What should we be teaching?
Dr Grant Kleeman
Senior Lecturer in Education
Macquarie University – Sydney
Geography: What should we be teaching?
Presentation structure:
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The nature of curriculum
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Key considerations/issues
•
A personal view
•
Discussion
“As a young man, my fondest dream was to become a geographer. However, while working in the
customs office I thought deeply about the matter and concluded it was too difficult a subject. With some
reluctance I then turned to physics as a substitute.”
Albert Einstein
The nature of
curriculum
Underlying assumptions
Geography curriculum documents, through their
content and form, represent a particular construction
of reality – the means by which a subset of all
available geographical knowledge is selected and
organised. They embody what Williams (1977)
refers to as the “selective tradition” – someone’s
selection, someone’s vision of legitimate knowledge
and culture, one that in the process of enfranchising
one group’s cultural capital disenfranchises
another’s.
Syllabuses as “settlements of
contestation”
Curriculum-related documents are the product of a
series of trade-offs and compromises between
competing positions and interests. They represent a
consensus or ‘settlements of contestations’. There are
– embedded in their underlying philosophy, their
structure and wording – ‘echoes’ or traces of the
debates and, in some cases, conflicts that characterise
the curriculum development process.
Thus:
• curriculum does not stand apart from the era
and context in which it is developed
• syllabus documents can be viewed as social
and political artifacts, an analysis of which
will reveal the social political power
struggles that underpin their construction
• the process of curriculum construction is
both complex and multidimensional
Why does it matter? – Issues of
identity
Moore (2000) is among those who stress the link
between the selection of curriculum content and identity
with the former seen as being inextricably linked to
competing representations of the nation and its heritage.
Identity in this context refers to
the ways in which people define
themselves individually and
collectively.
What we know, affects
who we are (or are
perceived to be).
Curriculum related controversies are becoming increasingly
common – politicization of the curriculum – especially by those
attracted to notions of social reconstructionism.
Shifts in curriculum thinking
(As noted by Andy Hargreaves)
1970s
High degree of teacher discretion, choice
and autonomy
1979 –1990s
Schools torn between the age of autonomy
and the emerging top-down, standards
driven, agenda
Result: Schools are increasingly preoccupied with testing rather
than learning.
But! “Spaces of resistance spread, cynicism thrives and
nostalgia pervades” Nick Hutchinson.
KEY CONSIDERATIONS/ISSUES
Key considerations/issues
To what extent should content be prescribed?
– Content prescription versus teacher developed curriculum
– Tendency towards greater prescription – driven by testing
regimes and accountability mechanisms
– How do we avoid curriculum inertia if we opt for less
prescription?
How is content to be organised?
– Aims/objectives based
– Outcomes-based – A curriculum focused and organised around clearly
defined outcomes that students are expected to demonstrate on completion.
Based on the assumption that there are a variety of ways in which students
can demonstrate a mastery of content
– Thematically-based (for example, ‘environments and communities’)
– Conceptually-based (broad conceptual framework incorporating ideas such
the interconnectedness of physical and human environments, place and
place, scale, process, change, globalisation, ecological sustainability etc.)
– The use of key questions
Selected curriculum construct
• Relevance/importance statement
• ‘Big ideas’ – provide the syllabus’s conceptual framework
• Key processes in Geography – skills-based syllabus
outcomes
• Curriculum development criteria – this section provides
guidance in terms of pupils’ experience/breadth of
study/context.
• Attainment targets ( a standards framework)
Key considerations/issues
How do we accommodate the demands of marginalised and disadvantaged groups
for a more inclusive set of curriculum arrangements?
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•
Content relevant to the experience and interests of marginalised and
disadvantaged groups – problematic
Mandated curriculum perspectives
The National Geography Standards (1994) – developed jointly by the National
Council for Geographic Education and the National Geographic Society – defines
perspectives as “points of view” and “ways of looking at the world”.
“[A perspective] is one point of view among many competing ways of interpreting
the meanings and experiences, events, places, persons, cultures, and physical
environments. Having a perspective means looking at our world through a lens
shaped by personal experience, selective information, and subjective evaluation. A
perspective provides a frame of reference for asking and answering questions,
identifying and solving problems, and identifying the consequences of alternative
actions. It is essential to be aware that many perspectives exist and that learning to
understand the world from many points of view enhances our knowledge and skills.
(National Geographic Research and Exploration. Geography for Life: National
Geography Standards, 1994, p. 57).
Geography syllabus
documents in New South
Wales define perspectives
as: “a way of viewing the
world, the people in it and
their relationship to each
other and with their
environments.”
In practice, this means that
people will describe and
explain geographical issues,
features and processes
differently.
The perspectives or points of
view a person holds will be
influenced by a range of
factors. These factors
include age, gender, level of
education, cultural and
ethnic background and
socioeconomic status (class).
Key considerations/issues
What should be the ‘entry point’ of study – the geographical process or issue?
How do we get the right balance between physical and human geography?
The ‘relevance revolution’ of the
1980s resulted in an increased
focuses on geographical issues.
Has this been at the expense of
students’ understanding and
appreciation of geographical
processes?
Geographical processes:
– wind and water erosion
– land clearing/habitat destruction
– soil structure decline
– salinity (types and causes)
– water cycle – water table, infiltration,
Issue: Land degradation
Key considerations/issues
To what extent should school geography reflect developments within
academic geography?
The former tends to be ‘traditional’, narrow and prescriptive while
the later is more broad and increasingly diverse.
Key considerations/issues
To what extent should the curriculum promote or even mandate inquiry-based
methodologies?
Inquiry-based methodologies facilitate classroom discussion and debate, and
promote a deeper level of engagement with issues via critical thinking.
The term ‘critical thinking’ refers to the processes by which individuals use
reflective thinking to gather, interpret and evaluate information in order to
formulate an informed opinion or judgment.
By developing students’ critical thinking skills we enhance their ability to
identify, and perhaps challenge dominant discourses, and develop their capacity
to evaluate various alternatives. Empowered by these understandings, the
individual is better placed to act as an agent of social change, working towards
the removal of inequalities and injustices. For this reason, critical thinking is
often championed by interest groups with a progressive or reconstructionist
agenda, but opposed, often vehemently, by conservative interests who either see
such pedagogy as a threat to the status quo or as an obstacle to their own
reconstructionist objectives.
Key considerations/issues
What geographic skills are appropriate for this stage of learning?
Identified using the Skills Framework & those commonly
associated with the discipline
• Map related skills
• Fieldwork
• Graphs and statistics
• Photographs
• Information and communication technologies (ICT)
•
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Formatting, multiple-page documents containing web-links
•
Developing simple databases
•
Multimedia presentations and/or webpages
•
Website evaluation
•
Accessing, collecting and interpreting electronic information
Key considerations/issues
What (and how) do students want to learn?
Always problematic because the labelling and
social profiling of young people is ultimately
determined by discourse-dominating elites
whose own limited perspective overgeneralises
and even distorts reality.
Are, for example, all young people
“hedonistic”, “self-obsessed” and consumption
orientated? Are they “too cool for school”? Are
they brand obsessed?
Has the direction of social change been away
from the traditional values of deference to
authority and attraction to community towards
a more individualistic and self-centred set of
social arrangements? If so, what are the
implications for the selection of curriculum
content?
Greater attention needs to be
given to the lives and
experiences of young people their personal geographies.
Student interest
What is studied (content)?
-
Perceived relevance
Ideally grounded in the
students’ own life experience
Interesting – ‘a touch of the
exotic’, place specific
Related to contemporary
events where possible
How it is studied (teaching and
learning strategies, resources etc)
-
Active engagement
Challenging tasks that draw
on their desire to enquire
Opportunities to explore
alternative views, attitudes
and values
The teacher’s enthusiasm for
Geography and his/her ability to
provide ‘quality teaching’ and
learning.
Cronulla race riots a Geography of
Sydney’s racial
diversity
Globalisation: Grounding abstract geographical
concepts in the life experience of students
Key considerations/issues
How do we avoid the “doom and gloom”?
Promote a sense of optimism by including a focus on the actions of communitybased groups, NGOs and governments that seek to address the impacts of global
issues.
A personal view
Recommendations
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Adopt a conceptual framework that provides geographical leadership and
certainty while encouraging teacher autonomy (and student empowerment)
through the choice of illustrative sample/case studies
Promote an issues-based approach but strengthen the emphasis given to the
relevant geographical processes
Emphasise contemporary geographical issues at a range of scales – from the
local to global
Mandate enquiry-based methodologies especially those related to fieldwork and
critical thinking
Identify the geographical skills relevant to the stage of learning and them teach
them within context
Strengthen the spatial context of specific geographical phenomena/issues but be
mindful of the need to adopt a broader definition of what constitutes ‘spatial’ –
For example, a ‘community’ can be defined as an identifiable group interacting
on the basis of shared space and/or social organisation.
‘Content’ suggestions
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A study of the earth’s biophysical processes, especially those
fundamental to our understanding of the diversity of global
environments, contemporary environmental issues and natural
hazards/disasters.
Utilitarian physical geography – e.g. weather and climate,
ecosystem functioning
Spatial impacts of technological change
The process of economic and cultural integration (globalisation)
and its impacts
Cultural geography
The processes (and impacts) of demographic and social change
Global inequalities (including development, debt, aid and trade)
Global geographical issues (drawn from both the physical and
human environments)
The unique physical and human environments of the UK
Factors causing change in UK communities
The UK’s regional and global links
Future challenges – human rights, demographic change, global
terrorism, immigration, sustainability and environmental
management
References
Moore, R. (2000). For knowledge: Traditions, progressivism and progress in
education – reconstructing the curriculum debate. In D. Scott (Ed.). (2003),
Curriculum studies: Major themes in education. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
National Geographic Research and Exploration, Geography for Life, [American],
(1994). National Geography Standards. Washington DC: National Geographic.
New South Wales Board of Studies (1992). Geography Syllabus Years 7–10.
Sydney: New South Wales Board of Studies.
New South Wales Board of Studies (1999). Stage 6 Geography Syllabus. Sydney:
New South Wales Board of Studies.
Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.