Geography 3-11

A Guide for Teachers

Hilary Cooper, Simon Asquith, Chris Rowley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781843124214
• eBook ISBN: 9781136783098
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The advent of the National Primary Strategy has produced a welcome reminder to teachers of the importance of geography within the primary curriculum. This book aims to encourage this renewed awareness and to support teachers in teaching primary geography in different and exciting ways. It will show that children have an entitlement to learn about geography and this can be achieved in a lively, creative fashion uplifting for both teachers and children. It covers:

• planning for and assessing progression in learning
• inclusion
• ICT and drama
• indoors, outdoors and beyond.

Written in association with the Geographical Association, this book will help both trainee and experienced teachers to integrate geography as an essential part of the primary curriculum.

CHAPTER

1 Theory, practice and research: a rationale for primary geography and overview of recent developments

Simon Asquith

THIS BOOK, GEOGRAPHY 3–11, reflects and projects a passion for a strong geographical and environmental education for all children in primary and the early years.

The book’s authoring team share a belief that an understanding of relationships between each one of us and the places with which we interact are key to being a successful human being in a sustainable world. The authors share a view that children must want to enquire into their world and that they must challenge themselves and the values that they and others hold that impact on people and places. The better children know their world, the better the child will be and the better the world for it. We therefore need teachers to want to teach geography.

In putting such a book together, the authors have recognised the great challenge facing geography as a subject when contextualised in formal curricula as evident in schools. It is a fundamental tenet of this book that the Primary National Strategy and associated national refocusing on the breadth of the curriculum are providing the context for an exploration of creative, value-based, enquiry-focused and challenging geography for children from the Foundation Stage to the end of Key Stage 2. The book recognises what we know of the ways that children learn and it seats geographical and environmental education within wider, holistic approaches to child development and within notions of an integrated approach to the curriculum. There is a critical recognition that geography comes alive when the learner has ownership of their learning and when the enquiry is powered forward by the learner’s own needs and desires to make sense of their world.

Primary geography – a time of opportunity

Some exciting reawakenings can be observed among those who teach and commentate on geographical education in England and the wider UK. Recent developments in joining up thinkers, researchers, educational leaders and those who provide curriculum support and teacher development have been increasingly generating a new dawn placing the child back at the centre of geographical learning. Ongoing discussion about the future of geography and other subjects is providing a new focus at the national level.

This book comes at a time of great opportunity for early years and primary geography. Discussion about subject boundaries, and therefore of the ‘worth’ or relative importance of sometimes competing subject areas, is enjoying a revival and curriculum and learning and teaching debate is increasingly flourishing from the individual school or setting level to the national. Geography stands surer than ever of its vital place in the curriculum and is learning hard lessons that have helped it recognise more of how a truly effective geographical and environmental education is actually gained. The following chapters aim to illustrate a range of approaches that will contribute to such an education.

A context for this book

The book is informed by and founded on the Geographical Association’s Primary Geography Handbook, published in 2004 and edited by Stephen Scoffham (Scoffham 2004). This highly valuable ‘manual’ follows and builds upon an earlier, equally important volume edited by Roger Carter (Carter 1998). Both of these handbooks were written by a team of volunteer experts from the world of primary geography.

It is hoped that the chapters that follow complement and extend the various sections of the most recent Handbook and that they link where possible with practical examples drawn from active classroom and field practitioners.

Chris Rowley, in Chapter 2, focuses on children and geographical enquiry, linking us to Handbook chapters on ‘Geographies and learning’ and more specifically to the Handbook chapter ‘Geographical Enquiry and Investigations’ (Dinkele 2004). John Goodwin considers, in Chapter 3, how effective planning is seated in progression in geographical learning, making clear links with the Handbook’s chapter ‘Planning the Geography Curriculum’ (Richardson 2004a).

Fieldwork is celebrated as a vital learning and teaching approach in Chapter 4 when Chris Buxton demonstrates links between fieldwork and geographical education for a sustainable world. Themes from a number of Handbook chapters are reflected here with the most obvious link being to the dedicated chapter on field-work in the ‘Geographical Skills’ section (Richardson 2004b). Drama is presented as a creative approach in Chapter 5, with reference into the need for children to learn in an active way and one that delivers real engagement. Here, Nigel Toye and Denise Evans extend lines of argument put forward in a number of chapters, including, very notably, that on ‘Geography and the Emotions’ (Tanner 2004).

Justine Slaymaker explores the inclusion of all children in a geographical education in Chapter 6, with clear links to the Handbook’s chapter ‘Geography, Inclusion and Special Needs’ (Blow 2004) and the global dimension, introduced in Chapter 7 by Sophie Mackay, Gina Mullarkey and Vimala John perfectly complements Mary Young’s Handbook chapter, ‘Geography and the Global Dimension’ (Young 2004).

Three authors explore geography’s place within an integrated curriculum in Chapters 8 and 9 which focus on the Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1, followed by an overview of KS2 from Hilary Cooper (Chapter 10). Jan Ashbridge considers Foundation Stage geography in Chapter 8, with obvious links into to the Handbook chapter ‘Young Children Making Sense of their Place in the World’ (Martin and Owens 2004) and this examination continues into and through Key Stage 1 as covered by Kevin and Kath Langley-Hamel in Chapter 9.

Neil Simco concludes the book (Chapter 11) with a reflective chapter built on discussions with the book’s authoring team and on the journey that they have taken in preparing the work. This helps him return to the theme of the teacher in the primary school and the early years and the wider contexts of enabling meaningful pupil enquiry-based learning, of realising an integrated curriculum that recognises holistic approaches to children’s learning, of value-laden approaches and of the importance of learning in each child’s ‘real world’.

Chapters identify key questions arising out of the curriculum as framed by the National Curriculum for Geography (DfEE/QCA 1999), the Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage (DfEE/QCA 2000) or the Primary National Strategy (DfES 2003) and link these key questions to the Handbook. Where possible, authors illustrate with real examples from the classroom or field, aiming to share approaches that demonstrate good contemporary and often innovative practice.

This book takes for granted that the Geographical Association’s Handbook is an essential reference for any teacher leading geography as a subject in the primary school or the ‘Knowledge and Understanding of the World’ area of learning in the Foundation Stage.

A primary geography curriculum

Geography has a long-established ‘place’ in the curriculum. Subject proponents point to its specific areas on offer with reference to life skills, world knowledge and people and places. Geography offers description and interpretation of our surroundings, whether local to us or more distant (Scoffham 2004) and is a pivotal subject with respect children’s learning about environmental sustainability, global citizenship and diversity.

In 1993 Patrick Wiegand told us that ‘Geography is good for you. It has a potentially significant role in creating a better world’ (Wiegand 1993: 1). Simon Catling closes his chapter in the Geographical Association’s Primary Geography Handbook by suggesting that

The vital role of geography in the early years and primary curriculum is to support and enable the development of informed, concerned and responsible members of the local and global community, whose sense of wonder, interest in and fascination with the world about them leads to active engagement in sustaining and improving people’s lives in their own places, other environments and across the wider world.

(Catling 2004a: 91)

Geography’s greatest claim to a ‘place’ in the curriculum of young learners is therefore, that as they learn about people in places, children are also learning to be people in places (Blyth and Krause 1995) and that as they are doing this values such as international understanding, environmental concern and awareness of the interdependent nature of the world (Martin 1995) can develop seated in a growing self-knowledge and awareness. Authors of chapters in this book advocate a curriculum whereby children engage in affective learning through geographical enquiry, a notion highlighted by subject experts drawn together by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) as a part of their ‘Futures’ thinking. Increasingly the agenda is returning to learning through children’s own experiences, their active and critical involvement in environmental issues and their political and emotional literacy in issues-based enquiry (QCA 2005a).

As with any subject, it is interesting to plot changing emphasis according to Zeitgeist. In 1992 one list cited geographical education, world studies, the European dimension in education, development education, multicultural education, environment education, human rights education, peace education and citizenship as key initiatives within place study, each in turn spawning individual networks (Wiegand 1992). Since then there has been an inevitable waxing and waning of some of these and an amalgamation of others. Citizenship has become a non-statutory National Curriculum subject at primary. Education for Sustainable Development has attracted recognition as an ‘approach’ by the QCA and is mapped within and across the National Curriculum, including the Geography orders (DfEE/QCA 1999).

Earlier ‘traditions’ within geog...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• About the contributors
• ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ by Lewis Carroll
• Chapter 1 Theory, practice and research A rationale for primary geography and overview of recent developments
• Section 1 Planning and assessment
• Section 2 Concepts of place
• Section 3 Inclusion and the global dimension
• Section 4 Values, enquiries and cross-curricular approaches
• Index