“Anything is geography”. These three words seemed to defined the thinking around the geography curriculum when I started teaching in 2004 and, for a while, this seemed hugely exciting. Geography is such a broad discipline that we could study anything in our classroom, put anything into a program of study, at least until we had…
This is a guest post from the brilliant Alistair Hamill • Head of Geography • SLT (T&L) • Shared Ed. Leader • GIS advocate • Learning Lead in Craigavon ALC • Mainstage speaker at Esri UC • Textbook author • PQH The vital role of fieldwork in the experience of learning geography Listen to a…
Remember that thought experiment There is a hot air balloon carrying a scientist, a mathematician, a geographer a nurse. As it drifts out over the ocean it starts to lose height. Something is getting thrown overboard and everyone must justify their place. We are going through something similar as a result of Ofqual’s consultation on…
Elements of experiential learning theory (ELT) and of other constructivist learning theories were popular in the early years of my teaching (2003 onwards). The reading that dominated my initial teacher training was from and about Piaget, Freire and Vygotsky and Dale’s Cone of Learning often dominated early Continuous Professional Development sessions in school. Experiential learning…
In Part One of School: What is it good for? I argued that schools shouldn’t try to concern themselves with every function of education as other social agents could handle those better. Instead, I suggested that schools do what everyone can’t do; the passing on of powerful knowledge from previous generations to the next. Those…
I was thinking today about how same-y my lessons had become. There was a time when pupils would have come in to find the tables arranged in groups for a carousel task, or ready for them to do a role play of a news report or they’d be creating a newspaper front page or doing…
One of the joys of the education landscape in 2018 has been the move from endless discussions about how to teach towards a renewed focus on what we teach. On curriculum. Recent writing At ResearchEd ’18 I was fortunate enough to listen to Christine Counsell speak about curriculum and the questions we should ask of…
There are three main approaches to teaching the concept of sustainability in schools. Firstly, we can teach about sustainability, its definition, its history and its application. Secondly, we can teach through sustainability by using the concept as a way of seeing the world and understanding an issue. Finally, we can teach for sustainability by…
A recent blog by Tom H (@GeographyTom9) on Why Subject Knowledge Matters made me think about how we treat teacher subject knowledge in our profession. I’m not convinced we give it the attention it deserves. Tom points out that subject knowledge adds texture to a lesson – it gives the details. It varies hugely by…
One of the first steps of curriculum design in geography is considering the relationship between thematic and regional geography. This is discussed in Alex Standish’s chapter in Debates in Geography Education (2nd Edition) edited by Mark Jones and David Lambeth. It has influenced by thinking when planning our curriculum at KS3 and beyond. What is…
Teaching it Real 