Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
‘Transforming Tired Topics’Fred Martin
Tom BiebrachAlan Parkinson
GA Secondary Phase Committee
But...Some of them could do with a polish...
Ox Bow Lakes in Siberia from 30 000 ft by Fred Martin
‘Tired topic’ alert
• What has been taught for many years – core topics/themes, content
• Taught them in the same way• Use the same case studies• Resources date – technology moves on• Ideas not updated – context changes
Text book 2009
Text book 1983
How topics tire• Outside influences – Exam Boards set courses• Repetition of topics • Time to innovate • Lack of Inset to update ideas• Updating can cost• Lack of assessment credit for updated ideas• Personal ideas become stuck• Disjuncture with ideas in HE geography • Other agendas - Literacy Numeracy AfL etc.
Topics mentioned by teachers...Brazil – Soils - Human geography “a bit depressing’- Lapse rates - Specific skills e.g. Cross sections - Map-skills- “Almost all settlement”- Global fashion- Mass movement – Statistics “I can’t do maths...”- Football - Rossby waves- Farming- Weather and climate - Meanders and river processes - Shopping hierarchies – EU - Regional inequalities in Italy
Are there any ‘tired topics’?
• Is the teacher or the topic ‘tired’?• There is no definitive list of ‘tired topics’• All topics need to be updated • Reminders of the range of approaches that
are possible – ‘good’ subject teaching
‘…..we may need to throw out crusty old favourites … ‘
David LambertA Different View (manifesto)
So how do we ‘polish’ tired t . . . . . ?topics
Student VoicesHadleigh School, Suffolk
Thanks to Dale Banham, Suffolk Adviser
Video clip
What do the students say ?
Students are from a school in a small town in Suffolk, which has the Secondary Geography Quality
Mark, and is also a ‘Centre of Excellence’ – it has superb exam results and an impressive take up for
Geography at Key Stage 4
Teacher voices...Survey on SLN
Developing empathy for the geographies of others
“what has it got to do with me ?”
“The debate is about how we teach, not what we teach: pace and
challenge, innovation, personalisation...”
“Important that topics we don’t enjoy should at no time be obvious to the
pupils...”
“Following someone else’s SoW... I can only tell my own story in my own
way.....”
ContextGCSE Specifications have changed
• Which one have you gone for and why ?
• In each one there may be topics that you are not looking forward to teaching quite as much as others...
Teaching Tired Topics
A Case Study
Chicago, 1925
Manchester, 2009
What is the connection?
Burgess Concentric Ring Model, 1925
Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentric_zone_model
Criticism“The original highly debateable, land-use models of the Chicago school (Burgess, 1925) have been adapted to the English [and Welsh] situation with repeated attempts made to ‘fit’ any given urban area to the Burgess concentric ring model. The result has been an urban geography which has failed to capture the dynamism and complexity of the real world…” (Rawding, 2007)
“Geographers [should] question established concepts and jettison those which are no longer useful for making sense of the urban experience.” (Hubbard, 2006)
Alternative approach to land use mapping – Google Earth ‘street view’
CBD
Older terraced housing C.19th
Later housing (1930s-1950s)
Modern housing
Retail and leisure
Industrial estates
View from above…“Official accounts of city life (maps, census, plans etc) write the city from the point of view of an authoritative, privileged male.”Miles (2002)
“The search for the essence of the city is one that impels urban researchers to look at the city from different vantage points and viewing angles…There can never be a unified theory of cities, only knowledges written from particular viewing angles in particular places and times.”Hubbard (2006)
View from within
Where am I?
What can I see?
What can I hear?
What do I feel about this
place?
How could/should this place change in the
future?
Google Earth Street view…the modern day flâneur (or voyeur?)
How has this place changed?
More information• Hall, Hubbard & Short (Eds.) (2008) The Sage Companion to
the City Sage, London
• Hubbard, P. (2006) City Routledge, Oxford.
• Rawding C. (2007) Reading our Landscapes Chris Kington, London
• Google Earth http://earth.google.co.uk/
• GA SPC http://www.geography.org.uk/aboutus/committeesworkinggroups/secondary
“There are only ever choices.... When choices are made and accepted by a sufficient number of teachers, they tend to become 'common sense‘”
(Noel Castree, 2005)
The choices YOU make are all important !
“The best teachers will provide a narrative that engages and thrills.
There’s always a story to be told and I think it’s possible to make any topic
interesting, at least for one lesson anyway...”
“Weather came out bottom in popularity amongst the students, so I
am trying to rework it as ‘extreme weather’... I get the nagging feeling
that I am ‘selling out’...
Lampedusa
Plastiki
Using movies
Your challenge
Can you talk for one minute about a topic without....
REPETITION – using the same word more than once
HESITATION – a pause, or ‘erm’...DEVIATION – getting off the topic
Manifesto Link
The lesson doesn’t end when the lesson ends...
• Continued feedback• Twitter (@GeoBlogs)• Examples of topics that you’ve woken up...• Image by DHDesign• Presentation on Slideshare
Acknowledgements
• Thanks to other members of GA SPC• Thanks to members of SLN Geography Forum
for comments• Thanks to Dale Banham and pupils of Hadleigh
High School for their insights
