Teaching secondary geography

Introduction

Introduction

This free course, Teaching secondary geography, is designed for people who are learning to be a teacher, are in their first few years of teaching, or who are working in an educational setting. It identifies and explores some of the key issues around teaching geography in secondary schools. Engaging with these issues and debates will help you to reflect upon and develop your practice as a geography teacher. You will also develop a greater awareness of the wider context of geography education and how this affects geography in the secondary school curriculum.

Section 1 examines how students learn geography, discussing the role of concepts and ‘thinking geographically’. The second section explores how students can be engaged in geography, focusing on the use of enquiry and young people’s geographies to support learning. Section 3 discusses creativity in geography. The final section explores opportunities and challenges related to teaching controversial issues.

This course is based on a learner-centred approach to teaching, which is underpinned by a constructivist view of learning – that learners construct knowledge and understanding for themselves through activities and experiences.

Now listen to an introduction to this course by Gary Spruce:

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Introduction to Teaching secondary geography by Gary Spruce.

Gary Spruce

School geography offers fabulous opportunities to help young people to better understand their immediate environment and the wider world and your teaching practice to support them, enabling them to develop an awareness of their place in the world.

This unit is primarily for secondary school geography teachers at the beginning of their careers. It takes a learner-centred approach and looks at some key ideas and concepts you can use to inform your actions in the classroom.

It explores geographical concepts and considers why you should encourage and support students as they develop their own conceptual frameworks. It outlines opportunities for you to increase student autonomy, make learning more directly relevant to young people through a curriculum of engagement and deliver creative approaches to teaching and learning.

Finally, the role of values and the significance of controversial issues in geography are discussed.

I hope you find it interesting and useful.

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As you work through the activities you will be encouraged to record your thoughts on an idea, an issue or a reading, and how they relate to your practice. Hopefully you will have the opportunity to discuss your ideas with colleagues. We therefore suggest that you use a notebook – either physical or electronic – to record your thoughts in a way in which they can easily be retrieved and re-visited. If you prefer, however, you can record your ideas in response boxes in the course – in this case, in order to retrieve your responses you will need to log on to the course.

This OpenLearn course is part of a collection of Open University short courses for teachers and student teachers.

Learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• outline the nature of geographical concepts and the enquiry approach, and explain their significance in geographical learning

• explain modes of creativity and the stages of the ‘creative’ process in geographical teaching and learning

• define controversial issues and explain their significance in geographical education

• relate personal views of teaching and learning to those presented

• use different resources and approaches to support students’ learning.

1 How do young people learn about geography?

If you asked a selection of adults or young people to tell you what ‘learning geography’ involves what do you think they would say?

Many people see geography as a subject concerned with remembering the names of places and landforms, and learning about human and physical processes responsible for the world around us. There is a common perception that geographers learn ‘the facts’, present them in maps, hydrographs, pie charts and ‘do fieldwork’. Many will restrict their comments to what is taught in school. Think for a moment of all the ‘out-of-school geography’ that students will have encountered over the last few weeks.

Within the geography community there has long been a lively debate about the nature of geographical knowledge with views including, for example, those of:

• positivists (reality exists independently of what anyone knows, thinks or believes, fitting with many stereotypes of what learning geography involves)
• social constructivists (all geographical knowledge is constructed)
• social realists (some objective ‘facts’ about the world exist and some knowledge is constructed).

Positivists argue for a ‘traditional’ content-driven, socially conservative curriculum in which knowledge is fixed and the objective is to induct the learner into the dominant knowledge traditions (Firth, 2013, p. 64). By contrast, what vexes constructivists and realists is how best to help learners to develop structures and processes so that they can effectively make sense of the massive amount of geographical information available to them, pose questions, investigate issues, generate their own data and formulate and articulate their own opinions. Your view of geography matters in terms of what and how you teach. Furthermore the opinions of students will affect what and how they learn.

Teaching approaches such as conceptual learning and thinking through geography, geographical enquiry, supporting creativity and classroom talk are influenced by learning theories. If you are unfamiliar with learning theories, a brief explanation of four learning theories can be found within this OpenLearn course, Exploring children’s learning , and a longer exploration in this OpenLearn course, Secondary learning . Reflecting upon how students learn geography and how they can ‘think geographically’ will help you to plan your teaching and to support their learning.

1.1 Concepts in geography

Learning geography requires students to achieve ‘an understanding of geographical concepts and ideas. It is also about developing the intellectual structures which young people need to understand and process geographical information and progress in their learning’ (Geographical Association, 2014).

Lambert (2011) has suggested that geography teachers can usefully distinguish between:

• core knowledge (world knowledge or vocabulary of geography)
• content knowledge (key concepts or grammar of geography)
• procedural knowledge (thinking geographically and distinctly geographical approaches to learning such as enquiry).

Core knowledge or context is important but where ‘thinking geographically’ (using and linking concepts) is a learning outcome, students develop the structures and skills to progress their own learning. Rather than ‘covering’ the subject, teachers support young people to develop conceptual understanding to organise, link, interpret and question geographical content. Students can link everyday experience with higher-level geographical thinking, develop explanations and think abstractly. Their own experiences and out-of-school or informal learning can be valued and integrated into their formal, school-based learning. In these ways the ‘curriculum becomes one of “engagement” rather than one of “compliance”’ (Geographical Association, 2012). More on this in Section 2.

Figure 1 Students working together

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A group of students working together

Figure 1 Students working together

1.2 Contested concepts in geography

Lambert and Morgan (2010, p. xi) issue some health warnings with regard to concepts: they ‘see concepts as sites of contestation’, observing that they are likely to have ‘multiple meanings that cannot be reduced to a single straightforward definition’. They observe that ‘Geography is a discipline that involves creating concepts in response to changes in the natural world’. Equally in a dynamic subject some concepts, such as regional geography, fall out of favour only to re-emerge again.

It is important to be aware of the contested nature of concepts. Be alert to alternative ways of thinking as you research topics and as you teach. Encourage students to develop, explain and question their own geographical conceptualisations and those of others. Have strategies to elicit and address misconceptions.

1.3 Summary

Many teachers and teacher educators have sought to explore and extend conceptual development in school geography. Brooks (2013, p. 86) argues that progress may be undermined by shifts in curricula and examination specifications from a conceptual approach to one that prioritises core knowledge. She argues that how teachers see the relationship between content (vocabulary) and concepts (grammar) will determine how they teach. Like Lambert (2011), Brooks advocates an approach that distinguishes between but integrates world knowledge, key concepts and procedural knowledge. You will have to determine which geographical concepts you wish to focus on, how best to help students to understand these concepts and how to support them as they develop their own conceptual frameworks.

2 How can young people be engaged in geography?

A ‘curriculum of engagement’ and a mix of teaching strategies that cater for diverse needs can motivate students. This section explores opportunities and challenges related to enquiry learning and Young People’s Geographies. These approaches can demonstrate the relevance of geography, thereby helping to engage students. Creativity and teaching controversial issues will also help to motivate and engage students and are discussed in Sections 3 and 4, respectively.

2.1 Using an enquiry approach

In geography, there are a range of opinions about what an enquiry approach to learning means. Roberts (2003, p. 37) states that ‘an enquiry approach to learning recognises that knowledge is not something “out there” ready to be learnt; it is generated in the process of answering questions’.

Activity 4 allows you to look at geographical enquiry in more depth.

Activity 4 Geographical enquiry

Timing: Allow about 1 hour

Part 1

Listen to the teacher explaining his experience of enquiry-based learning.

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Enquiry-based learning

John

I think enquiry-based learning which is, I suppose, a relatively new way of approaching the subject, has been favourite for us for a number of reasons. From pupil motivation points of view, the children are always finding out for themselves – they're not being told information. Most of the time I'm not inculcating information – I'm providing the resources and allowing the pupils to find out for themselves. It improves their motivation. We think the outcomes are certainly better. We think it also means that they're not predictable in that there's not only one right answer. If they're doing enquiry work they may come up with ideas and answers which I hadn't considered. And I think that's within their overall development a very good thing, and it does also mean, however, that there is a certain degree of risk attached because the outcomes are to that extent unpredictable.

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Part 2

Read through Geographical enquiry (Roberts, 2010). On page 6 she says:

how people understand geographical enquiry is influenced by their own personal biographies, the ways they have encountered enquiry through their study of geography.

Reflect upon how your ‘biography’ has influenced your understanding of the objectives, operation and outcomes of enquiry-based learning.

Make three lists or a mindmap to identify the following:

• examples of how your own educational experience was similar to the approach advocated by Margaret Roberts
• examples from your own teaching or teaching you have observed
• the features of the enquiry approach to learning that will promote engagement.

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If your own experiences do not seem to match up with an enquiry approach, consider ways in which the learning and teaching could be adapted to focus and build on students’ curiosity and questions. Provide some examples.

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Part 3

Roberts (2010, p. 7) states:

I think of geographical enquiry as an approach to learning that accepts that knowledge has been constructed and prioritises the need for students to make sense of things for themselves – an approach which could include individual projects. I do not see it as an optional approach, to be used occasionally.

What challenges have you experienced, or do you foresee, in embedding the enquiry approach to learning rather than using it only occasionally?

How might you overcome these?

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Part 4

There are many examples of resources made by teachers. Web-based enquiries can be seen at Staffordshire Learning Net (SLN). These aim to develop ‘critical literacy’ by encouraging students to question the validity of the information they retrieve. They are written to encourage students to ask the following:

• What is the source of information?
• What is the purpose of that information?
• What is the motivation?
• Who is represented? Who isn’t represented?
• How does the website persuade us?
• Are there alternative views?

Spend some time reviewing the SLN resources.

• How far and in what ways do they fit with your ideas and those of Roberts (2010) about an enquiry approach to learning?
• How could you use and adapt them?
• If you were to design a web-based enquiry, would you use the same questions? What topic would you choose?

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An enquiry approach, as understood by Roberts, includes four important aspects:

1. creating a need to know
2. using data
3. making sense
4. reflecting on learning (Figure 2).

It fits with a constructivist understanding of learning. Learners build on ideas they already have in order to question, understand and internalise new information (Ferretti, 2013, p. 105), interrelating, reinterpreting and trying to understand new experiences and ideas.

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Figure 2 Learning through enquiry (Roberts, 2003, p. 44)

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The box and arrow diagram has four boxes arranged in a square pattern, showing four stages of learning through enquiry. Firstly, the top left-hand side box is entitled ‘Creating a need to know, to’. Underneath the title there are 9 bullet points listing related activities: be curious, speculate, hypothesise, use imagination, generate ideas, make links with existing knowledge, identify issues, ask questions and finally plan how to research.

An arrow points to the second box on the top right-hand side of the diagram. The box has the title ‘Using data’. Underneath the title there are 6 bullet points listing related activities: locate evidence, collect evidence, select evidence, sort data, classify data and sequence data.

An arrow points to the third box on the bottom right-hand side of the diagram. The box has the title ‘Making sense: to make connections of all sorts, including to’. Underneath the title there are 11 bullet points listing related activities: relate existing knowledge to new knowledge, describe, explain, compare, contrast, analyse, interpret, recognise relationships, analyse values, clarify values and reach conclusions.

An arrow points to the fourth box on the bottom left-hand side of the diagram. The box has the title ‘Reflecting on learning: to be critical in relation to’. Underneath the title there are 9 bullet points listing aspects about which learners should be critical: data sources, skills and techniques used, criteria for making judgements, opinions, what has been learned, how it has been learned, how the enquiry could be improved, how the enquiry could be further developed, the value of what has been learned.

An arrow points to the first box on the top left-hand side of the diagram (the first one described in this text). The arrow has text alongside it, which reads ‘applying what has been learned to the next enquiry’.

Figure 2 Learning through enquiry (Roberts, 2003, p. 44)

Ferretti (2013, p. 102) observes that enquiry learning has long been advocated as an important approach but its use in secondary teaching and learning is limited. This may in part be due to the skills and confidence of both teachers and students. Other challenges include a drive in many schools to have a standard approach to lesson planning, often including narrowly defined, differentiated outcomes and three-part lessons. An assessment culture that focuses on ‘coverage of the subject’ and progress can also be seen to be at odds with an enquiry approach. These and other concerns are discussed by Ferretti (2013, pp. 109–112).

2.2 Young people’s geographies

Students will be engaged by topics that they see as relevant. How would you define relevance? It could mean that knowledge is relevant to one or more of the following:

Several initiatives by the Geographical Association have aimed to help teachers make geography more relevant to young people. Many of these build on an enquiry approach. The Young People’s Geographies Project (YPG) recognised that students have different experiences and interpretations of their environments, which result in ‘personal geographies’.

Experiences of an urban area will differ within and between peer groups in terms of transport and recreational choices, social interactions, identity, issues of personal safety and much more. Furthermore, young people are part of the geography of any place. Biddulph (2010, p. 45) states that ‘young people’s daily lives shape and are shaped by a multitude of social, economic and cultural changes’.

By helping students to make more sense of their immediate surroundings, the Making My Place in the World project addresses Roberts’ ‘relevance criteria’. Local fieldwork and classroom resources, such as starters and games, were piloted in 2011 and 2012. Students formulated their own enquiry questions and decided upon the evidence they wished to collect and methods of data collection and presentation.

Making geography relevant to students supports the development of conceptual understanding and builds on students’ existing knowledge.

2.3 Summary

Research shows that shifting the focus from teaching to learning will produce better student outcomes (MacGilchrist et al., 2004) and that student motivation aids progress (Hattie, 2012). Learner-centred approaches such as an enquiry approach or YPG are characterised by:

• students actively engaged in activities that may involve problem solving
• students having the opportunity to discuss their work with each other
• students deciding how to approach a task, with support and encouragement from you
• self and peer assessment
• you providing encouragement and feedback.

Enquiry and YPG approaches to learning value what young people bring in terms of personal geographies and questions, and they encourage students to investigate their own questions and environments. Students construct knowledge and understanding for themselves. In this way, geography can be meaningful and connected to their lives, and young people develop the conceptual understanding and skills to extend and update their own learning.

3 What can creativity look like in geography?

This section explores the potential breadth of creativity within geography. Many geography lessons involve aspects of creative teaching and learning activities. You may be familiar with starter and plenary generators, mysteries and games, and a multitude of suggestions for ‘creative approaches’ to geography teaching can be found on the web and in teacher resources.

Creativity is included in the criteria for outstanding achievement of geography students (Ofsted, 2011). However, at the same time commentators like Renshaw (2011, p. 106) decry the possibility of an examination culture in schools eroding the innate creative abilities of students and ‘systematically teaching students out of their creative capacities’.

A distinction is often made between ‘ C reativity’ (a by-product or characteristic of ‘genius’, for example Einstein) and ‘ c reativity (something of which all are capable as a normal cognitive function). This section will concentrate on the latter definition. The following activity allows you to consider what creativity is and the modes and importance of creativity.

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Figure 3 Creativity image

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The image shows a mind map exploring the concept of ‘creativity’. The mind map has four main branches. ‘Creative’, ‘Required’, ‘Indispensable’ and ‘Strategic’. From the ‘ Creative ’ branch, there is the main heading ‘Actions’. Radiating out from ‘Actions’ are ‘Journalling’, ‘proactive’ leading to ‘learning’, ‘Process’ leading to ‘orientation’, ‘Mind’ leading to ‘mapping’. Radiating out from ‘ Required ’ there is the main heading ‘Qualities’ and two branches entitled ‘Primary traits’. From the first primary traits branch are the words ‘Intuitive, persistent, curious, playful, nature, independent, courageous, proactive, patient, dedicated’. From the second ‘Primary traits’ branch are the words ‘Imaginative, focused, risk taker, possibility, thinker, flexible, opinion, decisions, thought’. From the ‘Belief ’ branch are the words ‘Personal’, leading to ‘ability’, ‘Higher’, leading to ‘power’, ‘Learning’, leading to ‘success’ or ‘failure’. From the Strategic branch are the main headings ‘Self-talk’ and ‘Words’. Radiating out from ‘Self-talk’ are the words ‘Asking’, leading to ‘questions’, leading to ‘focused’, leading to ‘solutions’, leading to ‘expanding’, leading to ‘possibilities’. Radiating out from ‘Words’ are ‘Spoken’, leading to ‘optimistic’, leading to ‘reflective’.

Figure 3 Creativity image

Creativity in geography can involve acts that demonstrate ingenuity, originality (in describing and presenting ideas) and thinking in a wider context to make links and connections (Bridge, 2003). It is a broad definition and, as Burnard (2011) observes, creativity has meant different things at different times as it is affected by the social, political and cultural context in which it is used and in which it is manifested. She notes that creativity is demonstrated not only by individuals but also through collaboration.

According to Scoffman (2013, p. 379), a pedagogy that puts creativity ‘at the heart’ of geographical learning will have benefits that include:

• respecting the autonomy and agency of the child
• facilitating personalised learning
• recognising ‘the complexity and messiness’ involved in generating new ideas and concepts
• valuing ‘emotional and existential knowing alongside more visible cognitive achievements’
• helping students to become more resilient, resourceful, flexible and independent.

Creativity is integral to ‘intelligence’ and allows higher-order thinking. Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (Figure 4) is a system for classifying levels of learning behaviour. ‘Creating’ is at the top of the classification. The intentional use of verbs in the classification highlights our understanding of learning as being an active process (Tarlinton, 2003). Creativity is a process and you can’t be creative if you don’t do something. Creativity involves the use of higher-order thinking skills, resulting in original and innovative understandings of geographical phenomena, often including ‘thinking outside the box’.

Figure 4 Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy

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Figure 4 lists six sets of thinking skills and puts them in order of cognitive demand. The title for each set of thinking skills is followed by a list of relevant actions. They are ranked from lower order thinking skills at the bottom of the diagram to higher-order thinking skills at the top. A wide arrow can be seen behind the text starting at the bottom and pointing upwards beyond the top of the text.

First, there is ‘remembering’, which includes recalling information, recognising, listing, describing, retrieving, naming and finding. Then there is ‘understanding’, which includes explaining ideas or concepts, interpreting, summarising, paraphrasing, classifying and explaining.

Thirdly, there is ‘applying’, which includes using information in another familiar situation, implementing, carrying out, using and executing. The fourth set is entitled ‘analysing’ and includes breaking information into parts to explore understandings and relationships, comparing, organising, deconstructing, interrogating and finding.

Fifth is ‘evaluating’, which includes justifying a decision or course of action, checking, hypothesising, critiquing, experimenting and judging. Finally, ‘creating’ might involve generating new ideas, products or ways of viewing things, designing, constructing, planning, producing and inventing.

To the left-hand side of the hierarchical list is a bracket around the top three sets of thinking skills: creating, evaluating and analysing. These are described with a label that reads ‘higher-order thinking skills’.

Figure 4 Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy

3.1 Creativity in a wider context

Creativity can interact with education in the classroom in a number of ways. Sir Ken Robinson is a creativity expert. In an interview with Amy Azzam (2009), he summarises key points about creativity in teaching and learning. You will explore these and different modes of creativity in Activity 7.

3.2 Creativity in practice

You will now consider creativity in practice and think about how it can be used to structure your teaching to engage children in the process of being creative and to support their creative development.

Keep at the forefront of your mind the ways in which ‘creativity’ (Table 1 in Activity 7) can interact with education in the classroom:

• behaving creatively
• teaching to support creative development
• using your own creativity to develop lessons
• learning to be creative
• learning in creative ways.

Remember creativity is a process and a way of thinking rather than an activity or an event. Models of creativity summarised by Philpott (2007, p. 123) suggest that the creative process involves four stages (though these are not necessarily linear).

1. Having an intention (an idea of what the outcome might be): exploring the problem or playing with ideas.
2. Getting inside the problem : thinking around, and outside the ideas, identifying and playing with the concepts and materials that form the substance of the problem.
3. Mastering the materials and the skills of the creative process and identifying the parameters and constraints within which creative thinking needs to take place.
4. Gathering the problem into a satisfying whole : outcome or understanding of the problem and its ‘solution’.

Teaching creatively is not easy; it requires you to think, plan and prepare. You have to be prepared to take risks in your teaching, for example by giving greater autonomy to students or working in ways unfamiliar to them.

You have to create an environment in which students feel able to take risks, and risk failure. However, the benefits are that teaching creatively will not only motivate students but also encourage their own creativity and keep you stimulated as a teacher. Creative teaching strategies can also help to promote positive student behaviour through increased motivation and by involving students in the activity.

When considering the use of creative strategies in your teaching you will need to pay particular attention to:

• the level of structured versus independent learning activities
• the environment (do you need to change the layout of the classroom or move outside the classroom environment?)
• how to use resources creatively
• how to support the students
• how to manage timings
• how you will ensure that the overall aims of the learning sequence are achieved.

Remember, even ‘creative’ approaches can become stale if used repetitively, and you will still need to adopt a variety of approaches appropriate to the students, topic and context, giving due consideration to any organisational/management issues.

3.3 Summary

It is easy to think about creativity in geography in terms of students making papier mâché models, performing role plays or writing a song or poem. However, too often questions, approaches and outcomes are tightly defined by teachers. Creativity in geography can be so much more: it is a process that may take place within a single lesson or over a sequence of lessons. As Scoffham concludes, students value subjects that:

You should plan to manage students and activities throughout this process. Creativity can contribute to students’ learning by increasing their motivation and supporting them in their development as independent learners. However, since time, effort and risk are required to adopt creative teaching strategies, you also need to know how and when to be creative (Beghetto and Kaufman, 2013).

4 What challenges are posed by teaching controversial issues?

Geography is a discipline laden with attitudes and values. There are many topics you will teach where you will have to explore a range of viewpoints and encourage students to appreciate others’ opinions. Getting young people actively involved in debating current issues, particularly those which are important to them, is a great way to build motivation and encourage students to see the relevance and importance of geography. Many current issues can be framed as being controversial but what does this mean?

According to the Royal Geographical Society (n.d.) controversial issues will:

• create differences of opinion
• have a political, social, environmental or personal impact
• have no straightforward or easy answer
• deal with questions of value or belief.

4.1 Controversial issues in geography

Many topics in geography have an element of controversy within them. This means that there is likely to be a variety of stances that different people can take. Some issues may provoke very strong feelings. As a geography teacher you must be well prepared to handle such topics, and you need to consider how to introduce and manage activities in a classroom to encourage everyone to take part and be listened to.

The next two activities require you to consider which issues may be defined as being controversial in geography and some general approaches you might adopt as you teach them.

4.2 Teaching approaches to controversial issues

While you might decide to teach whole lessons or units focusing on a controversial issue, they are so embedded within geographical learning it is worth including ‘values and attitudes’ as you plan any lesson. This will help you to identify relevant issues, plan to support students’ learning and to anticipate a range of possible reactions from students.

It may be that you unwittingly promote a ‘green agenda’ or take a stand on social justice issues through your selection of topics, learning activities, resources and teaching. Are there times when neutrality is inappropriate?

You cannot remain neutral in cases of racism. In England, for example, the Race Relations Amendment Act of 2000 states that schools must ‘eliminate unlawful racial discrimination’. The Education Act of 2002 requires schools to ‘promote spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development’. In addition, since 2007, English schools have been responsible for promoting ‘community cohesion’, which should be seen as a common vision and sense of belonging; a society in which the diversity of people’s backgrounds and circumstances is appreciated and valued.

In other cases, try to balance issues so that students can form their own opinions. However, if discussing a subject such as child labour, ‘you have a moral responsibility to highlight that child labour is considered to violate human rights’ (Royal Geographical Society, n.d.).

If you wish to consider these issues at greater length, you may find the resources at Controversial issues: guidance for schools from the Citizenship Foundation useful and Mitchell (2013) has a concise but in-depth discussion of teaching controversial issues.

4.3 Why teach controversial issues?

According to Oxfam, exploring controversial issues encourages learners to:

By connecting with real life situations and contexts, learning about controversial issues helps students to ‘unpack’ mixed media messages they encounter. It provides context and authenticity to learning experiences and it supports enquiry and analytical thinking. By helping learners to clarify their own opinions it can raise self-esteem. Aspects of spiritual, moral, social and cultural education can be addressed through teaching about controversial issues. However, it is important to be clear about your aims as you select teaching content and approaches:

4.4 Teaching controversial issues

The Royal Geographical Society, the Geographical Association and NGOs like Oxfam have a range of resources to support the teaching of controversial issues. The next activity will allow you some time to explore some of these.

Conclusion

To use the approaches explored in this course effectively, you must consistently adopt a learner-centred approach and support learners throughout processes such as conducting an enquiry or learning creatively. Occasional use of these approaches will have limited benefits in terms of learning outcomes. You and the students you work with need time to develop and master the conceptual understanding and skills involved.

Acknowledgements

This free course was written by Paula Addison-Pettit.

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‘Geographical enquiry’, Roberts, M., Teaching Geography, Spring 2010

Figure 1: (c) Janine Wiedel/Alamy

Figure 2: Roberts, M. (2003) Learning through Geographical Enquiry: Making Sense of the Key Stage 3 Classroom , Sheffield, The Geographical Association

Figure 3: courtesy of Adam Sicinski

Figure 4: Bloom, B., Blooms’ Revised Taxonomy, taken from http://www.slideshare.not/ castanlucy/ blooms-taxonomy-457128

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References

Andreotti, V. and Warwick, P. (2007) Engaging Students with Controversial Issues through a Dialogue Based Approach [online]. Available at http://www.citized.info/ pdf/ commarticles/ Post-16 Paul Warwick.doc (Accessed 10 February 2016).

Azzam, A. (2009) ‘Why creativity now? A conversation with Sir Ken Robinson’, Teaching for the 21st Century, vol. 67, no. 1, pp. 22–6.

Beghetto, R.A. and Kaufman, J.C. (2013) ‘Fundamentals of creativity’, Educational Leadership, vol. 70, no. 5, pp. 10–5.

Biddulph, M. (2010) ‘Valuing young people’s geographies’, Teaching Geography, vol. 35, no. 2, p. 45.

Bridge, C. (2003) ‘Creating the space to think’, Primary Geographer, January, pp. 19–21.

Brooks, C. (2013) ‘How do we understand conceptual development in school geography?’ in Lambert, D. and Jones, M. (eds) Debates in Geography Education, London, Routledge, pp. 75–88.

Burnard, P. (2011) SoundEd Programme: Creativity, London and Milton Keynes, Trinity College/The Open University.

Ferretti, J. (2013) ‘Whatever happened to the enquiry approach in geography?’ in Lambert, D. and Jones, M. (eds) Debates in Geography Education, London, Routledge, pp. 103–15.

Firth, R. (2013) ‘What constitutes knowledge in Geography?’ in Lambert, D. and Jones, M. (eds) Debates in Geography Education, London, Routledge, pp. 59–74.

Geographical Association (2012) Thinking Geographically [online]. Available at http://geography.org.uk/ gtip/ mentoring/ geography/ learning/ conceptsandthinkinggeographically/ (Accessed 25 February 2016).

Geographical Association (2014) How Do Pupils Learn Geography? [online]. Available at http://geography.org.uk/ gtip/ mentoring/ geography/ learning/ #theories (Accessed 25 February 2016).

Hattie, J. (2012) Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximising Impact on Learning , Abingdon, Routledge.

Humphreys, D. and Fall, J. (2014) ‘An idea of nature: biodiversity and protected areas’ in Brown, W., Aradau, C. and Budds, J. (eds) Environmental Issues and Responsibilities, 2nd edn, Milton Keynes, The Open University.

Lambert, D. (2011) The Geography National Curriculum: GA Curriculum Proposals and Rationale , Sheffield, Geographical Association; also available online at http://www.geography.org.uk/ getinvolved/ geographycurriculumconsultation2011/ (Accessed 16 March 2016).

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