Geography Teaching Today

Objectives

It is sometimes confusing talking about 'aims and objectives' because it sometimes sounds like they are indistinguishable. There is, however, a big difference.

Aims provide the overall purpose or goal. The objectives serve the aims. They help us achieve the aims. Aims are longer term, and very rarely are arrived at in a single lesson! Objectives are more short term, possibly stepping stones towards longer term aims.

Think of a journey analogy: the aim is to get to (say) Land's End. The objectives consist of all the bits and pieces you have to think about and decide upon in order to get there in time and in safety - mode of transport, number of stops, luggage requirements, etc.

If you only think about the objectives (and a lot of emphasis is often placed on this, sometimes using terms like learning objects, or even lesson outcomes) then the dangers are clear: the course as a whole can lose direction, no matter how brilliant the learning activities may be.

Physical and Human Processes

Geographical enquiries utilise physical and human processes that cause change and development in places, when seeking explanations for patterns and distributions. Pupils make progress by deepening and broadening their understanding of such processes and in so doing enhance their capacity to envision alternative futures for places, and the people who live and work in them. Thinking productively about futures is facilitated by the use of creative writing, art, ICT and by GIS technologies.

Place

Studying real places is an essential context for developing geographical enquiries. A place is a space that carries meaning, often through human occupation or by human interpretation. Every place has a particular location and a unique set of physical and human characteristics. These include what a place is like, how it became like this and how it is subject to forces for change.

Furthermore, the same place can be represented differently. What we think about places is both shaped by, and shapes, our 'geographical imagination'. Pupils carry with them mental images of places - the world, the country in which they live, the street next door. These form part of their 'geographical imagination'. It is important that pupils recognise that there are many images of places, some of which may conflict with their own.

Programme of Study

This is the official manifestation of the National Curriculum. But it is NOT a curriculum in itself. It is the framework - like a design template - for teachers to use to plan and make the curriculum.

See Curriculum, Curriculum Planning, Curriculum Making

Scale

Pupils should investigate geography at a range of scales. Virtually any topic, when studied geographically, benefits from a 'scaled' approach. Scale influences the way we represent what we see or experience.

We can select different scales from the personal, local and regional to the global. In between, we have the national and international scales, which are very important politically. We cannot, for example, fully understand high street shopping in a locality, or industrial change in a region or country, without comprehending the global context. Choice of scale is therefore important in geographical enquiry, as is the realisation that scale resolutions are interconnected, as if by a zoom lens.

Scheme of Work

A Scheme of Work is the physical manifestation of a school's curriculum planning. It shows the content selection and the sequence lessons. It shows aims and objectives - and also teaching and learning resources and activities. It also shows assessment opportunities. It is best seen as a working document, and not set in stone. Teachers use the scheme of work as the bais for their curriculum making, when the plan is brought to life!

Space

In addition to developing a sense of place in geography pupils also develop spatial understanding. Physical and human phenomena are located and are distributed in space. They therefore have relative locations relative to each other and often interact with each other across space. Any flows or movements between these phenomena, for example migration, create patterns and networks.

Spatial patterns, distributions and networks can be described and analysed, and often explained by reference to social, economic, environmental and political processes. Much geographical enquiry is therefore concerned with identifying such processes, and assessing the impacts of such processes.