on the mentee, and more widely on geography education and the children and young people they teach. 

    Type of mentor/ingWhat is this mentor/ing like?
    Evidence-based learningFocussed on effective geography teaching, and demonstrable results. Risks ignoring profound and underpinning questions about the purpose of (geographical) education.
    Reflective knowledgeThe teacher is central – with the beginning teacher encouraged to critically reflect upon their teaching, and to make changes based on their reflections. Risks knowledge and debate  about geography education being sidelined. 
    Teachers as activistsDraws on radical and progressive ideals about education, and positions the school as a site of social change, with the teacher positioned as a transformative intellectual.
    The knowledge-focussed mentorFocussed on the debates about the place of, and politics around, the ‘place’ of knowledge in schooling.
    The networked teacher-mentorIdentities are shaped, and teaching informed, through social networks and negotiations.
    Table one: Adapted version of Morgan’s (2022) typology of mentoring for geography teachers

    As we argue when concluding the book, Morgan’s question and typology is beneficial to supporting mentors in truly engaging with the question ‘what kinds of futures do you hope your mentoring will produce?’ (Hammond et al., 2022). We argue that this question allows mentors to take a metaphorical step-back from their practice, and to consider how the ideas of justice, agency and voice can be used by mentors to support and inform their practice. Here, we propose that by actively considering justice in, and for, geography education, mentors and beginning teachers can be supported in (re)producing more just educational spaces and systems. For example, in challenging injustices, othering and exclusionary practices to enable and empower teachers of geography both in their everyday work and also their development as professionals. This includes actively considering how people and places are represented in curricula and teaching, and empowering students through pedagogy. It also involves actively considering barriers teachers of geography might face – including those related to their identities when engaging with ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and Wegner, 1991), and ultimately in achieving their career aspirations.

    Another important future envisioned by chapter authors in the book concerns sustainability, for ‘one is born into history, one isn’t born into a void’ (Brand, 2001, p.82 quoted in Yusoff, 2018, p.27). The revision of the geography National Curriculum presented in the 2014 Programme of Study for Key Stage 3 (DfE, 2014) removed sustainable development and climate change from the Geography National Curriculum in England. Whilst not all schools are legally obliged to follow the national curriculum, and teachers conceptualised as ‘curriculum makers’ (Lambert and Morgan, 2010) exert their agency as they navigate decisions about what to teach – the national curriculum is important. For example, affecting; the content of published teaching resources and the focus of accountability regimes; how geography is taught; assessment foci and processes; and also potentially areas of focus during ITE.

    Current curriculum policy is one aspect of the time-space in which we exist. There is certainly no curriculum void! For us, a key role of mentoring is empowering beginning teachers to critically engage with what to teach and their representation of the world and the people who call it home (Ahmed et al., 2022). In the present time-space, this includes active consideration of how they teach children about the intersecting crises facing the Earth, and how we might empower children as active agents in their own lives, communities and the world. As Healy and Walshe (2022) argue, mentors can become more intentional as they navigate the professional landscape that shapes their mentoring, becoming policy actors (rather than policy subjects). 

    Whilst Healy and Walshe (2022) focus on critical engagement with educational policy that conceptualises and affects the practice of mentoring, in this blog we now shine a light on the intentionality of critical engagement with a more complex and wide-reaching set of policy, including geography curriculum discourse and policies concerning the future of the Earth. Combined with active scholarship, this is fundamental to ensuring beginning geography teachers are better placed to question the decisions that others have made when they engage with curriculum policies, debates and textbooks (Healy, 2022). For example, by drawing on the work of Haraway (2016) beginning teachers can support students in (re)examining the relationships between people and the Earth. As Haraway contends, ‘human beings are with and of the earth, and the other biotic and abiotic powers of the earth are the main story’, with how human beings live and die matters, not just to other people, but ‘also to the many critters across taxa which and whom we have subjected to exterminations, extinctions, genocides, and prospects of futurelessness’ (p.59). Drawing on Haraway’s work can support children in thinking about their connections to the Earth, and the decisions they make in their lives and futures.

    In conclusion…

    In this blog, we have examined how mentoring in geography can (re)produce spaces, practices and systems to help co-create more just communities and tomorrows for mentees. Through the example of sustainability, we have considered how through scholarship and moves to act as ‘policy actors’ mentors can also support beginning teachers in navigating the complexities of teaching geography in ways that critically engage with policy at a range of scales. We are conscious that these are highly ambitious aims, and we hope that the wide ranging, questioning and provocative contributions in Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School makes connections between the practical challenges facing mentors and the reservoirs of vibrant geographical thought that might inspire more expansive and hopeful futures. We have argued these futures ought to foreground concern with sustainability in ways that critically engage with intersectional injustices and contribute to geography’s essential contribution to education in the 21st century.   

    Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School will be published on 28th February 2022 and you can read more about the book here: https://www.routledge.com/Mentoring-Geography-Teachers-in-the-Secondary-School-A-Practical-Guide/Healy-Hammond-Puttick-Walshe/p/book/9780367743222

    References

    Ahmed, F. Hammond, L. Nichols, S-A. Puttick, S. and Searle, A. (2022) Planning in geography education: A conversation between university-based tutors and school-based mentors in Initial Teacher Education. G. Healy, L. Hammond, S. Puttick and N. Walshe (eds), Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School. Abingdon: Routledge, pp.156-172.

    Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique. London: Rowman & Littlefield.

    CCT. (2021) Chartered College of Teaching Comments on ITT Market Review  https://chartered.college/2021/07/05/chartered-college-of-teaching-comments-on-itt-market-review/

    Department for Education [DfE]. (2014) Geography programmes of study: Key stage 3 national curriculum. London: DfE. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/239087/SECONDARY_national_curriculum_-_Geography.pdf Accessed 18.10.21.

    Department for Education [DfE]. (2019) ITT Core Content Framework. London: DfE. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/919166/ITT_core_content_framework_.pdf. Accessed 30.12.2021.

    Department for Education [DfE]. (2021) Policy Paper: Initial Teacher Training Market Review: Overview. London: DfE.https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-itt-market-review/initial-teacher-training-itt-market-review-overview. Accessed 08.07.2021.

    Geographical Association (GA). (2021) Consultation Response by the Geographical Association: Government consultation on Initial teacher training (ITT) market review recommendations: response from the Geographical Association (August 2021) https://www.geography.org.uk/write/MediaUploads/Advocacy%20Files/DfE_ITT_market_review_consultation_-_GA_response_(Aug2021)FINAL.pdf Accessed 26.09.2021.

    Hammond, L. Puttick, S. Walshe, N. and Healy, G. (2022) Mentoring matters: mentoring for a more just tomorrow in geography education. G. Healy, L. Hammond, S. Puttick and N. Walshe (eds), Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School. Abingdon: Routledge, pp.243-251.

    Haraway, D. (2016) Staying with the trouble: Anthroposcene, Capitoloscene, Chuthulucene. J. Moore. Eds. Anthroposcene or Capitoloscene? Nature, history, and the crisis of capitalism. Oakland: PM Press.

    Hardman, M. (2021) What does it mean to teach a subject? Not what the ITT Market Review suggests. https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/2021/09/09/what-does-it-mean-to-teach-a-subject-not-what-the-itt-market-review-suggests/ Accessed 30.12.2021.

    Harvey. D. (2009) Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom New York: Columbia University Press.

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

    Healy, G. (2022) Geography and geography education scholarship as a mechanism for developing and sustaining mentors’ and beginning teachers’ subject knowledge and curriculum thinking. G. Healy, L. Hammond, S. Puttick and N. Walshe (eds), Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School. Abingdon: Routledge, pp.187-207.

    Healy, G. and Walshe, N. (2022) Navigating the policy landscape: Conceptualising subject specialist mentoring within and beyond mentoring. G. Healy, L. Hammond, S. Puttick and N. Walshe (eds), Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School. Abingdon: Routledge, pp.187-207.

    hooks, b. (2003) Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Kinder, A. (2022) Mentoring within the geography subject community. In G. Healy, L. Hammond, S. Puttick and N. Walshe (eds), Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School. Abingdon: Routledge, pp.102-118.

    Lambert, D. and Morgan, J. (2010) Teaching geography 11-18: A conceptual approach. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

    Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Lefebvre, H. (1991) The production of space (Translated by D. Nicholson-Smith). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

    Morgan, J. (2022) What sort of mentoring for what sort of geography education?  In G. Healy, L. Hammond, S. Puttick and N. Walshe (eds), Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School. Abingdon: Routledge, pp.42-56.

    NASBTT. (2021) ITT Market Review Final Report and Consultation: NASBTT statement. https://www.nasbtt.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/ITT-market-review-final-report-and-consultation-July-2021-002.pdf Accessed 30.12.2021.

    Taylor, B. and Healy, G. (2021) London Review of Education Call for Papers: Rising to the challenge of teacher education to prepare teachers for today’s world.  https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1684/4803/files/CFP_LRE_spring_2023.pdf?v=1634745655

    UCET. (2021) DfE consultation on the review of the ITE Market UCET response. https://www.ucet.ac.uk/downloads/13250-UCET-Market-Review-Response-%28July-2021%29.pdf Accessed 30.12.2021.

    UCL, (2021) IOE responds to the ITT Market Review consultation. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2021/aug/ioe-responds-itt-market-review-consultation. Accessed 22.09.2021.

    University of Oxford. (2021) Initial Teacher Training Market Review response. http://www.education.ox.ac.uk/initial-teacher-training-market-review-response/. Accessed 22.09.2021.

    Yusoff, K. (2018) A billion Black Anthropocenes or none. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

  • GEReCo and research priorities

    By David Lambert

    On publishing its ‘research reviews’, including the one on geography, Ofsted stated that the intention was to “set out the research that has informed our thinking on subject quality”. One of Ofsted’s so-called ‘filters’ in reviewing research was the recognition that “curriculum is different from pedagogy”. In other words, the official watchdog on standards recognises that a key element in judging quality in geography is the curriculum per se, defined as “what teachers teach and when, and what pupils learn”[1]. We go on to read that in its future subject reports, inspectors will judge “the extent to which teaching supports the goals of the subject curriculum.”

    Since its inception GEReCo has burned the flame for curriculum focussed scholarship and must continue to do so.

    However, it needs to do so with a fierce independence, for what Ofsted means or implies by curriculum may not be entirely consistent with what some of us at least feel is at stake. John Morgan recently outlined this disjuncture in his review of the Ofsted document:[2] because “… the curriculum is seen as an ‘object’ rather than as a ‘problem’, all that is left is to explain how best to organize it, plan for progression, and teach it – hence the overwhelming focus of the Review [is] on pedagogy and assessment.” But the curriculum problem remains, looming like the proverbial elephant in the room: how do teachers justify geography in the school curriculum and what should we teach?

    Perhaps we need look no further than the following words to see the significance of John’s point. Ofsted states that “Progress in curricular terms means knowing more and remembering more, so a curriculum needs to carefully plan for that progress by considering the building blocks and sequence in each subject.”

    This to me conjures images of Nero fiddling while Rome burns. There are doubtless other metaphors. But merely teaching geography efficiently and effectively to ‘ensure progression’ (which utterly defies precise, technocratic definition anyhow – at least beyond ‘remembering more’) is a woefully inadequate expression of an educational response to contemporary needs and challenges. For instance, how does teaching geography contribute to the education of children and young people in a world where

    • colonial and imperial violence, and the enduring injustices that have followed, are now more widely understood and acknowledged;
    • the climate emergency is causing death, economic mayhem and displacing tens of millions of people across the globe;
    • biodiversity loss, again on a global scale, is already looking cataclysmic;
    • human-nature relations are now so mixed up (partly a result of almost 8 billion people on the planet) that the Covid-19 pandemic is best not thought of as a ‘one-off’?

    These are existential threats, not abstract ‘world problems’. They are all present in the here and now. That is, they are experiential. But all are also geographical, or at least have geographical dimensions. Geographers are amongst those contributing new knowledge, perspectives and insights across all of these areas. The school geography curriculum has the enormous challenge of responding to pupils’ lived experiences while at the same time enabling them better to understand these in broader contexts. This is where ‘school subject’ meets ‘discipline’. It is not so much about rewriting the curriculum with better, new or more up to date selections to teach in schools, but more to do with the relationship we have with knowledge and the infrastructure that exist to support teachers in the development of this relationship – and building that relationship to ‘what we know and how we know it’ with pupils too. This is not easy and is nothing less than grappling with the challenges and ambition of Future Three curriculum making[3] – incidentally, the lynchpin of GeoCapabilities[4].

    So GEReCo is definitely right in promoting and developing deeper and broader links with the wider discipline (along with the RGS-IBG and GA). But the particular strength of GEReCo must be to examine the school curriculum implications – because of course, as Zongyi Deng[5] points out in his most recent paper, what is taught in school, even under the banner of that frequently misappropriated term ‘powerful knowledge’, is not just influenced by developments in the discipline. He makes a call for continued conceptual research on knowledge, how content selections are made and the role of teachers in curriculum making – in a manner that is not ‘above’ politics but neither is unaware of social, cultural, environmental and political contexts in which we live. It is for example noteworthy the surge of interest in issues of race and racism in society that has followed the resurgence of Black Lives Matter, and a growing number of individuals and groups are now thinking hard about how school geography must respond. It also is a matter of record the step change in popular understanding of the climate emergency and its differential effects around the world, including within the British Isles. Furthermore, Brexit has resulted in a political dynamic that requires recalibration of the UK’s relationship with Europe and the rest of the world – which clearly risks the very existence of the UK in its current form.  These are all epochal issues, and it is interesting how reluctant educationist in general seem to be in confronting the question of what appropriate educational responses should be. Guy Claxton’s riveting new read on the ‘future of teaching’[6], for example, barely mentions such issues and neither does Debra Kidd’s ‘curriculum of hope’[7] whilst acknowledging we live in ‘trying times’.

    Deng calls for empirical work on the curriculum and in geography this could – should maybe – address those matters alluded to in the previous paragraph. Easier said than done perhaps. But now is surely the time. It might therefore be appropriate for readers to use the comment box to make their own suggestions regarding this call. Comments might then take the form the basis of a further blog post – also taking into account gaps and silences noted in the Ofsted review of research in geography.[8]

    [1] All these quoted words are from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/principles-behind-ofsteds-research-reviews-and-subject-reports/principles-behind-ofsteds-research-reviews-and-subject-reports

    [2] https://impolitegeography.wordpress.com/2021/06/21/one-review-to-rule-them-all-ofsteds-review-of-research-in-geography/

    [3] Morgan, J., Hoadley, U. and Horden, J. (2019) On the politics and ambition of the ‘turn’: unpacking the relations between Future 1 and Future 3. Curriculum Journal, 30 (2) DOI:10.1080/09585176.2019.1575254

    [4] https://www.geocapabilities.org/

    [5] Deng, Z. (2021) Powerful knowledge, transformations and Didaktik/curriculum thinking, British Educational Research Journal  DOI: 10.1002/berj.3748

    [6] Claxton, G. (2021) The Future of Teaching – and the myths that hold it back. Abingdon: Routledge.

    [7] Kidd, D. (2020) A curriculum of Hope. Independent Thinking Press.

    [8] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ofsted-publishes-research-review-on-geography