Fieldwork
Place Profiling
What is place profiling?
Place profiling uses a variety of fieldwork techniques to provide students with a composite picture of the social, economic and environmental facets of a place they are studying. It is intended to develop the way your learners see, hear and interact with the spaces they inhabit - to deepen their experience of place.
Why use place profiling?
In the past, geography fieldwork has encouraged students to engage in lengthy, quantitative analysis in the field - something that can obstruct a more holistic understanding of place. Place profiling aims to counter this by using a wide range of simple and complementary qualitative methods which should help your students build up an accurate ‘profile' of their place. Most of the activities included here are extremely short and simple and don't require any specialised equipment. Many are simple sensory learning experiences that can be used across the key stages.
In what contexts could these activities be used?
Most of the activities suggested here are broad enough to be adapted to any local place in the UK - though some inevitably have an urban bias. They have been trialled in Bow, Stratford and Barking, east London.
Curriculum links:
KS3: Key concepts: Place, Space, Physical and Human Processes, Cultural Understanding and Diversity. Key processes: Geographical enquiry, Fieldwork and out-of-class learning, Graphicacy and visual literacy, Geographical communication
KS4: OCR GCSE Spec A. Unit A3 Similarities and Differences (Students study ‘our place' and contrast it with another place)
KS5: Edexcel AS Geography. Topic 4: Rebranding Places
Place Profiling activities:
The following place profiling activities are available in this module:
- I am a Camera
- Observe... Participate
- Shopping Challenge
- Place-check
- Clone Town
- Getting into Character
- I Spy a Stakeholder
- Past and Future Visioning
- Tuning in to soundscapes
- Picture this quote
- Story Stick
- Urban Detective
- Sign-language
- Missing Link
- I Spy Geography
- Drawing with words
- Treasure Hunt
- Tuning in our senses
- The whole world all in one place
- Green Mapping
- In/Out
Risk Assessment
When taking students on a fieldtrip - even in the local area - it is of course vital to complete a risk assessment. This document provides a list of possible risks that your students might encounter when conducting this type of fieldwork, which you should consider when writing your risk assessment.