Assessment in secondary geography

# 1 What does it mean to make progress in geography?

As a teacher, it is your responsibility to help students to make progress in learning but what exactly constitutes progress?

## Activity 1 Defining progress

Allow about 10 minutes

- Thinking about your own geographical learning and that of students, how would you define progress?
- Can you identify and explain any difficulties in ‘pinning down’ exactly what progression means?
- Are you aware of other educational stakeholders who would define progress in different ways? If so:
  1. Who are they?
  2. What are their criteria?
  3. Why do they differ?

Jot down your thoughts before reading on.

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Taylor (2013, p. 302) notes:

> Learning involves change in someone’s knowledge, understanding, skills or attitudes (and the meaning of each of those terms and the relationship between them is complex and contested), but a neutral idea of ‘change’ is not good enough. The change must be seen as valuable, as moving in a positive direction, as progress.

This raises the question: who decides what is valuable? The learner, the teacher, parents, schools, examination boards, government departments or regulators? Different stakeholders have different ideologies. In a subject as broad as geography, what is valued by one person might not be by another. The emphasis placed on knowledge, understanding, skills and attitudes varies. Geography is also dynamic and continually under construction, so the valued elements also change over time.

OpenLearn - Assessment in secondary geography
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