GeoCapabilities www.geocapabilities.org David Lambert Professor of Geography Education UCL Institute of Education
An EU project … … with global reach
The relationship between the academic discipline and the school subject “I was quickly discovering that the conceptual underpinnings of much of (what) I had learnt at school was the object of a number of excoriating critiques by academic geographers …” (Joe Painter, 2016)
A concern to stress the importance of geographical knowledge in the curriculum. To offer principled resistance to those who would undermine a progressive, knowledge-led curriculum
“We want great schools for our children, safe neighbourhoods for our families and good jobs. These are just and reasonable demands. …. (But we have) an education system flushed with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge” (Donald Trump 20.01.17) Note Mr Trump is not referring to what we call powerful knowledge. He does not favour a progressive curriculum of engagement.
Powerful Disciplinary Knowledge The knowledge young people are unlikely to acquire through their everyday encounters. It is usually, abstract and theoretical (conceptual) part of a system of thought dynamic, evolving, changing – but reliable sometimes counter-intuitive existent beyond the direct experience of the teacher and the learner Specialist (in domains that are not arbitrary/transient)
“Powerful knowledge” … refers to what the knowledge can do or what intellectual power it gives to those who have access to it. Powerful knowledge provides more reliable explanations and new ways of thinking about the world and acquiring it and can provide learners with a language for engaging in political, moral, and other kinds of debates (Young 2008, p. 14). … is powerful because it provides the best understanding of the natural and social worlds that we have and helps us go beyond our individual experiences … (Young 2013, p. 196). Knowledge is ‘powerful’ if it predicts, if it explains, if it enables you to envisage alternatives (Young 2014, p. 74).
a language for engaging intellectual power beyond our individual experieces envisage alternatives explains new ways of thinking predicts
Geography as powerful knowledge • the acquisition of deep descriptive and explanatory ‘world knowledge’. This includes (for example) countries, capitals, rivers and mountains. Also world wind patterns, distribution of population and energy sources. The precise constituents and range of this substantive knowledge is delineated locally influenced by national and regional cultural contexts. TYPE 2 • the development of the relational thinking that underpins geographical thought. This includes place and space (and scale), plus environment and interdependence. This knowledge component is derived from the discipline. Thus, these ‘meta-concepts’ are complex, evolving and contested. TYPE 1 TYPE 3 • a propensity to apply the analysis of alternative social, economic and environmental futures to particular place contexts. This requires appropriate pedagogic approaches such as decision making exercises. In addition to intellectual skills such as analysis and evaluation this also encourages speculation, imagination and argument. TYPE 4
Capabilities? Capabilities expresses what all young people have the ‘pedagogic right’ to expect from school. School contributes to their ‘substantive freedoms’ (to do and to be): to make healthy choices about how to live to function productively in society, with agency to develop discernment with regard economic, social, political and environmental issues GeoCapabilities proposes that an element of this ‘right’ is to geographical knowledge. That is, to learn how to think geographically.
The GeoCapabilities Project www.geocapabilities.org