These are challenging times - times for courage and care. Whilst it's not business as usual (and I'm not convinced we're a business anyway) I did want to give a shout out to some papers that came online during the #ucustrikebacks and so weren't shared earlier.
They are from an upcoming special issue on #gentlegeographies with @J_Sellick that's been in the works now for at least five years. This really is #slowacademia(!) and we've been trying to acknowledge that productive contributions come at different paces and in different forms.
This is now even more readily apparent in our current times - whatever our household, family and friends formulation, employment type, dis/abilities and more.
Many of us are feeling time differently and it may not be possible to read these. If you find you are, I hope you discover in them something of humanity and solace, and things which embolden you for today and tomorrow - quiet and modest as our actions/activisms may be.
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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?