Is there a crisis for subjects?

David Lambert

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www.geography.org.uk/resources/adifferentview/downloads

A Different View

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The World Subject

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Beginning in wonder

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Tackling complexity: place, identity, context

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Remarkably enduring images• of teachers• of classrooms• of subjects

Are subjects nineteenth century creations?

QCA 2004

“The UK has moved from a manufacturing economy to a service and knowledge-based economy. In an increasingly technological world, jobs migrate ... In an uncertain future (we need people who are) flexible and equipped to learn and adapt ...”

OECD (on ‘21st century skills’)

“ ... for jobs that have not yet been created, using technologies that have not yet been invented to solve problems that cannot be foreseen”

Mick Waters (2010)

“A school shouldn’t start with curriculum content. It should start with designing a learning experience and then check it has met national curriculum requirements.”

In the “Vibrant City”

The neo-liberal orthodoxy has “dulled our ability to think for, or beyond, ourselves”[Wadley 2008]

The learning fetishWhere learning is regarded as:

• A good thing in itself - and assumed to be value free in this sense. (Of course, it is not. Learning can be trivial, dangerous or wrong)

• An essentially scientific or technical process –thus, with correct technique, learning ‘accelerated’, as if this were an end in itself. (But understanding aspects of science, history or art can be counter-intuitive, and require sustained, sometimes painstaking effort)

• Paramount. Teaching is subservient to, and led by, the learning. We become embarrassed by teaching, and instead talk only about ‘facilitating’ learning.

(A society that abrogates responsibility in this way may be one that has lost confidence in itself)

The baby and the bath water

“There is no evidence that being able to solve simultaneous equations, or discuss the plot of Hamlet, equips young people to deal with life. We have lazily assumed that, somehow, it must do, but research shows that even successful students are often left timid and unsettled when they step outside the narrow comfort zones of their academic success”

(Guy Claxton BLP)

Summary

There is much to take from Claxton’s idea of building learning power He reminds us of the broader purposes of education

But is there a danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water?

Counter ArgumentsMust avoid: – Swinging pendulums and false dichotomies• Knowledge versus skills• Curriculum versus pedagogy• New versus old

– Defending subject knowledge/expertise

Must promote:– Teachers as ‘boundary workers’– Subject disciplines as resources– An evolving theory of knowledge

“Bringing Knowledge Back In” (Michael Young)

• Schools are special places (they are not ‘everyday places’)

• Inducting young people into ‘powerful knowledge’ (not simply the knowledge of the powerful)

• Clear distinction between curriculum and pedagogy

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Geographical Association ManifestoSection 2

“Thinking geographically”

“An essential educational outcome of learning geography is to be able to apply knowledge and conceptual understanding to new settings: that is, to ‘think geographically’ about the changing world”.

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“Vocabulary”

This is a metaphor for Core Knowledge

“Grammar”

This is a metaphor for conceptual understanding

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“Capability”In geography, ‘capability’ is enhanced through:

• Acquisition and development of ‘world knowledge’ (this may be equated with ‘core knowledge’, or essential and enabling knowledge) • Development of ‘inter-relational understanding’ (grasping global interdependence and a ‘global sense of place’)

• Propensity to think, through ‘decision making’ and other applied pedagogic activities, about how places, societies and environments are made, and what they may become

IdentityWho am I? Where am I from? Who is my ‘family’? What is their story? And the people around me?

SocietyWho decides on who gets what, where and why? What is fair? Why care?

In a “Garden of Peace”

The physical environmentWhat is the world (and this place) made of? Why do things move? What becomes of things?

Our place in the worldWhere do I live? How does it look? How is it changing? How might it become?

In a “Garden of Peace”

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Student Experiences

Geography: the subjectTeacher Choices

Underpinned by Key Concepts Thinking

Geographically

Learning Activity

How does this take the learner beyond what they already know?

Curriculum Making

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Geography in school matters

Geography underpins a lifelong ‘conversation’ about the earth as the home of humankind

Source: the GA Manifesto A Different View (www.geography.org.uk/adifferentview)

d.lambert@ioe.ac.uk dlambert@geography.org.uk