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*...'

On 'mutant' algorithms -

Thinking this morning of Latour's essay: 'Love Your Monsters: Why We Must Care for Our Technologies As We Do Our Children'.

Of course, the government's inattention to the algorithm was also a lack of care for children.

thebreakthrough.org/journal/issue-… 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.

I was wrong. 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.

Significant changes for Geography GCSEs, AS and A Levels announced today:
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl… For GCSE fieldwork, and questions on experience of fieldwork, removed...

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...

https://twitter.com/EnserMark/status/1284053361696940032

...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.

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?

https://twitter.com/SteveBraceGeog/status/1280466807871148040

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?

Some working #edu thoughts:
'Schooling' in academic writing land is different from learning & education. Schooling works at many levels but especially through techniques of body management with the goal of internalizing this as self-control - the goal: maximal available attention for learning. Doesn't mean learning will happen but tries to create an environment and amenable 'bodies' in the jargon, for this to happen. Some #TLAC techniques fall into this. The line between power as domination and power as empowering of students is a fine one. For some the

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.

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...

Three fantastic presentations at the 'Masters Research in Geography Education' @GEReCo_1 seminar @IOE_London. First up was Esther Vernon - really interesting close attention to the relations between knowledge and knowers in seeing with changing places conceptualisations. Next was @HafsaBobat. Lots to consider here for work towards more anti-racist geography curricula & pedagogies. Also challenge of making choices for/against taking geography if students+parents don't see whether it can take you places from egs around them. Geog an unknown risk?

Big data themes: asymmetries of (locational) privacy, theorizing material effects of data, surveillance & methodological challenges #AAG2014 @MattMattFinn calls not to (re-)ontologise big data as 'a thing' which has a singular logic, form or set of known (predeternned) effects