It's been over a year in the making but yesterday saw @healey_r open the #GeogEdLaunch of the @GeogEd_RGS with a remit for all things Geography and Education, across ages and bringing together pedagogic research, geography education and geographies of education.
We had three keynotes, first from @peterkraftl on the geographies of education...
Next from Jenny Hill on her work and other's work crossing between geography education and geographies of education
And @GAChiefExec on how we might think about the relationships between the academic discipline of geography, the school subject and geography education research and the implications of thinking in different ways.
All three set a wide context of diverse existing international and uk-based work, as well as locating their own work and experiences, and offering thoughts on possible avenues, connections and challenges the group may explore.
Later I was in one of two incubator discussion - here about the role of COBRIG, hosted by Chair Pauline Kneele, the Council for British Geography, thinking about its place and role with invitations for suggestions about its focus.
The room raised suggestions about visibility, diversity and inclusion, admissions, teacher training. We also heard about new initiative Geographers in Government and thought about British demographic trends and what the implications might be for the geogs of geography education.
In the afternoon we had three paper sessions. Here we had Giulia Chiara Ceresa with fascinating work on outdoor learning including live-action role playing games (LARP) and thinking of the learning environment as a co-protagonist
@thiagobp0 spoke about his work on children's geographies and early child education in Brazil with ethnographic sensitivity and ideas around existential justice and spatial lovingness.
John McKendrick and Lauren Hammond spoke about the ongoing importance, difficulties and impacts of taking a truly children's geography perspective in geographies of education. Examples of child poverty, free school meal take up explored.
@EllenLauraB took is through some really interesting early analysis from her work with pupils who speak multiple languages (across home/school), and challenges of a lack of formal definition, training for and funding for pupils with 'English as an Additional Language' (EAL).
Later we had a 'liquid cafe' (no drinks involved) dialoguing around a series of questions. Important themes emerged, as through the day, on decolonising geography, diversity, sustainablity and the anthropocene, justice and transitions.
Today groups are working on a series articles to articulate a history of the Higher Education Research Group, the change to the Education & Research Group and sketch out ideas around communities of practice, research interests and offer tentative thoughts on where this might go.
A thread for students on understanding hard readings...
Yes, sometimes the reading you've been set is by an academic that's not the best writer.
Sometimes something else is going on - they are writing to a different audience and not filling in all the backstory.
This thread has been promoted by the interview with Judith Butler that is fascinating on many levels: newstatesman.com/international/…
Some people have chimed in to say, 'oh but she's *incomprehensible*...'
'I mean what does this even mean...?' And sure, it's a long sentence with a lot going on packed into a sentence. If I was giving feedback to a student who needs to 'show evidence of understanding' I'd be asking them to slow down and explain and unpack things a lot more.
As the two are tied together, shirking responsibility for the algorithm and its effects is also then shirking responsibility for the children to whom you have a duty if care.
The point is not that the algorithm mutated and so moves beyond our care - but that we are responsible for our creations, including their unintended consequences.
I had thought - from what I had read and heard - that the approach taken to A level grades was a fairly balanced solution to an impossible situation and that the alternatives were worse.
Perhaps I should have known better - I did a PhD on Data, Education and Futures - how data is made about pupils and how this changes the ways that students and teachers think about the future.
For GCSE fieldwork, and questions on experience of fieldwork, removed...
For AS and A Level, requirement to facilitate fieldwork in set days also removed and more flexibility on approach to primary data as for A Level the non-examined assessment remains...
Woah there, before we leap and write off a whole subdiscipline of geography (children's geographies) for me the question is not whether we 'do relevance' but how and not whether we consider a learner's life experience but how. We are always doing both...
...I take that as inevitable. The question for me becomes whether it's done well or badly, and the status and emphasis given to the sources of knowledge and their blend in the classroom and curriculum.
The outside/within distinction looks like a false choice, as so often is adult-centred vs. child-centred. Can't we work towards a rich, deep, relevance-aware curriculum that considers subject, teacher and student - isn't that what the curriculum making model is all about?
Hi #geographyteacher and #geoged folks. Pondering something that's been in discussion on twitter - what do you think? In a Future 3/powerful knowledge curriculum what's the value of fieldwork, especially 'close to home'? Isn't field-based enquiry a messy and inefficient teacher?
Why not just teach 'the knowledge'? Is local geographical enquiry too close to everyday knowledge to render its value questionable? If people wouldn't go for enquiry/discovery in the classroom why do it outside the classroom?