Changing the lens: Concepts in the Geography Curriculum
Geographical concepts enable pupils to connect knowledge and develop increasingly sophisticated ways of thinking about the world. They help geography become more than a sequence of separate topics and help form the narrative and golden threads that flow through our geography curriculum.
An excellent recent Substack by Mark Enser (the first of three), 'Concepts in the Geography Curriculum', prompted me to contribute to the discussion of concepts in the curriculum, particularly in light of the forthcoming public consultation and the importance of subject leaders and teachers developing their understanding of curriculum. In his Substack, Mark explores the Geographical Association’s distinction between four key concepts—place, space, Earth systems and environment—and five organising concepts: time, scale, diversity, interconnection and interpretation.
The organising concepts help to form lenses through which we study the key concepts and in turn help to shape the questions we ask. For example as part of a study of place and earth systems we might look at a coastal town. We could examine it through time, considering how the coastline changes, from individual storm events to longer-term patterns of erosion, deposition and sea-level change unfolding over decades, centuries or millennia. We may change the lens through which we examine the place and instead look at it through the concept of diversity, how variations in rock type and geological structure create different landforms and rates of erosion along the coastline, how these differences affect different parts of the town, and how different groups of people by the types of coastal management that are used.
In my previous work develop a common geography curriculum across eight schools, concepts helped us create golden threads across different units. However, recurrence alone does not create progression. We have to be careful that concepts don't become relegated to words on a curriculum map. Pupils need to learn to use them with increasing depth and sophistication.
With the the forthcoming curriculum consultation, these types of discussion, what are the concepts that currently underpin our curriculums, how and when do our pupils encounter them, how do we build sophistication into the way pupils uses them are key.
With the curriculum and assessment review having recommended a greater and more coherent emphasis on climate change and sustainability there is also a question of whether sustainability itself should be made more explicit as an organising concept.
I have written a Substack article (link below) exploring these reflections and questions in more detail, considering what they might mean for geography teachers and curriculum leaders as the revised curriculum takes shape.
You can read the Substack here: Continuing the conversation about concepts in geography
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