Friday was rather exciting; a chance to head to the Institute of Education (IoE) at University College London (UCL) to meet up with Dr Alex Standish, Senior Lecturer in Geography Education, and other Fawcett Fellows. With my daughter heading off to university this year, I have a little more time to dedicate to myself and advancing my career, so I applied for a Fawcett Fellowship a few months ago and my application was successful. Returning to university to study/conduct research will certainly be a challenge. I am also discovering that things are rather different now to when I was last a student 30 years ago! However, it is always good to push yourself beyond your comfort zone. My daughter and I have been sharing updates on our new ventures too.
After negotiating the campus to collect my UCL ID card (Fresher’s Fair was in full throng), I headed towards Russell Square for a coffee and lunch meet with my Fawcett Fellows; an opportunity to discover a little more about each other aside from our Zoom call in early September. And, what a lovely group they were and from all regions of England and Northern Ireland. Alex then guided us towards the IoE for our first face-to-face afternoon session.
Three hours of lively discussion based around the suggested pre-reading material and sharing of best practice followed. Alex had provided a list of suggested reading material over the summer and identified the following three articles as the basis for our discussion today:
Leesa Wheelahan (2008) A social realist alternative for curriculum, Critical
Studies in Education, 49:2, 205-210, DOI: 10.1080/17508480802105473
Alaric Maude (2020) The role of geography’s concepts and powerful
knowledge in a future 3 curriculum, International Research in Geographical and Environmental
Education, 29:3, 232-243, DOI: 10.1080/10382046.2020.1749771
Young and Muller (2010) Three Education Scenarios for the Future: Lessons from the Sociology of Knowledge, European Journal of Education 45(1), 11-27
We began by talking about a vision/intent for geography, bringing along examples that we had from our own schools/MATs, plus exploring the Geographical Association (GA)’s 2026-2031 strategy flyer and delving into the draft new National Curriculum for Northern Ireland that has recently been published and now undergoing a period of consultation.
Next, we moved on to consider key concepts in geography, a much contested area for many years, as commented upon in the Geographical Association (GA)‘s A framework for the whole school geography curriculum too (https://geography.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/GA-Curriculum-Framework-2022-WEB-final.pdf). We talked about the need to make these more visible in any new National Curriculum. Should they become ‘golden threads‘ that are explicitly identified throughout Key Stages 1, 2 and 3?
Finally, Alex drew our attention to Future 1, Future 2 and Future 3 curricula, making sure we understood the differences between each one and asking for our thoughts. It was agreed that we should be striving for a Future 3 curriculum with a few aspects receiving greater emphasis and a couple of additions, e.g. disciplinary knowledge. We also touched upon some more recent writing, e.g. Mark Enser‘s and Alistair Hamill‘s Substack posts (https://substack.com/@markenser1 and https://alistairhamill.substack.com/).
Our next meeting is scheduled for mid-November when we will delve into one of our other requested foci, again with some shared reading beforehand ready for another, undoubtedly, enlightening and stimulating discussion. I think all of us are relishing the opportunity to step back from our everyday roles and have time to explore and reflect. It is a real tonic to find the joy in geography again.