Geographical knowledge, curriculum making &

recontextualising principles

steven.puttick@education.ox.ac.uk@steveputtick

ORF / PRFIntention / Reality

school geography in England…is dominated by objectivism and scientism, and threatened by an impending relativism, and lag behind ground-breaking developments in university geography.

(Winter, 2007, p.352)

What is concerning is the impact that policy makers and subject leaders are having on school geography through their promotion of the New Agenda.

(Standish, 2008, p.90)

What is concerning is the impact that policy makers and subject leaders are having on [formal representations of] school geography through their promotion of the New Agenda.

(Standish, 2008, p.90 – yellow text added)

[formal representations of] school geography in England… [are] dominated by objectivism and scientism, and threatened by an impending relativism, and lag behind ground-breaking developments in university geography.

(Winter, 2007, p.352)

Space-times of teachers’ journeys for knowledge

See also McCormack and Schwanen (2011) and McCormack (2008)

‘My first port of call is…’

(Gemma, department 1)

Teachers’ journeys for knowledge

•Where do they go? •When?•With whom?•Why these sources?•What do they do with these

sources? (How are they recontextualised?)

A curating role?

This was literally from googling.

(Sophie, interview 2:8)

LMGTFY.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=What+is+a+drumlin%3F

Let me that for you

I'm thinking how do you know that? how d'you know he wasn't just…sat there thinking I need to knock out another poem [laughing] - what shall I write – oh, lets write about a nightingale!

(Ruth, interview 1:22)

I can remember the moment…looking down and realising I was actually stood on a Drumlin, and going “this is a Drumlin!” I'm in a glaciated valley - this is a Drumlin. This is just brilliant! I love this!

(Ruth, interview 1:22)

…but now all I've got to do is go online and I can find that diagram, in an electronic form, and I just copy it straight onto a page…it's just where I get the model or the diagram from now. I don't have to go to the book…

(Ruth, interview 1:132)

Ruth’s journeys for knowledge:

• Range of space-times...• Different medium, similar purposes• Informed by deeply held

epistemological beliefs• Regulated by examination

specifications• Lightly affected – if at all – by the

National Curriculum

Possible implications• For conceptualising Curriculum Making?• For qualifying critiques of school

geography?• For developing further (geographical)

research into space-times of teachers’journeys for knowledge?

• For ITE; teacher as curator?

References

Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity. Theory, Research, Critique, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

McCormack, D.P. (2008) Geographies for Moving Bodies: Thinking, Dancing, Spaces. Geography Compass, 2(6), pp.1822-1836.

McCormack, D.P. and Schwanen, T. (2011) Guest editorial: The space-times of decision making. Environment and Planning A, 43, pp.2801-2818.

Standish, A. (2008) Global Perspectives in the Geography Curriculum: reviewing the moral case for geography, London: Routledge

Winter, C. (2007) Just maps: the geography curriculum in English schools, Oxford Review of Education, 33(3), pp.349-366.