The latest books is about bringing powerful knowledge into the classroom.
The geography chapter has been written by Dr. Alex Standish. It explores the curriculum thinking of two heads of department, who consider how knowledge is explored in their classrooms.
It's a fairly short chapter and is worth a read.
We finally have the outcome of the Curriculum and Assessment Review with the publication of the final report today. Many thousands of educators have been waiting for months.
In July 2024, the government commissioned Professor Becky Francis CBE to convene and chair a panel of experts to conduct the Curriculum and Assessment Review.The report has taken on board the many consultation responses from individuals and organisations.
These are available in a summary document which is separate to the main final report - this is also worth looking at.
The RGS's original response to the call for consultation is here. It was referenced in the final report, along with the GA's, and reports from UCL's Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education.
The report has been almost a year in the making, and runs to 197 pages.
The recommendations for Geography are as follows:
We recommend that the Government:
Makes minor refinements to the Geography Programmes of Study and GCSE subject content to respond to the issues identified, including by:
• Refining content to support progression better to further study, deepen children and young people’s understanding of key geographical concepts, make content more relevant and inclusive, and remove unnecessary repetition across topics.
• Embedding disciplinary knowledge more explicitly at Key Stage 3, such as geographical enquiry, spatial reasoning, use of digital tools, human geography and use of evidence, to ensure all children and young people have access to high-quality geographical education.
• Clarifying and reinforcing requirements for fieldwork to demonstrate its role more effectively in supporting content and the developing of disciplinary knowledge, ensuring changes remain proportionate and inclusive.
Embeds climate change and sustainability more explicitly across different key stages, including across the physical geography, geographical applications and human geography sections of the curriculum, ensuring early, coherent, and more detailed engagement with climate education. This should be done without risking curriculum overload.
There is also an element of media literacy here for climate change education in particular, where there is a lot of misinformation and disinformation. There is a need for pupils to be aware of AI and its value and issues.
There is also mention of the need for diversity and for all students to "see themselves in the curriculum" - something which I was particularly keen to see.
And these will ultimately form part of changes to the national curriculum (will this be compulsory for all schools?) and GCSE subject criteria. These will be consulted on again and no changes will happen before 2028 in any case.
On the purpose of the review itself:
National curriculum content must be kept up to date, fit for purpose and reflective of the needs of wider society. Periodic holistic reviews of the national curriculum are therefore essential for ensuring these aims are achieved, as well as for maintaining overall curriculum coherence. Reviews are also a valuable mechanism for addressing curriculum shape in the round. Reviews can evaluate whether the breadth and depth of different subjects and their content remains appropriate, as well as determining the overarching aims of schooling and the time needed for the different activities required to meet these aims. Reviews can also address the build-up of content in particular areas to ensure that the curriculum remains deliverable for teachers and ambitious for students.
The Oak National Academy is also mentioned as being further involved in the development of curriculum materials which are up to date.
We agree with the Review that the national curriculum and the resources that support it, should reflect our modern society and diverse communities. Our aim is for the curriculum to be both a mirror, in which every child can see themselves and their communities reflected, and a window through which every child is connected to the world beyond their existing horizons and perspectives
"We will follow the curriculum principles of coherence, subject mastery and depth – making sure that programmes of study and subject content are grounded in relevant and important knowledge and disciplinary skills."
There will also be a fully digital and easily navigable version of the national curriculum - we will create a rich, connected online version of the curriculum which visually represents the links within and between subject areas and gives connections to prior learning, helping teachers to contextualise learning across traditional subject boundaries in the classroom.
As the Review recommends, we intend to retain a single national curriculum which serves as a core entitlement which every pupil can access. We are legislating through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill so that academies will be required to teach the refreshed national curriculum alongside maintained schools. This will ensure that parents and carers have certainty over the core concepts in their child’s education and that there is a floor beneath which this cannot slip. The national curriculum is not the entire curriculum but an underpinning of what every child is entitled to know, which schools build on locally. Schools will continue to remain responsible for deciding how their school curriculum brings those core concepts to life in their choices of historical events, physical and human geography, and novels, for example. This will allow them to create dynamic learning environments where pupils can flourish.
"Music excites when it is performed" - Benjamin Britten
Roblox is a very popular game. For several years, Helen Young has been working with the BBC and several companies to produce some immersive geographical experiences based on the game engine to add to BBC Bitesize's offerings for students.
A job opportunity for you to work at my school.
A part-time maternity cover teaching Geography in King’s Ely Senior school is currently available from September.
This would involve
Deadline to apply is 19th of March.
Details are here. Happy to answer any questions.
The post is part time to cover maternity leave for the whole of the 2025/26 academic year.
Richard's PhD was based on his involvement in the work of the GeoCapabilities project.
I am proud to have been part of phase 2 of this project, which has had three phases to date. My involvement came when the project developed the ideas of curriculum making and connected it with the idea of vignette and the use of artefacts. All of these are referenced in the book.
GeoCapabilities began in 2012 with a pilot project led by the American Association of Geographers. This work is summarised in the online journal RIGEO. The first phase was funded by the AAG.At the GA Conference in 2012, I co-presented a session on the digitalearth ERASMUS+ funded project which I had been part of - a multi-million pound project, and I helped to lead one of the sub-groups which took me to various European locations including Klagenfurt. This was with Michael Solem and John Lyon, and was an interesting experience, and led to me getting involved ultimately with Michael Solem's work.
In 2013, GeoCapabilities became an EU funded programme as a 3 year Comenius project (539079-LLP-1-2013-1-UK-COMENIUS-CMP).
GeoCapabilities is international in scope. It embraces in how geography is understood and expressed in national school standards. The capabilities approach helps geography educators everywhere to articulate the importance of children learning how to think geographically. This is part of what is called curriculum leadership.
I joined the project team, working on behalf of University College London. I also co-presented at several events with the legend that is Duncan Hawley.
In the 2nd phase I attended meetings in Sheffield, Bruges, Brussels and Helsinki.
In Brussels we discussed the way that we might share the work of teachers who we were working with the ideas we had developed. These included the idea of 'curriculum artefacts' which went along with David Lambert's previous development of 'curriculum making' as an important activity for teacher to engage in. I suggested the relatively new (at the time) technology of ESRI StoryMaps.
Richard has looked to extend the ideas from the project across the curriculum. Inevitably there are quite a few references to geography, but he also develops some thoughts on how this could be applied to other curriculum areas. There is something here for teachers of most subject areas.
Richard's book is not only about geography but attempts to apply the geocapabilities framework to all the major curriculum subjects. An introduction sets out the journey that Richard has been on since his first involvement in the project. This is an important section as it sets the scene but also outlines the development of the approach he advocates. It is research-informed but also practical in nature.
Part 1 of the book is called Theory.
It provides some wider reading and also develops some conclusions. Some of the wider reading was not to my taste when I read it, but it all counts in helping to develop a personal 'philosophy' on the complex nature of the job teachers do, and why we do what we (choose to) do.
The first section considers which knowledge is the most important, with the story of a Māori story recounting the formation of glaciers which would not be viewed as significant as the more 'scientific' explanation but nonetheless is 'a different form of truth' and helps get away from the 'single story' that some schools would have - focussing on the particular story that the awarding body wants them to tell to meet a bullet point on a specification. He moves through the previous 'Trad vs. Progressive' binary which was always unhelpful, and introduces those who are not geographers (and have probably heard David Lambert's work before) to the idea of Futures 1, 2 and 3 (alternative curriculum models).
A reference point for this is Michael Gove's 'infamous' and deluded claim from 2016 that people had 'had enough of experts' though a recent visit to a private dentist for complex root canal treatment confirmed that I'd rather have asked him than a local plumber. We need to counter the tide of fake news, which is lifted by AI and the actions of governments in more than one country... USA 2025-2028 is not a serial I am looking forward to.
As Richard says on p.22, "Teachers need to be the experts in the classroom. They need to be experts in the subjects they are teaching."
Sadly, in many schools, teacher recruitment and retention and an ageing workforce (of which I am definitely one) means that many pupils are not taught by someone who not only completed a geography degree but has also avidly maintained their knowledge of the discipline since they paraded across a stage in a gown and mortar board.
On p.29, the idea of expert knowledge is then applied to the students too. Richard talks about showing a picture of James Hutton: 'the father of modern geology" who lived in the 18th century. Which means of course he was ignorant of the basics of plate tectonics which even Year 4 students can now confidently talk about... they have more knowledge than the founding father of the entire subject. So what knowledge we teach now will retain its power during the students' life time - let alone beyond.
Geography is a rapidly changing discipline, with GIS and geospatial technology - supported by AI - developing at pace. This section also outlines differences between curriculum choices made in England, Scotland and Wales.
He outlines some of the other thinkers who have worked in the field of capabilities in education, which is useful, and includes the curriculum making diagram which geographers will again be very familiar with (I hope). This points out the importance of teacher choices, and includes a sentence that most teachers will relate to:
"A lesson at the end of the day on a Friday afternoon might look very different to the same lesson with the same class on a Monday morning..."
Part 2 of the book is called Theory into Practice.
This is where Richard looks at other curriculum areas. Each of these is called 'What might make.... <insert subject here> a powerful knowledge?'
This returns the thinking to the idea of knowledge(s) and the implication that to unlock this requires what Margaret Roberts has called "powerful pedagogy" which is where we come in...
Richard looks at the following curriculum areas:
The book is also in some ways a CPD handbook for a department (or even an SLT team) to use to engage with the capabilities approach. There are discussion questions at the end of each section, which could be used by teachers working together to develop their practice. This would take a while to work through, but it would be interesting to see the outcomes, particularly if the approach was taken across a whole school.
Richard has drawn on a wide range of sources and worked hard to show how the capabilities approach can work across a range of subject areas... particularly in PE... and ends with a reminder that we have the power in our own classrooms, and should be the curriculum makers. As I said when I worked for the Geographical Association and led sessions for young teachers, every teacher is a Head of Geography, because if they're not actually holding that post... they're teaching particular students rather than that person...
It is very well written, and easy to digest as Richard unpicks the threads of how we have arrived at the current position we find ourselves in. With the deadline for the 'call for evidence' for the Government's Curriculum and Assessment Review coming at the end of the week, and the next stages when subjects will be looked at in detail, this book has arrived at the perfect time for schools who want to take a fresh look at why they do what they do.
Recommended for a departmental CPD library or as a book to hand to someone who has expressed an interest in taking on extra responsibilities or particularly enjoys the act of curriculum making.
Disclosure:
My copy was a review copy provided by the publisher, but I have also purchased a copy for my department's CPD library.
Published by Crownhouse in 2024
Paperback, 212pp
ISBN: 9-781785-837-180
Other resources:
Why not join me in late June for the latest RGS-IBG Teachmeet - once again, it's online rather than face to face, but that allows people to join who would not be able to get to Kensington on a weekday evening, so that's fair enough.
One for today.
Teaching about Iceland's geothermal and hydropower energy mix today.
For comparison, I will show the current state of the UK's energy mix, using this National Grid dashboard.
I was sorry to hear of the passing of Sir. Tim Brighouse.
I had the pleasure of crossing paths with him a few times during my time working for the Geographical Association, and also in my freelance years. This list has been appearing on social media a lot today...
Here are the details of how to get a copy of a new resource which I have been working on for quite a while - since before COVID19 in fact.
Buffaload Resource Final v1... by GeoBlogs
This blog has been a bit of a slow-burner compared to LivingGeography. I started it around nine years ago now, when I was about to start a new adventure in the classroom, and didn't expect that I would still be working at King's, as Head of Geography in the Junior section of the school.
It's had up around 80 000 views, which is OK.
Thanks for reading.
Image: Sundial on Ely Cathedral - Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license.
A chance to support my department in 2022 covering for a colleague.
Working in the Senior School with KS3, GCSE and A level teaching.
Happy to answer questions...
Come and take a look at the information.
A virtual tour of the school can be accessed here.
Closing date for applications is the 20th of April.
