Subjects to Change

Professor David LambertIoE/GA

GTE Conference, Bristol. 25-27 January 2008

Background

The curriculum in school is under intense pressure resulting in rapid and significant forces to change:

– Skills based curriculum (eg RSA Opening Minds)– Personalisation and ‘learning processes’ (eg learning

to learn, and ICTs)– From centralised to localised innovation– Closing the attainment gap– League tables

Response?

• We may welcome some of this!– Localisation and flexibility– Social justice

• But question some of the possible outcomes– Of a skills and process led curriculum?– Following the negative backwash of league tables:

– Curriculum hierarchies– Teaching to the test

Some tensions and doubts

• The values basis of the curriculum– What are its aims and purposes– Any notion of a ‘national entitlement’?

• The implications of current shifts on ‘subjects’– How are subjects understood?

• (has a ‘restricted’ view taken hold?)– The basis of new appetites for ‘integration’

Challenge (1)

To work out what the primary and secondary curriculum will look like

- Primary review this year … Subjects? Topics?

- Secondary:30% GCSE60% Diplomas10% basic skills and catch up

Reduced, skills based KS3

Challenge (2)

To work out where ‘school geography’ sits in relation to these shifting sands. We can:

– Stick to our knitting? And become an intrinsic, pure, minority pursuit

– Go for legislation! Because ‘geography is essential’– Emphasise vocational utility – maps, GIS …– Argue for extrinsic educational purpose and

contribution

Plus ca change …

“Long standing tensions between geographers and geographical educationists about the balance of:

– subject content– educational processes– social purposes (‘good causes’)”

(Marsden, B. (1997) ‘On taking the geography out of geographical education’, Geography, 82, 3, p 241-252)

Grasping Opportunities

• Curriculum making – using a conceptual approach to planning– subject leadership, with educational aims

• Gentle re-branding – ‘geo-capability’ – ‘living geography’

Aims led curriculum thinking

“What counts as an educated young person in this day and age?”

- at 7- at 11- at 14- at 16- at 19

According to the QCA: The curriculum aims to enable all young people to become

• Successful learnerswho make progress and achieve• Confident Individualswho lead safe and healthy lives• Responsible Citizens who make a positive contribution to society

Whole CurriculumSkills, Knowledge and Attributes:

• Skills; Functional Skills (Lit/Number/ICT) + Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills

• Knowledge and Understanding; Big ideas that shape the world - eg chronology, conflict, scientific method

• Attitudes and dispositions; eg determined, adaptable, learning to learn

Rethinking subjects

Some Different Aims From the Nuffield Review www.nuffield14-19review.org.uk

• To introduce ideals which inspire and are worth pursuing

• To introduce a defensible set of values which can sustain young people into the future

• To encourage the disposition to take responsibility for self, the environment and wider community

• To provide insights into the physical, moral, social, cultural and economic worlds

• To prepare young people for employment - through self knowledge, basic competences and understanding and confidence in learning

Translating aims into the curriculum(Nuffield Review)

• Entitlement to a minimum national framework

• Developing subject knowledge (serving rather than determining educational aims)

• Ensuring a range of knowledge, skills and attitudes reflecting:

– Cultural and economic change– Employability and economic prosperity– Maintaining democracy– Healthy living (physically and mentally)– Environmental sustainability– Social inclusion

The subject

• Geography – not as an end in itself but a resource in the service of educational aims

• Geography - “defined not as a collection of facts but as the state of the art conceptual frameworks of the subject” [p 242]

• That is, a distinctive disciplined enquiry

So,

What is geography?

How does geographical ‘disciplined enquiry’ contribute to the curriculum?

Engaging with young people’s curiosity: questions that can be addressed by ‘thinking geographically’

• Identity: Who am I? Where do I come from? Who is my family? What is my ‘story’? Who are the people around me? Where do they come from? What is their ‘story’?

• Place in the world: Where do I live? How does it look? How do I feel about it? How is it changing? How do I want it to change?

• The Physical world: What is the world (and this place) made of? Why do things move? What becomes of things?

• The Human world: Who decides on who gets what, and why? What is fair? How do we handle differences of opinion?

The power of geography (1)

The physical world: land, water, air and ecological systems and the processes that bring about change in them.

The human environments: societies, cities and communities and the human processes involved in understanding work, home, consumption and leisure.

Interdependence: involves, crucially, linking the ‘physical’ and ‘human’ and the emerging concept of ‘sustainable development’

The power of geography (2).

Place and space: the ‘vocabulary’ and the ‘grammar’ of the world, developing knowledge and understanding of location and interconnectedness.

Scale: the lens through which the subject matter is ‘seen’, and the significance of local, regional, national, international and global perspectives.

Pupils’ lives: using pupils’ images, experiences, meanings and questions; ‘reaching out’ to pupils as active agents in their learning. ‘

Geography is the Science of Our World

Increasingly Being Seen as a Language for

. . . Integrating. . . IntegratingWhat We KnowWhat We Know

• Understanding– Patterns– Relationships– Processes

• Conceptualizing• Modeling• Visualizing

Using Languages to Describe Our World

MathematicsMathematics

ArtArt

MusicMusic

ModelsModels

TaxonomyTaxonomyWrittenWritten

StatisticsStatistics

SoftwareSoftware

CartographyCartography

DiagramsDiagrams

PhotographyPhotography

……And Organize Our RealityAnd Organize Our Reality

They Reflect Our ExperiencesThey Reflect Our Experiences

Geography Embodies Formal Concepts, Theories, and Methods

. . . For Understanding Our World

EventsEvents

DiffusionDiffusion

ConnectivityConnectivityProcessesProcesses

PatternsPatterns

FlowsFlows

DifferentiationDifferentiation

Spatial InteractionsSpatial Interactions

ClassificationClassification

Thinking GeographicallyThinking Geographically

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KS3 Key ConceptsKS3 Key Concepts

GEOGRAPHYGEOGRAPHYScale

Place

Cultural Understanding and Diversity

Space

Inter- dependence

Physical and human

processes

Environmental interaction

and Sustainable

development

Towards ‘geo-capability’?

Geography educationists are key:

1. Demonstrating and advocating balance between- Subject content and enquiry- Educational process- Social purposes

2. Encouraging productive ‘curriculum making’ by teachers

‘Curriculum making’ ?

Focus on classrooms, and their three essential Focus on classrooms, and their three essential bundles of energy:bundles of energy:

• the students [eg curiosity]the students [eg curiosity]

• the teachers [eg pedagogy]the teachers [eg pedagogy]

• the subject [eg relevance]the subject [eg relevance]

Student Experiences

Geography: the subjectTeacher Choices

Underpinned by Key Concepts Thinking

Geographically

Learning Activity

How does this take the learner beyond what they already know?

Curriculum Making

Redressing balance

• Giving more emphasis to ‘the subject’ and ‘subject leadership’

• Giving less emphasis to the ‘technologies of teaching’

• Spending more time with aims and purposes

Goal

Is it possible to imagine the school subject discipline (geography) as a resource to underpin productive, critical debate with young people about ‘how to live’?

Are the tenets of Living Geography (LG) helpful in this?And Young People’s Geographies (YPG)?

Living Geography ...

• embraces young people’s geographies• is current and ‘futures’ oriented • is often ‘local’ but always set in wider (global)

contexts • investigates changing environments (physical

and human change processes)• encourages a critical understanding of big ideas

like ‘sustainable development’

Young People’s Geography …

A YPG curriculum will:

– be planned through dialogue: between teachers, young people, teacher educators and academic geographers

– draw from young people’s everyday experiences– extend the way that young people are involved in, and

can directly influence, the curriculum– emphasise dialogic pedagogies– enable young people to use their capacity to think

geographically when encountering the world

Geo-capability

• What do we want this to evoke?

• How can we best express this?

Geo-capability

• What do we want this to evoke?– ‘world-awareness’ – space-perspective– futures-orientation

• How can we best express this?

Geo-capability

• What do we want this to evoke?– ‘world-awareness’ – space-perspective– futures-orientation

• How can we best express this?– KUSV?