Just maps: the geography curriculum in English schools

The wider context of this article is the assumption in the social sciences regarding the existence of a dichotomy between truth and objectivity on one hand and constructivism, subjectivism and relativism on the other. The school subject of geography serves as an appropriate focus for examining this assumption. There are three issues facing the school geography curriculum in England for students aged 11–14 (Key Stage 3): the domination of the subject by objectivism and scientism, the threat of impending relativism, and the gap between geography in schools and geography in universities. I draw on Derrida's ideas about the instability of signs, the significance of totalising discourses and the imperative of ethical and political responsibility to question approaches to maps adopted in the Geography National Curriculum policy text and in two different school textbooks. The analysis serves as a springboard for ways in which students can be taught about maps that question cartographic conventions and release chains of traces to reveal their political and ethical substance. I argue that deconstruction and invention challenges the dichotomy and re‐energises school geography. I then consider the wider applicability of the case before ending with a mention of accuracy.     

基于核心素养的高中地理深度教学策略分析

通过对高中地理学科的核心素养内涵进行阐述,把握深度教学与地理核心素养之间联系,明确基于核心素养的高中地理深度教学的必要性,进一步探究基于核心素养的高中地理深度教学策略,旨在打造高效的高中地理课堂。     

Disrupting colonial discourses in the geography curriculum during the introduction of British Values policy in schools

The main purpose of this article is to expose and disrupt discourses dominating global development in an English school geography textbook chapter. The study was prompted by a teacher’s encounter with cultural difference in a geography lesson in South Korea. I investigate the issues raised through the lens of a new curriculum policy in English schools called ‘Promoting Fundamental British Values’ which forms part of England’s education-securitisation agenda, a topic of international attention. Following contextualization across research fields and in recent curriculum and assessment policy reform, I bring together theoretical perspectives from curriculum studies and Continental philosophy that do not usually speak to each other, to construct a new analytical approach. I identify three key themes, each informed by colonial logic: ‘development’, ‘numerical indicators’ and ‘learning to divide the world’. The inquiry appears to expose a tension between the knowledge of the textbook chapter and the purported aims of the British Values curriculum policy, but further investigation reveals the two to be connected through common colonial values. The findings are relevant to teachers, publishers, textbook authors, policy-makers and curriculum researchers. I recommend a refreshed curriculum agenda with the politics of knowledge and ethical global relations at its centre.     

Feminism and ‘the schooling scandal’

In this paper I outline an approach towards policy analysis that takes governmentality as its point of theoretical orientation and begin to apply this approach to my research into the recently raised compulsory school‐leaving age in Western Australia. I aim to demonstrate the methodological potentials of this approach by giving examples of the thinking and practices that shape and condition the policy. I commence by situating the school‐leaving age policy within a broader field of reforms occurring under the general banner of neoliberalism and argue that the policy is primarily concerned with the conduct of students classified at ‘educational risk’, and with transforming these students to become more visible, participative and engaged in their schooling. By focusing on the policy rationalities and technologies, and drawing on Foucault’s notion of governmentality, I explore the forms of knowledge and practical strategies that are deployed in this policy field. I contend that this particular deployment narrowly constructs young people’s experiences of schooling in ways that do not allow for a broader debate about their declining school attendance and what should be done to address it     

Net-Deepening of School Discipline

This study presents findings from an ethnographic content analysis of 15 chronological district-wide annual codes of student conduct from a large urban US school district. I frame policy creation and modification processes as reflections of societal shifts in perceptions of student behaviors. I looked to the policy documents to explore the possibility that school organizations have, over time, shifted toward school discipline frameworks that get students into deeper trouble today than in years past. The analysis yielded policy changes that, over time, make severe punishment increasingly likely. I refer to the change phenomena as net-deepening of school discipline. I address the pitfalls that net-deepening policy changes pose, with an emphasis on the potential for net-deepening to undermine the effectiveness of proactive and restorative forms of school discipline. The article offers to educators, policy-makers, and researchers conceptual and analytical considerations for developing proactive restorative discipline policies that meets the educational needs of all students.     

基于核心素养的高中地理教学策略

在高中新课改的背景下,地理核心素养已经成为地理学科教学的重要目标,对学生形成地理思维、具备地理观念、提升地理探究能力具有重要的意义。高中地理教师应当明确培养学生地理核心素养的基本教学目标,探索和应用高效的教学策略,以充分提升教学效率。     

Unregulated Open Enrollment and Inequitable Access to Schools of Choice

ABSTRACT

In severing the link between residential address and school assignment, school choice policies have the potential to decrease school segregation and increase educational equity. Yet this promise is undermined when school choice creates greater opportunity for those who are already privileged while limiting access to students from historically marginalized groups. This study combines data from a new survey of local open enrollment policies in Metro Detroit, student-level administrative records, and geographic data to critically analyze the local discretion provided in Michigan’s interdistrict school choice policy in relation to the goals of access to schools of choice, desegregation, and educational equity. I found that local school districts implement provisions of state policy in ways that restrict access to Black and economically disadvantaged students while creating pathways of opportunity for others. Districts are incentivized to implement these restrictions because of the inequities built into the state school funding formula and the racialized geography of Metro Detroit that is mechanized in district and county boundaries to restrict access. This study has implications for the regulation of local school choice markets and the role they play in increasing equitable public school opportunities.     

Tailored equities in the education market: flexible policies and practices

The term equity is ubiquitous in Australian education policy and evolves amidst ongoing debates about what it means to be fair in education. Over the past three decades, meanings and practices associated with equity have reflected broader shifts in advanced liberal governance, with equity being reframed as a ‘market-enhancing’ mechanism and melted into economic productivity agendas. In this paper, I argue that an emerging, yet, under-examined policy tension is the view that secondary schools are capable of being equitable, whilst simultaneously acting as adaptive service providers, tailoring education to different students and local markets. A dilemma here is whether or not schools should ‘tailor equity’ or whether tailoring equity is indeed antithetical to equity in so far as it implies unequal provision. To explore this tension, I draw upon fieldwork from ethnographic research in two socially and economically disparate government secondary schools in suburban Melbourne, Australia. In doing so, I explore how equity is enacted and governed by educators, how forms of equity at each school relate to versions of equity in policy and the extent to which each school tailors equity to its local community.     

Social Studies Education as a Moral Activity: Teaching towards a just society

Many competing ideas exist around teaching ‘standard’ high school social studies subjects such as history, government, geography, and economics. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of social studies teaching and learning as a moral activity. I first propose that current high school curriculum standards in the United States often fail in focusing on the kinds of sustained discourse and ideas necessary for students to develop an awareness and commitment to justice in a pluralistic society. I then make the argument that understanding social studies as an inherently moral activity creates a space for transformative and meaningful learning to occur. Lastly, I contend that public schools are inextricably linked to understanding and creating elements of a just society and as such, hold equal potential to both support and severely hinder its development.     

They Said It Couldn't Be Done: Implementing a Career Academy Program for a Diverse High School Population

The literature on teacher turnover has traditionally focused on teachers whose destinations are external to the school (be it another school, district or state, or profession). In this article I examine internal turnover that takes place among teachers who remain at their school but change their subject assignments. I analyze the levels, causes, and impacts on school reform of internal turnover within the science faculties at three urban middle schools during 4 years of a whole-school reform program. Major findings include the following: (a) Internal turnover levels are high, higher than external turnover; (b) subject assignments made without regard to both teachers' subject interests and stability of assignments appear to be the primary causes of internal turnover; (c) district policies allowing elementary-certified teachers to teach any subject foster internal turnover; and (d) internal turnover has serious detrimental impacts on school reform. I identify district and school-level policy options to reduce the level of internal turnover to support reform.     

韩国中学GIS教育的状态及相关大纲研究

我国大部分中学地理教师应该在地理领域里引入G IS,但是他们对G IS并不了解。现在中学教育中有G IS内容,但还不够完善。由于硬件或软件等G IS环境的不完备,教师对G IS知识了解不够全面。地理课时间不足与地理课程教学大纲相关。G IS教育不兴的原因有:第一,按照国家教育共同基本科目、一般选修科目、深化选修科目等要求,对G IS学习目标划分不清;第二,没有按照各共同基本科目、一般选修科目、深化选修科目的学习内容水平分等级;第三,因为在独立的单元里同时运用G IS概念和应用,所以G IS教育的灵活运用受到了限制。     

Space and Place: Urban Parents’ Geographical Preferences for Schools

Prior research documents the almost universal preference for schools that are “convenient”. Drawing on longitudinal interview data gathered from 36 urban parents, I argue parents’ preference for “convenient” schools is more complex than previously understood. Conceptions of geography used by policy makers do not adequately capture the ways in which parents think about geography. Instead of thinking about school as solely a location one must travel to, parents’ preferences for schools are informed by space and place-based notions of geography. Parents’ geographic preferences connect to larger, more deeply held ideas about parenting, family life, identity, child development, and one’s place in the larger stratified society. Further, these preferences do not exist in a vacuum. Parents’ geographic preferences have implications for the resources parents’ must activate in order to make certain schools possible. Geographic preferences also compete with other school preferences. This paper shows how notions of space and place shape the schools parents choose as well as the schools they are willing to consider. The study describes a fuller, more accurate portrayal of parents’ thinking. It also draws attention to the ways in which existing historical and social contexts influence parents’ understandings of choice policy.     

A thousand tiny pluralities: children becoming-other than the requirements of postsecular neoliberal policy recognition

ABSTRACT

This paper critiques the idea that secular education policy can neutrally recognise children’s non/religious identities at school. It also empirically analyses how one child becomes restricted by, and eludes, classed, gendered and adult-centred moral codes enacted through local school recognition. The concept of policy assemblage is first used to problematise postsecular, market-led enactments of non/religious school community recognition transnationally. I argue postsecular policy enactments in Ireland and elsewhere produce viable and non-viable forms of non/religious school community, thus containing, rather than facilitating school plurality and (re)creating social hierarchies. However, drawing on Deleuzian ideas of becoming and partial objects, I argue children are not determined by the sense-making moral codes of the policy assemblage. To demonstrate this argument, I map instances of how one girl alters and eludes the meanings of austerity, choice and authenticity moral codes. I do not privilege this girl as an example of child resistance, as I argue against using children as barometers of policy authority and secularist authenticity. Instead, I contend that alongside naming and opposing policy’s unjust effects, we need to cultivate attention to our capacity to affect and be affected by the partial objects (e.g. moral codes) and becomings of postsecular neoliberal policy assemblages.     

Values in geographic education: the challenge of attending to learners’ perspectives

Geography as a school subject is highly infused with values and controversial issues. Much attention has been paid to the role of the (geography) teacher in dealing with values education, but the continued lack of pupil‐focused empirical work hampers conceptual, practical and policy development. Drawing on evidence from pupil‐focused research, it is argued that greater attention must be paid to three issues: (i) pupils may interpret classroom experiences in relation to unannounced or hidden values and controversies; (ii) pupils may position or locate themselves in relation to controversial issues in a variety of ways; and (iii) as a result, pupils’ engagement with values in the geography classroom may be highly individualised and complex, reflecting (i) and (ii) in combination. The challenge is to attend to learners’ perspectives, and these three issues are presented as possible starting points for future research agendas.     

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN GEOGRAPHY'S CONTRIBUTION TO CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION IN ENGLAND IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY

The relationship between geography and education for citizenship has for long been associated with one of the subject's claims for a place in the curriculum. Suggestions that geography should be included in the school curriculum, for example, were made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on the grounds of the increase in Britain's international and overseas trade coupled with the gradual development of a middle class of merchants demanding greater knowledge of the world. In other words, it was claimed that knowing and understanding of other parts of the world served a citizenship end. However, there was no evidence that these counsels were ever widely put into practice. How could geography contribute to citizenship education if it was not part of the curriculum in school? The answer was obviously that it had to secure a place in the curriculum first. In retrospect its success in gaining a place in the curriculum was arguably partly due to its contribution to citizenship education. The achievement began largely in the nineteenth century. Thus Watson, who made a study of the growth of modern subjects in English schools found it difficult to trace a single reference to the teaching of geography in secondary schools in earlier times, though apparently at Westminster school members of certain forms were instructed after supper (in summer only) in the finding of places on ‘maps’. Much of the evidence suggested that whatever geography was taught by private tutors or learned individuals through the books which were undoubtedly published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the public and grammar schools did little or nothing to teach the subject. It was only in the eighteenth century that one began to see some stereotypical forms of geography being taught in a number of schools, concentrating on basic physical and political geography, increasingly by means of catechetical methods.     

Community,culture and identity: geography,the National Curriculum and Wales

ABSTRACT

The 1988 Education Reform Act legislated for a National Curriculum not for one nation but for two, Wales and England. This article reviews the way in which attempts to develop a distinctive curriculum in Wales for one subject, geography, were thwarted by the dominance among key policy‐makers in England of views about the study of place which were unsympathetic to the idea of the school curriculum being a vehicle for the development of a sense of community and national identity. Drawing on evidence from a survey of secondary school geography teachers in Wales, it considers the extent to which the teaching of geography is seen by teachers as a means of achieving such educational goals.     

TAKING SCHOOL CONTEXTS MORE SERIOUSLY: THE SOCIAL JUSTICE CHALLENGE

ABSTRACT:  Research is increasingly highlighting the influence of school contexts on school processes and student achievement. This article reviews a range of social justice rationales for taking school contexts into better account, and highlights the challenges contextualisation currently poses for practice and for policy. It notes important constraints on contextualised practice and limited developments in contextualising policy. There is now increasing concern to recognise and understand context in school effectiveness and school improvement research but such research needs to consider school context much more, in order to provide a stronger underpinning for contextualised policy and practice. School composition research is potentially most insightful because it addresses the issue most directly. Nevertheless future large-scale studies in this area need to overcome a number of limitations within the existing literature.     

‘Just be friends’: exposing the limits of educational bully discourses for understanding teen girls’ heterosexualized friendships and conflicts

The present paper explores the conceptual limitations of the bully discourses that ground UK anti‐bullying policy frameworks and psychological research literatures on school bullying, suggesting they largely ignore gender, (hetero)sexuality and the social, cultural and subjective dynamics of conflict and aggression among teen‐aged girls. To explore the limitations of bully discourses in practice, the paper draws on a pilot, interview‐based study of girls’ experiences of aggression and bullying, illustrating how friendships and conflicts among the girls are thoroughly heterosexualized, en‐cultured and classed. Drawing on girls and parent interview narratives, I also trace some of the effects of bully discourses set in motion in schools to intervene into conflicts among girls. I suggest these practices miss the complexity of the dynamics at play among girls and also neglect the power relations of parenting, ethnicity, class and school choice, which can inform how, why and when bullying discourses are mobilized.