Innovative pedagogies series: GeoCapabilities Empowering teachers as subject leaders Professor Karl Donert Independent Consultant
Contents
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Section
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Contents
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Introduction
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Teacher education: an international dimension
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GeoCapabilities: innovation in Geography education
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Curriculum leadership
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GeoWeb 2.0: innovations in geotechnology
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My path to GeoCapabilities
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The importance of networking
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Innovation and the Internet
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Geographer’s toolkit
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Developing the ‘spatial citizenship’ concept (SPACIT)
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The theoretical framework around GeoCapabilities
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How you might use GeoCapabilities
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Conclusions
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References
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Introduction 1
This example of innovation in learning and teaching practices is based on the GeoCapabilities initiative , an international project to research, develop and implement a ground-breaking approach to improve secondary teacher education and training in Geography around the world. It is based on a ‘capabilities’ approach, empowering teachers to become leaders in their classrooms. The ideas and concepts will be particularly useful to all those interested in the adoption of reflective approaches to disciplinary learning and teaching, the development of citizenship education and with the raising the status and profile of secondary school teachers and educators as curriculum leaders (see Figure 1).
FIGURE 1: SCREENSHOT OF GEOCAPABILITIES WEBSITE My National Teaching Fellowship (NTF) learning and teaching activities led to an involvement in the GeoCapabilities project and developing innovative pedagogical practices in Geography teacher education and training. GeoCapabilities is set in an extensive international context. The ideas, approach and activities have gained many committed participant organisations around the world through widespread global networking activities. As a result, the teacher-centred approach and innovative pedagogical practices are extensively peer
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See: http://www.geocapabilities.org
reviewed and have been strongly influenced by the opinions of leading Geography educators and subject professional bodies from around the world. The GeoCapabilities initiative received funding from the US National Science Foundation (2011-13) and the European Commission (2013-16).
Teacher education: an international dimension Initial secondary school teacher education is subject-based and has a strong international dimension. Policy and practice in teacher education and training is influenced by global assessments like the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Professional studies draw their substance from national regulations but also international research. In Geography an international dimension runs through the discipline. This contributes to the curriculum and enhances our understanding of the world. It concerns an active and experiential methodology as well as core global concerns such as inequality and environment. Although the organisation and content of school education is by and large a national concern, transnational agencies like the European Commission work with EU countries to help them improve their school systems. They perceive there are clear advantages in clustering organisations, enabling them to work together on issues of shared concern. In Europe, innovations in education and teacher training have been an important European priority under the Lifelong Learning Programme (2007-13) and continue today with Erasmus+ (2013-20). In order to address urgent issues in Science and Technology education under the Lisbon Process, the ‘High Level Group’ appointed by the European Commission in 2003 published a report in November 2004 that criticised the level of progress (European Commission 2004). They suggested there was a distinct lack of political implementation, reflecting diverse and contradictory national policy agenda. To address this, the EC provides funding opportunities for proposals that explore innovative approaches to education, as long as they help meet agreed EU priorities. With respect to GeoCapabilities, these include modernising curricula, developing high-quality learning, reducing early school leaving, and providing more support for teachers and teacher educators through professional development. Teacher education is highly regulated and controlled across Europe. School education systems are dominated by agencies not really concerned with quality in learning and teaching. National governments express their control through extensive national training programmes based on teacher competences, the establishment of obligatory education standards and, in some countries, the production of mass-produced textbooks and other resources that schools and teachers are expected to use. We have seen the rise of accredited curriculum agencies. In the main they are tasked to develop (often highly prescriptive) national curricula. Centralised inspection services operate largely through arduous and inflexible assessment criteria, seeking to criticise rather than support teachers struggling with official demands. High levels of surveillance in education result in compliance because of the imposition of external standards. Under the banner of accountability, testing and centralised assessment of pupils is more and more popular. Increasingly, league tables of school performance are published, principally based on success at national examinations, and used to highlight failure rather than celebrate success. Standards for teachers have been used as a method of reform for the teaching profession, imposed by governments and as frameworks to control licensing and certification procedures. I believe the net effect has been to de-professionalise the teaching profession and limit the importance of their main role, which should be to develop high quality, relevant and safe learning environments for their students. A technical (recipe book) approach to teaching results is common. The experience and expertise of most teachers, in understanding what their students actually need, is by and large ignored. Under these conditions, the love of your subject discipline can easily disappear behind waves of regulation, bureaucracy, and pressures to raise standards. The result is that many teachers feel they are predominantly 4
teaching for the (national) tests and only to the tests. I suggest the standards and testing creates huge barriers to innovation and change. Any opportunities that might encourage creativity or generate exciting and imaginative learning are lost. As a Geography educator who is passionate about his subject discipline I have been very concerned at the way the governing standards and education system remove autonomy and limit diversity of practice. Many of teachers and educators I work with perceive there is little or no space to use subject content and approaches that would be ideal for local circumstances, opportunities or relevant to the needs of the pupils. This is especially the case as teaching Geography is concerned with place and space, contemporary local issues and today’s news really helps bring the subject alive. In response to these issues, a group of interested universities, teacher training centres, professional subject associations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and schools from different countries developed GeoCapabilities as an international collaborative programme to examine the important roles played by secondary school subject teachers and their praxis. GeoCapabilities focuses on teachers who are empowered to act as curriculum (subject) leaders. As leaders they should be able to recognise and use ‘powerful knowledge’ in classrooms with their pupils. A second key target group is teacher educators/teacher trainers who enable professional development and offer support to novice and experienced teachers. Finally, the project seeks to influence education policy-makers. GeoCapabilities addresses our belief that through initial teacher training and continuous professional development we can find ways to raise the importance of the academic subject (in my case Geography) and use this to create powerful learning environments. I suggest this means establishing a greater focus on rich subject knowledge, subject specific skills, and greater understanding of complex issues (McNeil et al. 2013). GeoCapabilities seeks to identify shared geographical concepts, content and performance standards that go beyond a focus on competencies and those aspects that emphasise only technical transferable skills. They should result in teacher capabilities that illustrate how Geography as a discipline contributes in specific ways (and no matter how the subject is configured in national standards) to young people’s deep descriptive “world knowledge” (Mitchell and Lambert 2015).
GeoCapabilities: innovation in Geography education GeoCapabilities touches many innovative learning and teaching aspects in teacher education and training, as well as modern practice in schools. It has raised the profile of subject curriculum debate, for example, in the UK for almost the first time since 1988 when a national curriculum was introduced. By using capabilities and not competences, the teacher focus is on the subject pedagogy, so that what should be taught and how takes priority over the “science of teaching” (Marzano 2013). Most of the innovative practices reported in secondary teacher education and training do not take account of the role, importance and advances in the subject discipline. They mainly tend to be generic. Normally they relate to didactical approaches, pedagogical methods, classroom management and tools to improve the quality of learning or create active learning environments. Even within geographical education discourses, the subject itself usually takes a back seat. One result is a mismatch between the discipline and its advances, and what is being taught in schools. In the past decade in Europe, innovation processes in teacher education and training have concentrated on one key notion: that of the ‘competence’ development of learners, leading to a standards-based approach, testing and even league tables. However, despite this focus, there is no specific definition of competence; recent research shows that national systems find the competence-based curriculum very difficult to implement; and the results are often completely disjointed, disaggregated and decontextualised from reallife experiences. 5
In GeoCapabilities we have explicitly turned away from the development of generic skills and competences in order to emphasise ‘essential knowledge’ and the power of academic subject content. This is referred to as “Powerful Disciplinary Knowledge” (PDK) (Stemhagen et al. 2013). PDK is based on rigorous and demanding subject-specific processes and practices and constructed by specialist disciplinary communities. These epistemic practices ensure that, as far as can be determined, the knowledge created exists outside the direct experience of the teacher and the learner and is consistent and reliable. The move towards PDK reflects a ‘paradigm shift’ away from the competence-based curriculum and returns to more conventional understandings of studies in school that are predominantly based on the acquisition of disciplinary (geographical) knowledge, and the development of geographical understanding and skills. Powerful knowledge is defined by Lambert (2014) as evidence based; abstract and theoretical; part of a system of thought; evolving and changing; sometimes counter intuitive; and discipline based. In GeoCapabilities we use capabilities to build on a competencies approach by including a subject knowledge component and in so doing we offer a more holistic perspective to innovation in learning and teaching. This places an important emphasis on the process of subject curriculum development rather than on competency outcomes. I confirm at this point that in secondary geographical education this is neither a return to a list of rivers, capital cities and other facts, nor is it our attempt to identify and define core knowledge based on standards (Hirsch 2013). Geographical thinking involves many fundamental concepts in Geography. The unique context of geographical enquiries in place, space and environment makes them geographical and authentic. According to Jackson (2006), thinking geographically offers a uniquely powerful way of seeing the world and making connections between scales, from the local to the global. So, in GeoCapabilities, we develop approaches to help teachers recognise the power of geographical thinking in enhancing engagement with geographical information and raise awareness of the significant role of disciplinary content in diverse (European) education contexts. Capabilities reflects a concern that access to PDK should be inclusive, an entitlement for all young people, whoever they are and whatever their circumstances. A capabilities approach seeks to ensure equal access as a matter of social justice, such that schools have a duty to mainstream knowledge domains (like Geography) that take students beyond their direct experiences.
Curriculum leadership GeoCapabilities provides teachers with a rationale for why their subject is worth teaching. We consider ways to help teachers develop not only as curriculum subject experts but also as curriculum disciplinary leaders. We claim that teachers who are able to associate their subject-specialist knowledge with general educational aims are in a position to take on the role of curriculum leadership through ‘curriculum making’. In this context, leadership relates to teachers’ understanding of subject goals and purposes in the context of the discipline. Educational leadership is primarily framed and led by policy interests. However, in terms of GeoCapabilities we suggest it concerns building teacher responsibility for generating clear and explicit goals for the discipline in the classroom and school, and to set in motion strategies for how they will be achieved. They thus aim to ensure quality outcomes by co-ordinating curriculum development, overseeing pedagogy, and managing delivery (after D’Agostino and O’Brien 2010). However, such curricular leadership should not seek to add further layers of bureaucracy. GeoCapabilities is innovative because it is not a top down solution, but a framework for teachers and educators to scaffold and share their practice. It allows for national differences in how the school curriculum is conceptualised and ‘framed’. It is represented in a manner that encourages dialogue between teachers and also across borders. Such curriculum-focused dialogue, articulated through capabilities is a way to capture and incorporate broad education goals as well as a means of building communities that can nurture internationalised curriculum leadership in schools. 6
In the GeoCapabilities framework we recognise the importance of critical consciousness in the developmental process of teacher education (Shor 2012). We encourage (secondary) teachers and trainees to discuss their own discipline and practice. They reflect on the importance of PDK and assess disciplinary learning and teaching approaches in the context of active citizenship and futures. In order to do this we have experimented with the use of vignettes to establish critical consciousness through a self-reflective approach. In GeoCapabilities these are teacher reflections describing and illustrating examples of what they consider to be PDK, expressed visually through the GeoWeb 2.0.
GeoWeb 2.0: innovations in geotechnology Our GeoCapabilities initiative takes advantage of recent, considerable innovations in Web 2.0-based geographic applications, sometimes referred to as the GeoWeb 2.0 (Walker and Rinner 2014). GeoWeb 2.0 is Cloud-based, mobile and geo-located. It provides instant access to digital geospatial media and allows the portrayal of challenging and complex situations. The GeoWeb 2.0 merges geospatial data, geo-media, mapbased online applications and Web 2.0 concepts, such as user-generated content and enhanced interactivity, to create powerful systems to visualise and interact with scientific information and location-based multimedia content (Gryl 2012). GeoWeb 2.0 can function as a tool for gathering volunteered geographic information through, for example, interactions between citizens and scientists, or citizen-science approaches. Web 2.0 technologies also allow us to deliberate on, collaborate and communicate scientific information via the Internet. These tools can therefore provide highly innovative platforms to encourage critical thinking, problem-solving and collaborative skills (Matias et al. 2013). In GeoCapabilities we introduce the use of the GeoWeb 2.0 in education and training. We specifically promote certain Cloud-based interactive mapping technologies that allow teachers to tell their stories, develop interactive learning artefacts and express PDK. The specific tools employed are based on story mapping. We 2 3 use the Story Maps platform developed from ArcGIS Online . Templates are provided to integrate geospatial tools in everyday life. Story Maps create collaborative and persuasive storytelling interfaces populated with 4 geo-media (Strachan 2014). A number of open source alternatives are available, such as MapStory and 5 StoryMap JS . Story Maps are designed for general, non-technical audiences and can be web-based or saved as an app. With story mapping, teachers are able to apply scientific enquiry, tightly coupled with the creation of designs, to deliver geoinformation as rich media-based content informed by geographic contexts. They are able to personalise and share their contributions with others. As a result, they can offer their students interactive, discipline-based, scientific exploration and discovery of PDK online. Geographical location is used as a means of organizing and presenting information. The tools of Geographical information systems (GIS) are used to present the results of spatial analysis. They tell the story of a place, event, issue, trend, or pattern in a geographic context. According to Kriz (2013), Storytelling with Maps is one prevalent, state-of-the-art method of creating and communicating imagery, emotions, and the understanding of spatial events through an interaction between a storyteller (map maker) and an audience (map user). In innovation terms GeoCapabilities created and raised the profile of some important terminology for teachers and trainers to consider and address. These concepts include ‘Capabilities’, ‘Curriculum Making’,
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http://storymaps.esri.com/ http://www.arcgis.com http://mapstory.org/ https://storymap.knightlab.com/
‘Powerful Disciplinary Knowledge (PDK)’, ‘Futures’, ‘Future 3’ education and ‘Teachers as Leaders’. Online training and support materials are being piloted and will be made available as Open Education Resources (OERs). GeoCapabilities also embraces powerful geo-technologies that provide learners and teachers with the potential to be able to express themselves ‘geographically’. We also consider ways to help teachers develop as curriculum leaders.
My path to GeoCapabilities For almost 40 years, creative practices in teaching Geography and geographical teacher training have been at the heart of my academic and professional work. As a geographer, I am privileged to be able to see the world from a special, spatial perspective and one that is full of opportunities to innovate and be innovative in maximising the quality of learning and teaching. Geography provides me with interest in locational context, from which I am able to undertake the spatial analysis of different phenomena. An examination of the interrelationships and impacts that result from human and natural processes allows me to bring meaning to my own views of the world. As an academic discipline, the study of Geography is concerned with physical, social and environmental issues affecting people, places and environments around the world. Teaching Geography is associated with helping students appreciate different places and regions through the study of human–landscape relationships. Geography and geographers seek to understand the world we live in, but I think it is also vital that we focus on the ways we behave towards it. This is why I believe the study of Geography, at formative stages in education, is so important. I suggest geographical education provides a unique and essential stage to help the young (and the not so young) to better understand one another, so that they can co-operate, live and work together, and deal with common and important issues. I argue that Geography education offers us a lifelong toolkit to help us achieve this and it provides a focus that offers young people access to active and responsible citizenship, as well as a route to meaningful employment. My route to GeoCapabilities is an extended story. It reflects my over-arching concern for the health of Geography as an academic discipline. GeoCapabilities integrates more than ten years of project work and consultancy. This has largely been concerned with the role and value of educational networking; innovative uses of the Internet for teaching and learning; learning opportunities afforded by Cloud-based Digital Earth tools and technologies; and defining, fostering and promoting the concept of Spatial Citizenship in education and training.
The importance of networking I have greatly benefitted from being involved in subject-based collaboration for educational purposes. Subject-based networks and professional associations have played a central role in my career and in improving the quality of the Geography I taught in higher education and in school. As an academic, networking builds on the fact that I greatly value my discipline and it provides me with the contacts and connections I need. As a teacher, it gave me the opportunity to connect with leaders in the field and keep up to date with latest research. I believe collaboration on learning and teaching should not become separated from the disciplinary contexts in which they are put into action. I met almost the all people I currently work with on GeoCapabilities through international professional networks I established. These are HERODOT, the European network for learning and teaching Geography in higher education; the digital-earth.eu network promoting geo-media in schools; and the School on the Cloud network advocating Cloud-based approaches in learning, teaching, management and leadership in European education. 8
These networks operate by bringing together various actors who can collectively share their experience, know-how and expertise. The outcomes of these collaborations have supported many colleagues in their careers, by creating courses for new university geography teachers, continuing professional development for 6 geographers, and even the development of an international peer reviewed journal for European Geography . All of the GeoCapabilities partners share a common vision for geographical education with me. As a result, our ideas and any innovative outcomes are much more likely to be effectively developed and widely disseminated. In an educational context, this should be related to activities that develop network participation and active engagement at all levels. Nowadays I recognise that contributing to digital social networking is even more important than policy, language and culture when building international collaboration. However, I think an academic approach to collaboration is important, which implies that processes of self-reflection and critical analysis are involved.
Innovation and the Internet For me, the networked information society has unleashed two powerful forces on education. We have easy access to high-speed networks that empower individuals to access and use ICT. We can now discover and consume information, resources and services wherever we are. Furthermore, mobile apps combined with social computing approaches invite us to share in the creation and ownership of information. So I think the greatest potential of the Internet lies in providing us with amazing tools and resources that enable a personalisation of learning to take place, which also needs to be reflected in a personalisation of teaching. Secondly, ubiquitous access to high-speed networks along with open standards and content, and techniques for virtualisation make it possible to leverage very high quality education content in unprecedented ways. There are so many exciting, emerging opportunities that I can use to create exciting, customisable learning possibilities. This leads me to suggest we are in the midst of a new social and technological paradigm that needs to be more fully reflected in learning and teaching. It should move us even further from the teacher-centred classroom, to a learner-centred environment. If we are to take advantage of this, we must provide teacher training that can use Cloud computing with services tailored to teachers’ needs in individual classrooms and transform the role of educators and related pedagogy. In this brave new world, subject expertise becomes essential. Students can access ‘learning bytes’ from any location and use high quality interactive resources freely. At the same time, we should expect learners to critically ask and attempt to answer complex questions and share gained knowledge to help others. I think that this potential overload of information provided to society by big data and Cloud-based educational content poses immense challenges for teachers. This is manifested in terms of understanding the power of the information and in using it in context to solve problems (i.e. encouraging critical thinking) to create new knowledge and develop skills. In cases such as this, the importance of student interactions with others and especially with subject experts like their teachers/educators is raised, that is, I think we need to establish a transition from traditional practice to a ‘flipped classroom’. A flipped classroom moves lectures and traditional approaches online so they can be accessed at any time. This creates space for interaction between students and with teachers during normal class times. It also encourages the need for new roles in education like ‘mentor’, ‘co-creator’ ‘collaborator’ ‘contributor’, and ‘curator’. In geographical research, Cloud-based tools have become particularly important, as powerful Digital Earth technologies have been created and are increasingly used. This is because they have the potential to create a
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See: http://www.eurogeographyjournal.eu
profound revolution in our understanding of the world. Their usage has been facilitated by developments in Web 2.0, Cloud computing and communications technologies, accompanied by advances in Geographic Information Systems, GI Science, sensors and satellites. Former US Vice-President, Al Gore (1998) envisioned Digital Earth as a tool predominantly for policy-making professions. Decision makers would access these resources to monitor and assess environmental and social conditions in order to help identify clear, direct solutions for sustainable development. The resulting big data sets allow us to visualise, compare, analyse, interpret and even predict complex earth and atmospheric processes. As an educator, Digital Earth has provided me with countless subject-specific opportunities to incorporate innovative learning and teaching in my practice. The immense value of these tools to education is based on their capability to serve geographic media (geo-media) at a massive scale to learners, teachers and educators, for them to access, use, share and communicate. I have found when using learning environments that embed Digital Earth technologies and geo-media, that teachers can establish authentic, profound learning experiences for their pupils, while raising levels of engagement, participation and understanding. In 2009 I had the privilege to be an invited keynote speaker and workshop facilitator at a UN conference in the divided city of Nicosia on Cyprus. On reflection, I recognise this was a highly formative event for my involvement in GeoCapabilities. It encouraged me to reflect on why geographical education was so important in society. With the help of local universities, the UN had identified Geography teacher education as the driving force to bring Ministries of Education, teachers and educators on Cyprus together from both sides of the boundary wall. Ironically, Cyprus was the only country in Europe where no university department of Geography existed and Geography was only taught to elementary school pupils (ages 6-14). In my talk I argued that Geography education provides young people with a toolkit that will help them ‘read the world’ and challenge stereotypes, vital to the future of Europe and for Cyprus in Europe.
Geographer’s toolkit At the conference I introduced my Geographer’s Toolkit, and many of these items have since been reflected in GeoCapabilities. The first item in the toolkit is a European Dimension. I confirmed geographical education should provide a strong place-based (European) element in the classroom. At this time Europe had opened its borders creating a highly interdependent society. Past and present processes produced an extremely complex pattern of natural, social, political, cultural and economic diversity. The symbol of Europe was everywhere, but the walls on Cyprus remained almost impermeable barriers to change. As citizens of Europe, I conceptualised that ongoing constructionist European processes influence all of us. I suggested that in order to avoid stereotyping, fragmentation, chaos, and conflict a critical European dimension is required in education. I said this could only be delivered by Geography education in secondary schools and universities as it helps build common European identity, attitudes and values. I contended that through geographical education, European identity has an opportunity to crystallise, so that Europeans can feel they belong together, sharing in a common destiny. The second element in the Geographer’s Toolkit is Spatial Learning. I reasoned that our positive use of geographical information is essential for lifelong learning and it should be applied across all curriculum subjects. I maintained these provide us with indispensable cognitive skills that we need in everyday life. They help us to pose and structure problems, to identify factors involved and then to search for answers specifically related to spatial location, in other words ‘where we are’ and ‘what we do’. I illustrated how young people would benefit from learning to think spatially and that we need an educational commitment to increasing the levels of spatial literacy. Learning such skills requires the use of appropriately designed tools, technologies, and curricula. I recommended using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to help foster scientific enquiry, problem solving 10
and spatial thinking. I confirmed that a spatial learning process should drive an active learning pedagogy, where exploration (of places) happens; measurements (associated with location) are collected; observations are made; geoinformation is attached to place marks and journeys; and tours and stories can be designed based on maps. The third item I described is the close link that exists between the study of Geography and the lives of citizens. I confirmed geographical education should be linked closely to active, responsible, participative citizenship, such that young people can contribute to and make a difference in their community. Learning, therefore, should include a core dimension on culture-based understandings of the practice of citizenship, as advocated by the European Commission (2000). It should be based on constructivist principles, where the learner can actively create their own representations of knowledge and interact deeply with the learning process. It should be based on both social and physical interactions, so the learning focus is able to shift to more complex, interactive approaches (Prawat and Floden 1994). Geographical learning and teaching stress both active participation and interaction with others. So I posed a challenging question to the participants about how education can encourage young people to contribute their ideas to decisions being made about the kind of future society we want to create. In other words, I said constructing citizenship through geographical education can provide the context to equip young people with suitable knowledge, understanding and skills so that they can make their own minds up as global citizens (Andrews and Lewis 2000). The final component of the Toolkit is geographical themes I believe should be studied as they help learners to develop meaningful competences, essential knowledge and profound understanding. This is closely related to PDK. I proposed these would include social, egalitarian, intercultural and, importantly, environmental issues facing Europe and the world. Geographical studies in these areas give young people a sense of their responsibilities in a complex, inter-related and inter-connected society. It also allows the learners to develop their awareness of the relevance and importance of considering issues at different scales.
Developing the ‘spatial citizenship’ concept (SPACIT) Reflecting on the power of Geography education at the UN event led me to follow-up work as Visiting Professor at the University of Salzburg, Austria, and enabled by my NTF award. Engaging discussions with colleagues there led to the elaboration of my toolkit into the ‘spatial citizenship’ (SPACIT) concept, offering an educational approach at the intersection of citizenship and Geography education. We defined spatial citizenship as: “an individual’s ability to interact and participate in societal spatial decision making through the reflexive use of geo-media (e.g. maps, virtual globes and GIS) regarding consumption as well as production 7 and communication.” (Wikipedia 2013 ). We suggest that spatial citizens are able to access and interpret geomedia to critically question what is taking place, where and why (e.g. with new planning proposals) and then produce, communicate, and negotiate alternative visions of the future. Spatial citizenship implies bridging the gap between citizens and democratic processes through geo-media, encouraging pro-active participation and the appropriation of space (Gryl et al. 2010). We obtained a European funding for a three-year lifelong learning project to support further developments on SPACIT (2010-13). The SPACIT project aims at providing teachers with the relevant education to support active spatial citizenship in the classroom (see Figure 2).
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See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_Citizenship
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FIGURE 2: SPATIAL CITIZENSHIP INFOGRAPHIC (FULL INFOGRAPHIC CAN BE SEEN AND DOWNLOADED AT HTTP://WWW.SPATIALCITIZENSHIP.ORG)
The purpose was to explore innovative approaches to the inclusion of geo-media in school education, as part of the process of engaging young people in their own environments (de Miguel Gonzalez 2012). Key to spatial citizenship is positive uses of geo-media in education and the integration of geo-location tools in everyday life. This is made possible through the almost ubiquitous availability of smartphones, tablets, Wi-Fi and the Cloud. We believe spatial citizenship approaches have the capacity to create powerful learning opportunities that empower young people and individualise learning (Hogrebe and Tate 2012). The SPACIT Project has produced an online reader on the geoinformation society, the technological basics, its 8 social implications and economical effects for individuals , a competence model (Gryl et al. 2013) and curriculum (Schultz et al. 2014). Open education resources were created for teachers to help them actively learn and teach spatial citizenship skills and competences. At the same time as SPACIT developments, I was invited to connect with colleagues who had started working on GeoCapabilities. This was initially a two-year research project led by the Association of American
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See: http://www.spatialcitizenship.org/deliverables/
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Geographers (AAG) and in partnership with the Grosvenor Center for Geographic Education at Texas State University, the Institute of Education in London, the University of Helsinki, the European Association of Geographers (EUROGEO) and the Geographical Association. GeoCapabilities had obtained seed funding from the US National Science Foundation’s Geography and Spatial Science program. As a pilot project, the goal was to research the potential of improving curriculum making in Geography through transatlantic and transEuropean collaborations in teacher professional development. The ‘capabilities’ approach asks teachers of Geography to reflect on the role of geography in affording people with intellectual, moral, and existential capabilities for lifelong learning, economic and social agency in citizenship, and the pursuit of personal well-being. The partners suggested the approach offers a way to evaluate what is of value in education. The pilot analysis produced case studies showing how capability concepts are articulated in Geography standards and frameworks in the US, UK, and in Finland. The case studies demonstrate how Geography education can contribute to the development of three human capabilities: (i) individual autonomy and freedom to use one’s imagination and to be able to think and reason; (ii) identify and exercise one’s choices on how to live, based on worthwhile distinctions with regard to citizenship and sustainability; and (iii) understanding one’s potential as a creative and productive citizen in the context of the global economy and culture (Solem, Lambert and Tani 2013a). The pilot results presented a common transatlantic framework for understanding the place of Geography in the secondary school curriculum in these countries. The outcome for the project team was to consider implications for teacher preparation and continuous professional development, and to explore opportunities to continue the work. In the US, support in the form of a web-based platform was proposed, offering broader access to teacher preparation and greater opportunities for teachers to acquire an international perspective on Geography subject matter. An important consideration was to reach aspiring secondary teachers at a formative time when they deepen and extend subject matter knowledge and strengthen skills to improve their teaching. In the UK this was 9 perceived as an opportunity for the creation of geographical education in a ‘Futures 3’ formation, where ways to understand the world from the epistemic rules of the specialist Geography community are introduced, and take pupils beyond their everyday experience (Young and Muller 2010). In Finland, the biggest challenge of Geography teaching up to the 6sixth grade was teachers’ limited knowledge of academic Geography and thus their capability to enhance students’ geographical thinking remained modest. At this point I assisted GeoCapabilities project partners in writing an application for EU funding to further the initiative. The purpose was to utilise the framework of GeoCapabilities in practical training situations, using the concepts and ideas for the design and content of a prototype web-based professional development platform (a GeoCapabilities platform).
The theoretical framework around GeoCapabilities The capabilities approach is the theoretical framework for GeoCapabilities, inspired by the ideas of Nussbaum and Sen (1993) from the field of human welfare and development economics. The capability concept was originally formulated by the economist Amartya Sen. Sen (1986) was concerned with forms of
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Futures 1: subject delivery of knowledge for its own sake; traditional subjects are ‘given’ bodies of knowledge; Futures 2: skills and ‘learning to learn’ – knowledge is constructed; subject divisions are artificial and arbitrary; experiential learning; it undermines the notion of the world as an object of study/thought; Futures 3: subjects are not given (as in F1), but not arbitrary either (as in F2); students are introduced to “the epistemic rules of specialist communities” to provide ways to understand the world objectively, and take pupils beyond their everyday experience (Young and Muller 2010). 13
empowerment and suggested capabilities provided opportunities for humans to function. In terms of teacher education, both capabilities development and the institutional context that control their progress need to be addressed. GeoCapabilities places stress on geographical subject knowledge. Teachers of Geography are asked, as curriculum leaders, to reflect on the role of their academic subject in providing students with intellectual, moral, and existential capabilities for lifelong learning, citizenship, and the pursuit of personal well-being (Hinchcliffe 2007). For me, GeoCapabilities is a unifying framework that tries to support teachers in creating learning environments where pupils are able construct knowledge from multiple and varied sources. It allows them to develop insights that go beyond what they will need if they are to become active world citizens. Young and Muller (2010) describe this as a ‘Future 3’ curriculum. It concerns using ‘powerful knowledge’ as a curriculum development principle to engage all pupils. Maude (2014) proposes four types of powerful knowledge namely, (a) knowledge that offers students “new ways of thinking about the world”; (b) knowledge that provides students with powerful ways of analysing, explaining and understanding; (c) knowledge that gives students some power over their own knowledge; and (d) knowledge that enables young people to follow and participate in debates on significant local, national, and global issues. These allow pupils to engage, ask critical questions, analyse, explain, understand and take control of their own knowledge. In GeoCapabilties, we describe Powerful Disciplinary Knowledge in Geography as consisting of: the acquisition and development of deep descriptive and explanatory ‘world knowledge’; the development of relational thinking that underpins geographical thought; a propensity to apply analysis of alternative social, economic, and environmental futures to particular place contexts (adapted by Lambert, from Lambert 2011a; 2011b; Solem, Lambert and Tani 2013b). I situate GeoCapabilities in a Learning 2.0 context (Cakir 2015). Young people are connected with their peers and always online. The ubiquitous nature and ease of use of digital resources can contribute to empowering them as learners, who select their own appropriate, even disruptive technologies based on their own needs (Conole et al. 2008). Learning 2.0 approaches facilitate pedagogical innovation by putting the learner at the centre of the learning process. Learning 2.0 tools also facilitate new ways of collaborative creation, exchange of learning content, self-regulated learning and personalization. This is closely tied to the review of learning cases undertaken by Redecker and Punie (2010), who identify five forms of Learning 2.0 as new areas for innovation in learning. These are: (i) learning – social media tools used as scaffolds; (ii) achieving – to make learning more effective; (iii) networking – social media for communication and networking; (iv) embracing diversity – inclusion, reaching out; and (v) opening up to society – facilitating access to information. Technological advances have created many new geo-technological tools available for learning and teaching. The spatial citizenship approach addresses their use, introduces geo-media tools, and defines the skills that are needed by young people to help them communicate their visions of the future of our planet (Hicks 2013). Under the banner of Digital Earth, I suggest geo-media offers the potential for individual and collective engagement through challenging, deeper forms of learning, encouraging analysis, critical thinking, and scenario building (Donert 2014).
How you might use GeoCapabilities GeoCapabilities harnesses ‘subject-based’ PDK perspectives with terminology, theory and tools. The purpose is to encourage productive dialogue between teachers and educators about the value of subject content and its broader educational aims. GeoCapabilities is centred on developing the ‘thinking teacher’. Building 14
teachers’ leadership capacities though improving their curriculum understanding and practical curriculummaking skills. GeoCapabilities outcomes help teachers lead and manage the design of suitable curricula. The GeoCapabilities approach bases its emphasis on the development of teachers’ critical and subject-specific, reflective capabilities. The approach could be applied at different academic levels (secondary, undergraduate) and subject contexts. GeoCapabilities also has broad implications for educational practice and policy. GeoCapabilities is a professional development process that supports teachers. It helps them to critically understand, interpret and give meaning to key issues in their subject curriculum and in the context of their school, their teaching and classes. The capabilities approach encourages the development of autonomy, which becomes the centre of the educational process. Thus capability, as envisaged in our project, is also a concept that applies to the work of teachers, no matter what circumstances or curriculum they are faced with. 10
Materials and information about the GeoCapabilities initiative is available via the project website . A number of videos are available there describing the approach and concept. Examples of Powerful Disciplinary Knowledge in the form of vignettes are available for download. Conference presentations and academic papers are provided online, and a series of open education resources are available for others to use. GeoCapabilities has an online, teacher-training platform accessed from the project website. It offers a means for Geography teachers to communicate how the development of geographical knowledge and understanding in young people contributes to the fully educated person. The platform provides support and opportunities for interested stakeholders to deepen and extend their concept of Geography and its value in education. The materials there are designed to provoke and stimulate creative and committed responses from teachers. They are intended to be enjoyed and to be professionally rewarding and motivating, contributing to teachers’ lifelong learning as curriculum leaders. The platform allows critical reflection on the teaching of Geography at the level of goals and purposes. It develops ideas of disciplinary rigour in Geography education and links with enquiry pedagogies. As a result, GeoCapabilities empowers new understandings of the significance of the role of teachers in ‘enacting’ the curriculum, inspiring them to interact with others internationally, take responsibility for ‘curriculum making’ and learn from each other. Four teacher training and professional development modules are being compiled and will be completed in the coming months: Module 1: Defining and developing disciplinary capabilities: develop an understanding of (geo)capabilities, and its potential to enable a different view of the world, through reflection on your own teaching schemes of work and by discussing examples of the geographical power of powerful disciplinary knowledge (presented as geographical story map 'vignettes'). Module 2: Curriculum making by teachers: grasp the significance of curriculum-making and professional judgement as deliberate acts of sequencing and interpreting what pupils will do with the materials and experiences we provide. Module 3: Connect capability with curriculum making – video case studies:
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http://www.geocapabilities.org
evaluate video case studies of teachers discussing and critically reviewing their attempts at curriculum making and what this means for a ‘Future 3’ curriculum. Module 4: Curriculum leadership and advocacy: develop curriculum leadership using ‘lesson study’ and ‘practical theorising’ frameworks to encourage a confident and collaborative understanding of how a GeoCapabilities approach might be used to convey and express the value of Geography and thinking geographically in the curriculum and teaching. Access to GeoCapabilties information and resources is sustained through a variety of seminars for different target groups, offering support from the open online learning resources. Those interested in the approach will be able to fall back on these ready-to-use materials and a GeoCapabilities manual. The hosting of the materials is secured for at least three years after the completion of the project in 2016. Contact can be made to the professional associations involved in the project (AAG, GA, and EUROGEO), who will continue to offer GeoCapabilities courses and seminars to teachers and teacher educators after the lifetime of the project.
Conclusions The ‘capabilities’ approach to geographical education is one that has been developed based on idea that educational experiences and acquired knowledge and expertise should expand people’s capabilities to think for and beyond themselves. It aligns learning with a body of knowledge worth conveying to students (Morgan 2014). Rooted in a conceptual framework for education, drawing on the ideas of the economist Amartya Sen and philosopher Martha Nussbaum, GeoCapabilties relates closely to active citizenship education, spatial citizenship and the use of geo-media. GeoCapabilties developed and tested a capabilities framework to enhance the professional development of in-service teachers and student teachers. The main products are (i) the creation of four modules in an online GeoCapabilities teacher education course, with international outreach to make Capabilities more visible; (ii) a Web portal with resources and guidance; and (iii) supplemented by social media and online tools used for the establishment of technology-mediated communication and collaboration between teachers and trainees, establishing a community. These products embrace the heart of teacher education, training and curriculum development. We consider GeoCapabilities offers an integral, holistic and transformative approach to school education curricula design that it is not constrained by pre-specified demands. Because of this, the outcomes will be relevant to a broader range of educational stakeholders including policy makers and advisors. A curriculum-making methodology has been produced that provides enhanced leadership potential for teachers in their own classrooms, and for middle management teams as curriculum developers in schools and other settings. Storytelling with maps has been piloted as a means for teachers to express their understanding of key concepts and approaches. GeoCapabilities is the first attempt to apply capabilities at school level. It should result in a progressive form of discipline-oriented Geography teaching. The activities have been concerned with establishing the role of Powerful Disciplinary Knowledge in learning and teaching. The concept of ‘curriculum making’ has been established as a means to conceptualise the notion of distributed curriculum leadership in schools. Ultimately, a blueprint will be produced, so that other subjects are able to implement capabilities training and support for teachers of different subjects.
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