Subjects to Change Professor David Lambert IoE/GA GTE Conference, Bristol. 25-27 January
Dec 31, 2015
Background
The curriculum in school is under intense pressure resulting in rapid and significant forces to change:
– Skills based curriculum (eg RSA Opening Minds)– Personalisation and ‘learning processes’ (eg learning
to learn, and ICTs)– From centralised to localised innovation– Closing the attainment gap– League tables
Response?
• We may welcome some of this!– Localisation and flexibility– Social justice
• But question some of the possible outcomes– Of a skills and process led curriculum?– Following the negative backwash of league tables:
– Curriculum hierarchies– Teaching to the test
Some tensions and doubts
• The values basis of the curriculum– What are its aims and purposes– Any notion of a ‘national entitlement’?
• The implications of current shifts on ‘subjects’– How are subjects understood?
• (has a ‘restricted’ view taken hold?)– The basis of new appetites for ‘integration’
Challenge (1)
To work out what the primary and secondary curriculum will look like
- Primary review this year … Subjects? Topics?
- Secondary:30% GCSE60% Diplomas10% basic skills and catch up
Reduced, skills based KS3
Challenge (2)
To work out where ‘school geography’ sits in relation to these shifting sands. We can:
– Stick to our knitting? And become an intrinsic, pure, minority pursuit
– Go for legislation! Because ‘geography is essential’– Emphasise vocational utility – maps, GIS …– Argue for extrinsic educational purpose and
contribution
Plus ca change …
“Long standing tensions between geographers and geographical educationists about the balance of:
– subject content– educational processes– social purposes (‘good causes’)”
(Marsden, B. (1997) ‘On taking the geography out of geographical education’, Geography, 82, 3, p 241-252)
Grasping Opportunities
• Curriculum making – using a conceptual approach to planning– subject leadership, with educational aims
• Gentle re-branding – ‘geo-capability’ – ‘living geography’
Aims led curriculum thinking
“What counts as an educated young person in this day and age?”
- at 7- at 11- at 14- at 16- at 19
According to the QCA: The curriculum aims to enable all young people to become
• Successful learnerswho make progress and achieve• Confident Individualswho lead safe and healthy lives• Responsible Citizens who make a positive contribution to society
Whole CurriculumSkills, Knowledge and Attributes:
• Skills; Functional Skills (Lit/Number/ICT) + Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills
• Knowledge and Understanding; Big ideas that shape the world - eg chronology, conflict, scientific method
• Attitudes and dispositions; eg determined, adaptable, learning to learn
Some Different Aims From the Nuffield Review www.nuffield14-19review.org.uk
• To introduce ideals which inspire and are worth pursuing
• To introduce a defensible set of values which can sustain young people into the future
• To encourage the disposition to take responsibility for self, the environment and wider community
• To provide insights into the physical, moral, social, cultural and economic worlds
• To prepare young people for employment - through self knowledge, basic competences and understanding and confidence in learning
Translating aims into the curriculum(Nuffield Review)
• Entitlement to a minimum national framework
• Developing subject knowledge (serving rather than determining educational aims)
• Ensuring a range of knowledge, skills and attitudes reflecting:
– Cultural and economic change– Employability and economic prosperity– Maintaining democracy– Healthy living (physically and mentally)– Environmental sustainability– Social inclusion
The subject
• Geography – not as an end in itself but a resource in the service of educational aims
• Geography - “defined not as a collection of facts but as the state of the art conceptual frameworks of the subject” [p 242]
• That is, a distinctive disciplined enquiry
Engaging with young people’s curiosity: questions that can be addressed by ‘thinking geographically’
• Identity: Who am I? Where do I come from? Who is my family? What is my ‘story’? Who are the people around me? Where do they come from? What is their ‘story’?
• Place in the world: Where do I live? How does it look? How do I feel about it? How is it changing? How do I want it to change?
• The Physical world: What is the world (and this place) made of? Why do things move? What becomes of things?
• The Human world: Who decides on who gets what, and why? What is fair? How do we handle differences of opinion?
The power of geography (1)
The physical world: land, water, air and ecological systems and the processes that bring about change in them.
The human environments: societies, cities and communities and the human processes involved in understanding work, home, consumption and leisure.
Interdependence: involves, crucially, linking the ‘physical’ and ‘human’ and the emerging concept of ‘sustainable development’
The power of geography (2).
Place and space: the ‘vocabulary’ and the ‘grammar’ of the world, developing knowledge and understanding of location and interconnectedness.
Scale: the lens through which the subject matter is ‘seen’, and the significance of local, regional, national, international and global perspectives.
Pupils’ lives: using pupils’ images, experiences, meanings and questions; ‘reaching out’ to pupils as active agents in their learning. ‘
Geography is the Science of Our World
Increasingly Being Seen as a Language for
. . . Integrating. . . IntegratingWhat We KnowWhat We Know
• Understanding– Patterns– Relationships– Processes
• Conceptualizing• Modeling• Visualizing
Using Languages to Describe Our World
MathematicsMathematics
ArtArt
MusicMusic
ModelsModels
TaxonomyTaxonomyWrittenWritten
StatisticsStatistics
SoftwareSoftware
CartographyCartography
DiagramsDiagrams
PhotographyPhotography
……And Organize Our RealityAnd Organize Our Reality
They Reflect Our ExperiencesThey Reflect Our Experiences
Geography Embodies Formal Concepts, Theories, and Methods
. . . For Understanding Our World
EventsEvents
DiffusionDiffusion
ConnectivityConnectivityProcessesProcesses
PatternsPatterns
FlowsFlows
DifferentiationDifferentiation
Spatial InteractionsSpatial Interactions
ClassificationClassification
Thinking GeographicallyThinking Geographically
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KS3 Key ConceptsKS3 Key Concepts
GEOGRAPHYGEOGRAPHYScale
Place
Cultural Understanding and Diversity
Space
Inter- dependence
Physical and human
processes
Environmental interaction
and Sustainable
development
Towards ‘geo-capability’?
Geography educationists are key:
1. Demonstrating and advocating balance between- Subject content and enquiry- Educational process- Social purposes
2. Encouraging productive ‘curriculum making’ by teachers
‘Curriculum making’ ?
Focus on classrooms, and their three essential Focus on classrooms, and their three essential bundles of energy:bundles of energy:
• the students [eg curiosity]the students [eg curiosity]
• the teachers [eg pedagogy]the teachers [eg pedagogy]
• the subject [eg relevance]the subject [eg relevance]
Student Experiences
Geography: the subjectTeacher Choices
Underpinned by Key Concepts Thinking
Geographically
Learning Activity
How does this take the learner beyond what they already know?
Curriculum Making
Redressing balance
• Giving more emphasis to ‘the subject’ and ‘subject leadership’
• Giving less emphasis to the ‘technologies of teaching’
• Spending more time with aims and purposes
Goal
Is it possible to imagine the school subject discipline (geography) as a resource to underpin productive, critical debate with young people about ‘how to live’?
Are the tenets of Living Geography (LG) helpful in this?And Young People’s Geographies (YPG)?
Living Geography ...
• embraces young people’s geographies• is current and ‘futures’ oriented • is often ‘local’ but always set in wider (global)
contexts • investigates changing environments (physical
and human change processes)• encourages a critical understanding of big ideas
like ‘sustainable development’
Young People’s Geography …
A YPG curriculum will:
– be planned through dialogue: between teachers, young people, teacher educators and academic geographers
– draw from young people’s everyday experiences– extend the way that young people are involved in, and
can directly influence, the curriculum– emphasise dialogic pedagogies– enable young people to use their capacity to think
geographically when encountering the world
Geo-capability
• What do we want this to evoke?– ‘world-awareness’ – space-perspective– futures-orientation
• How can we best express this?