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ISSUES Geography “at a crucial point” (QCA):

Implications of change in higher education

Andrew Church University of Brighton

Change in higher education

• The implications of:– Challenges facing geography in higher education

– Debates in geographical research

– Issues in undergraduate geography teaching

• Connections to geography in schools

PGCE, Local GA President, RGS-IBG, Ask An Expert, Revision conferences, teacher CPD.

Challenges to higher education geography

• Finance and top up fees• Undergraduate numbers and widening

participation• The vice chancellor’s question • Merger and fragmentation• The distinctiveness and core of geography

– Conceptual – space, place, scale etc.– Physical processes and geomorphology– Human-environment interactions

“Geography is sociology with space added in”

(Sociologist working in a leading geography department)

Nature-culture – teaching sustainability

• Nature-culture binary – Nature as a social construction• Whatmore 2005 - 3 trends in rethinking the human and the

non-human– Nature outside society is a fallacy– Intersections and ‘mixed up lives’ of plants, animals

and people – animal geographies– Hybridity – human, animal and machine blurred

categories• Landscapes and culture-nature – historical representations

of nature• The implications for teaching sustainability

About 16 ants nests are situated on this fence line, some 18 inches high

Toad habitat

Human Geography – the globalisation debate

• A more nuanced understanding

• Schools of thought

• Complex relational geographies

• ‘Acting out’ globalisation – beyond us as consumers and them in the developing world

What is globalisation?

‘A transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions, generating transcontinental flows and networks of activity, interaction and the exercise of power.’

(McGrew, 2000)

Globalists – ‘borderless’ world

Traditionalists – the state matters

‘Acting out globalisation’

Globalisation and teaching tourism

• Geography - “It’s all tourism……tourism’s not as interesting as the teachers think” (Alice aged 15)

• Beyond tourism – geographical concepts of mobility

• Mobility, globalisation and environmental and social responsibility

• Engaging with experience - teaching exclusive achieved mobilities or more inclusive aspirational mobilities?

“‘Big science’ questions have become preoccupied with predicting what the future will look like…..there comes a time when it will be necessary to stop predicting the future and to start acting in the present” Lane 2005

Teaching the present and mitigation or doomsday futures?

Physical geography – key debates

Geography in the classroom The role of ICT in higher education

• GIS and data sources

• The undergraduate essay and the Internet

• “I started the way I normally start my essays by searching Google”

• Geographies of wikipedia

• Search skills and evaluating Internet sources – www.vts.rdn.ac.uk

Education outside the classroom – Implications from academic debates

• Undergraduate fieldwork – Internationalisation

• Geographical research into - Participation, children, space, the everyday and the body

Everyday geographiesGeographies of the home and the body

Participatory researchEmpowering through research???

Children’s geographiesHearing voices - Children’s spaces

What is education outside the classroom? (DFES Powerpoint presentation)

Key Stages 3 & 4; post 16Ages 11-19

• Learning through the National Curriculum, for example:– Geography and science field study

– Art & Design/Design & technology visits to museums, galleries, industrial sites

– Music/Drama visits to concerts & theatres

– History/RE visits to heritage sites/places of worship

– Sporting competitions & festivals; outdoor & adventurous activity as part of PE/sport

Education outside the classroom manifesto - DFES Powerpoint presentation

Key Stages 1 & 2Ages 5-11

• National Curriculum – using the world outside the classroom as a resource for learning

• Examples include:

– Exploring the natural and built environment through field work in school grounds and the local area (e.g. parks, woodland, coasts, streetscapes, places of worship) – geography, science, history, RE

– Understanding where food comes from through visits to farms and allotments; growing fruit, herbs & vegetables in the school grounds – geography, citizenship, food technology

– Understanding art and culture from around the world through paintings & artefacts at museums/galleries – art & design, design & technology, creativity, global citizenship

Education outside the classroom• “The main aim of the Manifesto is to

provide all children and young people with a variety of high quality learning experiences outside a classroom environment, whether that be during school, after school or during holidays.”

•

Education outside the classroom

• Geography 21 also builds on recent thinking about how learners engage with geography. The emphasis on the personal perspective and personal scale links with much work on assessment for learning. It is about making transparent the “what has this got to do with me?” question.

Education outside the classroom

• QCA KS3 review - Geography Subject report.

“At key stage 4, taking a lead from the QCA/OCR Pilot Geography GCSE, the focus could be, for example, on investigating issues to enable pupils to develop as informed citizens”

Education outside the classroom – acting on acadmic debates

• Children AS informed citizens “The right to vote is about the only right I don’t have”

• Understand Children’s spaces – embodied experiences, hidden from adults, spaces excluded from

• Empower pupils - Students leading during fieldwork?

• Express children's geographical and planning needs – studying the planning system or contributing to it?

A confident geography?

• Relational and imagined geographies

• An active and listening geography