Geography Teaching Today

Either on your own or with colleagues, consider the following question:

What is the purpose of teaching and learning geography?

Consider how geography can help young people to think more intelligently about the world. Consider also the oft-stated view that school geography can appear fragmented or bitty, revealing the classic 'problem with geography' that its content richness leads to severe content selection challenges for anyone designing and making a coherent curriculum.

Discussion

In geography there is clearly a vast content base from which choose what to teach. Rather than trying to 'cover' everything (a little), we have taken the view that, if we wish to encourage deep and productive thought in geography, it is potentially more fruitful to address a smaller selection of topics, themes, issues or places at great depth. In this unit we 'practice what we preach', and focus on one topic (climate change) and on a particular pedagogic strategy (argumentation).

In you own curriculum making you may wish to take these ideas and develop them further. Equally, you may chose different content and different strategies more appropriate to developing geography and citizenship in your particular school or setting. First let us further explore the links between geography education and citizenship.

Now go to Taking it Further