Geography Teaching Today

I'm going to talk about fieldwork from a primary prespective and let's not forget it is a statutory component of geography! In my last school we moved from a situation where fieldwork was nearly abandoned due to concerns about health and safety but luckily reinstated and built on this to such a degree that every year group in the school undertook at least two active fieldwork experiences in their locality during the year. This has shown enormous benefits and not all of them were expected.
Some children have little knowledge of their locality eother through lack of access or because they are 'blind' to aspects of the environment that they encounter everyday but do not see. Structured experiences open up their eyes and enable their geographical vocabulary and understanding to develop in ways that only first hand learning can effect. Our school was in an area of high deprivation and the pupils were pleased that we wanted to learn about where they live . Fieldwork helped them to value their neigbourhood and the people in the community that live and work there. From a community point of view, it also helped locals to realise that children could be concerned citizens too. In short - it helped community bonding.
Fieldwork develops map skills such as making and using because the learning becomes real. Our pupils had to plan their own routes, map their own localities and find themselves on maps during the fieldwork - a difficult skill. They learnt about jobs by meeting different people from different vocations and interviewed them using their own questions. They learnt how to use digital cameras effectively through taking images in situ and used compasses to orient annotated sketch maps. These are all things that need to be done using first hand experience. They also became involved in local issues - writing to newspapers, tourism offices, local councils. One unexpected benefit was the stimulus for writing back in class and the improved quality of the writing. Another was the support of parents through comments and volunteer help. Most of all, children love fieldwork if it is well planned , interesting and if they are joint collaborators. It is the jewel in the crown of geography. Please get in touch with your fieldwork experiences or questions.

Paula has said so much in this and has covered such a lot of the benefits of fieldwork. Because of its obvious value, as covered so extensively above, fieldwork shouldn't be an option, it must become an integral part of teaching at both primary and secondary level. If children are to become really engaged and switched on to the subject, they must have some fieldwork experience. Often it is the simplest and least costly experiences that have the greatest impact - investigating the local area and even the school grounds, discovering things that they didn't know existed and starting to develop their indentity with the environment, stimulating a need to conserve and preserve it.

I agree about using local areas for fieldwork. I have successfully brought fieldwork into most of my topics at KS3 and some that is completed independently by students for homework. It gives students a much better appreciation of place.

Thanks very much for your comments on this topic. Jenny, I'd be very interested to hear more about your experiences of using the local area with KS3 - and the idependent learning that you mention. Drop me an email at fieldwork@rgs.org if you get the chance. Thanks!