Volume 47 | Number 2 | Summer 2022
Editor:
Melanie Norman Writing for Teaching Geography
Email: m.j.norman
@brighton.ac.uk Teaching Geography provides a forum for sharing:
Editorial contact: • practical strategies for teaching geography
Elaine Anderson • critical reflection on geography teaching
and learning
Email: eanderson@
geography.org.uk • curriculum innovation and change in geography.
If you have a teaching strategy, practical idea,
resource to share or particular view on educational
practice, we would like to hear from you.
Teaching Geography welcomes articles from PGCE
students, ECTs, practising teachers, academics and
teacher trainers. If you have an idea but have never
submitted an article before and would like some advice,
please contact Melanie Norman (m.j.norman@
brighton.ac.uk), the Editor of Teaching Geography,
who will be happy to discuss it with you.
We welcome the submission of these types of article:
Top Spec Geography – new titles
coming soon
Cutting-edge resources for post-16 students
that use an easy-to-follow approach to offer
the latest research on a wide variety of human
and physical geography topics, helping to
bridge the gap between school and university.
Available in June:
• T
 he Climate Crisis  Tim Daley and Kate
Stockings
• H
 ealth geographies and the COVID-19
Pandemic  Bob Digby and Tony Gatrell
To find more go to:
www.geography.org.uk/Shop/
Volume 47 Number 2
Copy editing: Fran Royle
Cartography: Ledgard Jepson Ltd
Design: Ledgard Jepson Ltd
Printing: Buxton Press
ISSN 0305-8018 (print)
ISSN 2043-6831 (online)
The opinions expressed in this journal do not necessarily coincide
GA strategic with those of the Editor or the Geographical Association.
partners Teaching Geography is published three times a year.
The Geographical Association is a registered charity:
number 1135148 (company number 07139068)
All requests for re-using GA copyright material should
now be directed to www.plsclear.com or follow the link
at www.geography.org.uk/Contact-Us
© The Geographical Association. As a benefit of membership, the
Association allows its members to reproduce material from Teaching
Geography for their own internal school use, provided that the
copyright is held by the Geographical Association.
Safety: Care has been taken to ensure that articles published in
Teaching Geography do not suggest practices which might be
dangerous. However, the Geographical Association has not tested
the activities described and can offer no guarantee of safety.
Vol 47, 2, Summer 2022
© Teaching Geography
1.  ■ Geographical concepts (2500 words) articles
critically discuss and illustrate approaches to teaching
geography or current educational views and how they
impact on geography.
2.  ■ The G-Factor (2000 words) articles (supported
by online resources) are based around a practical
idea for teaching one or a sequence of lessons.
3.  ■ How to... (750 words) articles provide practical
advice and strategies for geography departments.
4.  ■ Spotlight (2000 words) articles provide
specialist subject information and propose
approaches for teaching these topics.
5.  Raising issues (1200 words) articles aim to
be thought-provoking and spark debate about
controversial or contentious topics.
There is detailed information on preparing articles
for publication at https://www.geography.org.uk/
Write-for-GA
HEALTH GEOGRAPHIES AND
THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
SERIES EDITORS: BOB DIGBY AND SUE WARN
SERIES EDITORS: BOB DIGBY AND SUE WARN
TIM DALEY AND KATE STOCKINGS
BOB DIGBY AND TONY GATRELL
TSG
TOP SPEC GEOGRAPHY
TSG
TOP SPEC GEOGRAPHY
Disclaimer: While every effort has been made to identify and contact
the original sources, we apologise if there have been any inadvertent
breaches of copyright.
The Teaching Geography Editorial Board
Editor: Dr Melanie Norman Vice Chair of GA Education Group
Dr Richard Bustin Head of Geography, Lancing College, Sussex
Hannah Finch Noyes Head of Geography at St Helen and
St Katharine, Abingdon, Oxfordshire
Lucy Fryer Geography and Geology Teacher, King Edward VI
Grammar School, Chelmsford
Dr Aidan Hesslewood Head of Geography, Spalding Grammar
School, Lincolnshire
Fred Martin Consultant to the GA
Dr Emma Rawlings Smith Lecturer and Researcher in Education,
University of Bangor
Dr Ian Selmes Former secondary geography teacher and former
Lecturer in Secondary Geography Education, University of Leicester
Justin Woolliscroft Former Lecturer in Education (Geography),
University of Hull
Corresponding members:
Grace Healy is Education Director (Secondary) at David Ross
Education Trust, a PhD student at the UCL Institute of Education
and Chair of the GA’s Teacher Education Phase Committee.
Charlotte Milner is a Teacher of Geography at Westminster
City School, London.
Contents Teaching
Geography
Editorial49 Exploring New Zealand 71 Volume 47
Editor Melanie Norman introduces this issue of Megan Brook describes how she developed a Number 2
Teaching Geography. scheme of work on New Zealand for key stage 3 Summer 2022
that combines ‘awe and wonder’ with rigorous
The geography of COVID-19: geography. ■
a case study in geoliteracy 50
‘The danger in primary geography’
Anne Dolan and Joe Usher examine the geography
by Simon Catling – a response  74
of COVID-19 and offer ideas for exploring the issue
through the framework of geoliteracy. ■ Gary Dawson, Hannah Finch Noyes and Paul Hunt
share their thoughts in response to Simon Catling’s
Everyday geographies: the power article – ‘The danger in primary geography’ (Primary
of the quotidian 53 Geography, Spring 2022) – introduced by Melanie
Norman.
Alan Parkinson draws on the work of writers Everyday geographies
as varied as Georges Perec and Joe Moran to (see page 53)
Using football to introduce the concept
investigate the impact of our everyday experiences
of place to key stage 4 students  76
on thinking, teaching and learning in geography. • Create a mind map using the paper on Power
Paul Hunt outlines his school’s ‘masterclass’ your table.

• Start with Oppression in the middle and

The ability to …

e…
How to…create a river fieldwork approach to introducing A level topics and describes then try to branch off to individual words

h av
that you associate with oppression such

ust
as Power.

ou m
simulation in the classroom 56 using football to introduce the concept of place to • Under these secondary words write a

-ist y
brief description of what you mean – OPPRESSION
define your word or your use of it.

key stage 4 students. ■

I n ord er to be X
• Connect your secondary words together
with lines which have an explanation of

Lucy Fryer shows a technique for preparing students the link between the words.

• Used your completed mind map to -isms

for river processes fieldwork in the classroom. ■ Sustainable threads: using immersive
create a final definition of Oppression. The use of…

narratives to teach about the impacts Operationalising anti-racist

Operationalising anti-racist pedagogy of fast fashion 79
pedagogy in a secondary
geography classroom
in a secondary geography classroom 58 (see page 58)
Verity Jones, Ruth Millett and Jessica Pykett
Daryl Sinclair and Alesha de Fonseka explain anti- introduce a collection of lesson plans for key stages
racist pedagogy and outline techniques for using it in 2 and 3 on sustainable fashion and climate crisis.
the classroom. ■ They reflect on why schools need to teach about
fast fashion, and how to support teachers in light of
Curriculum for Wales – where are current concerns about children’s eco-anxiety. ■
we now? 61
Steph Robinson questions whether the high ideals
Reviews  83
of Curriculum for Wales are less than matched by its Ian Selmes
lack of detail in important areas. ■ Fostering empathy in the
teaching of natural hazards
Cover image: A couple with
Supporting trainee teachers to decolonise t-shirts asking for a cleaner
(see page 67)
the school geography curriculum  64 Volume 47 | Number 2 | Summer 2022

and more sustainable fashion

Sharon Reilly describes how she developed her industry during the Jobs, Justice
initial teacher training curriculum to help trainees and Climate rally on 5 July,
understand their role in decolonising the geography 2015, Toronto, Canada. ©
curriculum, and how they could improve the Shutterstock/Arindambanerjee.
classroom experience for their students. ■

Fostering empathy in the teaching

of natural hazards 
Kit Marie Rackley outlines practical approaches
to teaching natural hazards that foster empathy,
and an awareness of their impact on people. ■
67 Accompanying The code below links to
online materials Teaching Geography online.
For articles with this symbol, go to http://www.
geography.org.uk/journals and click on Teaching
Geography. Select Summer 2022 from the dropdown
menu and you will find the additional resources for
these articles if you scroll to the bottom of the page.

The Geographical Association is the leading subject association for all teachers Key to articles
of geography. Our charitable mission is to further geographical knowledge and ■ Geographical
understanding through education. Our journals, publications, professional events, concepts
website and local and online networks support teachers and share their ideas and ■ The G-Factor
practice. The GA represents the views of geography teachers and plays a leading ■ How to...
role in public debate relating to geography and education. ■ Spotlight

Vol 47, 2, Summer 2022

© Teaching Geography
47
GA Annual Conference
and Exhibition 2023
Sheffield Hallam University
Collaborative Geographies
Geographers are good people to work
with. We see the value of our own
discipline but are not afraid to look
outwards and draw on insights from
other specialisms to make sense of
a complex and changing world. We
know that to tackle some of the planet’s
most pressing geographical and
environmental challenges – from the
climate emergency to economic
inequality and social injustice – we need
to work with scientists, politicians, civil
society organisations, charities and
many more, to achieve meaningful
change. Being collaborative
geographers enables us to make
positive impacts on the world.
Collaboration is also central to a
geographical education. We frequently
learn together in the classroom and
develop our students’ skills to work as
requires us to be good listeners and
communicators, to be inclusive and
value and respect difference, to be
adaptable in our views, but also to have
contributions. Collaboration is also
hugely enjoyable and as a set of skills
that our students learn, can be of great
value to them in their future lives.
Collaborative Geographies is a
conference theme that aims to allow the
challenges and pleasures of working
together. Contributions could explore:
• collaboration within the
geographical community – across
human and physical geography,
between Early Years, primary,
secondary and higher education, or
within the GA and among other
geographical organisations as we
address key challenges like
becoming a more inclusive
discipline
• the value of collaborative learning
and pedagogies within geographical
education
• experiences of geographical
collaborations beyond our own
subject – with community
organisations, environmental
groups, charities, political agencies,
activists and so on
• collaboration as a way of raising the
There are many more possibilities
and I encourage members to interpret
the theme broadly and respond
creatively. I also hope that we can bring
some of those with whom we
collaborate into the conference to
celebrate but also to learn critically from
our experiences.
Alastair Owens,
GA Vice President 2021–22
Editorial
I am writing this editorial for the summer issue
of Teaching Geography shortly after the GA
Annual Conference and what a joy it was to
be there in person to meet up with so many
friends and colleagues who I had only seen in
a virtual environment since March 2020. Many
past contributors to Teaching Geography offered
conference sessions. Also a number of people
who have articles published in this issue hosted
presentations, namely, Alan Parkinson, GA President
2021–22, Anne Dolan, Joe Usher, Daryl Sinclair,
Kit Marie Rackley, Paul Hunt and Verity Jones.
Our own Teaching Geography conference session
was organized by Richard Bustin, and featured
three first-time contributors in 2020 talking
about their journey to getting published in the
journal. Alice Matthews, Charlotte Milner and
Sarah Trolley whose articles were nominated
for the award of ‘Excellence in Leading
Geography’ in 2021 all contributed to the session.
Congratulations to this year’s award nominees
Alistair Hamill, Holly Meneer and particularly to
Tessa Sittner, the overall winner. There was much
to celebrate during the Conference and some of
this year’s sessions will be adapted to appear as
articles in Teaching Geography in the future.
This issue has an insightful article from Alan
Parkinson whose Presidential theme has been
‘Everyday Geographies’. There is nothing
‘everyday’ about geography in the colloquial sense.
Alan shows us the ‘power of the quotidian’ is
exploring the everyday through a geographical lens.
COVID-19 is something we will have to learn
to live with over the coming years. Anne Dolan
and Joe Usher explain how ‘geoliteracy’
can help students to ‘make decisions based
on geographical conceptual understanding,
knowledge and reasoning’. Since COVID-19 is
now part of everyday lives, students can develop
geoliteracy skills though their everyday experience.
There are several articles outlining ideas designed
to help readers in planning lessons and units of
work. These are accompanied by downloadable
resources which authors have kindly shared with
us. Lucy Fryer demonstrates a river fieldwork
activity which can be carried out indoors in
preparation for an outdoor activity; Kit Marie
Rackley suggests practical ways of teaching about
natural hazards with an emphasis on the impact
such events have on the people who experience
them; Paul Hunt uses football stadia to introduce
the concept of place to KS4 students and Megan
Brook shares a scheme of work about New Zealand.
The ‘Sustainable Threads’ article by Verity Jones,
Ruth Millett and Jessica Pykett, was the catalyst for
Melanie
Norman
the front cover of this issue. The article builds on
‘geographical concepts of interconnection and Editor Melanie
sustainable development’ through a series of Norman introduces
eight lessons. The lessons are aimed at KS2 and this issue of Teaching
KS3 students developing the link between the Geography.
key stages as recognized in the vignettes by Paul
Hunt, Hannah Finch Noyes and Gary Dawson.
These three short pieces have been written from
a secondary phase perspective in response to
an article in the Spring 2022 issue of Primary
Geography entitled ‘The danger in primary
geography’. It is important for geography teachers
in secondary schools to acknowledge the work
that is undertaken in primary schools and several
other articles also mention work with KS2 students.
Steph Robinson writes about the new Curriculum
for Wales, exploring the fact that geography
comes under the Area of Learning called
‘Humanities’. Steph asks how geographers might
provide a curriculum, ‘that remains true to the
disciplinary knowledge of geography?’ It will be
interesting to follow the development of the new
Welsh curriculum over the next few years.
The remaining articles have a focus on pedagogy
but both also include practical examples. Daryl
Sinclair and Alesha de Fonseka explain anti-racist
pedagogy (ARP) and suggest ways of using this
approach in classroom teaching. Sharon Reilly
talks about the activities she undertook with her
trainees to understand their role in decolonising
the geography curriculum.
This issue provides an excellent balance between
thought-provoking articles which will help readers
to appraise their own curriculum (change is not
always necessary but it’s good to regularly review
what is taught) plus several articles with good ideas
for practical classroom teaching. If you have an
idea for an article do please get in touch. Inside the
front cover of every issue of Teaching Geography
are some notes about writing for the journal with
more detailed information available on the GA
website (https://www.geography.org.uk/Journals/
Teaching-geography). We hope to hear from you!
PS Studying geography beyond GCSE and A level
doesn’t necessarily mean becoming a geography
teacher as many students seem to think (see
p76). Lucy Verasamy was taught A level by Alan
Parkinson and is one of ITV’s weather presenters.
Chris Mason studied geography at Cambridge
and is the BBC’s political editor. What could be
more ‘everyday geography’ than the weather and
politics, where decisions often underlie many of
the issues studied in geography? The outcomes
of such decisions often have consequences that Editor Dr Melanie Norman on
those with an understanding of geography might the South Downs near Beachy
have foreseen.  |  TG Head. Photo: Tony Norman.
Vol 47, 2, Summer 2022
© Teaching Geography
49
 Anne Dolan
and Joe Usher The geography of COVID-19:
a case study in geoliteracy
The emergence of COVID-19 in 2019 resulted in
Anne and Joe the most devastating global public health crisis
examine the for over a century. Compounded by political,
geography of economic and social crises, the pandemic has
COVID-19 and offer taken global analysis away from climate change,
ideas for exploring exacerbated existing inequalities and challenged
the issue through our fundamental concepts of ‘normal life’.
Notwithstanding the many challenges that the
the framework of
COVID-19 virus poses for our personal and
geoliteracy.
professional lives, it offers significant opportunities
for geographical analysis. Indeed geography, a
discipline which spans the intersection of physical
and human processes, together with its strong
Accompanying
interest in patterns across space, is uniquely
online materials
placed for helping students understand the
pandemic (Gatrell, 2020; Hazen, 2020).
Understanding the geography of
COVID-19
The outbreak of COVID-19 in December 2019
was declared a pandemic by the World Health
Organisation (WHO) on 11 March 2020. Various
strands of geography were an integral part of
the COVID-19 story (Usher and Dolan, 2021;
Gatrell, 2020). Firstly, the geography of local
places, together with the location of essential
services, became inherently important during
the series of lockdowns. Secondly, given the
importance of the spatial dimension of COVID-
19, geospatial technologies had a crucial role
to play. Thirdly, COVID-19 highlighted social
and economic inequalities within and between
different geographical regions. Unequitable
vaccine distribution left millions of people
vulnerable to the deadly virus, while allowing
even more variants to emerge and spread across
the globe. The decision by some nations to give
already inoculated citizens a booster vaccine,
rather than prioritizing doses for unvaccinated
people in poorer countries, illustrated a grotesque
inequity with clear geographical dimensions.
An unequal distribution of vaccines left many
countries in the Global South unsupported and
vulnerable. Fourthly, the science of COVID-
19 had geographical aspects, including the
practice of contact tracing, tracking, testing,
vaccine trials and development. Fifthly, COVID-
19 raised important environmental questions.
Ultimately, this zoonotic disease probably
arose as a result of human activity, generating
extensive environmental degradation. Finally,
the scale of disruptive consequences sent shock
waves around the world, comparable in scale
to major geopolitical events such as the First
and Second World Wars. Hence, the pandemic
demands responses that are informed by the role
of physical and biological processes, including
Vol 47, 2, Summer 2022 climate change, previous viruses and the impacts
© Teaching Geography
50 of political decision making.
Geoliteracy
Geographical events with extensive global
impacts such as COVID-19 provide an ideal
opportunity for adopting the framework of
geoliteracy. Geoliteracy involves an ‘applied’
version of geography, as students are required
to make decisions based on geographical
conceptual understanding, knowledge and
reasoning. The importance of oral language,
together with a competent use of language,
is an essential part of geoliteracy.
Since the pandemic became a pervasive part
of everyday lives, it is a useful example to help
lower secondary students to develop their
geoliteracy skills with something they have
direct experience of. Given that some students
may have been directly affected by the virus,
sensitivity is required through empathetic and
flexible teaching. For lower secondary students
in Ireland (years 7 and 8 in England), geoliteracy
frames the geography curriculum (Download 1).
Learning the lexicon of geography in general
and the language associated with COVID-19
(Download 2) in particular supports conceptual
understanding. Students are in a better position
to read and critically engage with geographical
texts if they have a thorough understanding of
key vocabulary. Any geographical interrogation of
a contemporary issue such as COVID-19 requires
an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the
topic-related vocabulary, and such understanding
should not be assumed. Students can create their
own COVID-19 glossaries based on newspaper
coverage, social media and personal knowledge.
Such glossaries – illustrated with locational
graphs, maps, hyperlinks and diagrams – support
geographical conceptual understanding. To
maximise the potential for geographical learning
and understanding of the vocabulary/language,
students can complete location-specific case
studies, (e.g. the regional impact of COVID-
19 throughout Ireland) and comparative
geographical analysis based on maps of different
scales (including those produced by WHO and
the Johns Hopkins University and Medicine
Coronavirus Resource Center). Teachers can
also reinforce the language of COVID-19 in
a geographical context through any of the
geography lesson topics listed in Download 3.
The three Is
Three central aspects of geoliteracy are commonly
referred to as the three Is: Interactions (how the
world works); Interconnections (how the world
is connected); and Implications (how to make
well-reasoned decisions). Each geoliteracy lesson
is constructed around these three concepts
(Dolan, 2019).
 Interactions: A geoliterate student
understands how human and
natural systems function and interact
before, during and after a pandemic
such as COVID-19. How the world
works
Interconnections: A geoliterate
student articulates the manner
through which people and places
are connected to each other across
time and space during a pandemic.
How the world is connected
Implications: A geoliterate student
is able to evaluate the potential
Covid-19 related impacts of each
personal and collective decision
systematically. How to make well-
reasoned decisions

The implications of COVID-19 are complex,
multi-layered and multidimensional with spatial
and place-based dimensions. A geoliteracy
framework is well placed for helping students
explore the geographical dimensions of a
pandemic. Geography lesson topics, devised
using a geoliteracy framework (Download 3)
can be used by teachers to draw out processes,
patterns, systems, scale, geographical skills and
related issues such as sustainability. Geographical
learning can be further enhanced through an
analysis of COVID-19 using frameworks such
as the development compass rose.
Enhancing geoliteracy and Figure 1: Students’ illustrations
of the three Is of COVID-19.
geographical learning through
the development compass rose
The development compass rose (TIDE, 1995), a
useful tool for enhancing geographical learning,
has the potential to support the development
of geoliteracy (Download 4). The tool can be
applied to any environment, place, event or issue,
including COVID-19. The development compass
rose encourages learners to raise questions
about issues that are relevant to them and to Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022
© Teaching Geography
think critically about the world around them. 51
 Impacts of COVID-19

Natural/environmental Economic Social/cultural Who decides?

The global economic
shutdown, which was
achieved at a devastating
social cost, has barely
dented our carbon
emissions.
Tesco and other supermarket
home delivery services benefited
from the lock down. As grocery
stores remained open, Tesco was
also able to maximise sales across
product lines, from alcohol to
ready-made meals and pizzas, to
homeware and clothing products.
Many people could not visit
their elderly parents, they could
not attend a football match in
person nor could they attend
a live performance of any
description.
Global problems require global
collaboration, and the pandemic has
revealed that its solutions are international.
Scientists and medical experts shared data,
resources and equipment in the quest for
effective treatments, tests and vaccines.

COVID-19 brought some
benefits including cleaner
air, burgeoning urban
wildlife, and a sudden,
dramatic shift to a less
carbon-intensive lifestyle.
People took time to notice
the beauty of nature in
their local area.
With the high streets closed,
many shops (mention local
examples here) were unable to
open during lockdown.
The travel and tourism sector was
hit by the pandemic, as airlines
remained grounded. Many people
trapped in their own localities
throughout the pandemic.
COVID-19 was associated
with isolation and remoteness.
Masks hid faces while screens
separated people. Social
distancing was enforced by
stickers on pathways and empty
chairs. The pandemic forced
many people to retreat into
isolation.
The pandemic exposed the
good and the bad side of
society. (Local examples can be
cited here.)
TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights) is a World Trade
Organisation Agreement that protects
intellectual property, including patents on
medicines produced by pharmaceutical
companies.
The TRIPS Waiver was first proposed by India
and South Africa in 2020 to temporarily
remove intellectual property rights for health
technologies needed to prevent, contain or
treat COVID-19, until vaccine equity could be
achieved. While the waiver was supported by
many nations it was opposed by some states,
including EU member states.

Figure 2: Exploring the
impact of COVID-19 using
the development compass
rose framework.
Online resources
To access the downloads
accompanying this
article please go to
www.geography.org.
uk/journals/teaching-
geography and select
Summer 2022.
Dr Anne Dolan is a
lecturer in primary
geography at Mary
Immaculate College,
Limerick and Dr Joe Usher
is an Assistant Professor of
Geography Education at
the Institute of Education
in Dublin City University.
Email:
Anne.Dolan@mic.ul.ie
Twitter: @DolanGalway
Email: joe.usher@dcu.ie
Twitter: @Geoseph_Usher
Formulating relevant questions enables students and behaviours that allow students to explore
to make connections between the physical, the physical world, human activities, how we
social, political and economic dimensions of interact with our world and to recognise the
COVID-19; for example, how did COVID-19 interconnections between systems’ (DES, 2018,
restrictions affect the economy and the natural p. 5). Requirements for key stages 3 and 4 in
environment? Students can continue to work on the National Curriculum in England pertaining
a spatial analysis of the impacts of the pandemic to the teaching of place, space, human and
(my local area, my country, my world) using the physical geography and skill development can
four domains of the development compass rose be enhanced through a geoliteracy framework.
(Figure 2). Geography is well placed to help students to
understand the causes, impacts and implications
Conclusion of a major pandemic such as COVID-19 (Dolan,
COVID-19 has affected the life of millions of 2020; Gatrell, 2020). Using tools of analysis
people around the world. The pandemic forced presented by geoliteracy and the development
governments to operate within a context compass rose allows students to examine a
of uncertainty, having to deal with difficult contemporary event using several categories and
trade-offs given the health, economic and different spatial scales. More importantly, these
social challenges. The Junior Cycle Geography frameworks help students to identify lessons
programme in Ireland is designed to help learnt from the pandemic. This is an important
students become geographically literate. In step as young geographers identify and plan for
particular, ‘it develops knowledge, skills, values life in a post pandemic society.  |  TG
References
All websites last accessed 15/03/22.
DES (2018) Junior Cycle Geography. Available at www.curriculumonline.ie/getmedia/2a7a8d03-00e6-4980-bf20-
f58def95688f/JC_Geography-en.pdf
Dolan, A. (2019) ‘Geoliteracy: an approach to enquiry-based learning for Junior Cycle Geography students in Ireland’
Teaching Geography, 44, 1, pp. 24–7.
Gatrell, T. (2020) ‘The COVID-19 pandemic: geography matters’, Teaching Geography, 45, 3, pp. 97–100.
Hazen, H. (2020) ‘Teaching COVID-19 Topics in a Geographic Framework’, The Geography Teacher, 17, 2, pp. 33–43.
Johns Hopkins University and Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center. Available at https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Teachers in Development Education (TIDE~) (1995) Development Compass Rose Consultation Pack. Birmingham: DEC.
Available at https://www.tidegloballearning.net/sites/default/files/documents/Tide~%20Development%20Compass%20
Rose.%20Tool%20for%20raising%20questions.pdf
Usher, J. and Dolan, A.M. (2021) ‘Covid-19: teaching primary geography in an authentic context related to the lived
experiences of learners’, Irish Educational Studies, 40, 2, pp. 177–85, DOI: 10.1080/03323315.2021.1916555.
World Health Organisation. Available at https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus#tab=tab_1
Further reading
Dolan, A.M. and Usher, J. (2021) ‘Where in the world is Covid-19?’ Primary Geography, 104, 1, pp. 10–12.
Dolan, A.M and Usher, J. (2020) ‘The geography of Covid-19’, InTouch, INTO Teacher’s magazine November/December 2020,
pp. 52–3.

Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022

© Teaching Geography
52
Everyday geographies:
the power of the quotidian
Routines and habits
With every day that passes, we are not just living,
we are living geography. Our diurnal routines
and repeated experiences – engagement with
the same places, people, environments, time-
worn rituals, etc. as those of the previous day and
numerous others – stretch back to our childhoods.
This repeated exposure to ‘the same old’ embeds
itself into our days as a habit, and so these events
are diminished in the attention we pay to them
until, over time, we forget their significance.
‘Everyday’ has a meaning other than events
which occur each day, such as brushing our teeth;
it can refer to something that occurs so regularly
that it becomes mundane. We take such events
for granted, and this obscures their magic – we
become inured to their meanings. We fail to
pay much attention to many of the objects we
touch every day, although they help to shape our
personal and collective identities, and each one
has a story (Zuccotti, 2015). Eventually disposed of,
these objects create future archaeology, perhaps
fossils to be uncovered by future generations.
The careless disposal of plastic packaging has
laid down a layer which will be visible in the fossil
record, or perhaps uncovered by the shifting
course of a future river. The everyday life of those
of us living in the Anthropocene has an added
permanence as a consequence. My presidential
theme of ‘Everyday Geographies’ (Parkinson,
2022) has partly emerged from encounters with
writers who have explored the quotidian and from
some of the projects that I have engaged with
during my long and varied career.
Global experiences
The lives of people living in those parts of the
world that the late Professor Hans Rosling called
‘Level 4’ countries (those with the highest
incomes) have become increasingly globally
connected and their cultures homogenised in
recent decades. Our lives, which are lives of
increasing consumption, connect us with distant
geographical locations and the work of countless
unseen others, living broadly similar existences
in many cases, but subjected to inequalities and
very different life experiences in others. A glance
at Gapminder’s Dollar Street website shows
that even on low incomes, familiar consumable
products will be found in people’s homes around
the world – from toothpaste to mobile phones.
Our own near neighbours may encounter very
different issues to ourselves, framed by culture,
nationality, gender or race, or layers of personal
circumstance, lifestyle choices or birth chances.
In recent weeks while completing this piece, the
everyday lives of millions of Ukrainians have been
upended and even in the midst of this horror
Alan
Parkinson
Alan draws on the
work of writers as
varied as Georges
Perec and Joe
Moran to investigate
the impact of our
everyday experiences
on thinking, teaching
and learning in
geography.
Figure 1: Everyday artistries from ‘Place motifs: turning up the
colour of local geographies’ a workshop presented by Dr Helen
Clarke (pictured) and Dr Sharon Witt at the GA Annual Conference,
2022 – one of many sessions where the presenters interpreted
the conference theme of ‘Everyday Geographies’. Photo: ©
Geographical Association
they have sought some solace in the completion
of everyday actions. Our collective consumption
patterns reinforce inequalities, which have
increased in recent decades, and are also shaped
by cultural influences, political decisions, the
legacies of colonialism and geopolitics. Our
consumption habits also help to propagate a
growing climate and biodiversity emergency
which threatens to disrupt all our everydays, to a
far greater degree than the COVID-19 pandemic
has to date. Geography has become increasingly
important since February 2020 (Wolman, 2020).
The older generation, for which I just about qualify,
has a broader range of these quotidian experiences
to draw on, cultural references to throw into
conversations, and memories (accurate or
otherwise) of how things ‘used to be’ (for better
or worse): a world where CO2 levels were well below
350ppm; when there was a choice of just two
television channels, music was stored on spinning
vinyl discs, pieces of punched card were used to ask
computers a question, hours were spent waiting for
a bus that never came (Clarke, 2016) and the global
population was less than half what it is now: the
world I was born into in the 1960s. Young people,
by comparison, will not remember a time before
the ubiquity of devices such as the smartphone and
smart speaker, social media platforms like Facebook
and Google and streamed music and film platforms.
How has this impacted on the geographies we
teach, and are these everyday geographies and
knowledge reflected in the geography curriculum,
or should they be (Roberts, 2017)?
The geographies of the everyday
Our quotidian experiences are shared, as well as
being ‘lived’, on an individual level; with social
media they are arguably over-shared. In Queuing
for Beginners Joe Moran, Professor of English Vol 47, 2, Summer 2022
© Teaching Geography
and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores 53
 University, unpicked the meanings of events from
breakfast through to bedtime. Moran describes
his academic interests as being in ‘the banal
details of everyday life’ (Moran, 2007). He pays
homage to Thomas Harrisson, Charles Madge and
colleagues, who started the Mass Observation
project in 1937: using ethnographic techniques
from anthropology and sociology to observe the
minutiae of ordinary people’s lives in Bolton. They
recorded the seemingly ‘pointless’ ephemeral
details which, more than eighty years later,
provide a fascinating insight into the lives of our
recent ancestors (Hall, 2015). The internet creates
a vast plethora of today’s ephemeral objects:
but this time they have digital persistence. Those
of us in the older generation may sometimes
reflect on how grateful we are that our youthful
indiscretions were not captured and shared in the
way they would be now.
Just as a relationship can become stale without
excitement or passion, our relationship with some
aspects of each day can lead to them becoming
something to ‘get out of the way’. We might
even refer to some of these events as background
noise. The influential French author Georges Perec
(1936–1982) was a master of exploring such
matters in his varied body of work. He used the
term ‘infra-ordinary’ to describe those parts of
our lives which are so ordinary they have become
almost invisible, like infrared light (Perec, 1999).
In his book Species of spaces (Espèces d’espaces)
he explores a French apartment building, drawing
up an inventory of every item within it. Each
successive piece in the book changes scale,
moving from his bed, to the bedroom, out into
the street and the neighbourhood, into the city,
and the world and eventually out into space. His
work is steeped in geographies of the everyday
and has influenced many within the discipline,
and certainly my own Presidential theme. One
could call his work psychogeographical, and it
has influenced others who work in this area,
including the author Kevin Boniface, and the
Mission:Explore books. (Forsdick et al., 2019).
Joe Moran views events through a historical/
cultural lens; we wear our geographical spectacles.
Of the world, Perec says this:
What can we know of the world? What
quantity of space can our eyes hope to take in
between our birth and our death? How many
square centimetres of Planet Earth will the
soles of our shoes have touched? To cover the
world … will only ever be to know a few square
metres of it … perceiving that the Earth is a
form of writing, a geography of which we had
forgotten that we ourselves are the authors.
(Perec, 1999, pp. 78–9)
In another literary experiment Perec sat outside
a café in the Place de Saint Sulpice and recorded
the activities of everyone (and most of the things)
he saw for three days, in a series of exhaustive
lists, being careful to only record those things
which would not usually have attracted any
attention (Perec, 1975). A later attempt saw him
recording everything he ate and drank during
Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022 1974. Perec’s work influenced Darran Anderson,
© Teaching Geography
54 whose book Inventory is an autobiography of
a life lived through the Troubles in Northern
Ireland in the 1980s. It recounts his family’s
history through a series of vignettes, involving
items ranging from a pen to a blindfold to a
mass leaflet (Anderson, 2020). Philosopher Julian
Baggini spent months living in the ‘most average’
postcode district to experience an ‘ordinary life’.
He ate what the average person ate, took part in
the activities that ‘they’ did, and even took the
average person’s holiday (a package holiday to
Majorca). (Baggini, 2008). The postcode where
he lived for his experiment turned out to be S66,
the postcode in South Yorkshire where I grew up.
Is mine a life less, or more ordinary because of
my own ‘formative years’?. Mark Lowenthal, who
translated Perec’s work suggested that reading
it helps us to realise that ‘our perception of the
world is formulated through categories, genres
and classifications, many of them specific to the
culture we come from’ (Perec, 1975, p.52)
Curriculum and young people’s
geographies
Margaret Roberts suggests that one of five
ways that geographical education as a whole
could be ‘powerful’ is that it enables students
to make connections between their everyday
knowledge and school geography. This knowledge
is developed through their daily experiences,
along with journeys and holidays. She references
influences on her own practice, including
Vygotsky, and suggests that ‘if students’ everyday
knowledge does not feature in curriculum
documents or in lesson plans then it is given scant
attention in the classroom’ (Roberts, 2017). Others
might say that students need to be studying
unfamiliar places and concepts if school is to
have value. This more ‘powerful’ knowledge takes
them beyond the everyday. My own department’s
curriculum certainly features many opportunities,
for students’ personal geographies to take
centre stage alongside more unfamiliar contexts,
informed by my participation in the Young
People’s Geographies project, which was part
of the Action Plan for Geography (GA website).
Lauren Hammond’s recent research suggests
that educators’ engagement with everyday
geographies recognises students as social actors
who exist beyond the school gate and the formal
classroom space. Geography doesn’t begin or end
Geography
as part of
everyday life
Geography as Geography
an academic as a school
discipline subject
Place and time-space
Figure 1: Spaces of geographical thought (Hammond, 2020).
at the ‘boundary’ of the school gate, and we need
to pay closer attention to children’s geographies, Postscript
and the everyday, and this distinctive space of For a chance to receive one of 100 limited-
geographical thought (Hammond, 2022). edition badges made to the design below,
please get in touch to share examples of
how you have included students’ personal
Reflections
geographies into your own planning for
Since March 2020 our horizons have narrowed, a curriculum document I’m compiling this
and many of us may be desperate to expand year called a ‘Curriculum Vitae’.
our everyday routines. However, others have
found renewed beauty and mindfulness in simple
pleasures: the sound of birdsong, small exchanges
with neighbours and the joy of the immediate
neighbourhood. In a piece in Medium, Sebastian
Hill suggested:
The mundane is just as crucial and intrinsic to
life as the exceptional. Finding the beauty in
the small, ordinary things helps us appreciate
the extraordinary even more. (Hill, 2017)
Perhaps this would be an appropriate time to
take a fresh look at your curriculum documents
and find a little place for the ordinary, the
overlooked and the mundane, to ensure that the
voices of a wider range of people are recognised,
and to allow the stories of students’ personal
geographies to be celebrated.  |  TG

Blogs, websites and further reading

https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-the-Phone-with-iPhone/ – a device which has changed our
everyday life.
https://www.co2levels.org/ – find out the atmospheric CO2 level in the year you were born.
https://everythingwetouch.org/ – Paula Zuccotti’s photography project explores what the things we touch says about us.
https://futurearcheology.org/ – an extension of Paula’s project, which was also adapted for the lockdown.
https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street
http://livinggeography.blogspot.com – Alan Parkinson’s main blog, which has over 11,000 posts on it.
Farrier, D. (2020) Footprints: in search of Future Fossils London: 4th Estate – an excellent book on our belongings as future
fossils from the Anthropocene.
Hanley, L. (2012) Estates: An Intimate History London: Granta Books – more on the impact of the chance of our birth.
Parkinson, A. (2017) ‘You can take the boy out of Yorkshire.’ in Catling, S. (ed) Reflections on Primary Geography Sheffield:
GA – some details on my childhood in Yorkshire and how it influenced my geographical imagination.
Rosling, H., Rosling, O. and Rosling Ronnlund, A. (2017) Factfulness London: Sceptre Books

References
All websites last accessed 16/03/2022.
Anderson, D. (2020) Inventory: A River, A City, A Family. London: Chatto.
Baggini, J. (2008) Everytown: A journey into the English Mind. London: Granta Books.
Clarke, J. (2016) ‘Doreen Massey (1944–2016): making geography matter’, Cultural Studies, 30, 3, pp. 357–61. DOI:
10.1080/09502386.2016.1172751.
Forsdick, C., Leak, A. and Phillips, R. (eds) (2019) Georges Perec’s Geographies: Material, Performative and Textual Spaces.
London: UCL Press (also available at www.uclpress.co.uk/products/116894)
Geographical Association Project Archive – Action Plan for Geography; Young Peoples’ Geographies – at: https://www.
geography.org.uk/project-archive
Hall, D. (2015) Worktown: The Astonishing Story of the Project that Launched Mass Observation. London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson. Alan Parkinson is Head
Hammond, L. (2022) ‘Recognising and exploring children’s geographies in school geography’, Children’s Geographies, 20, 1, of Geography at King’s
Ely Junior, and President
pp. 64–78.
of the Geographical
Hill, S. (2017) ‘An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris — the book, its background and its lessons for the 21st century’.
Association 2021–22. He
Available at https://medium.com/@magicsebi/an-attempt-at-exhausting-a-place-in-paris-the-book-its-background-and-its- is a Fellow of the Royal
lessons-for-the-21st-4a7df0ef05bb Geographical Society and
Moran, J. (2007) Queuing for Beginners: The story of daily life from breakfast to bedtime. London: Profile Books. a Chartered Geographer.
Parkinson, A. (2022) ‘Everyday Geographies – the power of the quotidian’. Presidential Lecture, Geographical Association He was awarded the Tivy
Annual Conference. Available at www.geography.org.uk/GA-Annual-Conference-and-Exhibition Education Medal by the
Perec, G. (1999) Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. Edited and translated by John Sturrock. London: Penguin. Royal Scottish Geographical
Perec, G. (1975) An attempt at exhausting a place in Paris. London: Wakefield Press. Society in 2013.
Roberts, M. (2017) ‘Geographical education is powerful if …’, Teaching Geography, 42, 1, pp. 6–9. Email:
Wolman, D. (2020) ‘Amid a Pandemic, Geography Returns With a Vengeance’. Available at www.wired.com/story/amid- a.parkinson@gmail.com
pandemic-geography-returns-with-a-vengeance
Twitter: @GeoBlogs
Zuccotti, P. (2015) Everything we touch. London: Viking-Penguin Random House.

Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022

© Teaching Geography
55
 Lucy Fryer
How to … create a river
fieldwork simulation in
the classroom
River processes is one of the most common topics enables representation of the upper course, and
Lucy shows a taught across the age ranges, particularly in key gradient can be measured. For this the traditional
technique for stage 4 geography. Rivers are often taught at method of ranging poles and clinometers can
preparing students GCSE (either as a compulsory or optional unit) be used (if ranging poles aren’t available then
for river processes and can provide a sound foundation for the water any two poles that have marks made at identical
fieldwork in the and carbon cycle at A level. Understanding how heights can be substituted). The gradient will
classroom. characteristics change downstream requires likely be very small, but then so is the distance,
knowledge of geomorphological processes, which so it should be measurable. Clinometers can be
often links to other units such as coasts. The topic handmade (see ‘Making Maths’ reference at end)
is a common fieldwork choice – for good reason, as if not already available.
characteristics can be measured reasonably easily,
The width of the river can be varied simply by
in a relatively safe environment, with students
adjustment of the bedsheet material along the
able to see the processes happening in real time.
course and students can take measurements with
Fieldwork enables students to build confidence
a tape in the classroom.
with a wide range of techniques to give them
choice for their Non-Examined Assessment (NEA, Clast analysis can also be undertaken by placing
also known as the independent investigation). suitable rocks along the river’s course: large
Measuring clasts (size and roundness), velocity angular ones in the upper course, and small
and gradients are techniques that can be used rounded ones in the lower course. Students can
in fieldwork for rivers, coasts and glaciation, use callipers and a roundness index to record
while the follow-up presentation techniques – their data. If plenty of rocks are available, this
bar graphs, pie charts, located graphs and kite task could be extended to include sampling
diagrams – can be used for a variety of topics. discussions. If callipers aren’t available, place
a rock on a piece of paper, hold something flat
Having located a suitable river, there is plenty of
along each end of the long axis and mark the
fieldwork that can be done. Some suggestions
point on the paper before measuring between
are outlined by Norman (2008) and Jones
the two points (Figure 3).
and Nankivell (2016); the latter shows links
with the maths department. However, finding Along with the setup diagram (Figure 2), Figures 4
the ‘right river’ can be difficult: access, river and 5 illustrate the setup in a classroom, including
characteristics, suitability for large groups all need changes in width, clast types, and even a meander
to be considered, along with the usual fieldwork with a river cliff (although fewer creases would be
challenges of time out of school, cost, etc. ideal for indication of turbulence!).
Here I present an idea for investigating river
characteristics in a classroom. With year 9 we
UpstreamDownstream
build it into a scheme of work on the hydrological
cycle, with discussions drawing on the Bradshaw
model (Figure 1). Having outlined and explored Discharge
the theory behind the model, we then look at
how to measure the various characteristics. The
Bradshaw model covers channel, water and
Occupied channel width
sediment characteristics as the river can be traced
downstream, so students can make links between
Channel depth
how the landscape influences water behaviour,
which in turn influences sediment characteristics.
Average velocity
As rivers and therefore the Bradshaw model
aren’t currently investigated at A level (though it
can in some GCSE specifications), exploring the Load quantity
model with our younger students still provides
the opportunity for them to experience the
success of applying knowledge of geomorphic Load particle size
processes to expected and real situations in order
to explain findings. For more capable students,
Channel bed roughness
it also provides the opportunity to link multiple
characteristics together, requiring a greater
Slope angle (gradient)
geographical understanding.
Vol 47, 2, Summer 2022 The ‘river’ is made from blue bedsheets (Figure 2).
© Teaching Geography
56 Starting the river on a box of reasonable height Figure 1: The Bradshaw model.
This is an activity I have carried out for a few years,
tweaking it over time so it works as well as possible.
I have found that setting it up before the students
come in the room is crucial for the ‘wow’ factor
(warning statements like ‘Don’t get your feet wet!’
as they enter the room help to build intrigue and
excitement). Setting up can be done quite quickly
if everything is collated beforehand. Ideally, have
as much equipment as possible for students to
experiment with, even if they don’t always use it
‘on the river’. For example, issuing clinometers to
every student/pair of students enables them all to
take part in the experience: they can practise from
their seat by checking gradients against places
around the classroom (e.g. looking up to posters
high on the wall). With callipers (or equivalent
Figure 2: Diagram of classroom simple river layout.
methods), if enough rocks aren’t available then
measuring awkward shapes, such as pencil cases,
can be done without moving. If you only have
one set of equipment for demonstration, I found
that students pick up the general idea but are less
able to identify the difficulties when undertaking
measurements (e.g. accuracy of reading off a
clinometer) and also they don’t come away with
the same enthusiasm. Having started off some Figure 3: Measuring a clast
axis without callipers. Photo:
years ago by just having a single demonstration
© Lucy Fryer
set of equipment at the front of the room, I found
students were engaged by the novelty, but didn’t
have the enthusiasm that I see them having
today. Instead of students spending five hours at
a classroom desk with a pen and a book, having
something to break up the possible monotony, and
to help them feel personally involved, is worth a lot.
All of these activities can be done in the space of
an hour, unless notes are taken about methods,
or data recorded and analysed more closely, in
which case more time is likely to be needed. I
have done this activity with years 9 and 11 and it Figure 4: Upper course of
is one of the lessons they tend to remember the classroom river. Photo: ©
most years later. Lucy Fryer

I believe not only do they have some ‘fun’ by

doing something different, but they also get the
chance to familiarise themselves with equipment
before having to use it in an unfamiliar place.
As teachers I think it can be quite easy for us to
forget what it was like when so much was new
all at once on a field trip – location, equipment,
timings, staffing, etc. – and that it can actually be
quite unnerving to some students. Reducing the Figure 5: Middle and lower
unfamiliarity by introducing the equipment in the courses of classroom river.
known space of the classroom could also help to Photo: © Lucy Fryer
reduce some of the nerves our students may face
when we ask them to undertake measurements in river bed? What happens if my hydroprop gets
the field in real life, which of course we want this stuck? What do I do if the water’s too deep for
to lead into. This movement into reality is crucial my wellies? We miss all these questions and many
to develop students’ thought processes: we still more in the classroom exercise, but for those
miss a lot in this scenario. Where exactly is the struggling to broaden opportunities using some
Lucy Fryer is a Teacher of
edge of the river for width measurements? How lesson time, at least this activity will go some way Geography and Geology at
do I choose one clast out of all the clasts on the towards that.  |  TG King Edward VI Grammar
School, Chelmsford and is
References a member of the Teaching
Geography Editorial Board.
Jones, R., and Nankivell, J. (2016) ‘Developing numeracy skills through fieldwork’, Teaching Geography, 41, 3, pp. 110–11.
Norman, M. (2008) ‘Year 10 Fieldwork: Coasts and Rivers’, Teaching Geography, 33, 2, pp. 61–3. Email: lfryer@kegs.org.uk
NRICH (2021) Making Maths: Clinometer. Available online at https://nrich.maths.org/make-a-clinometer (last accessed
Twitter: @MissLFryer
17/03/2022).

Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022

© Teaching Geography
57
 Daryl Sinclair
and Alesha Operationalising anti-racist
de Fonseka
pedagogy in a secondary
geography classroom
Teaching geography is impossible without
Daryl and Alesha engaging with racial diversity; thus, our
explain anti-racist
responsibility as teachers is to use anti-
pedagogy and racist pedagogies (ARP), which prevents the
outline techniques continuation of racist ideologies (Esson, 2018).
for using it in the For this introduction to using ARP in your
classroom. classroom, we have opted to write collaboratively,
to ensure there are multiple voices and
engagement from a diversity of backgrounds and
experiences. We hope to use our knowledge and
experience to support educators in their journey
with ARP and develop safe and inclusive teaching
practices for an equitable future.
In teaching geography, it is critical to engage with
the bias found in our resources and curricula. We
have found across various awarding bodies and
schemes of work that the West and white people
are positioned as the benchmark of progress and
civilisation. This foundation has a negative impact
on our students’ world view and future potential,
whether creating biases and stereotypes or
preventing a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and
People of Colour) student from understanding
that their heritage and knowledge has value.
Continually presenting BIPOC people through
one-dimensional case studies of conflict, famine,
and underdevelopment limits the students’
success (Joseph-Salisbury, 2020).
Geography teachers are the ideal leaders to
challenge the reality of racism within traditional
geography. The classroom is where ideas and
norms can be productively challenged and
disrupted. As educators, we can equip ourselves
with ARP in order to remove the additional
challenges faced by our BIPOC students and
improve outcomes for all our students.
What is anti-racist pedagogy?
• ARP is a pedagogy that seeks to challenge the
negative and one-dimensional representation
of non-white communities worldwide. ARP uses
dialogue within the classroom and with the
communities being studied to present them
critically and equitably.
• ARP engages with learning as something that
relates to your knowledge of the context and
the position you occupy as a person. It is an
approach that sees context as necessary for
understanding modern society and being
empowered to change it.
• ARP empowers teachers and students to
actively create knowledge and change
their understanding through reflection. The
classroom becomes a space to empower
Vol 47, 2, Summer 2022 learners to identify and understand racism
© Teaching Geography
58 in order to create change (Kishimoto, 2016).
Techniques and examples
ARP represents a shift away from geography’s
traditional preoccupation with fact learning and
presents the curriculum from the perspective of the
communities being discussed: communities who
are excluded from power by being narrated, rather
than given a voice to narrate themselves (Radcliffe,
2017; Spivak, 2003). For example, learning
about Britain’s industrialisation through India’s
experience of deindustrialisation under colonialism
in the mid-1800s allows the students to develop
more complex perceptions of the people involved.
A central technique in ARP is regular critical
reflection and intentional discussion time within
lessons. This enables students to contribute from
their areas of experience and expertise to add
new voices to the creation of knowledge, i.e.
giving students who may be from the area of
study the opportunity to share (voluntarily) their
knowledge to introduce a richer perspective. This
technique also allows students to identify and
challenge misconceptions through discussion.
The use of knowledge from people connected
to the communities being studied and learning
relevant historical context can broaden students’
understanding beyond simple generalisations,
thus avoiding stereotyping and racism.
Case-study of practice – Daryl Sinclair
Using theory as starting point for ARP
My experiences and engagement with ARP took a
new form as I moved from teaching in an incredibly
diverse school in East London to teaching at
international schools in Germany, London, and China.
In the international teaching environment,
I experienced greater homogeneity in the
school community, which limited sources of
challenge or alternative perspectives within
the class. Conversely, my heritage – London-
born of Jamaican descent – enabled me to
draw my personal experiences into the lessons.
Unfortunately, this caused me to teach at the
students rather than learning with them. This
traditional approach did not align with ARP, as I
was telling students how the world is, rather than
teaching them how to interpret it critically (Freire,
1972). To avoid what had become a swapping
of Western bias for my own bias, I decided to
try using theory as scaffolding from which all
students could build their understanding.
I created a new course that used this approach:
Systems of Oppression. It is a course aimed at
year 11 students and utilises ARP to explore the
social identities and hierarchies that inform social
interactions worldwide.
The course starts by defining key terms and
theories collectively as a class. There is no right • Create a mind map using the paper on Power
and wrong, and it is explicit that the teacher your table. The ability to …
does not have a ‘final answer’. It builds from the
• Start with Oppression in the middle and

e…
class’s (including the teacher’s) understanding, then try to branch off to individual words

h av
or lack of understanding, and ensures an equal that you associate with oppression such

ust
starting point. This is achieved through a mixture as Power.

ou m
of discussion, independent writing and teacher
guidance to ensure input from all students. • Under these secondary words write a

-ist y
brief description of what you mean – OPPRESSION
I use techniques such as associative define your word or your use of it.

I n ord er to be X
brainstorming with linking explanations (Figure
1), which prompt students to justify their • Connect your secondary words together
contributions and engage with the definitions of with lines which have an explanation of
the link between the words.
others. This theoretical space is less intimidating
than specific examples. I found that simple • Used your completed mind map to -isms
questions such as ‘what does power mean to create a final definition of Oppression. The use of…
you?’ can be accessed more easily than ‘do white
people have more power than black people?’.
Figure 1: Example of definition-building through constructivist group activity work.
Simultaneously, the focus on theory centres
meaningful discussion on a definition rather than
personal opinion.
These dialogues create collective definitions,
owned by the students and teacher, which
support the student’s creation of new knowledge.
From this point, the students investigate a
form of oppression they know or experience;
this immediately centred them as creators of
knowledge. Some of the guidance for this work
can be seen in Figures 3 and 4.
Following the success criteria, one student
engaging in research on oppressive regimes in
North Korea was required to consider their biases Figure 2: Task to create a definition of oppression.
at the start of their project. As a South Korean,
he identified specific biases in the information
presented to him during his childhood juxtaposed
against some of the information he had found
through his research. He concluded his research
by reviewing the definitions against his learning
and reflecting upon his new understanding.
In Figures 3 and 4, I have included two examples
of success criteria that can scaffold the student’s
creation of such knowledge. These figures build
off on the definitions and language the class
created during the task in Figure 2.
Utilising the ARP approach to provide a foundation
to the learning via theory creates an inclusive
starting point for all students. By including the Figure 3: The first short project and success criteria based on the collaborative definition activities
students and their identities in the creation of shown in Figure 2 as scaffolding.
knowledge, I was not required to be an expert
nor have personal experiences to draw upon, and
the students demonstrated critical engagement
which challenged simple generalisations. I look
forward to further developing ARP within the
school as this implementation is used more
generally across the curriculum.

A rubric for operationalising ARP

Making ARP a reality becomes easier with
operating procedures and guidelines that can
be employed proactively by teachers in various
settings.
Based on this discussion, the following list can
be used as a single point rubric – a collection of
questions that teachers can use to identify areas Figure 4: A research project with success criteria using previous Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022
© Teaching Geography
for change in the lessons that they are teaching. class-generated knowledge and the task in Figure 3 as scaffolding. 59
 1. Have we addressed our understanding and and are inherently vulnerable. There is no
bias at the start of each topic? requirement for lessons to become ‘about’
2. Have we included the voices, actions and the teacher, but they may use this as a helpful
knowledge created by the communities resource at their discretion and if they are
involved in the topic of study? comfortable with it.
3. Are students involved in the creation of 3. What if my students do not want to
knowledge and definitions? contribute? BIPOC students cannot (and must
not) be forced to share their experiences –
4. Are students given time to express and reflect
leave it up to them if they want to share. Direct
on their learning?
dialogue with individual students and classes
5. Is intervention from the West only viewed is required to create an environment where the
positively, or are white-saviour narratives students are comfortable contributing. This
challenged? will not happen overnight, but it is essential to
6. Are data engaged critically, i.e. equal-area employ ARP.
projection maps centred on the country of 4. If I answer ‘no’ to the statements in the
study, mode rather than average income, ‘Rubric for operationalising ARP’, does that
per capita normalisation, etc.? mean I am a racist? Critical self-reflection is
7. Are places referred to in a specific way that challenging, and it can be painful to identify
avoids generalisation, i.e. specific communities areas in your teaching where you may have
rather than ‘poor people’, specific countries been causing harm to your students. Teachers
rather than ‘Africa’ or ‘Asia’? are not expected to be perfect. However, it is a
professional expectation that you constantly
8. Are BIPOC communities used as positive
strive to improve your pedagogy, learning
examples of progress and development or
environment, and engagement with your
only for examples of challenges – are white
students.
communities used as examples of challenges
or only for positive examples of progress and 5. This is too much work; I don’t have time
development? to make all these new resources. Do not
worry; ARP techniques can critically engage
9. Are images presented critically and equitably?
with existing resources and lead to more
a. Is the purpose and message of the image equitable outcomes. You do not need to throw
considered and discussed? out everything that you currently use; simply
b. Is the image authentic or staged/modelled? engage with them critically.
c. Is there a balance between the imagery of
challenge and imagery of success? Conclusion
d. Are the pictured people agents in the Following the guidelines above can provide the
change, or is there always a benevolent first steps to practising ARP at any school. Though
‘white saviour’? ARP cannot be reduced to a universal rubric, the
e. Do the images focus on difference, ignoring lists above may represent the starting point for
similarities? an important change in the pedagogy in your
classroom.
There are challenges to achieving a positive
response to the statements above; we address As geography classrooms continue to become
some of these challenges here. more diverse, ARP provides strategies to ensure
the classroom is an equitable and growth-
Potential challenges and resolutions orientated space. It is crucial that pedagogical
1. But I still don’t get this racism stuff. Do not progress is made for the future.
worry, it is an ongoing journey and you are never We encourage all teachers to consider the rubric
expected to fully ‘get it’ or have the ‘answer’. discussed in this paper to seize this opportunity,
We can all start by critically and constructively to take risks and critically engage with their
Daryl Sinclair is a Social
engaging with the techniques above and resources, students, and pedagogy with an anti-
Studies and Economics/ gaining understanding through experience. racist philosophy. We hope this writing inspires
Politics Teacher at 2. Do I have to do this just because I am not and gives teachers the confidence and assurance
International School
Campus, Hamburg.
a white teacher? BIPOC teachers can take to take these risks and contribute to progress for
on a significant burden operationalising ARP the future.  |  TG
Alesha de Fonseka is a
teacher of geography at
Matthew Arnold School, References
Oxford. Esson, J. (2020) ‘“The why and the white”: Racism and curriculum reform in British geography’, Area, 52, 4, pp. 708–15.
Freire, P. (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.
Email: dsinclairwriting@
gmail.com Joseph-Salisbury, R. (2020) Runnymede Perspectives: Race and Racism in English Secondary Schools, London: Runnymede.
Kishimoto, K. (2018) ‘Anti-racist pedagogy: from faculty’s self-reflection to organizing within and beyond the classroom’,
Twitter: @dsinclair17 Race Ethnicity and Education, 21, :4, pp. 540–54. DOI: 10.1080/13613324.2016.1248824.
Email: Schommer, M. (1990) ‘The effects of beliefs about the nature of knowledge on comprehension’, Journal of Educational
alesha_94@live.com Psychology, 82, pp. 498–504.
Spivak, G. (2003) ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, Die Philosophin, 14, 27, pp. 42–58.
Twitter: @alesha_rai
Radcliffe, S. (2017) ‘Decolonising geographical knowledges’, Themed Intervention, 42, 3, pp. 329–33.

Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022

© Teaching Geography
60
Curriculum for Wales – where
are we now?
Curriculum for Wales (CfW) was born out of the
publication by Professor Graham Donaldson of
Successful Futures (2015), which was hailed as
innovative and pioneering. ‘Current curriculum
reform in Wales provides an opportunity for
teachers to have greater freedom to develop
pedagogical approaches that meet the needs of
their pupils’ (Hughes and Lewis, 2020). However,
many teachers have greeted the changes
with scepticism. As this article will attempt to
demonstrate, there are lots of issues still to be
addressed – not just within the humanities Area
of Learning and Experience (AoLE), but also
specifically for geography teaching.
Education is part of the national mission vision
2017–2021 for Wales, which is an extensive
journey of reform. However there is a growing
concern amongst geography teachers in Wales
that the implementation of CfW is desperately
fragile and fragmented. The new curriculum
(Welsh Government, 2020) works to ensure
that learners are clear about ‘what matters’ in
humanities, but the overarching question for all
geography teachers is this: if the ‘what matters’
statements (Figure 1) are essential foundations of
humanities, isn’t it essential that all geographers
have a joined-up approach to curriculum design,
with at least some elements non-negotiable?
Practitioners have been tasked with ensuring that
all learners can fulfil the four purposes (Figure 2).
However, when this journey began, there was a
renewed hope for a fresh, bright new curriculum
with teachers freed from the shackles of the existing
National Curriculum. Years on from this initial
report, humanities teachers are still grappling with a
number of key issues and a lack of exemplification.
The four purposes contain some exciting ideas,
such as rights, values and politics through the lens
of local, national and global ideas. However, using
our own locality to consider these different ideas
may not be equitable across different schools,
depending on how well schools can demonstrate
these purposes through their own local lens. As
Gatley (2020) suggests: ‘The problem presented
by new Welsh Curriculum is whether the four
purposes and the six Areas of Learning and
Experience (Figure 3) constitute the coherent
unified curriculum intended.’
Eleanor Rawling (2020) discussed the ‘powerful
vision for the humanities in the Curriculum for
Wales’, and it is true that teachers have grasped
this vision and tailored it to their own cynefin
(place). However, one of the greatest challenges
facing the humanities AoLE is how to marry up
a wave of opinions and ideas as to what should
be included in the humanities vision for each
school. Indeed, the OECD report (2020) said
‘There is a risk of inequalities increasing due to the
Steph
Robinson
challenges that disadvantaged schools can have in
implementing the curriculum, which accentuates Steph questions
the need for clarifying resources available for whether the high
schools’. We may be at risk of CfW creating local ideals of Curriculum
disparities in teaching if all schools and humanities for Wales are less
AoLEs have completely different visions. than matched by
its lack of detail in
There is a clear need for all AoLEs to develop
a programme that embodies the whole-school important areas.
vision so that the approach is very much joined
up. Involving key stakeholders in the design and
development of this vision is crucial in order for
it to be fully understood and embraced, but are
teachers of the humanities AoLEs finding the time
to do this and do it well? According to the Welsh
Government (2020), this should be an ongoing
conversation for the whole school and beyond –
we should be engaging with parents/carers and
the wider community. The vision for CfW should
be informed by the school’s values and ethos, as
well as by its location and surroundings.
What matters statements
• Enquiry, exploration and investigation • Human societies are complex and
inspire curiosity about the world, its diverse, and shaped by human
past, present and future. actions and beliefs.
• Events and human experiences • Informed, self-aware citizens
are complex, and are perceived, engage with the challenges and
interpreted and represented in opportunities that face humanity,
different ways. and are able to take considered
• Our natural world is diverse and and ethical action.
dynamic, influenced by processes
and human actions.
Figure 1: What matters statements for the humanities AoLE.
• Ambitious, capable learners ready • Ethical, informed citizens of
to learn throughout their lives Wales and the world
• Enterprising, creative contributors, • Healthy, confident individuals,
ready to play a full part in life and ready to lead fulfilling lives as
work valued members of society.
Figure 2: The four purposes of the humanities AoLE.
1. Expressive arts 4. Languages, literacy and communication
2. Health and wellbeing 5. Maths and numeracy
3. Humanities 6. Science and technology
Figure 3: The six Areas of Learning and Experience.
Progression
A further challenge that must be addressed is
assessment. How do we assess and what will this
look like? How do we moderate across several
teachers, when time is such a cursed obstacle
in secondary schools? To the question ‘I am
clear about both what will be the same and
what will be different in my school under the
new assessment arrangements’, in a survey Vol 47, 2, Summer 2022
© Teaching Geography
published by the Welsh Government (2022), 61
 46% of senior leaders disagreed and 43% agreed
with this statement. It is worrying when nearly
half of all senior leaders are unclear about the
impact of assessment on their school. Secondary
teachers will always have one eye on the terminal
assessments horizon, which leads on to a further
problem for CfW: curriculum design. Geography
teachers need to know what they are working
towards in terms of key stage 4 specifications
in order to properly construct a key stage 3
curriculum with foundation stones for GCSE.
The new GCSE and A level qualifications
reforms in Wales are under way, with periods of
consultation and the shift towards a humanities
GCSE qualification. Subject-specific practitioners
are rightly concerned about the dilution of
their disciplines. A fundamental issue that
bothers geographers is the lack of disciplinary
progression within the ‘what matters’ statements:
for example, there is no description of what
progression looks like in geography. Indeed, some
teachers are concerned with the lack of discussion
over how to integrate assessment into progression
and how best to make the link between descriptors
of learning (DoL) and lesson objectives. The worry
is almost certainly over accountability, rather than
what is best for students while embodying the
spirit of CfW. As Elwood, Hopfenbeck and Baird
(2017) note, high-stakes summative assessments
can increase pressure on young people, obscuring
the ‘purpose’ of schooling as learning, and
reframing their educational experience as being
geared towards ‘performing’ in examinations.
This is the very concept that CfW seeks to avoid,
with an emphasis instead based on formative
assessment and a development of low-stakes,
long-term retrieval practice.
A tail of two curriculums
As it stands, we are in real danger of curriculum
overload. Jeremy Miles, Minister for Education in
Wales, sees a CfW revised timeline of September
2022 for years 7 and 8. Where does that leave
the current year 9? Teachers might well be
forced to run two curriculum models side by side,
until such time as the new CfW overrides any
existing curriculum provision. It is pertinent to
ask how this affects teacher workload, in terms
of reporting and accountability. Currently many
geography teachers are having to report on
existing national curriculum levels, as well as
working on using progression step language to
report to key stakeholders for the current years
7 and 8.
The future
What is definitely exciting from a secondary
perspective is the opportunity to cross-collaborate
with other colleagues, both within and outside our
own school, and to learn from the sector leading
best practice that is deep within all of our schools.
There is a real opportunity here for geography
teachers to work across clusters and families of
schools to capture a real understanding of subject
topics being taught and to therefore have a much
better informed idea of what students coming to
secondary school already know. The GA’s Welsh
Special Interest Group has developed a series of
scaffolds (GA, 2021) around different themes for
CfW through the lens of geography and these
are an extremely useful tool for teachers to start
with. There are many overlapping features from
the humanities AoLE that are worth careful
consideration.

Figure 4: Two approaches

to curriculum design for Design approaches
the new Curriculum for
Wales. Source: Top – History
• Thematic approach – a Theme or Big
Central South Consortium:
RVE Question linking the subject areas
Humanities; Bottom –
Education Achievement • Sequencing – work in one subject being
Geography Humanities
Service for South East Wales. used and developed in another
Business Studies • Shared planning – jointly planned units
Social Studies of work

Disciplinary approach Interdisciplinary Integrated approach

Specialist teachers approaches with one teacher

Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022

© Teaching Geography
62
The battle to avoid a loss of subject
specialism
In its summary to the consultation questions
put forward by the Welsh Government, the GA
(2019) commented that it was gravely concerned
in regard to the question ‘How well do you think
draft Curriculum for Wales 2022 guidance allows
for all children and young people to specialise
from age 14 in a particular discipline or subject?’
The GA responded ‘The risk is that school
curricula will therefore not help learners to acquire
subject-specific knowledge, concepts and skills.
We are therefore concerned that the transition to
qualifications will become problematic and that,
at worst, the currency of Welsh qualifications will
be reduced as a result’. Indeed, Morgan (2017)
commented on ‘our failure to identify a core of
geographical knowledge that should be taught in
schools is leading to “the making of geographical
ignorance”.’
Brooks (2010) centralised the importance of
subject teacher’s specialist knowledge in the
geography content in what is taught in the
classroom and how powerful this is. There is a real
danger that, if curriculum design is not mastered
and engineered carefully, geographical specialism
could be lost.
Curriculum design models
One of the biggest concerns facing all teachers
(not just geographers) is the varying application
of curriculum design, both across clusters of
schools and within secondary schools, and the
amount of time given over to this process. Various
consortia are offering different advice, especially
when it comes to assessment, with some advice
likened to a ‘tick box’ scenario of assessment
against descriptors of learning. The potential
outcome is geography teachers becoming
disenchanted with the spirit of CfW, and instead
returning to the hoop jumping, misused national
curriculum levels not seen since 1998.
Figure 4 shows examples of curriculum design
models that advisory services to schools
have illustrated as part of their professional
development advice to schools for CfW. As
you can see, there are different approaches to
curriculum design and this depends crucially on
the school’s own local context. One size does not
fit all. Curriculum design, is very much dependent
on a range of factors such as staffing, expertise of
pedagogy, local context and strategic structures
of departments. Trying to copy another school’s
design model would be in advisable. Instead,
schools should look at what they do best and
play to their existing strengths when it comes
to designing a new curriculum.
Concluding thoughts
The one thought that hovers over CfW is the
range of curriculum designs that schools are able
to use. How do we compare standards when the
implementation of the CfW varies across Wales?
In our quest to cover the broad and balanced
curriculum content, are we in danger of only being
surface deep in our pursuit of the four purposes
that may not completely lend themselves to
current geographical topics? How do we as
geographers provide a curriculum that remains
true to the spirit of CfW yet remains true to the
disciplinary knowledge of geography?
As Armando Di-Finizio (2019) said, ‘this is a
fantastic opportunity for Wales and for the
education across the UK, as long as we don’t
lose sight of the Four Purposes and the What
Matters statements’. One thing that is clear is
the need for continued and ongoing collaborative
discussions with all key stakeholders. Indeed,
Gately (2020) published a paper asking the very
question, ‘Can the new Welsh Curriculum achieve
its purposes?’  |  TG

References
All websites last accessed 21/03/22.
Brooks, C. (2010) ‘Why geography teachers’ subject expertise matters’, Geography, 95, 3, pp.143–8.
Di-Finizio, A. (2019) The New Curriculum For Wales: A worthwhile vision. The Institute of Welsh Affairs. Available at www.iwa.
wales/agenda/2019/05/the-new-curriculum-for-wales-a-worthwhile-vision
Donaldson, G. (2015) Successful Futures: Independent Review of Curriculum and Assessment Arrangements in Wales.
Pdf available at https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2018-03/successful-futures.pdf
Elwood, J., Hopfenbeck, T. and Baird, J. (2017) ‘Predictability in High-Stakes Examinations: Students’ Perspectives on a
Perennial Assessment Dilemma’, Research Papers in Education, 32, 1, pp. 1–17. Available at https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1123151
Gatley, J. (2020) ‘Can the New Welsh Curriculum achieve its purposes?’, The Curriculum Journal, 31, 2, pp. 202–214.
GA (2019) Draft Curriculum for Wales 2022 guidance: feedback. Available at www.geography.org.uk/write/MediaUploads/
Steph Robinson is Head of
Wales_curriculum_consultation_-_GA_response_July2019_abriged_for_GA_website.docx
Geography at Pencoedtre
GA (2021) PowerPoint scaffolds on a variety of Humanities themes for years 7–9. Available at www.geography.org.uk/ High School and is a
Curriculum-for-Wales-the-place-for-geography member of the GA’s
Hughes, S. and Lewis, H. (2020) ‘Tensions in current curriculum reform and the development of teachers’ professional Welsh Special Interest
autonomy’, The Curriculum Journal, 31, 2, pp. 290–302. Group. She is also author
Morgan, J. (2017) ‘The making of geographical ignorance?’, Geography, 102, 1, pp. 18–25. of Curriculum for Wales:
OECD (2020) Implementing Education Policies: Achieving the New Curriculum for Wales. Paris: OECD Publishing. Available at Geography for 11–14
https://doi.org/10.1787/4b483953-en years, published by Hodder
Rawling, E. (2020) ‘Geography in the Welsh curriculum; a good idea but’, Teaching Geography, 45, 3, pp. 101–4. Education in 2022.
Welsh Government (2020) Education Wales Humanities AoLE. Available at https://hwb.gov.wales/curriculum-for-wales/humanities Email: S.Robinson@
Welsh Government (2022) Practitioner survey on preparations for Curriculum and Assessment Reforms 2022: interim findings phschool.co.uk
from primary and secondary school senior leaders. Available at https://gov.wales/practitioner-survey-preparations-curriculum-
Twitter: @pencoedtreG
and-assessment-reforms-2022-interim-findings-html#section-80370

Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022

© Teaching Geography
63
 Sharon Reilly
Helping trainee teachers
to decolonise the school
geography curriculum
The move to decolonise the school geography
Sharon describes curriculum has recently been gaining momentum.
how she developed The Black Lives Matter movement shifted it
her initial teacher further into the public domain, highlighting the
training curriculum need to address the whiteness of the school
to help trainees curriculum, but also the need to address racial
and social justice. Puttick and Murrey’s article
understand their
(2020) emphasised these issues in the geography
role in decolonising
curriculum. They surmised that the lack of ‘race’
the geography
in geography needed to be addressed to support
curriculum, and how a geography education ‘that empowers young
they could improve people to understand the complexity and shifting
the classroom
politics of space, place and knowledge and
experience for their
contribute to a meaningful anti-racist future’(p.
students. 126). This inspired me to address the question
of decolonising the geography curriculum in
my geography ITT (Initial Teacher Training)
curriculum.
Accompanying
online materials Teacher educators have a responsibility to
prepare trainee teachers to have the confidence
and knowledge to teach in ethnically diverse
classrooms, to deal with racist incidents and
address racial stereotypes (Lander, 2014). There
is a need for a collective voice, where all students’
narratives are represented in the classroom. I was
very aware that I approached this from a white
privileged perspective: to ensure substantive
change, the development required careful
thought, research and consideration. Yet with
the rich and diverse subject of geography we
have the opportunity to reflect diverse cultural
backgrounds and ensure that no student feels
marginalised or ignored, thus avoiding a one-
dimensional view of place and perpetuating
negative representations.
I use the term ‘ethnic minority’ to recognise
Black, Asian and other ethnic minorities in the
UK. However I am aware that there are other
groups of students who feel marginalised by
the curriculum. In this article I am specifically
looking at the experiences of ethnic minorities in
the geography classroom. I use the term ‘race’
in the article, in line with Puttick and Murrey’s
(2020) thinking – that using the term allows us to
explicitly recognise racism and racial inequality
and acknowledge that race and racism continue
to underpin socio-political events.
Where to start
The first steps for me were to help geography
trainees to understand their role in the process
of decolonising the curriculum, develop their
confidence to teach in an ethnically diverse
classroom, introduce a greater diversity of
geographical knowledge and provide tools to
Vol 47, 2, Summer 2022 improve the experiences of ethnic minority
© Teaching Geography
64 students in the classroom.
The areas of focus were to:
• understand what we mean by decolonising
the curriculum
• recognise that this might be an uncomfortable
subject
• consider the language that we use in the
classroom
• Identify potential barriers in the geography
curriculum to:
–  avoid geographical ignorance
– tackle stereotypes, misrepresentation
and developing a dialogue
• develop case studies which have a broad
view and take a multifaceted approach
• recognise ethnic minority students’
experiences in our classrooms and connect
the learning to their experiences.
The curriculum
Developing the ITT programme was the
beginning of a conversation to develop a
collective voice supporting a more inclusive
geography curriculum. I am aware that I am
unable to look at all aspects of the curriculum;
however it is important to start this conversation,
understand what we mean by decolonising the
curriculum, begin to examine the geography
curriculum and recognise students’ ‘everyday
knowledge’ within our classrooms. Recognising
students ‘everyday geographies’ helps students
to connect with their learning and feel included
and empowered by the subject (Robinson, 2020).
After exploring many definitions of decolonising
the curriculum, we selected one from Keele
University to underpin our programme:
‘decolonizing the curriculum means creating
spaces and resources for a dialogue among all
members of the university on how to imagine
and envision all cultures and knowledge systems
in the curriculum, and with respect to what is
being taught and how it frames the world.’ (Keele
University, 2019, p. 2).
The next step was to explore aspects of the
geography curriculum and discuss the potential
barriers experienced by students from ethnic
minorities. Four areas were highlighted.
1. Urban change
There are some good examples of where race
and racism are recognised, and the impacts of
colonialism are discussed. One is the GA’s A
guide to fieldwork in Bristol (Owen, 2021), which
examines the development of Bristol’s identity,
explicitly recognising race. It discusses historical
links to race, racism and colonialisation, for
instance Bristol’s connection to the slave trade
and racial discrimination faced by immigrants.
It also acknowledges the picture today, for
instance the campaign for and subsequent
removal of the statue of Edward Colston, and
that ethnic minorities still face housing issues,
and do not benefit from the increased affluence
in parts of the city. Another example is based
in Detroit, using mapping which goes beyond
where different ethnic groups live to examine the
reasons behind these patterns, focusing on racial
discrimination and housing and how this leads
to further racial discrimination (Hill, 2014). Both
of these examples explicitly recognise race and
create a greater awareness of the issues around
race and how this impacts on urban change.
Questions relating to urban change
• Have you considered the impact of race
and racism on urban change and or
development?
• Was the development of the urban area
influenced by colonialisation?
• How has race affected the city’s growth?
• Does this resource fully reflect historical
influences?
• Have you considered the language that
you are using to support ethnic minorities
to feel included in their learning?
2. Colonisation
How colonisation influenced development
in the past and continues to have an impact
on development resulted in the creation of a
resource – the impact of colonisation in Nigeria
(Figure 1). The resource aimed to contextualise
the development of Nigeria and incorporate an
understanding of colonisation, its legacy and how
colonialism has influenced Nigeria’s development.
Questions relating to colonisation
• Have you considered how colonisation has
impacted on development in the past?
• Is the legacy of colonisation still having
an impact on the country’s development?
• Do your resources reflect the historical
links with the country’s colonial past?
• Have you considered how this will connect
with the students in your class?
• Have you considered the language that
you are using to support ethnic minorities
to feel included in the learning?
3. Barriers to the curriculum
An exploration of the ‘Black girls hike’ (2019)
movement revisits a discussion which recognises
barriers where ethnic minorities feel out of place
in the countryside. These barriers potentially
limit the understanding of rural geographies and
conceptual understanding of physical geographies,
and could limit the engagement of students from
ethnic minorities in fieldwork, having potential
implications for attainment. Possible barriers
are fear of discrimination, feeling excluded and
conspicuous, and a lack of suitable outdoor Figure 1: Extract from a
resource investigating the
clothing. These barriers need to be recognised in
impact of colonisation in
schools; a starting point is a conversation (with Nigeria (a larger version
students and parents) that recognises the issues is available to download).
and looks for solutions; beginning to empower
students to develop social agency. Milner (2020)
suggests that fieldwork should reflect ethnic
minority backgrounds, and thus focus on urban
areas; however this does not solve the issues.
We need to try to break down these barriers.
Questions relating to rural environments
• Have you listened to your ethnic minority students to understand
their barriers to rural geographies?
• Have you presented positive role models of ethnic minorities in the
countryside?
• Have you used images of ethnic minorities in your teaching materials?
• Have you tried to understand the issues from the view of ethnic
minorities in the UK?
• Have you carefully considered the rural area that you are visiting and
the barriers that ethnic minority students may face?
• Have you considered the language that you are using to support
ethnic minorities to feel included in their learning?
4. Aid
An exploration of aid concentrated on how
we teach about aid. We discussed a need
to recognise our own bias, perceptions and
experiences: to emphasise the agency of local
communities and value local knowledge, in order
to shift the power dynamics away from putting
our own agendas, that reflect a western society,
on local communities (Figure 2). One of the
trainees’ own experiences was of travelling to
South Africa with an aid charity group to support
a local school. The group painted the school: but
a local student commented that this was the third
time the walls had been painted that year.
A further development was to engage with racial
literacy – the knowledge, skills and awareness
needed to talk about race and racism. Rogers
and Mosley (2008) concluded that the more
experience teachers have with racial literacy,
the more likely they are to set up appropriate
conditions for the students in their own
classroom. These discussions were uncomfortable;
however, trainees recognised the need to confront Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022
their own unconscious bias and prejudices. © Teaching Geography
65
 Figure 2: An ITT student’s
reflection on experiences so
far in the classroom.
Online resources
A list of titles for further
reading is available
to download. Go to
www.geography.org.
uk/Journals/Teaching-
geography and select
Summer 2022.
Sharon Reilly is a Senior
Lecturer at the University
of Brighton.
Email:
S.Reilly@brighton.ac.uk
Twitter:
Sharon reilly@littleReilly1
Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022
© Teaching Geography
66
Within my teacher training so far, I feel my SBT1 school and I have made reasonable efforts to tackle
stereotypes and issues surrounding BAME representation. For example, when recently covering development
and causes for differences in development around the world, we spent a whole lesson learning about
colonialism, the colonisation of Malawi and how this and neo-colonialism have had a lasting impact on the
country’s development, even now. Within my teaching I also have addressed misconceptions of the ‘single
story’ being sold about Africa – that Africa is actually a large continent (and not a country) and full of 54
diverse different countries. However, I think there is still some way to go to improving the way we and other
schools are addressing these topics. One of the other trainees mentioned how in their GCSE classes on
development, they briefly mentioned that many countries in Africa were once colonies of the British Empire.
But this was as far as the discussion went and there was no mention of what this history actually meant for the
communities in those countries then or now.
They recognised that lack of engagement with Conclusions
racial literacy could lead to misconceptions
We have started a productive conversation, but I
which perpetuated the marginalisation of ethnic
recognise that this needs to be embedded across
minorities in the classroom, and that by developing
the ITT geography curriculum to make a substantive
racial literacy we can raise the awareness of ethnic
change to classroom practice. There are still many
groups to develop a language that supports an
areas to consider in the future, such as to recognise,
ethnically diverse classroom. One trainee said:
include, and represent ethnic minority student
I found today’s lecture and the associated experiences and cultural backgrounds; to support
reading really interesting, and it certainly trainees to critique resources prior to their use;
opened my eyes to an area of teaching and consider the use of images and language.
in the UK that needs to be addressed ... It
Overall, the response from trainees was positive.
made me feel slightly uncomfortable; am
Further outcomes were reflected later on during
I prepared enough to address these issues
the course; one trainee recognised the lack
and misconceptions to a satisfactory level
of representation of ethnic minority voices in
without running the risk of offence to any
climate change debates and included a section
BAME students? However, we do need to
in their resource to reflect climate activists from
avoid geographical ignorance by not shying
ethnic minority backgrounds (see downloads).
away from these topics even if they do feel
Robinson (2020) pointed out that in geography
uncomfortable.
textbooks ethnic minorities in less developed
regions are often only reflected as ‘poor’,
Questions for trainees regarding aid ‘deprived’ or ‘undeveloped’ and geographers are
• Are you aware of your own perceptions represented as white. She challenged her classes
of aid and the implications of this in your to research more diverse geographers involved in
teaching? climate science and activism with really positive
results.  |  TG
• Have you represented aid from a western
society perspective?
• Do your teaching materials truly represent
the reality of aid and the country receiving
aid?
• Have you considered the role of aid in
perpetuating stereotypes?
• Have you considered the language that
you are using to support ethnic minorities
to feel included in their learning?
References
All websites last accessed 23/03/22.
Black Girls Hike UK C.I.C (2019) Black girls hike. Available at www.bghuk.com (blog).
Hill, A. (2014) Detroit Redlining Map 1930. Available at Detroit Redlining Map 1939 | DETROITography
Keele University (2019) Keele Manifesto for Decolonising the Curriculum. Available at www.keele.ac.uk/raceequalitycharter/
raceequalitycharter/keeledecolonisingthecurriculumnetwork/keelemanifestofordecolonisingthecurriculum
Lander, V. (2011) ‘Race, culture and all that: An exploration of the perspectives of White secondary student teachers about
race equality issues in their initial teacher education’, Race, Ethnicity and Education, 14, 3, pp. 351−64
Milner, C. (2020) ‘Classroom strategies for tackling the whiteness of geography’, Teaching Geography, 106, 3, pp. 105−7
Owen, A. (2021) A guide to fieldwork in Bristol. Sheffield: GA
Puttick, S. and Murrey, A. (2020) ‘Confronting the deafening silence on race in geography education in England: learning from
anti-racist, decolonial and Black geographies’, Geography, 105, 3, pp. 126−34
Robinson, R. (2020) How can we decolonise geography? Available at https://geoteach.co.uk/decolonising-geography.html
Rogers, R. and Mosley, M. (2008) ‘A critical discourse analysis of racial literacy in teacher education’, University of Missouri
Curriculum, 19, 2, pp. 85−202
Fostering empathy in the Kit Marie
Rackley

teaching of natural hazards

When starting a new topic on natural hazards, it students’ eco-anxiety has made climate change
is typically an exciting prospect for students and arguably a safeguarding concern for schools Kit outlines practical
even teachers. There are so many images, video (Rackley, 2021), these key elements are crucial approaches to
clips and outputs from popular culture that can be for empowering young people in the face of teaching natural
tapped into to give an immersive and engaging unprecedented challenges. hazards that foster
learning experience. Almost every week there is empathy, and an
Students must understand the effect of physical
no shortage of news items focussing on a current awareness of their
natural hazards on people and places, but
natural hazard event, allowing teachers to keep
what can we do in the classroom to develop impact on people.
those case studies fresh and timely. Then we have
empathy and avoid treating natural hazards
climate change, effectively one big disaster movie
and climate change as some form of academic
of multiple threats and hazards.
entertainment? Here are just a few ideas from
This is the crux of the issue and the focus of this my own teaching and through observations
article. Through my own teaching experience, of effective teaching by others. While the
and from what I have observed, it is easy to be examples may be from less recent events, it is the
caught up in the spectacle and awe of natural methodologies used which are the focus. Indeed,
hazards in order to motivate students, sometimes articles such as those written by Alistair Hamill
not fully appreciating that behind every single (2021) which focus on more recent events can
statistic is a personal tragedy. The environmental complement the following ideas.
and societal challenges we are facing today need
not just knowledge and understanding, they need
conversation, context, and empathy.
Observing beyond the spectacle
On Friday 11 March 2011, each period of my
school day was spent simply doing one thing:
Geography and the ability to watching the news, live, as it covered the
empathise devastating scenes of the tsunami, triggered
Of the curriculum ideologies identified by by an earthquake, sweeping the east coast of
Rawling (2000), building empathy would appear Japan. It made for vibrant discussion and helped
to fit naturally into a progressive educational demonstrate processes and impacts, but I was left
(child-centred) or reconstructionist (radical) hollow at the end of the day when I realised that
one. Those aim to develop attitudes of respect I too had been captured by the spectacle. Take
for others, social capital and an acceptance of a look at Figure 1, a picture of the earthquake’s
multiculturalism. However, I would argue that aftermath. What are your eyes immediately
empathy is a skill that enables an appreciation drawn to? How long did your thoughts linger on
of the ideas of others, develops co-operation and what first captured your attention? You most
improves critical thinking – all desirable traits for likely demonstrated ‘anchoring’ and ‘salience’
anybody being prepped for the job market, and
therefore compatible with utilitarian or vocational
ideologies. If the development of empathy
through the curriculum is transcendent, it will sit
well with ‘powerful knowledge’. As Mark Enser
put it: ‘Powerful knowledge isn’t knowledge that
pupils would otherwise encounter in their day-to-
day lives …’. It allows students to ‘better explain
and understand the natural and social worlds’
and ‘go beyond the limits of their personal
experience.’ (Enser, 2021)
Regardless of what curriculum ideology
prevailed in the past and what combination
of these one may subscribe to today, aiding
the development of empathy in children has
become an increasingly necessary process at
both primary and secondary phases. In her book
Anne Dolan states that powerful geography can
develop empathy in children, allowing them to
understand and participate in the environment in
which they live (Dolan, 2020). Empathy as a skill
helps in acquiring knowledge and understanding
of identity and diversity, and instils values and Figure 1: US Navy responders in the aftermath of the Tohoku Vol 47, 2, Summer 2022
attitudes for social justice and equality. Now that earthquake in March 2011. Source: © pkotegorov/flickr (CC BY 2.0).
© Teaching Geography
67
 biases (over-focusing on the first or obvious thing,
and that which grabs our attention), and when
it comes to devastating scenes these biases can
be particularly strong. After recognising this in
myself and the students I taught, I developed my
own method of analysing still images, screenshots
or freeze-frames – called foreground, background,
four-corners and space, which works with all age
groups (Figure 2).
The image can be on the whiteboard or a physical
resource, but, using Figure 1 as an example,
the first step is to address the aforementioned
biases by asking students to make observations
or generate questions only on everything in the
foreground, such as the rescue workers. The focus
can include imposing components in the near-
background, such as the damaged building on the
left. Then draw the focus on to the background:
the apparently unscathed building, the washed
up boat, the wandering person, and the hills.
Concentrating next on the four corners, and
‘space’, draws attention to areas that often get
ignored, as they are outside the ‘vignette’ of
human vision. We now notice the stripped-out
building insulation, the condition of the road,
the misty sky.
This approach works exceptionally well with
enquiry skills and tools such as the critical
thinking question generator (GA, 2018) or
the development compass rose (TIDE, 1995).
However, depending on the image and the
objectives for using it, this method alone doesn’t
Figure 2: A four-step process
to address anchoring and
salience bias when using
imagery.
Figure 3: Mexican rescue
workers take part in a search
for victims in the aftermath of
the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
Source: Alamy.
Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022
© Teaching Geography
68
necessarily build empathy. Instead, it provides a
solid foundation for observations and discussions
that support it.
Creative arts: a chance for cross-
curricular approaches
One technique useful for building empathy is ‘hot-
seating’. Hot-seating works by having a character
who is questioned by a group of students not
just about the topic under discussion, but also
about their personality, motivations, thoughts
and feelings. The technique is also useful for
developing questioning skills. Some kind of
stimulus is used, which involves an identifiable
character. This could be one of the rescue workers
or the wandering person seen in Figure 1, or it
could be someone who is featured in a news
article. The teacher is sometimes in the hot-
seat (this is called ‘teacher-in-role (TiR)’), or if a
teacher is not comfortable with this role they can
use the stimulus and other necessary information
to, ahead of time, brief a willing student or
colleague to take it on.
The earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010 produced
exceptionally powerful personal stories. One
such story focused on Hector Mendez, a Mexican
rescue worker (Figure 3). The journalist, Moni
Basu, used clear and emotive language to
describe Hector’s motivation, hope, determination
and pain (Basu, 2010). I used this as a stimulus
for a year 7 lesson about the Haiti earthquake.
Figure 4 shows some questions that were asked

How much sleep do Do you miss
you get at night? your family?
How many people
have you saved?
Can be developed from the article
Not in article but can be reasonably inferred
of me ‘as Hector’ when TiR hot-seating. For
homework, the students were asked to come up
with questions they would like to ask Hector. They
weren’t given a copy of the news story, but brief
information about Hector as outlined in it: that
he was a volunteer, that he has helped out in
many hazardous events which became disasters
for the people affected, etc. On most occasions,
the news article itself provides possible answers,
and on others my geographical knowledge was
used to appropriately and reasonably fill in gaps.
The questions that can’t be answered are almost
always related to thoughts and feelings. These
are the most challenging to answer and require
empathy skills of the hot-seater. I tackle this
by thinking ‘how would I feel?’ One thing to be
mindful of when hot-seating is that it is not used
to reinforce stereotypes or appropriate cultures.
When it comes to marginalised voices, ensure you
are very confident that your own experience is
relevant, or you have spoken to or researched the
viewpoints of people who are part of such groups.
The aim is to express thoughts and feelings as a
result of a geographical process or event, not on
the basis of someone’s background or culture.
Another technique is a ‘freeze-frame’. Based on a
stimulus, groups of students devise a living picture
posing as statues to generate a scene. Figure 5
shows a group of students in a freeze-frame in
the aftermath of an earthquake. This technique
also offers an opportunity for cross-curricular skills
building. Key stage 3 students practise ‘analytical
drawing’ in art, which lends itself naturally to
geographical sketching. In this instance, students
who are seated used their sketchbooks to sketch
the scene depicted by the living statues. Each group
had 10 minutes to pose as a living picture, while
the rest of the class sketched. An extra element
was added for the last two minutes of each freeze,
when I interviewed the ‘statues’ with an imaginary
microphone, asking them questions such as ‘How
long have you been digging for?’, ‘What were
you doing when the earthquake hit?’, ‘You look
distressed. What is upsetting you?’, ‘What building
did this use to be?’ The responses were used by
the artists to add annotations to their sketches.
Figure 4: Questions asked of
‘Hector’ (via teacher-in-role
hot-seating) by a year 7 class
Have you seen about being a rescue worker
in Haiti.
someone die?
Why do you want to
try to save people?
What is your life like
in Mexico?
Figure 5: Using ‘analytical
drawing’ and freeze-framing
to sketch how people might
respond in the aftermath of
a natural hazards disaster.
Photo: © Kit Rackley.
Real-time, real stories
Building empathy from geographical issues
such as the impacts of natural hazards can be
synergistic with promoting appropriate use of
social media and online blogs. Thanks to hashtags
(for example #HurricaneIda, #DixieFire and
#Lytton #Heatwave from 2021), social media
automatically curates thousands of first-hand
accounts of disasters resulting from natural
hazards. Once the primary impacts have passed,
the hashtags will provide a window into the
long-term impacts and responses. Tweets or
posts with these hashtags then remain forever
accessible so long as the platform they are
hosted on exists, providing a cache of stimuli
and potential curriculum artefacts. In Figure
6, Twitter user ErinInTheMorn’s (Erin, 2021)
posts about her anxiety about the impacts of
Hurricane Ida as it hit her home town on the
coast of Louisiana in August 2021. Although
individuals such as Erin may have made the
choice to post in the public domain, we must
be mindful that these are real people choosing
to disclose their lived experiences. Use of social
media in this manner requires moderation and
sensitivity, and so therefore can in itself be a good
exercise in empathy building. It also promotes
safe and appropriate use of online platforms,
especially since it is increasingly a valuable tool
for investigating geographical events (Fearnley, Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022
© Teaching Geography
2020). 69

Figure 6: Posts from a
Twitter user whose family
home is located in an area
of Louisiana that was hit by
Hurricane Ida. Reproduced
with permission.
Kit Rackley is a freelance
educator and author at
www.Geogramblings.com,
and a consultant to the GA.
Email:
kit@geogramblings.com
Twitter: @geogramblings
Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022
© Teaching Geography
70
Where the use of social media platforms might
not be appropriate or desirable, online blogs can
be used. In September 2020 the Bridger Canyon
area just outside Bozeman, Montana, USA
experienced a wildfire that burnt 8224 acres. The
Bridger Foothills Fire didn’t make international
or even national news as it was small in scale,
but it made a huge impact on an individual and
community level (Rackley, 2020). On Facebook,
resident Jeff Vermillion wrote a blog article titled
Fire and Hope, which has since been published
and archived (Vermillion, 2020). A comment
submitted by a reader says:
Beautifully and eloquently said Jeff. I’m a
canyon resident and you captured so many of
my thoughts and emotions. Where there is pain
and loss, there is opportunity as well.
Very little can compete or compare with the
testimony from those who are directly impacted
by a significant event, and empathetic use of
such stories, offered generously by those who
wish to tell them, should be a default when we
are teaching the impacts of natural hazards.
Final thoughts
As outlined and practically demonstrated in
this article, our subject enables us to develop
the skill of empathy in young people while
covering issues in the curriculum. Not only is
empathy and conversation important to help
develop social cohesion, but it also allows for the
creation of a safe learning environment. With
contextual safeguarding in mind, teachers who
are thoughtful and strategic in the application of
any of the ideas above or similar will be helping
to normalise human emotions like anxiety and
be mindful of students for whom covering these
issues may be triggering or upsetting. And in an
era of declining mental health in young people
and environmental degradation, the subject of
geography once again can demonstrate itself as a
means of reconnecting with our humanity.  |  TG
References
All websites last accessed 24/03/2022.
Basu, M. (2010) ‘Rescuer was woman’s last hope in Haiti: “We told her we won’t leave”’, CNN, 29 January. Available at http://
edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/28/haiti.rescuer/index.html
Dolan, A. (2020) Powerful Primary Geography: A Toolkit for 21st-Century Learning. Abingdon: Routledge
Enser, M. (2021) Powerful knowledge: What teachers need to understand. TES Online, 17 September. Available at www.tes.
com/news/powerful-knowledge-what-teachers-need-understand
Erin, Trail Mom (2021) via Twitter. Available at https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1432315488344940551 and
https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1432778573077749760
Fearnley, F. (2020) ‘Social media as a tool for geographers and geography educators’, in N. Walshe and G. Healy (eds),
Geography Education in the Digital World (pp. 75–86). Abingdon: Routledge
Geographical Association (2018) Critical Thinking in Practice: Practice Guide. Available at www.geography.org.uk/write/
MediaUploads/Support%20and%20guidance/683_Critical_Thinking_in_practice_guide_final.pdf
Rackley, K. (2021). School safeguarding policy should consider climate change and eco-anxiety. Geogramblings. Available at
https://geogramblings.com/2021/04/25/school-safeguarding-policy-should-consider-climate-change-and-eco-anxiety
Rackley, K. (2020). Bridger Foothills Fire [Video]. Geogramblings. Available at https://geogramblings.com/2020/09/11/bridger-
foothills-fire-video/
Hamill, A. (2021) ‘Representing without misrepresenting: the ethics of case study writing’ Teaching Geography 46, 2, pp. 53–55
Rawling, E. (2000) ‘Ideology, politics and curriculum change: reflections on school geography 2000’, Geography, 85, 3, pp. 209–20
Teachers in Development Education (TIDE~) (1995) Development Compass Rose Consultation Pack. Birmingham: DEC.
Available at https://www.tidegloballearning.net/sites/default/files/documents/DEVELOPMENT%20COMPASS%20ROSE.pdf
Vermillion, J. (2020) ‘Fire and Hope: Bridger Foothills Fire 2020’ in the Bozeman Magazine. Available at https://
bozmanmagazine.com/articles/2020/10/01/103732-fire-and-hope-bridger-foothills-fire-2020
Exploring New Zealand
New Zealand is a country that is full of
geography: glacial, fluvial and volcanic features
combine to create majestic landscapes, used
to good effect in the ‘Lord of the Rings’ films.
Opportunities for outdoor activities, including
skydiving and white-water rafting, are prolific.
New Zealand also has a fascinating but troubling
human/cultural history, particularly in its Maori
roots and the impacts of British colonialism.
It was with the intention of highlighting these
factors that I created a key stage 3 scheme of
work (SoW) on ‘Exploring New Zealand’. The plan
was to place this scheme at the start of year 7,
to ‘introduce’ geography as a discrete subject at
secondary school, aiming to expose students to
the breadth and rigour of geography right from
the first term. An additional aim was to establish
a sense of ‘awe and wonder’ in the students
about the world, expanding their horizons beyond
the classroom and their local environment.
When devising the SoW, I took care to ensure that
a range of human, physical and environmental
themes and processes were included. I focused
on popular New Zealand tourist attractions to
ensure that the students remained engaged. This
focus also enabled students to gather enough
information to devise an extended end-of-topic
project, in which they created their own tour around
New Zealand; for example, students explored glacial
processes and landforms through investigating the
Franz Josef Glacier and Milford Sound. This focus
also enabled students to investigate environmental
issues such as global warming (the impacts of
shrinking glaciers in New Zealand) and human
issues such as the effects of overcrowding at
tourist ‘honeypot’ sites (Milford Sound).
The SoW works towards achieving the main
aims of the key stage 3 National Curriculum for
geography (DfE, 2013) in these ways:
1. Students gain an insight into ‘globally
significant places’ such as Auckland,
Milford Sound and Rotorua and develop an
understanding of the physical and human
characteristics that make these places
significant.
2. Students investigate the processes which give
rise to physical and human characteristics:
for example the impacts of colonialism on
indigenous groups; climate change; glaciation;
and tectonic processes.
3. Students gain competence in geographical
skills, such as map reading, diagrams and
aerial photographs, as well as persuasive
writing and verbal debate.
Figure 1 gives a basic outline of the lesson topics
and key questions for the SoW, along with some
examples of the types of lesson activities included.
Megan Brook
Impact on students
Megan describes
My school has been very pleased with how the
how she developed
SoW has encouraged students to engage with
geographical concepts and processes that they a scheme of work
on New Zealand
wouldn’t normally access until key stages 4
for key stage 3 that
and 5. For example, in the lesson about Maori
combines ‘awe
culture and whether tourists should be allowed to
visit Maori areas, one student brought up ideas and wonder’ with
relating to cultural commodification. He discussed rigorous geography.
whether Maori people may feel forced to change
their dances and clothing in order to suit what
the tourists wish to see. We had an interesting
discussion about this as a group.
Accompanying
The SoW also enabled students to attempt to online materials
break down some stereotypes or misconceptions
regarding British colonialism. During the lesson on
Maori culture, students carried out a comprehension
and memory recall activity. Through this activity,
students learned about how the British Government
broke their promises to the Maori. By the Treaty
of Waitangi in 1840 the Crown provisionally
agreed to honour the Maori’s right to their land,
but later decided to colonise that land. The
students were able to discuss the negative
impacts of this action as a group, and many
students could link this event with ongoing
disputes between the Maori population of New
Zealand and those of European origin. One
student mentioned in a class discussion how
he didn’t think that the British flag should be a
part of the New Zealand flag any more. It was
interesting that he picked this up independently,
as it is such a big topic for debate in New Zealand
and a referendum on whether or not to keep the
flag took place in 2016.
A real benefit of this SoW was the ability to raise
bigger geographical themes and topics that
we will revisit later in key stage 3 and beyond
as discrete areas of study, for instance global
warming in year 8 and glaciation in year 10.
Looking at glaciation, for example, the students
will already have a good grounding on what a
glacier is, how fiords are created, and why glaciers
are shrinking. This will prove invaluable when they
move on to GCSE.
Examples of student work
This student engaged well with the section on
the Franz Josef Glacier and how its retreat could
affect New Zealand (Figure 2): it was interesting
to see how he used some of the protest signs
and statements used in the school climate strikes.
He appeared to understand how the shrinking of
this glacier links to the ‘bigger picture’ of global
climate change.
Another student created a 3D model to go with
his written description of a suggested field trip Vol 47, 2, Summer 2022
© Teaching Geography
to New Zealand (Figure 3). 71

Lesson title Key questions
Exploring New Zealand! • What is New Zealand
like? (physical and
human features)
• What tourist attractions
are there?
Investigating the Bay of Islands • What are the key
features of the Bay of
Islands?
• What activities can you
do there?
• What environmental
problems is the area
suffering from and what
are the solutions?
What is happening to the Franz Josef Glacier? • What is a glacier and
how does a glacier
form?
• Why is the Franz Josef
Glacier a tourism
hotspot?
• What is happening to
the Franz Josef Glacier
and why?
Milford Sound/Piopiotahi: How should it be protected? • How was Milford Sound
formed?
• What activities can you
do there?
• Is it being adequately
protected?
Maori people: The indigenous New Zealanders • Who are the Maori and
what is their history?
• What is their culture
and what are their
traditions?
• Should tourists be
allowed to visit Maori
people and places?
Exploring Waitomo Caves • Where are the Waitomo
Caves and why do
people visit them?
• How did the caves form?
• How could we
encourage tourists to
explore them?
Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022
© Teaching Geography
72 Figure 1: Outline of the SoW focusing on New Zealand.
Geographical
Examples of lesson activities
themes
• Place • Group brainstorming task to
• Tourism assess prior knowledge.
• Map from memory which plots
the key physical and human
features.
• Video clip of top visitor
attractions to establish awe
and wonder.
• Sustainability • Photo/video clip analysis to
• Overfishing prompt discussion – why is this
area a scuba-diving hotspot?
• Food chain
disruption • Photo analysis – what are the
main threats to this area?
• Environmentalism
• Diagram analysis – why are sea
urchins taking over the Bay of
Islands?
• Writing a letter to Jacinda
Ardern describing the problems
and solutions in the Bay of
Islands.
• Glaciation • Use of mini whiteboards –
• Global warming students say how they think
glaciers form and later, what
• Tourism global warming is.
• Video clip to prompt discussion
– what activities can be done on
the glacier?
• Extended homework – students
create a poster which discusses
how global warming is affecting
the glacier.
• Glaciation • Group work: how do you think
• Tourism Milford Sound formed?
• Sustainability • Decision-making exercise:
students choose one solution to
• Planning overcrowding in/around Milford
Sound out of five options and
justify their choice.
• Cultural • Haka – video and discussion.
geography • Information recall/memory test
• Historical quiz on the history of the Maori
geography culture and English oppression.
• The impacts of • Class debate: should tourists be
colonialism allowed to visit Maori areas?
• Fluvial processes • ‘Mind movie’ – story read out
• Tourism to the students to establish a
sense of awe and wonder.
• Photo analysis to work out how
the caves were formed.
• Travel writing.
 Protecting the kiwi • What is the kiwi and
why is it important in
New Zealand?
• Why is the kiwi under
threat?
• What can be done to
protect kiwis?
• Environmental • Carousel activity – students
protection and move around the room
sustainability collecting information to fill in
their crib sheets.
• Debate: Is it worth protecting
the kiwi bird?

Whakaari/White Island, New Zealand • Why is Whakaari/White
Island dangerous?
• Should tourists be able
to visit the island?
• Tectonic processes • Students use phones/computers
to complete a fact file on the
2019 Whakaari/White Island
eruption.
• Short documentary.

Assessment – designing a tour around New Zealand • Students use all of their Students are given options on how to present their work.
prior knowledge to
design a year 7 field trip
to New Zealand.

Figure 1 (continued): Outline of the SoW focusing on New Zealand.

Figure 2: Student work on the retreat of the Franz Josef Glacier. Figure 3: Student work – a 3D model to accompany a written
description of a field trip to New Zealand.

Final observations
The sea life looks amazing. Seeing the Franz
At the end of the SoW, students were asked to
Josef Glacier and Queenstown bungee jumping
summarise what they enjoyed/didn’t enjoy about
has really made me want to go there with my Online resources
the unit on a sticky note. The following is a good
family. There is so much to explore. It was so The resources for this
reflection of the response of the whole group of scheme of work are
interesting learning about the Maori people
students: available to download.
and how they are keeping their culture alive.
I loved doing New Zealand as a topic because Go to www.geography.
I loved making my project on my tour around org.uk/Journals/
we watched some amazing video clips and saw New Zealand at the end, I’m really proud of it. Teaching-geography
some fantastic photos that really brought it to and select Summer 2022.
life, seeing all the colours and things to do. My In summary, this SoW introduces students to the
favourite was the Bay of Islands. I learnt all breadth and scope of geography as a subject,
about how the environment is being affected while also establishing a sense of ‘awe and Megan Brook is a teacher
by humans and what they have done about it. wonder’ about the world.  |  TG of geography at Carre’s
Grammar School, Sleaford,
Lincolnshire.
References
Email: Megan.Brook@
DfE (2013) Geography programmes of study: key stage 3. Available at www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-
carres.uk
curriculum-in-england-framework-for-key-stages-1-to-4 (last accessed 31/03/2020).

Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022

© Teaching Geography
73
 Gary Dawson,
Hannah Finch ‘The danger in primary
Noyes, Paul
Hunt, Melanie geography’ by Simon Catling
Norman
– a response
Introduction
Gary, Hannah and
I have always thought it important for geography
Paul share their
teachers in secondary schools to be aware of the
thoughts in response
experiences of geography their students have
to Simon Catling’s
had during their primary school years. To keep
article – ‘The
up to date with what is happening in primary
danger in primary
geography classrooms I regularly attend the
geography’ (Primary
Charney Manor Primary Geography conference,
Geography, Spring held each year in February. Professor Simon
2022) – introduced Catling presented a paper at that conference,
by Melanie Norman. held online in February 2021, with the title
‘Primary geography is dangerous’. This called
for primary geography teachers not to shy away
from dealing with ‘dangerous’ and controversial
Accompanying geography, with examples – and warnings.
online materials There was much discussion of the paper and the
Conference felt the concerns it raised perhaps
needed a wider audience, reaching both primary
and secondary geography teachers. As a result,
Primary Geography published an article by Simon
called ‘The danger in primary geography’, in the
Spring 2022 issue (Catling, 2022). The secondary
school geography curriculum encompasses
even more aspects of what Simon refers to as
‘dangerous geography’, and the three responses
that follow this introduction give the perspective
of the secondary phase on teaching about
contentious issues/wicked problems. Simon’s
article from Primary Geography can be accessed as
a download, in which Simon argues that ‘primary
geography should explore more “dangerous”
topics if it is really going to matter for pupils.’
Melanie Norman is Editor of Teaching
Geography.
Email: M.J.Norman@brighton.ac.uk
Controversial issues and wicked
problems – perceptions of place
When the A level specifications changed in 2016
we noticed that students found the Changing
Places topic one of the most challenging areas
of the core content in the human geography
specifications. Such an abstract concept of ‘place’
had not been the main focus of any topic in their
primary schools: without this prior knowledge,
students found it difficult to revise, and also to
write evaluative essays.
To normalise ‘place’ as a topic just like any of
the other ‘traditional’ geography topics, such as
hazards or rivers, we decided to make the study
of sense of place a core topic for our students in
year 7. We named the topic ‘Amazing Places’,
and over the course of four weeks students spend
Vol 47, 2, Summer 2022 homework time completing an independent
© Teaching Geography
74 research project entitled ‘Representing Place’.
They are asked to find two or three sources (such
as photos, poems, newspaper articles, works of art)
to represent on A3 paper a place of their choice.
They must describe and explain what each source
tells us about their place. They must also write an
evaluative conclusion, assessing which source is
most useful in representing their place and why;
considering if there are other sources that might
be more useful. This project really challenges
students to think differently about the use of
qualitative sources in geography. So often research
is a fact-finding mission for younger students: why
not take them out of their comfort zone while also
preparing them for the same evaluation skills that
will be demanded of them at A level?
Throughout the scheme of work we introduce a
range of A level concepts, such as insider/outsider
perspectives, placelessness and sense of place.
The hope is that this will enable students to build
a stronger foundation on which to study the
Changing Places topic at A level. This should also
allow them to engage in higher-order, evaluative
thinking from the start, without the need to first
master basic terminology.
In addition, we take the opportunity to complete
fieldwork in the school grounds with students
aiming to answer the question ‘What factors
shape our school’s sense of place?’ Students
collect their data around the school, using
Survey123 to describe the sense of place they
feel in different parts of the site. We encourage
them to choose a range of contrasting areas.
The results are then presented on ArcGIS and
analysed by focusing our discussion on the
reasons for the different words used. This sort
of fieldwork really challenges students to look
at qualitative data collection differently – they
choose the sites independently and must justify
their decisions about the data they record. The
temptation with year 7 students is to select
simple fieldwork tasks such as traffic counting,
but is this really sufficiently challenging for our
future A level geographers?
Although we are yet to see a cohort that has
studied this unit reach A level, it has undoubtedly
helped students understand the nature of the
topic. Indeed, parents have also been impressed
at the diverse curriculum studied in year 7
geography, which enables them to see the
progress made in the subject content since
they were at school!
Hannah Finch Noyes is Head of Geography at
St Helen & St Katharine School, Abingdon, and
a member of the Teaching Geography Editorial
Board.
Email: hspencer@cantab.net
Exploring dangerous geography
Simon Catling calls on primary teachers to
explore dangerous geography ‘for the sake of
the world and for our pupils and their futures’.
From a secondary school perspective I could not
agree more. A geography curriculum at its best
occurs when the subject is brought to life through
contemporary investigations that challenge
students’ view points and promote discussion
and debate.
Recently I have been teaching a unit on the UK
economy to our year 7 students. During one
lesson several students questioned the lack of
women in a factory they had seen manufacturing
chairs in a recent BBC show, ‘Inside the factory:
Chairs’. The students debated the role of women
in the factory and how both men and women
could easily use the machinery shown. For some
this was ‘dangerous’ geography, as it challenged
their worldview of the jobs that men and women
can have as careers. My year 7 students love to
ask the ‘But what if …?’ questions, which really
do show they are engaging with the curriculum,
and I try to encourage this by asking ‘What might
…?’ questions which give them licence to provide
an answer without the fear factor of being
‘wrong’.
I would argue that dangerous geography is even
more relevant at GCSE level. In my 25 years of
teaching geography I have had students ask me
why are we studying ‘X’; what is the point of ‘X’;
or when will I ever need to know about ‘X’ when
I am older. If we don’t make the subject relevant
these questions are justified. However, if we
introduce dangerous elements as Simon Catling
suggests, then the relevance can be focused
on and explored. For example, when teaching
flood hydrographs we can start to discuss the
importance of early warning systems so that
people more at risk, such as the elderly or the
homeless, can be supported.
I would suggest that dangerous geography
should not only be explored at key stage 2 but
also throughout key stage 3 – and perhaps even
more at GCSE level – to provide the relevance the
subject needs. Perhaps our challenge as secondary
geography teachers is, how we can support our
primary colleagues in promoting the dangerous
side of geography?
Paul Hunt is subject leader for geography at The
Appleton School, a Chartered Geographer and a
member of the GA’s Secondary Phase Committee.
Email: phunt@theappletonschool.org
References
Catling, S. (2022) ‘The danger in primary geography’, Primary Geographer, 107, pp. 10–12.
Response to ‘The danger in primary
geography’
Simon’s article was a plea for curriculum change.
Teachers of geography are gradually, continually,
almost daily changing their curriculum in
response to changes in the world, suggestions
they have picked up from colleagues, ideas from
their preferred external sources of pedagogic
influence and of course from their interactions
with students. There have been times when
more substantial change has been necessary or
encouraged, such as changes to the National
Curriculum or exam specifications. Over a decade
ago the GA launched a campaign for teachers
to embrace the idea of curriculum-making,
and this was accompanied by greater support
from government and influence for subject
associations. Many schools embraced this change.
Our subject is always going to change: it is in its
being. Whether we can develop systems within
our community that support this change will
involve the various academic communities, from
higher education to primary or nursery, having
the opportunities to meet, co-operate, share and
contribute to change. The GA and RGS (with IBG)
have roles to play in this meeting of communities
to ensure such dynamic systems are in place.
I enjoyed Paul’s response to Simon’s article.
Paul suggests the important need to justify our
curriculum, and when designing our curricula at
any level we must be able to justify the broader
relevance of the topics, places, skills and concepts
that we teach and learn about. Unfortunately,
when challenged, there are probably too many
occasions when teachers might just say ‘to pass
the exam’. This is not acceptable now, if indeed
it ever was.
Unfortunately, often only a small number of
teachers, if any, are involved in the construction
of a school curriculum. We must seek a wider
participation across all communities when
the National Curriculum or specifications are
changed, but we will also have to accept the
reality that at any one time the curriculum at a
national level will have its limitations. That said,
geography teachers should be able to justify all
aspects of the curriculum and if we can’t then we
should reflect on the presence of each aspect or
seek help to argue for their presence.
Gary Dawson is Head of Geography at Coppice
Performing Arts School, Wolverhampton, and a
member of the GA’s Secondary Phase Committee.
Email: garydawson@talktalk.net
|  TG
Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022
© Teaching Geography
75
 Paul Hunt
Using football to introduce
the concept of place to key
stage 4 students
Our school is a mixed comprehensive in South
Paul outlines his Benfleet, Essex, and typically has around 100
school’s ‘masterclass’ students who opt for GCSE geography, around
approach to 10 of whom go on to study A level; we take
introducing A level AQA qualifications for both. As part of our
topics and describes department’s plan towards increasing numbers in
using football to our A level geography course, we have introduced
introduce the a number of ‘masterclasses’ aimed at key stage
concept of place to 4 students. The aim of the masterclasses is to
key stage 4 students. introduce topics from the A level curriculum to
generate interest in the subject and to dispel the
misconception that geography is not relevant
to students’ lives. In this article I explore how
Accompanying we have used football to develop the concept of
online materials place and discuss what we have learnt from our
first sessions.
Developing the masterclass session
When I was asked to develop a masterclass
session, the stated requirements were:
• base the session on an A level theme
• engage the students
• challenge the misconceptions that students
have of your subject.
My starting point for this was to engage the
students. I produced an online questionnaire and
asked the students to complete it as a homework
task. The questionnaire asked students what
words described geography as a subject; I have
illustrated these in the word cloud (Figure 1).
The word cloud demonstrated that students
emphasized physical geography, and hazards
in particular, so to highlight the breadth of our
subject I decided to focus on a human geography
topic.
I also asked the students why they may or may
not consider studying geography at A level, and
summarised the responses (Figure 2).
Once I had their feedback, I began to plan the
masterclass session. I decided to focus on the
concept of place, as this is the topic that A level
students often say is most different from the
GCSE content, and the one that really makes
them look at their local area differently. This also
helped to address the perception that geography
lacks relevance in students’ lives.
I decided to use football as the theme of the
first masterclass, as it is not a topic that students

Reasons why I am not

Reasons why I want to
considering A level
study A level geography
geography

I have an interest in the I don’t really want to be

world around us. a geography teacher.

I enjoy the subject. I don’t need to know

about places and
countries for the job
I want to do.

I would like to be a I don’t really see how it is

journalist and it might be relevant for me.
helpful.

I would like to learn more Unsure how it relates to

about climate change other subjects at higher
and make a difference. education.

It would help with My chosen career does

understanding different not use geography.
cultures.

It will help prepare for I don’t need to know

stuff like businesses and about erosion and
how they can control weathering for my job.
climate change.

My interest is in business
type jobs and skills.

Helpful for general

knowledge of natural
hazards, but not much
use for a career.
Vol 47, 2, Summer 2022
© Teaching Geography
76 Figure 1: Students’ perceptions of geography as a subject. Figure 2: Students’ reasons for studying or not studying geography.
encounter at key stage 3 or 4 at our school. I
had several discussions with the GCSE classes
about how watching football was different
during lockdown, when there were no fans in
the stadium, and wanted to explore this aspect
further with them. To encourage students to
attend the session I advertised it as ‘What has
geography got to do with football?’; I was hopeful
that this would generate their curiosity.

Developing the structure of

the session
I wanted the masterclass session to explore
a sense of place, and the meaning of place.
However, I was aware that I needed to lead the
students into the topic, so they fully understood
the links to their current knowledge and
understanding of place. So I decided to explore
our local area using a range of different resources,
some hopefully very familiar, such as OS maps, Figure 3: OS map extract showing South Benfleet. Source: Digimap for Schools © Crown Copyright.
and others more unfamiliar, e.g. an interactive
geological map. The themes explored in the
masterclass were:
• physical landscape of our local area
• what is the geology of our local area?
• what is the economy of our local area?
• how does football relate to geography?

Physical landscape
I began the session by exploring with the students
the physical landscape of our local area, first
from memory, in the form of a mind map, and
then using a local 1:50,000 Ordnance Survey
map from Digimap for Schools (Figure 3). In my
questioning I was able to revisit 4- and 6-figure
grid references, which proved a helpful revision
tool. As some of the students do not live near the
school, it was interesting to discuss with them
the differences between their idea of what the
physical geography of the area was like compared
to that of students living nearby; a useful
reminder that ‘what one perceives differs from
person to person, and from situation to situation’
(Weinstein and Sumeracki, 2019).
Geology
Then I introduced the concept of geology,
another area that we don’t often focus a great
deal of attention on at GSCE, particularly when
discussing our local area. Using the British
Geological Survey (BGS) interactive map (BGS,
n.d.) we were able to explore the drift geology
and discuss how this unseen layer influences the
landscape. I also took this opportunity to discuss
with the students the different careers that might
require an understanding of geology.
Economic function
As the class was a small one, the students were
able to come up to the board and interact with
the map to explore the economic features of
Benfleet (Figure 4). This provided an excellent
opportunity to discuss employment in the area
and the students’ aspirations for the future. This
was also a good opportunity to highlight the skills
that are developed at both GCSE and A level, such
as analysing and interpreting data.
Figure 4: Economic activity in Benfleet. Source: Datashine: O’Brien, O. and Cheshire, J. (2016).
At this point, the session started to explore the
different concepts of place that are covered in
the A level course.
What do we mean by ‘place’?
We moved on to the slightly more difficult
concept of locale. Agnew (1987) defines locale as
‘the physical and social context of the landscape
of the place; the unique or otherwise collection of
buildings and infrastructure that marks this place
out as different, and a setting for a particular
social practice’. I begin by discussing the locale
of our school. What makes this place a school?
We annotate an aerial photograph of our school.
This was a good point at which to discuss
change – are schools always like this? Is a school
still a school in the six-week holiday? Has the
area around our school changed? I used several
photographs from around the school area to
discuss the locale. We have recently celebrated
the school’s 50th anniversary, so it was helpful to
show students different photos of the school over
the past 50 years and discuss how much change
had taken place. Many of our students have
parents and grandparents who were also taught
at the school, and this gave students another
example of how A level geography is relevant Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022
to our lives. © Teaching Geography
77
 Figure 5: Using a football How does football relate to geography? I showed the students the badges of Liverpool
badge to develop a sense and West Ham, and we explored how each gave a
of place. Drawing on the work of Tuan (1977), Relph (1976)
and Cresswell (2015), and having discussed the sense of place for the club (Figure 5). I found that
the students were really interested in this aspect
school and the changes to the school over time,
of the lesson; they were keen to discuss their own
I introduced the concept of football and a sense
football club badges as well as the school’s badge,
of place.
and were surprised that this could be seen as part
As a Liverpool fan, I decided to focus on Liverpool of a geography lesson.
and also a local team, West Ham. Sense of place At the end of the session student feedback
can be difficult to understand if you have not illustrated how the session had helped to
been to or experienced a place, so we undertook introduce A level concepts, and how geography
Online resources
Links and information
a virtual field trip by playing several clips from can have relevance to their lives. I believe that it
on the development fans at stadia (Anfield and London; YouTube is essential to stress the importance of concepts
of Everton’s new (2016)) and asking the students to note down and theories and how they relate to everyday
stadium are available the sights and sounds that help to develop a experiences, so students can make informed
to download. Go to
sense of place in the stadia using the concepts judgements. This also helps to strengthen the
www.geography.org.
uk/Journals/Teaching- discussed earlier. argument that geography matters!  |  TG
geography and select
Summer 2022.
References
Dr Paul Hunt is a All websites last accessed 07/04/22.
Chartered Geographer,
subject leader for Agnew, J. (1987) Place and Politics: The Geographical Mediation of State and Society. London: Routledge.
geography at The BGS (n.d.) Geology of Britain. Available at https://mapapps.bgs.ac.uk/geologyofbritain/home.html?&_
Appleton School, a ga=2.240080515.1210187133.1635593562-918530986.1635593562
member of the GA Cresswell, T. (2015) Place: An Introduction (2nd ed). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Secondary Phase O’Brien, O. and Cheshire, J. (2016) ‘Interactive mapping for large, open demographic data sets using familiar geographical
Committee, and a features’, Journal of Maps, 12, 4, 676-683. DOI 10.1080/17445647.2015.1060183
Liverpool FC fan. Relph, E. (1976) Place and Placelessness. London: Pion.
Email: phunt@ Tuan, Y. (1977) Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
theappletonschool.org Weinstein, Y. and Sumeracki, M. (2019) Understanding how we learn – A visual guide. London: Routledge.
YouTube (2016) – videos of fans’ experiences at Anfield football stadium (www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-oflM22zI) and
Twitter: @geoghunt
London football stadium (www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQKZYG1PACY)

Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022

© Teaching Geography
78
Sustainable threads: Using Verity Jones,
Ruth Millett

immersive narratives to teach and Jessica

Pykett

about the impacts of fast fashion

Why do we need to teach about fast
fashion?
An investigation of our clothing offers a
relatable way of connecting learners with
complex global systems relating to contemporary
social, economic, political and environmental
issues. It also suggests possible routes to more
sustainable futures, in which humans do not
exceed the planetary or social boundaries
necessary for living. ‘Fast fashion’ refers to the
design, manufacturing and marketing methods
used to rapidly produce high volumes of cheap
clothing that move quickly in and out of trend,
and frequently end up as waste. It’s been
reported that up to 40% of clothing purchased
is never even worn, 93% of brands are not
paying workers in their garment factories a
living wage, and the fashion industry as a whole
is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions,
20% of global wastewater, and for vast amounts
of ocean-based plastic pollution as a result of
the increasing use of plastics in new fibres (see
‘References and further reading’ for information
sources). Students need to learn about the
environmental and social impacts of
unsustainable forms of consumption to
appreciate the interaction between physical
and human processes, and to investigate the
dynamics of global trade and resource
distribution.
Developing research-informed Verity, Ruth and
resources Jessica introduce
Working with the Global Goals Centre, a UK a collection of
sustainability charity that has a curated hub of lesson plans for key
resources for educators to support and inspire
stages 2 and 3 on
learning and action on climate and equity
sustainable fashion
(https://globalgoalscentre.org/resource-hub/), we
developed a series of eight lesson plans, with ideas and climate crisis.
for extension activities, for teachers of key stages 2 They reflect on why
and 3 students – all freely available. These lesson schools need to
plans build cumulatively on geographical concepts teach about fast
of interconnection and sustainable development, fashion, and how
encouraging engagement and action for change to support teachers
as knowledge of linear and circular models of in light of current
economy are explored. This work was informed by: concerns about
• young people and families’ existing knowledge children’s eco-
• sensitivity to the emotional dimensions of eco- anxiety.
anxiety and other pressures on young people’s
wellbeing
• an enquiry-based approach.
Accompanying
During the summer of 2021 at Thinktank, online materials
Birmingham Science Museum, we worked with over
150 visiting families to try out some imaginative
ways to give old clothes new life. We showed the
effect of the fashion industry on the climate, and
explored how our feelings about clothes, fashion
and mending are connected with environmental
change. We did this through an immersive activity
of making and crafting (Figure 1). We focused on

Figure 1: Giving old clothes

new life. Photo: © Jessica
Pykett.

Vol 47, 2, Summer 2022

© Teaching Geography
79
 Figure 2: The denim exhibit.
Photo: © Jessica Pykett.
Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022
© Teaching Geography
80
the material properties and impacts of denim, in
order to shed light on the environmental impacts
of cotton and by contrast, the potential long-
lasting nature and value of this fabric (Figure 2).
Immersive learning is a method in which
students are ‘immersed’ in a learning
environment. The more life-like and realistic
the students’ experiences, the more detailed
and inspired their work.
We investigated the source of the clothes worn
by visitors to the museum and marked these
on a global map, which also traced the impacts
of the fashion industry. We asked people to
write messages on the main changes they’d
like to see in the fashion industry and to reflect
on who should be responsible for instigating
these changes. We found that people – young
and old alike – loved to discuss specific stories
and memories about their own clothes, some
of which they felt very attached to. Some
shared stories about their own jobs in the local
garment industries, their cultural connections
to mending and repair, and the importance
of passing down fabric skills and techniques
through generations of their own families. Many
wanted information on which brands were more
sustainable than others, or pointers to take local
action. Subsequently, we put everyone’s creations
together in a wall-hanging full of denim pockets Figure 3: Collaboratively produced wall hanging. Photo: © Jessica
to be used for later workshops (Figure 3). Pykett.
In Thinktank’s new gallery space, Our Changing
Planet, young people shared not their anxiety, but
their anger, at the inaction of governments and
global corporations. They also spoke of a sense
of hope at the potential for schools to provide
the space through which to find out about more
sustainable forms of consumption, to be able to
imagine sustainable futures, to learn new creative
skills of mending and waste reduction, and to
plan collective actions to support change.
The lesson plans we developed in response to
these conversations were committed to anchoring
activities through students’ (and teachers’) own
clothes, making the learning relevant. To support
young people in thinking through more circular
models of consumption, as seen in Figure 4, we
also embedded mending skills, thus disrupting the
usual linear model of fast fashion.
The eight lesson plans (an overview is available
to download from the GA website. The full
teaching resource is free to download from
the Global Goals Centre Resource Hub: https://
globalgoalscentre.org/resource-hub) are
underpinned by:
• knowledge about global trade patterns –
linking these to more local histories of the
textile industry and working conditions
• resource use in the fashion industry
• the material and symbolic (trends) properties
and impacts of particular fibres and fabrics
• advancement of the circular economy as lots of people are doing stuff to reduce the Figures 4a: Diagram of
a more sustainable alternative to linear a linear model and 4b:
impact of this industry. It makes me feel
Diagram of a circular model.
production processes a bit more hopeful for the future. (Key stage Source: Global Goals Centre
• future action planning at school level. 2 student) Resource Hub

They are designed to be stand-alone lessons or in
combination with each other, or to accompany
a free online game that facilitates the immersive
exploration of fast fashion for key stages 2/3
audiences, available via the Global Goals website.
No one in my family knows how to sew or
why we should even think about mending
clothes. I’m going to go home and make sure
I tell them. I’m going to show them how to
sew on a button. (Key stage 3 student)

Workshops in action Immersion in fast fashion

We have been working with primary and
secondary school teachers, as well as student
teachers, in southwest England and the Midlands
to develop and evaluate the resources. Many
schools used the resources as a focus for Earth
Week in February; others plan to use them during
Fashion Revolution week, held annually in April, as
part of their ongoing geography focus on trade or
as the focus for whole-school tutorial discussions.
The response to these resources has been
incredibly positive:
I really like these ideas as they are
collaborative, which will make a greater
difference, but also achievable. (Key stage
2 teacher)
I love this. This is a fantastic project and one
that is probably not on very many young
people’s radars. Great to get some really
high-quality teaching resources in circulation.
(Key stage 3 teacher)
I had no idea that my clothes had such a story
to tell. I know that there’s a lot of bad things
about making clothes but today I learned that
The activities are immersive in a number of
ways. By starting with ‘storying’ students’
own attachments and perspectives on clothing,
and the journey stories of their clothing,
the lessons help them to think through their
own immersion in global trade networks and
the circulation of physical materials. They
are further immersed in particular historical
narratives – invited to think about local textile
histories and contemporary fashion trends.
They can be immersed in the mending, and
experience first-hand the challenges of working
with specific materials (Figure 5). This supports
them to consider and reflect on issues of
wellbeing, including positive actions that can
address their own potential worries about
climate crisis and ecological change.
Another level of immersion relates to how
the activities position young people as active
decision-makers, informed consumers and
as part of collective or social groups. They
are signposted to organisations and activities
that support change and critically assess Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022
© Teaching Geography
issues of responsibility and accountability. 81
 Figure 5: Young people
sewing on buttons. Photo:
© Verity Jones.

Finally, these activities illustrate the value We also need to think about where these all end
of geography as a means to explore current, up, including extreme levels of waste of clothing,
potential and alternative futures – feeding the food, plastics, electronic waste from computers
imagination about plausible scenarios and and mobile phones. By providing information
thinking through what steps are needed to about the impacts of fast fashion and giving
actively shape the futures young people want. students a real experience of repairing, creating
and valuing clothing, these resources enable
Learning through sustainable threads students to consider the limits of linear
Because we are consuming natural resources at production and consumption. They will be
an unsustainable pace, we need to consider able to imagine how a more circular economy
everything we do and use, including what we can achieve sustainability and how taking
wear, what we eat, how we get around, how we action together we can shape the choices
Online resources
use energy, water, soil, electricity, and materials. we collectively face.  |  TG
This teaching resource
is free to download from
the Global Goals Centre
Resource Hub: https:// References and further reading
globalgoalscentre.org/ All websites last accessed 22/03/22.
resource/threads-lesson- Bustin, R. (2021) KnowHow: Plastics and ocean pollution. Available at www.geography.org.uk/eBooks-detail/4a02033a-5433-
plans/ 411a-bd00-408e21cdbd3b
Clean Clothes Campaign Fashion Checker. Available at https://fashionchecker.org
Ellen MacArthur Foundation Redesigning the Future of Fashion. Available at https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/topics/
Dr Verity Jones is
Associate Professor of
fashion/overview
Education at UWE. Geographical Association Teaching Resources Plastic Pollution. Available at https://www.geography.org.uk/Plastic-pollution-
resource
Email: Verity6.Jones@
uwe.ac.uk
McKinsey State of Fashion: Annual Reports. Available at www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/state-of-fashion
Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum. Available at www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/thinktank
Ruth Millett works at United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (2018) UN Alliance aims to put fashion on path to sustainability. Available
Thinktank, Birmingham at https://unece.org/forestry/press/un-alliance-aims-put-fashion-path-sustainability
Science Museum.
United Nations Environment Programme (2019) Fashion’s tiny hidden secret. Available at www.unep.org/news-and-stories/
Email: Ruth.Millett@ story/fashions-tiny-hidden-secret
birminghammuseums. University of Exeter FutureLearn Who Made My Clothes?, free 3-week online course. Available at www.futurelearn.com/
org.uk courses/who-made-my-clothes
Dr Jessica Pykett is World Bank (2019) How Much Do Our Wardrobes Cost to the Environment? Available at www.worldbank.org/en/news/
Associate Professor of feature/2019/09/23/costo-moda-medio-ambiente
Human Geography at the
University of Birmingham. Acknowledgments
Email: j.pykett@bham. We are grateful for funding support from the University of the West of England (UWE) and University of Birmingham, and
ac.uk thank Chantal Jackson and Ellie Shipman for their wonderful design work and illustration in the resources.

Vol 47, 1, Spring 2022

© Teaching Geography
82
Reviews
BOOK
United We Are Unstoppable: 60 inspiring
young people saving our world
Akshat Rathi (Ed.) | ISBN: 9781529335941
Paperback £9.99 | John Murray: London
Inspired by Greta Thunberg’s 2018 School
Strike for Climate and by her 2019 call at the
UN climate summit in Madrid for sharing young
peoples’ stories about fighting the climate crisis,
this book features sixty personal stories gathered
from forty-one countries around the world. By
publicising the diverse situations, perspectives
and actions of some 16-28-year-olds, it aims to
inspire more to join in and make a difference.
The stories are presented as collections structured
into chapters by continent. Chapters begin with
a short factsheet of that continent’s population
and of some of its more significant climate
change impacts, such as glacier melt, air pollution
and coastal erosion. Readers are introduced to
what inspired these individuals to take action,
from seeing a sea turtle having a plastic straw
removed from its nostril or witnessing severe
drought, rapid permafrost melt, coral bleaching
or land loss as sea levels rise. We learn about their
subsequent campaigns to make a difference, the
difficulties they experienced, what they learned
about the limiting
2635 FSC factors
Teaching for effective
Geography ad.qxp_Layout
action in2 09/03/2022 10:08 Editorial
Learn outside
The students who attended the
trip said how much easier the exam
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the different parts of the river…
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Reviews
their own country, and about the need to refocus
government attention on regulating business and Reviews of new
on changing consumer behaviour. geography resources.
There are books that are accessible to all sorts
of ages which are innately geographical in
their content. Bill Bryson’s 2003 book A Short
History of Nearly Everything comes to mind. This
collection edited by Akshat Rathi is another. It is
authentic, engaging, informative and testimony
that we are not alone; climate impacts are
everywhere and have been apparent for some
while. Students reading this book would gain
a good understanding of the diversity of these
impacts. They would also realise the importance
of everyone living to reduce personal impacts
as well as promoting appropriate science-based
policy for governments and businesses to follow.
The book includes simple, attractive graphics
of what some of these storytellers would say to
their government leaders, and to people who are
worried about the climate crisis. This set of stories
could inspire others to take action but first the
book needs to be read. Teachers have the power
to make that happen.
Ian Selmes is a member of the Teaching
Geography
Page 1 Board.
Our secondary school trips and courses
offer students excellent first-hand
experiences in the outdoors.
4 FSC field trips are linked to the curriculum and
led by expert tutors
4 Spend dedicated time outside the classroom to
inspire and motivate students
4 Develop life skills such as resilience, teamwork
and problem solving
4 Carry out fieldwork and practical learning
requirements
4 Link outdoor learning to work back at school
4 FSC centres are fully Covid-secure
For more information
please call 01743 852100
field-studies-council.org/
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Geography 11–14
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Geography is an experience...

Let’s get back out

in the field.
International travel is back, and to help you return to the field,
we have launched our brand new online ‘Explore
Geography’ hub packed full of inspiration, useful
articles, valuable free teaching resources, and
the must-see geography destinations. So if
you’re looking for your next geography
adventure, this is the place for you.
Follow the link or
scan the QR code
below to get
started.

NEW FOR 2022

The Ultimate FREE Geography
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National
Fieldwork
Week
Join us in embracing the
joy, value and importance
of geography fieldwork
during National Fieldwork
Week 6–10 June 2022
Wherever you can go and whatever
you choose to do, you will find
activity ideas, resources and much
more to inspire and support you
and your students in making the
most of your geography outdoors

See the GA website, journals,

e-newsletters and Primary
Updates for further information

www.geography.org.uk/
National-Fieldwork-Week