CPD for Geographers?

A lot of my thinking at the moment is on curriculum and subject knowledge. I profess to be no level of expert on either topic – and am learning all the time about the former – but they have really taken my interest of late.

The more I read about how we learn, I consider the ways in which our curriculum can be reshaped to allow students opportunities to connect new knowledge to existing knowledge and ways in which we can better plan sequences of learning (with emphasis on spaced retrieval/interleaving).

These are huge questions, and not ones that this post seeks to deal with now, but they started a me thinking anew about CPD. This too was further prompted by an article in TES (fairly recently?), focusing on the damning implications of limited subject-specific CPD. The report linked in the article, Developing Great Subject teaching, gave me food for thought. If you don’t have time to go through the full 53 page report, spend some time considering the implication of the headline findings, notably:

Performance review is widely used to identify and balance CPD needs for the school as a whole and for individuals.

The report qualifies the point made:

Primary and secondary schools with a strong CPD offer put a lot of effort into doing this systematically, using different evidence sources and aligning analysis of individual needs with school self-evaluation, improvement and CPD activities.

However, I would suggest that for many teachers, this CPD remains focused on generic pedagogy (excellent article by Michael Fordham on this). Besides this, quality CPD should be an entitlement for teachers.

It’s, unfortunately, easy to see why this situation has arisen. There seems to be a lack of quality CPD offers being made to subject-specialists. Of course, I don’t proclaim to speak for all subjects and phases, but when I reflect on my own subject, I worry about the lack of high-quality training that is out there. This carries dangerous implications for the future of geography – the very nature of the subject means it is constantly changing – and if we are not able to access high quality CPD, the quality of our practice suffers.

So, this post comes with a plea – geographers, where are you getting your CPD from? And, perhaps more crucially, how are you able to drill down and share it with your own staff?

For me, my subject knowledge has been fundamentally improved by accessing regular and up to date news outlets, membership of the GA has been truly transformative (would highly recommend if you are able to join) and, of course a number of Twitter colleagues are always linking and sharing new materials related to geography. I, even, go back to the textbooks and materials I was lucky enough to have from my A-Level/university studies – these always give me further threads of thought.

My views on homework – An anecdotal approach

I am writing this post with a view of my own department and the ways in which we have looked to deploy homework. I understand the research base for homework is mixed, with conflicting evidence on both sides. Whilst I absolutely try to be research led in all the work I do in my department, I am using homework as part of a broader vision for the department.

As a head of Humanities, I have dual oversight of both Geography and History – so my writing will draw upon both subjects – and this year I have sought to establish clear routines and expectations around the use of homework across the department.

I have been keen to see the introduction of weekly homework (for all year groups) which builds on prior learning from lesson content/previous topics. Only now, as we approach the end of term 2, do I feel I have been able to get a firm grip on the planning and implementation of homework – and I still think it can be refined!

I believe homework is important for 3 reasons:

1. It allows students to consolidate learning at home, when they may have gone through a whole day without your subject.
2. It establishes a sense of expectations – conveyed from the teacher to the students (this should be done because we care about you and your learning).
3. It builds good habits – I, much like many colleagues, have been fretting and worrying about my Year 11 cohorts and whether they are revising/working away from the classroom, I believe with an effective homework plan, these learning habits develop.

These conditions come with a number of caveats which we have try to refine to ensure we make full and effective use of homework.

1. We don’t set project based homework – It’s difficult to manage, it’s hard to monitor and it bestows an advantage on those students who have calmer home environments
2. All homework should recap prior learning – We would not introduce any new content in homework. We experimented with ‘flipped learning’ earlier this year with our G&T students, but I didn’t think the practice was effective. (will blog on this separately)
3. Homework should ‘look and feel’ the same – This is a hard point to illustrate, but all of the homework sheets we produce follow a similar style and layout. All homework is 1 side of A4, always has a piece of geographical/historical stimulus (graph/image/source) and has questions related to this.
4. Homework has to be self-assessable – We discovered very early on that, if we didn’t make homework easy for students to self assess, it would become just another burden for staff to manage and mark. We try and keep homework (as shown in the examples) short and focused with clear structures for right/wrong answers.
5. Tracking needs to visible and low-cost on time – To manage students who do not return homework, we have implemented a system of ‘red sheets’. Using a stock of red paper, teachers will print homework on red sheets. This means that, on the due date of any given homework, if a student hasn’t done it, they complete a red sheet and stick this into their book. This means that, when the teacher is marking their class books, they can easily see students routinely failing to complete homeworks, and can then escalate further from there.

Of course, there have been a number of challenges that we have faced (and are still resolving):

1. Student absence – Students receive a red sheet when they haven’t done HW – either because they lost the sheet/didn’t do it/were ill. We have found this can lead to students with high absence being put in with persistent non-homework students.
2. New students joining school – We experience an incredibly high instance of students joining through the school year and they may be unaware of the necessary prior knowledge to access HW.
3. Ineffective long term homework planning – I hold my hands up to this and it’s something I will reorganise ahead of next year. Homework is generally being set, but sometimes it is set in a haphazard order, lurching from topic to topic and not allowing students to either a) consolidate current learning or b) consolidate prior learning.
4. It hasn’t had a significant impact on assessment grades – However, I feel this is more of a reflection of our current assessment system rather than an issue with homework itself.
5. Issues with buy-in from students – The red sheets have been more effective at KS3 than 4, where the general rate of return of HW is quite low. It is hoped that, as students progress through the school, they will maintain an ethic of homework completion that we are seeking to establish early in their secondary school life.

Guest post – Why I love my job

I’ll start off with saying I never thought I’d be writing this, this time last year. I was a Geography NQT that had been swayed into being a full time maths teacher. Don’t get me wrong I loved the kids, but I lost the love for the job as I fell out of touch with Geography. My physical health was a real concern and I was going to give it all up.  1 year on and I’m a Geography RQT in what I deem to be the most wonderful department and I never want to leave!

There are 3 main reasons why I love my job:

1. My department.

A department should be full of friendship, support and to be honest a bit of banter! I could not imagine my life without the people I work with every single day. First of all you know that 1 class that everybody has at some point in their career? I’m currently enjoying that challenge once a week. I say enjoying because every week without fail, I can sit down with a brew and know that every single person in the department will listen and help me come up with new ideas for a better lesson next week.  You’d think 6 months down the line you’d be expected to just get over it but the team listen to the same rant in the same awful Yorkshire accent every week and I could not thank them enough. Without the support of my friends/team I would be an awful teacher, I truly would! If you have no support don’t quit, just move on, it’ll be worth it!

2. The kids

Sometimes things just fit into place. I’ve always managed to maintain positive relationships with pupils but I just feel it is my duty to get the best of these kids and see them through to the end. If a better position came up I honestly couldn’t leave, it wouldn’t be worth it. To anyone just starting out in teaching I would make your first target to get to know everything possible about the students you teach. What’s their favourite sport? etc. Obviously don’t distract the attention from the lesson but make time I between lessons etc. They are human, they care and they want to be cared about! Everything else becomes so much easier and you will probably find yourself writing a cheesy blog like this 6 months later.

3. My subject

As previously stated I was swayed into teaching full time maths including GCSE with no Geography in my first ever teaching job last year. Without sounding dramatic I became pretty much just a shell of a human being. The reason I started teaching was to share the wisdom of the world that we live in, when this was taking a way I forgot what teaching was and to be honest how to do it.

Now I have the joys of teaching KS4 and KS3 GEOGRAPHY. There’s bits of Geography to suit every pupil. I love learning what pupil’s strengths and weaknesses are. For example those that sometimes struggle to understand how the development gap is being reduced go ahead and amaze me when interpreting data from a choropleth map. Those that struggle to compare data of the climate of the Sahara desert and the climate of London will amaze me with an evaluation of management methods on the Holderness coast.  I try not to waffle on but if the learning fits I also get to share my own experiences of: experiencing urban development; being flooded; seeing the Holderness coast erode year by year. There is nothing quite like it. Why else do I think my subject is incredible? It genuinely prepares them for the future and provides plenty of skills which will open doors for the all the pupils I feel so passionate about.

Geography in the news? Not on my curriculum

You might be aware that, over the last few days, the UK has had some snow. The so called ‘Beast from the East’ (and now Storm Emma) has caused havoc across parts of the UK with transport disruption, school closures (much to the delight of Edu-twitter!) and seemingly record sales of bread and milk!

This has been of particular interest to the burgeoning community of geography edu-tweeters, this morning I set up a poll asking whether people intended to teach about the UK’s extreme weather when they are next in school. I had already planned this post, and so the poll results will make for interesting viewing.

I’ll be clear from the outset here – I don’t think teachers (especially geographers) need to be teaching extreme events exactly at the moment of their happening, certainly not during timetabled lessons (I would make exception for terrorist attacks etc and we teach/discuss these during assembly and form time). My rationale for this is outlined below.

1. Geography is struggling for curriculum time – This is certainly the impression I get when I discuss timetabling with colleagues in other schools. We have 2 hours a week in Y7 and 1 hour a week in Y8 before beginning KS4. This means, that for the students I teach, I cannot waste any lesson time. As a department, we have already planned the curriculum for this year – a serious amount of time went into this, debating content, case studies, concepts – to let that all be thrown out in one week makes a mockery of those efforts. In my last post, I argued for geographers to be selective about the places we teach, but the same threads apply here. We owe students powerful knowledge delivered within an well planned and logical framework.
2. Workload matters – This argument seems illogical at first consideration. How could planning about such an event, so widely reported, increased my workload? There’s a huge amount of stuff out there already! – Whilst that’s true, we know there’s more to planning than making a PPT/worksheet. You need to identify your key concepts (there is a lot that comes with teaching such an extreme weather event!), craft your explanations, select and adapt your resource materials. This is not a workload reducing task.
3. It gives the wrong impression – This is especially true if you take a break from another topic to specifically teach about it. E.g. Y8 are currently working on ecosystems – looking specifically at savannah grasslands at this moment. If I delivered a lesson on the UK’s extreme weather next week I am telling my students “This lesson is only important when nothing extreme is happening, but the moment there’s a sniff of geography, you’re getting that.” So often, we are the representatives of our subject in school, we cannot be doing anything which potentially diminishes the subject in the eyes of the students.
4. Students, as novices in geography, find it difficult to manage such change – Rapid change of content is difficult for students to process and meaningfully engage with. This references the ways in which experts (teachers) think differently about content to students (novices). Even now, my mind boggles at the extent of the background geography I would need to teach to ensure students could even effectively comprehend such an event. As geographers, we have already built an extensive bank of geographical knowledge, and so managing these transitions is not problematic for us. Excellent stuff on the ‘curse of knowledge’ by David Didau found here.
5. We are subject experts – I have referenced this point in passing above, but let me spell it out again. We are subject experts – we have spent extensive time learning and developing our knowledge of geography. We are not news presenters, responding to what goes on in the world the moment it happens, we need to present to students the importance of scholarship and our selection of content does this. I remember, completing my A-Level in Geography in 2009. One unit of study was on tectonics and, in particular, earthquakes. In 2008, the Sichuan earthquake hit, devastating Southern China. I learnt nothing about that case study until I came to teach it myself in my first year of teaching in 2013. My teacher had already taught us about the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and had decided not to muddy the waters of our novice minds by introducing new content. Have faith in your expertise.

However, I will caveat this post with the following:

• Yes, I will be updating the lessons I use for the weather hazards topic at GCSE (but this will be in place for next year, I don’t want to rush it). If you are yet to deliver any case studies on extreme UK weather – of course it makes sense to update things.
• Yes, the students will want to talk about it and I will engage them in these conversations (in form time or out of lesson).
• Yes, my strongest students will want to do some additional work on this – I will support them where I can with recommendations for reading/videos etc, again out of lesson time.

Place matters – Why do we teach what we teach?

For geographers, I think the title question is well worth reflecting upon in relation to what we teach. I am planning some posts that broadly discuss curriculum development in geography, and hope this will be an initial introduction to my thoughts.

When I think about geography, and the features of an excellent geography curriculum, I immediately think about place. Place represents both a physical manifestation on the surface of the Earth, but also it is a way of seeing the world. Places are a reflection of the cultures, environments, socioeconomic processes and people that inhabit and, as a result, no two places can be considered to be the same.

This preposition is problematic for geographers because of our tendency to seek similarities in the world. We teach students to categorise and group the world into broad categories – LIC/HIC/NEE are examples of this – but we need to be clear with our students that, whilst places may share similar features, they are all inherently unique and different.

Consider two examples of place lifted from the new GCSE specification (AQA) – Brazil (explicitly Rio De Janeiro) and Nigeria (taught via urban environments and economic world). Both countries are NEEs, both share similar economic history and are increasingly developing their economies to privilege manufacturing and services to support economic growth (and a growing middle class), both have a diverse range of socioeconomic issues and increasing populations. The similarities run deep.

However, to try and teach them as one and the same would do a disservice to their uniqueness and would be to cheat students of the important knowledge that surrounds these two places.

The point I am making here is that we, as geography teachers, must be critical and reflective about the places we choose to teach. Inevitably, all of the choices we make, our influenced by any number of factors – our own interests, our own expertise, what we may already have resources on, what might be ‘engaging’ (for students and SLT).

When making these important curriculum decisions in geography, we need to have clarity and authority in our decision making.

To share my own thinking on this – in our KS3 curriculum, we teach a unit entitled ‘The Geography of Britain’. Through the delivery of this topic, we spend some time explicitly teaching on London – namely considering its place in both Britain and the world. In planning this sequence of learning, we made a decision to privilege London (privilege it by giving it explicit coverage) over, say, Barnsley  (nothing meant by my choice of other here!). We made this decision because of three things:

Firstly, London is a global city and, as a result, it offers students a unique frame of analysis. It opens a greater breadth (and depth) of geography for students to consider – population change, management of resources, challenges and opportunities of urban growth – than could ever be offered by Barnsley. London is collectively understood to be a city of greater historical and cultural significance – to deny students the chance to learn about it is damaging.

Secondly, geographical data is much easier to access for London than it is for Barnsley. The quality of geographical data we present to students has an enormous bearing on the quality of the geography they are able to learn. A quick search for geographical data on population, wages, transport, ethnicities, maps presented a plethora of high quality materials I could integrate into my planning on London – but not so for Barnsley. I reiterate, this is no slight on Barnsley, it is an observation on the importance of place.

Thirdly, the reality of time. In our curriculum model, KS3 runs 3 hours a week over 2 years – 2 hours in Y7 and 1 hour in Y8. This, inevitably, has an impact on the selection of content and the way we present it. In an ideal world, I would plan for students to extensively learn about their local area – developing a clear sense of the geography of it, done through fieldwork and the analysis of geographical data – but realities limit these ambitions. This is something we must be mindful of in our curriculum planning too – time makes realists of us all.

I firmly believe that yes, geography should allow students to contextualise and understand where they live, of course their local geography is important BUT this must be part of an overarching curriculum that draws upon shared, powerful knowledge that will contribute to a greater understanding of the world. I rally against geography’s ‘ethical turn’ (more on this in future writing) which has laid claim to geography’s identity, seeking to reshape and redefine the key underpinnings of geography and advocate for geographers to begin to reconsider just what are the threshold concepts of geography? What is the powerful knowledge that can have a potentially transformative impact on how we view the world?

And when you’re contemplating these questions, how much of this is reflected in your own curriculum?

“What’s a Saguaro cactus?” Why subject knowledge matters

The focus of this blog is all about subject knowledge. It’s (largely) undisputed amongst educationalists that subject knowledge is one of the most important factors in effective teaching. (Read effective teaching to mean improving student outcomes) This finding has been reinforced by a number of publications – notably Coe et al (2014) ‘What Makes Great Teaching?’, their report for the Sutton Trust.

I recall, from my own training, very little being said (certainly explicitly) about subject knowledge. It was an unspoken assumption that we fresh-faced trainees would already have great subject knowledge because we’d studied geography at university… or at least A-Level… At the time, I didn’t think much of this. I recall, confidently, proclaiming my subject knowledge to be very strong and doing very little to improve it. I jumped through the subject knowledge audit hoops, pledging to fill in the gaps in my knowledge (more on that later!).

Looking back now, this had an undoubted impact on the quality of my teaching. I remember teaching a lesson from AQA old spec in the ‘Living World’ unit. The lesson was on hot deserts and the ways in which vegetation had adapted to survive in the extreme conditions. After watching a brief video clip and reading through some textbook information, one of the students asked me a question about the Saguaro Cactus.

Now, for those who don’t know, the Saguaro is a species of cactus synonymous with the Sonoran desert in North America. Characterised by its great size (see below), the Saguaro sprouts multiple arms through its life (which can be as long as 200 years!). The Saguaro is also notable for its spine, white flowers and small fruits. They are fascinating in the way they’re stems swell to hold rainfall – essential in these conditions. It is estimated, after water storage, some Saguaro can weigh up to 900kg!

The legendary Saguaro cactus

Now, I digress but what this illustrates is how far my subject knowledge (on this one minor point of goegraphy) has come. When this question was first asked, I couldn’t answer the question. I didn’t actually know what a Saguaro was, beyond the very limited information in the textbook, and couldn’t enhance the learning for my students. This had an impact on my own self-perception as a teacher and the way my students viewed me. There is (or should be?) an expectation from students that you are the subject expert in the room and can answer their questions (certainly those relevant to the lesson!).

It seems fairly insignificant, that I didn’t know anything about this one cactus, but it opened a window into how poor my overall knowledge was of this area of Geography. Ensuring I have strong subject knowledge is essential for 2 reasons. 1) strong subject knowledge means I have a grasp of how my students are likely to think about what they are being taught and 2) it will help me to identify, and address, misconceptions. It is essential in allowing me to plan sequences of learning, consider how I assess this and directly informs my questioning of students.

Since those heady days of training, prompted along by the new specifications, I have made a real point of working on my own subject knowledge. There are a number of different ways I do this – reading around the subject (I will blog on my favourite Geography books at some point), engaging with the GA, reading and engaging with blogs via social media, watching/listening to the news (Radio 4’s Today/PM programmes have been an incredible aid to my subject knowledge) are examples of some strategies I use to make sure I am informed and knowledgeable. These are supplemented by copious amounts of googling/shameless Wikipedia use too.

My big takeaway from this for geographers is to plan time for your own subject knowledge development. In the same way we plan to mark, prepare lessons and resources we should be planning ways to develop our own subject knowledge. There are some excellent textbook materials out there – but they are not going to provide the depth of knowledge we will need to maximise the learning of our students.

I’d love to hear other ways in which #teamgeography are working on their subject knowledge.

Where’s the geography?

Whenever I think about a new topic or a new class, I always try to strip it back to one simple question: ‘Where’s the geography here?’. This question was posed to me by my mentor when I was training to teach.

Let me paint you the picture, she’d observe my lesson (one I’d no doubt spent a silly amount of time preparing!) and would offer her insights – initially fairly generic, focusing on behaviour, quality of resources etc. and then she’d pose the question; ‘Where’s the geography?’.  This question would always leave me scrambling to try to explain what the students had done, what they’d learnt, how it linked to what was done previously – but that wasn’t the question. What she was getting at was, how did my lesson improve my students wider geographical knowledge – what subject specific vocabulary had they learnt? What locational knowledge had they developed/extended? Where had they developed their geographical skills (map reading, atlas use)? Where had they consolidated prior geographical learning?

To not put to fine a point on it – how was my lesson any different to what they were getting elsewhere around school? This was a real eye-opening moment for me and my teaching and is something I carry with me closely now – be that planning learning or observing colleagues. Certainly now, when I am planning learning for my own students, I pay close attention to the vocabulary we are using (be that new or from prior learning), any case study countries/regions that might be introduced and consider how I can ensure these key details aren’t being glossed over. I have been guilty in the past of not being explicit in how I teach geographical language assuming, wrongly, that many of the key terms we use will have been covered in English lessons/students already understand the terms.

To give an example of this – I will discuss an example of a lesson for next week.

Class: Year 7 Geography
Topic: Tropical Rainforests – Lesson 1 – Introduction to the Rainforest

Version 1

In the past, I might have started the lesson with a map highlighting where tropical rainforests can be located and, as students entered, I would have asked them to annotate continents and countries to demonstrate location. I would have gestured towards atlases and indicated the page they were to use. I would have set an on screen timer and circulated, offering support to various students. When the timer expired, I would stop the class and then take some feedback, modelling some notes on the board, before moving on. I would next have focused on what a tropical rainforest looks like – again using images/videos to develop student ideas on this.

However, next week, I am going to deliver this differently. Same class and same topic, but here’s how it’s different.

Version 2

I will start the lesson with a quiz – What are the 7 continents? Write down and self assess answers in the back of books. I will then display the tropical rainforests map and begin to teach key details. I will explcitly teach students what the equator is (and where it is), they have done this before, but they will need this reinforced. I will write a definition of the equator on the board. Next I will focus on teaching students about the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer. Again, students are aware of these, but maybe unsure of their relevance here. Now that students have recapped this prior knowledge on latitudes, we can begin to consider how this might have an impact on the location of tropical rain forests. Students will begin to understand how the climate changes with latitude and will begin to see the links between vegetation and climates. 

Mapping rainforests

Map to consolidate the Equator and Tropics

Now, the first task would have been quicker and required much less planning from me certainly. However, it would have existed in a disjointed void. Sure, some of my students would have strengthened their location knowledge, but for many, this task would have existed in isolation (and the learning would have been lost) because it bears little relevance to rest of the lesson. By planning my lesson with the ‘geography’ in mind, it has helped to ensure time in lesson is both more purposeful and consolidates that which has gone before.

I am not suggesting my schemes of learning/medium-long term plans are perfect, not even close, but they have certainly gotten better when I’ve considered the year’s learning as a whole. I will blog on concept mapping at some point – but it is this idea that has helped me to nail the ‘geography’ in my geography lessons.

For your next lesson, or set of lessons, reflect on that point – ‘Where’s the geography?’.

Geography – A call to arms

I’ve toyed with blogging on and off for a few years now, but it was last night browsing Twitter, that the idea struck me again. There was a thread citing the lack of geography teachers on Twitter and, even more so, the lack of those who blog. Doing some digging, two things became clear – 1) lots of geographers want to blog but are unsure of themselves and 2) many didn’t think they could sustain a blog long-term.

So, here we go – inspired by this, I would like to welcome you to Team Geography’s blog. It is my hope that this will be the first of many posts – focusing explicitly on geography. Looking at how the subject is taught (teachers sharing their best practice), looking at (and sharing) the resources they use, considering the issues facing Geography today, discussing Geography curricula and a wide range of issues – assessment is one I’m certainly interested in.

This blog will always be looking to host as wide a range of content and views as is possible. If you are a geographer, geography teacher or just interested in making a contribution – we would love to hear from you. You can find me on Twitter (@GeographyTom9) or the other Twitter folk who run this with me (@Jennnnnn_x and @LCreanGeog) – get in touch with us about making a submission.