Questions
children ask
Dr Stephen
Scoffham
Faculty of Education,
Canterbury Christ Church University
Geographical Association Annual
Conference
University of Derby
April 5th 2013
Total number of children
134
Total number of boys
58
Total number of girls
76
Redcar
Blackburn
Grantham
Oxford
London
Very varied catchment
areas
All children aged 9-10
Questionnaire
What questions do you want to ask about the world and
your surroundings? Think carefully and write down no
more than six questions in the space below.
You might want to think about these themes
Weather, rivers, seas, oceans
Continents and oceans
Natural disasters
Towns, cities and peoples lives
Food and transport
The environment/creatures
Britain/Your own area
Other countries
Planet Earth
Maps
Are you a boy or girl? How old are you?
Analysis categories
(a) School
(b) Gender
(c) Themes
(d) Times asked
(e) Question type
(f) Place names
There were a total of 587
question of which 528
related to geography
Comparison by school and gender
• In general terms the same themes occurred in all five samples
• Influence of previous travel experience and teaching were
apparent
• There was evidence of some clustering eg a group of boys in
one class asked a lot of questions about death and disasters
• The influence of the Japanese tsunami was strikingly apparent
and certainly underlies the frequency of questions about
natural hazards
• There were no obvious difference between boys and girls
Questions grouped by theme or topic
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Earth in
space
Hazards
People
Countries Animals
Weather
Rivers Mountains
and Seas
Top Ten Questions about The World
How hot is lava?
How do earthquakes happen?
Why does it rain?
What is the biggest sea/ocean?
What is the biggest mountain?
Why is the world round?
How many animals are there?
How big is our planet?
How many countries are there?
How many people are there?
0
5
10
15
20
25
Question Types
Factual questions
How big is our planet?
How many continents are there?
Is there a core in the middle of the
Earth?
Process questions
How was the Earth made?
Why does it rain?
Is there a way of stopping natural
disasters?
Existential questions
Why is there a sun and a moon?
Why does the world turn round?
Can you touch the clouds?
Anthropomorphic Questions
•
•
•
•
•
•
Who built the first mountains? (x3)
How are rivers made?
How do you cause a hurricane?
Who invented water?
Why was the world created?
How was the Earth made?
Places named by children in their questions
United Kingdom
World countries
Others
England 10
Britain 5
Redcar 3
London 3
Blackpool 1
Blackburn 1
Isle of Man 1
UK 1
India 4
Japan 3
Russia 2
South Africa 2
Australia 2
Iceland 2
Finland 1
Jamaica 1
New Zealand 1
USA 1
China 1
Antarctica 6
Amazon 3
Pacific Ocean 3
North Pole 2
River Nile 2
Greenland 1
Lake Victoria 1
Equator 1
Himalayas 1
Mt Everest 1
New York 1
Total 19
Total 21
Total 25
“Taking part in the research has really made me
think about facts; we don’t particularly focus on
facts because of our cross curricular approach,
however the boys seem to love learning them
It has also confirmed the value of fieldwork; this is
the first school I have worked in where there are
‘big’ resources just around the corner ie beach,
sand dunes, cliffs. All the visits we have done have
lasted about 40 minutes but they have clearly
made quite a big impression.
Conclusions and Summary
• Considerable number of questions to do with physical
geography especially Earth in space
• Surprising number of ‘how’ and ‘what’ questions
• The number of questions about distant places as
opposed to a parochial ‘everyday geography’
• The danger of geography becoming a Disney style
chronicle of disasters
• The importance of encouraging children to ask
questions even when we don’t know the answers
Further thoughts
Questions are one of the
‘learning muscles’ we develop
as we seek to develop our
intelligence
(Lucas and Claxton 2011)
Children are ‘expert
witnesses’ in the
process of curriculum
reform and it would
be ‘indefensible’ to
ignore their views
(Alexander 2010 p143)
Geography provokes
and answers
questions about the
natural and human
worlds using different
scales of enquiry…
(DfEE/QCA 1999)
Children are to be viewed as
contributors to our shared
knowledge and understanding of the
world rather than as recipients and
shared ‘beneficiaries of ‘hand-medown curricula
(Catling and Martin 2011)
References
Alexander, R. (Ed) (2010) Children, Their World, Their Education,
London: Routledge
Catling, C. and Martin, F. (2011) ‘Contesting powerful knowledge: The
primary geography curriculum as an articulation between
academic and children’s (ethno-) geographies’ in The Curriculum
Journal 22, 3 pp317-335
DfEE/QCA (2000) The National Curriculum, London: Crown
Lucas and Claxton (2011) New Kinds of Smart, Maidenhead: Open
University
Scoffham, S. (2013) ‘A Question of Research’ in Primary Geography
No 80 pp16-17
Contact: stephen.scoffham@canterbury.ac.uk