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Professor David Lambert on Curriculum making...

GA Curriculum Consultation - make your voice heard.

The Geographical Association has added a major consultation to the website on the theme of "what makes a better school geography"....
It appeared yesterday.
It's a chance for you to get involved in a consultation on the changes to the Geography curriculum. There are several elements to the consultation, which can be viewed HERE.


There is a paper which describes a suggested 'national' curriculum, although the realities are that the curriculum document will be influenced by each school's particular circumstances and characteristics. The document suggests particular significant places that might be included, but there is a recognition that these will include those that are 'significant' for students too: very much influenced by the idea of 'living geography'.

There is also a presentation which suggests some of the geographical 'core knowledge' that will enable and open up other aspects of the curriculum. This has been put together by the GA's strategic partner ESRI UK, and works using the ArcGIS online tool. This is well worth a look as it consists of a series of maps containing specific information. Is the balance here correct ? are there places missing ? are there too many places named ?

When you've read the documents and the other materials that are presented here, please visit the FEEDBACK PAGE and provide your views. This is really important.

Making a Geography pie...

It's British Pie Week. We have a "Pie Society" at the school where I taught, and visit locations around the SE (and further afield) in search of good pies...

If Geography was a pie what would its filling be made of ??

For more on the analogy of cooking and geography (curriculum making), you can revisit my article, that was contained in Tim Handley's PGCE guide.

So, to make my Geography pie I'm going to start by chopping one red onion finely...

Chop One Red Onion Finely


What are the other ingredients that I should add ??

David Lambert at the SSAT Conference #nc10

David Lambert gave a keynote lecture to the 2010 SSAT annual conference on Friday 26 November. 

He addressed round 1500 school leaders on the question: are subjects in crisis? 

Obviously he focussed on geography and made some positive remarks about the recent White Paper The Importance of Teaching and its intention to recentre the school curriculum on 'knowledge'.

You can see a video of David's lecture on the SSAT website (take a look at Dylan Wiliam's session while you're there....)

The slides that David used (you might want to listen to the presentation while watching the slides, or put them side by side on the screen...) are available via SLIDESHARE... and have been embedded below...
November 2010 SSAT Presentation

View more presentations from GeoBlogs.

If you're snowbound today & your school is closed take a look...
Think of it as a little impromptu CPD

David Lambert in the TES

Just caught up with the publication of a piece by Professor David Lambert in the TES, published on the 27th of August, while I was away on holiday. I saw the original piece, and haven't checked yet for any possible editing of the piece for publication. It was titled "Crack curriculum's core and open a world of opportunity"

If politicians want more focus on knowledge, subject teachers should decide what is crucial

The Government appears determined to reform the school curriculum again. This is something that some teachers may resist - it will appear as yet more change, when not enough time has been allowed for the last alterations to settle. And because of the return to "knowledge" as opposed to "skills", changes could be accompanied by much Gradgrind-sounding rhetoric about facts and old-fashioned subjects.

It could sound like a rush to restore a golden age of subjects past, and undo the curriculum reforms of the last government. However, if we can just stop dodging the imagined swinging pendulum for one minute, perhaps we can see a more progressive future, which is in teachers' hands. Teachers should seize this chance to get stuck into the knowledge question rather than collectively avoid it, which has in some ways been the story of recent times.

The professional language invented over the past 10 years is the language of pedagogy. This is no bad thing in itself, of course, but pedagogy has become so dominant that it is now confused with its apparently weaker cousin: curriculum. But it is the curriculum that teachers need to engage with.

At present, the subject curriculum is often referred to as the vehicle to "deliver" transferrable skills. This is wrong. It is pedagogy - the skills of doing and thinking - that is the vehicle. The curriculum is about the destination, the aims and goals, and is therefore a matter of serious moral deliberation.

Skills, on the other hand, are said to be value-free. But what shall we teach and how do we justify this? These are the important questions and they ought to be informed by what we think young people need to know.

The curriculum, like pedagogy, is about choices. It is, therefore, a part of what we have come to know as "professional judgment".

In the case of curriculum, the choices concern the selections of knowledge we try to teach. We make these selections according to principles we value, governed by our sense of educational purpose.

A curriculum shaped by whim, the topics in the news and contemporary themes of "relevance" - or, worse still, policy imperatives laid down by the Government - is likely to be incoherent, shallow and like junk food: deeply unsatisfying after the initial fat and sugar rush.

So this is why the subject disciplines matter. Geography is a good case in point. It is an ancient human fascination: its big idea is to try to make sense of ourselves at home on planet Earth. Mapping the world was, and is, fundamental. Today the project is augmented by all kinds of technologies including geographical information systems. But it is useful to consider for one moment what it means to know a bit of geography.

This is particularly important because these days, thanks to the internet and Google Earth, sat-nav and mobile phones, everyone knows some geography. Furthermore, we all have a geographical existence: we live somewhere, shop somewhere and have relatives and friends dotted around the globe.

This realisation has encouraged a lot of interest in "everyday geographies" - but again, let us pause for thought. Is our interest in everyday geographies curriculum-based or is it more a matter of pedagogy? Every teacher knows the strengths of working from the known and what is familiar to children - this is sound pedagogy. But in curriculum terms it is a betrayal not to move to the unknown and unfamiliar. Curriculum goals must be in the driving seat.

Part of the unknown for most young people consists of what is sometimes called "core knowledge", a component of our cultural literacy. This includes locational knowledge - also known as geographical facts, or what the Geographical Association's manifesto refers to as the subject's "vocabulary".

It is important to embrace this in school because this knowledge is not easily developed in everyday life. And yet, it is knowledge that helps make sense of information encountered in everyday life. It helps us function in society. If there is a move to identify subject essentials, or core knowledge, let us engage with it at face value. Instead of shrinking from the curriculum debate, it is time for teachers to take back intellectual responsibility for their work.

- The Geographical Association manifesto is at: www.geography.org.uk/adifferentview

HOW DOES 'CORE KNOWLEDGE' FIT IN GEOGRAPHY?

The good news is that absolutely necessary core knowledge is not a large component of the geography curriculum. It can be taught via the regular use of atlases, occasional quizzes and other enjoyable and simple devices that form part of the repertoire of careful teaching.

It can be thought of as the extensive knowledge base upon which more intensive geographical case studies and inquiries can acquire deeper contextual meaning. To illustrate: can we really expect to be able to engage with global climate change meaningfully, without a mental framework that would include naming the oceans and some of the world's ocean currents? Without such knowledge, we are literally disabled to some degree.

We can incorporate it, as many careful geography teachers already do, into the broader geography curriculum. Geographical vocabulary is powerful, but so, too, is its grammar or syntax captured by its key ideas such as place, space and environment.

A person growing up in the 21st century as a global citizen (and all that implies) is at a disadvantage without geographical knowledge - economically, culturally and politically. How can we make any of the personal decisions that already confront us every day about energy, food and water security without geographical knowledge?

Understanding geographical perspectives contributes to our capabilities as educated individuals and members of society.

Professor David Lambert, Chief executive of the Geographical Association

RFID tags in the geography classroom

This is one of those "let's have a go at this..." moments.

It's a 'development' of some of the excellent QR code work that Noel Jenkins has done. I read this week that some graffiti artists are now using QR codes to 'tag' their work...

The idea of tagging is spreading (apparently there is no # tag on an Apple keyboard, although hashtags are now becoming very common...)

It's obviously important to tag resources so that people can find them, photos are tagged on Flickr so they can be searched, and an extension of that is geotagging, which is now built in to some digital cameras, and is added to photos taken with my iPhone for example.

So TOUCHATAG was introduced to me by John Davitt via some tweets and details from a conference that I followed remotely. John is also planning an event called Learning on the Beach #lob10 in Ireland which I would have attended as 'this year's Islay 2020' style CPD, but instead I will be at Glastonbury with the Geography Collective.

Touchatag uses RFID tags: these are Radio Frequency Identification tags (more later)

I bought a tag reader, and a starter pack of 10 tags from the Touchatag shop.

The phrase that drew me in was the chance to create an "internet of things"....

The tags can be linked to actions or resources, and it's this aspect that I will be exploring further...

Image Alan Parkinson

The reader and software are now installed, so the next thing is to come up with some activities.

A TOUR is available to introduce the idea of what can be done.

For example, a cube with a series of tags could be created and by placing the appropriate side of the cube on the reader, an action is triggered, which could be related to e-mails, music, videos, Twitter or some other application - the tag could be hidden inside an object or stuck to it e.g. the bottom of a coffee mug, or a DVD case. The objects could be related to the lesson activity that is planned, or provide instructions or guidance for students, or perhaps bring up clues as to the nature of the activity that has been planned... This is the next stage...

Just considering what stories I can attach to objects, and how I can use that for geographical learning....

From what you've read on this post - does anyone have any thoughts on how it could be used ?

Would be interested in developing some collaborative resources on the use of these tags, and will share some of the outcomes later in the year at a few planned sessions....

Also been looking at the existing uses of RFID tags, and there are quite a few 'geographical' contexts that could be used with students to introduce the idea of what they are, and let the students create the ideas in the classroom...

• Tags in the ears of farm animals, such as cows, so productivity can be mapped as the animal comes in for milking, and each animal can be identified... - could be mentioned when looking at agriculture or food production - also useful for tracking spread of infections
• Tags inside library books, so they can be scanned rather than physically stamping library cards and books etc. These systems may well be in lots of school resource centres / libraries
• They can be placed in vehicles so that they can be tracked for congestion charging purposes or road tolls
• My Barclaycard is able to use contactless technology to pay for things, not that I've ever had the opportunity yet...
• My Oyster Card does something similar, and these are used by thousands of London travellers every hour...
• Some schools are tagging pupils: RFID can be placed in uniforms or school bags and used to track attendance, or students leaving the school site during the school day

A useful document hosted on SCRIBD gives a summary of the technology:

RFID Technology

Not everyone is happy about their use. There are campaigns against their use to track activities and movements of people.

A lengthy post, but an idea I shall return to...