Geography Teaching Today

Images as Inspiration

Do you use photographs of the learners' communities as a stimulus? Matthew and Nikki from different schools worked together on a task using their photographs of Milton Keynes for evidence of it being a sustainable city. Read their account here.




Can you identify ten or so photographs to try this activity in your community?

What positive advantages do you see in this surrogate for fieldwork?

Matthew and Nikki describe a personal aspect to setting up this task and in the approaches taken by the learners. Would you expect similar responses from your own learners?

Comment

With digital cameras and cheaper disposable options it is much easier for learners to take a guided approach to capturing what they consider to be significant about their own communities. They could be asked to concentrate on just one of the eight components.

A set of eighty photographs on a CD-ROM is available and could be used as stimulus for the range of photographs to be captured in the learners' communities. It is recommended that you look in depth for evidence in fewer photographs rather than overloading the number of photographs to be looked at.

Keeping the focus on geography

'It is important for students to realise that the image itself, however attractive, is not usually the end point. The real geographical learning is in the reasoning behind its production and the analysis and explanation of the end product. It's important that students are given sufficient time for this stage, and appropriate support in undertaking it.'
Taylor, Liz (2005) Re-presenting Geography, Cambridge: Chris Kington Publishing.

What 'appropriate support' would you need to prepare?

What guidance might you provide for framing questions?


Active strategies for using photographs

1. An enquiry approach. Encouraging students to come up with their own questions that they want answered about a photograph can be a way of stimulating interest. Answers can be elicited from the students within the class where possible.
   
   
2. Providing key questions or statements. These can help to focus students' thinking and be used as springboard for discussion. Using the development compass rose is a useful way of structuring their responses.
   
   
3. Combining with other resources. Using photographs together with other media such as maps, atlases, plans, stories and, if possible, visitors who have had first-hand experience of the place being studied can enable students to gain a fuller 'sense of place'.
   
   
4. Writing frames and tables for a structured response. These can help students to pick out the main ideas from a photograph in a structured way.
   
   
5. Questioning the information presented in the photograph. Using a 'biased' view can be useful for drawing out students' opinions and perceptions of a place. For example, showing evidence of wealth where, otherwise, there is the assumption that an area is poor and run-down.
   
   
6. Comparing photographs. Looking at two or more different photographs showing contrasting views of a place has clear advantages.

Adapted from Wellsted, E. (2006) 'Understanding "distant" places' in Balderstone, D. (ed) Secondary Geography Handbook, Sheffield: Geographical Association.

To what extent would you employ each of these strategies?

Is there a progression to be made explicit from Key Stage 3 to GCSE?

Learners could share in building up a photographic library about their communities. Captions and key words would use geographical vocabulary.

Think about learners' use of these strategies when they are making presentations or debating. There is more on generic skills later in this unit.

Comment

Using these active strategies can provide a visual component to enquiries. An extension would be to use video to capture a dynamic feature of communities such as vehicle or pedestrian flow, at different times of day and days of the week, near shops or a transport interchange.

Now do Activity 5