Teaching and Learning Geography

Daniella Tilbury, Michael Williams, Daniella Tilbury, Michael Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134765904
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book provides a clear overview of current thinking on the teaching and learning of geography. It is an ideal companion to all students beginning a career in teaching the subject in secondary schools.
The chapters are written by experienced teacher educators and bridge both theory and practice. The writers focus on the continuities, whilst setting them in the context of the changing curriculum.
The book is divided into four parts. Part One examines the historical context of geography teaching. Part Two looks at issues of course planning, design, syllabuses and programmes of study. Underlying this section is the assumption that geography should not be considered in isolation from other subjects, but rather as part of a whole curriculum. Part Three concentrates on teaching and learning, and includes chapters on the use of maps, field work, IT and first hand experience within a community. The final section covers the issues associated with assessment, across the whole school age range.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Daniella Tilbury and Michael Williams

Unlike the core subjects of language, mathematics and science the place of geography in the curriculum of primary and secondary schools is relatively uncertain. In some countries the separate identity of the subject is not recognized while in others it is often squeezed into elective structures as pressures mount on the limited amount of curriculum time. In elementary and primary schools geography is sometimes included as one component of topics studied there while in secondary schools it may be integrated into courses labelled humanities, social studies or environmental education.

The focus in this book is predominantly on geography identified as a separate subject, largely within the context of schools in England and Wales. Our overall aim is to provide a clear and thorough overview of contemporary concerns in the teaching and learning of geography and to offer pointers for future developments in the subject. The National Curriculum introduced by legislation in 1988 is the obvious backcloth for the chapters and we have sought to take into account any variations which have emerged in curriculum provision between England and Wales. Even in the short period since 1988 changes have been made in the statutory requirements for curriculum content and pupil assessment. As part of a slimming-down process the status of geography has been modified, particularly for pupils aged 14–16 in Key Stage 4, and the amount of content in each of the four Key Stages has been reduced. Major alterations are also being implemented in the whole 16–19 curriculum in response to the pressure to develop vocational courses and examinations. Despite the many changes taking place in geography teaching, however, central principles and practices in teaching and learning continue to be relevant. We have sought to concentrate on the continuities while placing them within the context of the changing curriculum environment.

The historical context is the subject of the first three chapters. Initially, the focus is upon the broad sweep of the changing nature of school geography in the twentieth century. This takes into account the reorganization of state schools and the legislation and official reports which have had a major influence on geography teaching. The next chapter discusses the period since 1976, which marked the start of the ‘great debate’ about the curriculum, and emphasizes the significance of the 1988 Education Reform Act which made geography a mandatory foundation subject for pupils aged 5–16 in state schools. The tensions encountered in seeking to define the nature of the subject and the achievements in implementing the Act are considered. The final chapter in this section brings the history up to date. While, at one stage, it appeared that the Education Reform Act marked the end of a developmental process, it is now clear that further refinements are necessary. It is one thing to define mandatory subjects, but it is quite another to implement centrally defined innovations in school classrooms. Further, it must be acknowledged that the framework provided by legislation is only a framework and that there is scope for schools to design their own courses which take account of local circumstances and the special interests of pupils and teachers. Contemporary trends in primary and secondary geographical education are reviewed in the framework of aims, content, teaching methods and modes of assessment, and suggestions are made for likely changes in the future.

In Part II the authors address issues of course planning and design. The nature of school geography, distinct in many ways from geography in other sectors of education, is examined from the perspectives of its scope and of the way it is structured to take account of the developing pupil and student. It includes consideration of how courses can be designed to meet the needs of pupils with different abilities and interests. That geography should not be considered in isolation from other subjects lies at the heart of the concept of the entire curriculum. The search for coherence and continuity both in the whole curriculum and in the geography curriculum continues. A key to this is cross-curricularity. Geography teachers have been particularly active in seeking to identify the links between geography and other subjects—for example, history and science—and, indeed, there have been transfers in content between these subjects. Cross-curricularity also embraces a number of themes, dimensions and skills. These are explored in chapters about environmental and development education, economic and industrial understanding and citizenship (community understanding in Wales) and equal opportunities.

From a concern with course design, syllabuses and programmes of study we move in Part III to classroom concerns. An attempt is made to strike a balance between emphases on learning and teaching. Learning theories and teaching theories are introduced and the centrality of language in facilitating pupil learning is explored. School geography is especially concerned with mapwork, fieldwork and the use of new technologies. Each of these is given separate treatment. That geography can be studied at a number of different levels is self-evident to geographers and approaches to teaching about the local community, on the one hand, and the international community, on the other, are discussed. As contemporary political debates highlight, studying other countries and, indeed, any environmental issues is laden with controversy. Bias and propaganda, stereotyping and misinformation, are dangers of which geography teachers need always to be aware. There is also a danger in promoting a bland and uncritical neutrality. Part III concludes with an exploration of the implications of adopting a radical perspective for defining course aims, content, teaching methods and pupil assessment.

Just as the content and teaching methods associated with geography will vary as pupils and students move through the stages of schooling so do the purposes and modes of pupil assessment. Although there are certain key principles underpinning assessment in general, it is important to distinguish between the way pupils are assessed in the topic-based courses characteristic in primary schools and the subject-specialist courses typical in secondary schools and colleges. Similarly, there are fundamental distinctions between, for example, external examinations and teacher assessments and between summative and formative assessment. Recent years have witnessed the reform of assessment at all levels—statutory standard attainment tests, General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), General Certificate of Education (GCE) Advanced (A) and Advanced Supplementary (AS) levels, and General National Vocational Qualifications (GNVQs)—and these issues are reviewed in Part IV from the perspective of the geography teacher.

It is obvious from the chapters in this book that nothing in the school geographical curriculum is stable. Indeed, there never has been a period of stability in geographical education: reform and innovation are the buzz words rather than consolidation and entrenchment. Through all the changes, whether they are external or internal to the school in origin, the professionalism of individual teachers and groups of teachers in primary and secondary schools is crucial if an appropriate blend between the continuing principles underpinning good geographical education and innovations is to be achieved. It is our hope that this book will make a contribution to sustaining this professionalism and will offer some guidance to both new and experienced teachers who are charged with the task of modernizing the subject in the interest of future students and citizens.

Part I

Chapter 2
The place of geography in the school curriculum
An historical overview 1886–1976

Bill Marsden

SOME GEOGRAPHICAL ROOTS

The 1880s were an important time in the development of geography as a secondary school and university subject. In 1886, the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) commissioned the Keltic Report, the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society in Reference to the Improvement of Geographical Education. A second key publication was Halford Mackinder’s ‘On the scope and methods of geography’ (1887), published in the RGS’s journal, in which he sought to resolve the great schism between geography’s physical and political components. Both publications made it clear that geography would not establish itself in universities and secondary schools unless it acquired the status of a genuine academic discipline, which meant forsaking its previous image as a mere repository of world knowledge.

Another major authority at this time was Archibald Geikie, a Scottish geologist of commanding intellectual stature. He took a keen interest in geography, especially as a school subject. His paper to the RGS in 1879 on ‘Geographical evolution’ preceded and matched Mackinder’s in its grasp of the issues at stake. In his superb The Teaching of Geography (1887), Geikie infused his methodology with the best principles of progressive primary practice. Mackinder reviewed the book respectfully but was critical of Geikie’s incorporation of a whole range of environmental sciences into geography. More damaging for Geikie’s future influence with the geographical establishment was his refusal publicly to support justifications for geography as a separate discipline in the universities.

A critical event of the 1890s was the establishment of the Geographical Association (GA) (Balchin 1993) as a result of a group of secondary teachers joining together to exchange lantern slides. The new organization in effect took over the educational functions of the RGS, leaving the latter to concentrate on its support for world exploration and empire building. The GA was soon to produce a journal, The Geographical Teacher, which helped to seal the success of geography in establishing a place in secondary schools, and to disseminate a knowledge and understanding of the subject. Thus Mackinder’s pioneering endeavours in this quest were reinforced and achieved ultimate success. Geikie was almost forgotten and it was a Mackinder disciple, A.J. Herhertson, who was credited with establishing a new and important paradigm in geography, the regional principle. This was outlined in his famous paper of 1905 and transmitted into schools through his amazingly successful textbook Senior Geography, first appearing in 1907 and still in print in the early 1950s.

This regional paradigm represented on the face of it a great leap forward, but it was not an uncontested innovation. Two major arguments were raised against it, one academic and one pedagogic. First, it was recognized early on that the systematization of the world’s natural regions and their climatic characteristics as they affected human occupance often led to blatant determinism. During the 1920s, for example, the geographical educationist, James Fairgrieve rejected the ‘geographic control’ argument (Fairgrieve 1936:6–7). The thesis also had racist undertones, for writers were widely prone to accept the idea that climate served to determine not only human economic activity, but also human energies, attitudes and intelligence. Second, educational experts pointed out that the abstractions of the regional paradigm were unsuited to younger children, who required more vivid and smaller-scale place-based study. Herbertson himself conceded that ‘the best logical order is not necessarily the best pedagogical order’ (Herbertson 1906:281).

Another outcome, regarded then positively rather than negatively, was that the regional paradigm emerged in the heyday of imperialism. It was instantly recognized by Newbigin (1914) and others of her generation that one great advantage of the climatic regions approach was that there was a bit of the British Empire in each major region. Thus in restricting the selection of areas to be covered in order to avoid excessive pressure on the timetable, priority could be given to imperial places. Textbooks focusing on the British Empire and, after World War II, on the Commonwealth, appeared in large numbers. Many of the great names in British geography also, such as Freshfield (1886), Mackinder (1911) and Fairgrieve (1924), were unashamed imperialists, averring that it was not only the right but also the duty of geography, even at the cost of scientific distortion, to give priority to the study of Britain and its Empire.

EXTERNAL SUPPORT FOR GEOGRAPHY IN THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM

This section will draw on official reports and consultative documents, and on generic texts in educational methodology which, like geographical sources, generally justified the subject’s claims for a place in primary and secondary curricula.

Let us begin with two key progressive figures in primary education. One was the former HMI Edmond Holmes, who, after his retirement, launched a contemptuous attack on mechanical teaching, as practised in subjects such as elementary geography. But the attack was not, as later progressive disciples were to infer, on subject-teaching as such. Genuine knowledge, as he conceived it, was above all conceptual, something very different from factual recall. The memorization of geographical information ‘is easily converted into knowledge of these facts, but it is not easily converted into knowledge of geography’ (Holmes 1911:90).

John Dewey similarly stressed that the key issue in promoting a progressive primary education was not through the polarization of child—and subjectcentredness as incompatibles, but was much more to do with ensuring that the valuable and distinctive contributions of subjects such as geography and history were not polluted by didactic and mechanical teaching (Dewey 1916:211).

In general, official reports on both primary and secondary curricula subsequently supported the case for geography (see Williams 1976). The Hadow Reports, for example, made cogent pleas for a well-taught geography. Thus, The Education of the Adolescent (Board of Education 1926) urged that the case for geography in post-primary education needed ‘little arguing’. The subject should ‘occupy no subsidiary or doubtful place’, whether on utilitarian grounds, as ‘an instrument of education’, or as being appealing to children. The main objective should not be merely to accumulate information, but to develop ‘an attitude of mind and a mode of thought characteristic of the subject’ (ibid. 203–4).

The Primary School (Board of Education 1931) was subsequendy hijacked and misused by progressive ideologues, who claimed that in its support for progressive methods it argued against the use of subject approaches in the primary school. The essence of Hadow’s thesis, however, was that it was the traditional, didactic, grammar school-type methods of teaching subjects that were not appropriate, rather than the subject inputs themselves. While subjects as such should not be given priority, especially in the early years, and while the qualification was made that such work should not be merely a preparation for stages yet to come, Hadow included a three—and—a-half-page section on geography which began, ‘Work in the primary school in geography, as in other subjects, must be thought of in terms of activity and experience, rather than of knowledge to be acquired and facts to be stored’ (ibid. 171).

The Spens Report of 1938 on Secondary Education would seem to have accepted as read the case for geography. It was more concerned with the actual nature of the offering, which it saw as giving:

a conception of the world and of its diverse environments and peoples, which should enable boys and girls to see social and political problems in a truer perspective, and give them sympathetic understanding of other peoples. For the older pupils a comprehensive scheme of world-study …can offer scope for the consideration of vital problems bearing on social, economic and political life.

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Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• LIST OF FIGURES
• LIST OF TABLES
• NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
• LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
• CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
• PART I
• PART II
• PART III
• PART IV