Investigating Geography

Margaret Roberts

Annual Conference of the Geographical Association

Manchester 2009

Investigating geography

• What questions does geography investigate?

• How can pupils investigate geography?

• How can we investigate the teaching and learning of geography?

Geography

The value of an academic subject depends on the extent to which it answers questions we are interested in…

Questions

• Why does the landscape vary?• How are Nungua and Teshi affected by Ghana’s

5 year development plan? • Why are the people of District 6 in Cape Town

being moved?• What experiences do Y7 students have of

Sheffield, the UK and the world?• Why is Southern Italy represented as it is?• Should the UK develop more nuclear power?

How are Labadi and Teshi affected by Ghana’s 5 year development

plan?

Labadi

Teshi

Nungua

Fishing

Agriculture

Why were people being moved from District Six?

Everyone in the District died a little when it was pulled down…they had taken away our past and left the rubble…they had destroyed our community and left dust and memories’ Richard Rive

Extract from letter:

“We believed that this land was ours forever. We have made our homes here, developed the land, built schools … Now the South African Government wants us to move away. We love this land of ours…we own tractors, we plough maize and beans and often sell our surplus. We also own large herds of cattle…”

A resettlement area in the ‘homeland’ of KaNgwane

As geographers we have a special role – a trulycreative and revolutionary one – that of helping toreveal the spatial malfunctionings and injustices,and contributing to the design of a spatial order ofsociety in which people can be really free to fulfilthemselves in a secure social setting where therights of all are respected. This, surely, would be‘progress in geography’ (1973, Smith, An introduction to Welfare Geography)

Some states of affairs are bad, and should be struggledagainst and changed. Such was apartheid in SouthAfrica.(Smith, 2000)

Questions after apartheid: the land issue

80% of population

13% of land

How is the South of Italy represented in textbooks?

“Farming is at subsistence level”

Copyright photograph, headed ‘Farming in the South’ from Waugh, D and Bushell, T, (2008) New Interactions, Nelson Thornes

Copyright photograph, headed ‘Disadvantages of farming in the South’ from Waugh, D. and Bushell, T. (2008) New Interactions, Nelson Thornes

In this enquiry you work for theNew Cassa per il Mezzogiorno orfund for the south organisation.You have been given the task ofseeking funds for the improvementschemes and have been asked togive a presentation to the EU andWorld Bank.

• Draw a star diagram to show the main problems of the south

• Show how life in rural areas may be improved?

• What schemes do you think would bring most benefit?

Copyright illustration to accompany the ‘enquiry’ , from Waugh, D. and Bushell, T. (2008) New Interactions, Nelson Thornes

Copyright photographs of tomato production in Campania, vines in Puglia and orange production in Sicily. Copyright map of agricultural products of Puglia.

All in an atlas produced for primary school children in Italy:

De Agostini. (2006) Atlante Geografico di Base, per la scuola primaria, Instituto Geografico D’Agostini

Factors affecting agriculture (in atlas)

Campania• ‘The Romans called it ‘happy Campania’

because of the fertility of its plains and the gentleness of its climate.’

Puglia• ‘Blessed with a good Mediterranean climate and

characterised by a landscape almost without hills’

Extracts from: De Agostini. (2006) Atlante Geografico di Base, per la scuola primaria, Instituto Geografico D’Agostini

Representing the other

Ways in which ‘othering’ is achieved:

• Naming and treating a place as an undifferentiated entity

• Stereotyping: simplifying and exaggerating a few characteristics; omission; fixing

• Representing the other in developmental terms

• Marginalising: presenting as peripheral

Why a negative geographical imagination?

• Mountjoy (1973) Problem Regions of Europe: The Mezzogiorno

• ‘Europe ends at Naples and ends badly, Calabria, Sicily and all the rest belong to Africa’ Creuze de Lesser, 1806

• AC Milan: Welcome to Europe

Investigating the subject: summary

• The range of questions geographers ask has changed.

• The questions are influenced by changing conceptual frameworks.

• There are different ways of constructing geography and different ways of seeing the world

Investigating geography

• What questions does geography investigate?

• How can pupils investigate geography?

• How can we investigate the teaching and learning of geography?

A framework for learning through enquiry

• Creating a need to know

• Using data

• Making sense of data

• Reflecting on learning

Creating a need to know: stance

Copyright photograph of birds migrating – from Google images

Creating a need to know: Stimulus and speculation

Map of Antarctica from: 7summits.com/vinson/maps.php

Plus photograph of Michael Palin

Creating a need to know: Press conference

Types of data

• Reports• Newspaper articles• Advertisements• Brochures• Photographs• Paintings• Film• Cartoons

• Google Earth• Google Street View• Atlas maps• OS maps• Weather Maps• Statistics• Graphs• Personal knowledge• Artefacts

Earthquake in L’Aquila

www.bbc.co.uk

The Atlas of the Real World

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,370,000 for Italian earthquake L'Aquila.

Three newspaper clippings showing diagrams of the Boscastle floods – removed for copyright reasons

Making sense

Making senseCopyright photograph of Patriot Hills

Copyright photograph of Mozambique floods

Public Meeting role play

• Should a new incinerator be built in Sheffield?• Which energy sources should the UK

government encourage?• Where to locate a new hi-tech industry?• How should the area of waste land opposite the

school in Barnsley be developed?• How should the Brazilian Government respond

to conflicting land claims in Amazonia?

Reflecting on learning

Copyright photographs of Antarctica

Investigating geography

• What questions does geography investigate?

• How can pupils investigate geography?

• How can we investigate the teaching and learning of geography?

Closed Framed Negotiated

Qu

estion

s

Questions not explicit Questions explicit Pupils decide questions, guided by teacher

Data

Data selected by teachers, presented as authoritative evidence

Variety of data provided by teacher, presented as information to be interpreted

Pupils helped to find their own data from sources in and out of school

Makin

g sen

se

Activities devised by teacher to achieve pre-determined objectives. Students follow instructions

Methods of interpretation are open to discussion and choice – guided by conceptual frameworks

Pupils decide how to analyse and interpret in consultation with teacher

Reflectio

n

Predictable outcomes Students discuss what they have learnt; different outcomes

Pupils reach own conclusions and evaluate them critically

Classroom talk

Dialogues of learning

The most powerful determinant of children’s

learning, the difference that makes the

difference, is how teachers scaffold the

learning process

Scaffolding: the complex set of interactions

through which adults guide and promote

children’s thinking.

The Guided Construction of Knowledge (Mercer)

The meeting of minds (Bruner)

The Co-construction of knowledge (futurelab: Enquiring Minds)

Copyright world map,

Copyright photograph of earth from space

Copyright photograph of school globe

Extracts from learning logs or journals

• Chi calculations/degrees of freedom – freedom from what? This is too mathematical for me I do it without fully understanding it.

•The need for profit is important, but so is where and in what conditions people live. The people in the Government have no worries about their housing and they don’t have severe money problems. The people on The Manor do and if the people in the government can’t see this and the problems then it is obvious that the power is in the wrong hands

The construction of knowledge

Construction

Re-construction

Co-construction

Different ways of seeing