Geography Teaching Today

Aims

Many commentators (e.g. White, J. 2006 What are schools for?) have said that one of the problems with the national curriculum was that it was 'aimless'. It was not always clear what the purpose of the curriculum was. Subjects were just 'there' and young people had to study them. Why?

Aims need to be explicit because they provide overall direction, and therefore the purpose of the curriculum. The 2007 Secondary Curriculum Review is designed to be clearer about the aims.

What we say is that we need subject aims as well as overall whole curriculum aims. At the very least we need to show how the subject geography serves, or contributes to, the whole curriculum aims.

See also Objectives

Concepts

One of the features of the new Key Stage 3 (first teaching September 2008) is that subjects are oriented around 'Key Concepts'. There is now much talk not only of an 'aims-led' curriculum, but a 'concept-led' curriculum too. However, concept-led may be misleading. See David Lambert's longer discussion on this matter 'Thoughts on planning with concepts'.

On the other hand, the reason why concepts do link to aims is that they evoke teaching for understanding. Think of each 'key concept' as a bundle of ideas, our grasp of which can grow and develop. They are 'key' because we think growing understanding of the ideas is useful and significant in serving the grand geographical aim of making sense of the world - or at least helping us develop the capacity to think geographically.

See also Elements of learning, Place, Space, Scale, Interdependence, Physical and Human Processes, Environmental Interaction and Sustainable Development, Cultural Understanding and Diversity

Cross-cutting themes

Geography is a notoriously difficult subject to 'place' in the curriculum: it intersects with the physical sciences and the social sciences as well as the arts and humanities. It is not surprising then that geography can 'carry' many cross-cutting themes, such as citizenship (including the global dimension), education for sustainable development and information technologies (in particular those enabling the use of geographic information [GI]).

We say it is important for geography teachers to say something specific about how the subject contributes to such themes - this will almost certainly be a variation on the theme of 'thinking geographically' (see Peter Jackson's article from Geography - 'Thinking Geographically')

Cultural Understanding and Diversity

Geography is fundamentally concerned with the diversity of people and places on the planet. It is important to explore this with pupils in geography, not to 'show them' the world but to explore it using geographical enquiry, focusing on how people and places are represented in different ways.

Basic questions that geography can help pupils address are 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'? One intention would be to help young people to grow accustomed to diversity, and not to fear it.

Curriculum

The curriculum is often said to consist of all the planned experiences in school. The geography curriculum is what we plan - and make happen - in geography, in the classroom, out of classroom tasks (such as homework) and in 'fieldwork'.

Curriculum planning

Curriculum planning in school is the process that results in a Scheme of Work. It involves taking account of various factors and influences, including the needs and interest of the young people, developments in the subject and wider policy and society concerns such as citizenship, diversity education and community cohesion

See also Programme of Study and Scheme of Work