Subjects to Change Professor David Lambert Io EGA

Subjects to Change Professor David Lambert Io. E/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% GCSE 60% Diplomas 10% basic skills and catch up Reduced, skills based KS 3

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 learners who make progress and achieve • Confident Individuals who lead safe and healthy lives • Responsible Citizens who make a positive contribution to society

Whole Curriculum Skills, 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. nuffield 14 -19 review. 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 • Understanding – Patterns – Relationships – Processes • Conceptualizing • Modeling • Visualizing . . . Integrating What We Know

Using Languages to Describe Our World They Reflect Our Experiences Mathematics Models Photography Cartography Taxonomy Written Music Software Statistics Art Diagrams …And Organize Our Reality

Geography Embodies Formal Concepts, Theories, and Methods Flows Classification Differentiation Patterns Diffusion Events Spatial Interactions Processes Connectivity . . . For Understanding Our World

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KS 3 Key Concepts Space Cultural Understanding and Diversity Place GEOGRAPHY Scale Environmental interaction and Sustainable development Interdependence Physical and human processes

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 bundles of energy: • the students [eg curiosity] • the teachers [eg pedagogy] • the subject [eg relevance]

Curriculum Making How does this take the learner beyond what they already know? Teacher Choices Underpinned by Key Concepts Student Experiences Learning Activity Geography: the subject Thinking Geographically

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