National Fieldwork Week - coming in June 2022

 

GA National Fieldwork Week Flyer from GeoBlogs

The GA's National Research Report - now available

The GA has carried out a great deal of research throughout its history and released papers and pamphlets at intervals, often involving the President of the time, or former and future Presidents. The latest report has been compiled over the last few months and is now available to view.

Download a copy of the report here.

The Geographical Association (GA) published a national research report today, focused on the professional needs and views of teachers of geography. 

The report presents the findings from a two-stage ‘listening exercise’, comprised of an online survey and a series of focus group discussions with geography educators from the primary, secondary and post-16/HE phases and from Initial Teacher Education (ITE).

The most consistent finding of the research is that subject-specialist issues are a key concern for all those involved in geography education, primary geography subject leaders, secondary practitioners early in their career, experienced secondary school heads of geography and geography ITE tutors. It concludes that more action is needed to meet the demands of geography educators for support with subject-specialist knowledge, skills, confidence and connections. The research also:

• points to the significant impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on geography education, highlighting that these impacts vary greatly from school to school and between individuals

• identifies what geography teachers value about their professional subject association, particularly their desire to network with one another

• emphasises the relevance of global environmental and social issues to geography and the need for the geography education community to respond to these issues.

GA Chief Executive Alan Kinder said:

‘This GA National Research Report has been a year in the making and I’d like to thank all those GA members and others who gave their time towards such an insightful exercise. With a growing membership, the GA needs to work ever-harder to listen to and represent the views of its members. This report distils a huge range of ideas and makes recommendations for the GA, for policy-makers, for school leaders and teachers of geography. Our next challenge will be to pursue these findings and recommendations, so that children and young people in schools everywhere benefit from the improved support we are able to provide to teachers of geography, nationally and internationally.’

I was pleased to have played a part by facilitating one of the focus groups. Thanks to all those members and non-members alike who contributed to the fnal report, and particular thanks to Dr. Emma Rawlings-Smith and Alan Kinder who co-authored the report and to all those involved at various stages in its production.

The TES has picked up on the fieldwork issue for newly qualified teachers, which has been missing from many ITE courses:

New geography teachers lack the confidence to teach fieldwork after having limited experience of it during the pandemic, @The_GA warnshttps://t.co/DzJgTBx14c

— Tes (@tes) January 27, 2022

GA Presidency Month 4: December 2021

December saw a range of activity in the first part of the month which came at the end of a long and varied term which was particularly tiring and challenging, with growing COVID cases in school, and waiting to find out more about the new variant and its potential implications for us, as cases rose and the threat of another lockdown began to loom the week before Christmas.

December 1st was the first of another month of activity supporting GA branches.The GA Birmingham Branch has continued with a programme of excellent speakers, including Ben Hennig.

Thanks to those teachers who came along, and to Bob for sending a recording of the session, which I think went very well.

The 2nd of the month saw the latest of our Parents' Evenings via Parent Cloud. These may well become one of the legacies of the pandemic, with the end to face to face appointments, or perhaps hybrid events.

My booster jab was given on the 3rd. Many people in the world are yet to receive their first vaccine, although impressively over 800 million Indians have received their first dose. It turns out this is going to very important with the Omicron variant.

ERASMUS projects have continued and we have negotiated extensions on the project as they have been majorly affected by the pandemic which has impacted on our chances to work with the teachers who are part of the project. They have been delayed and subject to alteration.

Zaragoza in Spain is a city that I have never been to (yet) and my trip there had to be cancelled last weekend following the emergence of the Omicron variant and changes to travel arrangements.

I also had to cancel a proposed trip to Romania in the New Year, and an event in London as well due to people having to isolate.

I also filled in my CPD log for my Chartered Geographer status this week. I have been a Chartered Geographer since April 2007, and the GA Conference will mark my 15th anniversary as a CGeog (Teacher).

To find out more about this opportunity to get accreditation for your CPD and other efforts check out the Chartered Geographers section of the RGS website.

I had a GIS resource to work on and spent some time on that as well.

I also put out the call for papers for the session that I have had accepted at the 100th IGU in Paris. If you would like to be part of the session you need to submit your abstract by January 11th.  Let me know if you would like further information.

I also had to get copy for the Spring 2022 issue of my Webwatch column for GA Magazine's Spring 2022 issue finished. The magazine is getting a face lift in 2022 with a new format which means the full version of Webwatch will now be available to download with a smaller version in the magazine.

With the GA now passing 10 000 plus members (as you may have read in a piece I wrote for the GA website)

Christmas was a bit of a pause for most people.

I continued to potter on projects during the school holidays:

- The first day of the holidays I had a meeting with Alan Kinder.

- Wrote an article on the KS2 work I am doing at school. This will appear in 'Primary Geography'.

- Worked on ERASMUS project outcomes for GI Pedagogy and also D3 - check out the course we have created here.

- I also bought and started reading David Gardner's new book, which is out now as an eBook - it's excellent, and comes with an accompanying GeogPod broadcast which I listened to this week as well.

- I worked on finishing a new session called 'Click and Collect' to present at a number of GA Branches this coming year. It links with another resource I'm working on, which also connects with the idea of Supply Chains. That will all emerge in 2022, as part of my 'Curriculum Vitae'

Omicron cases continued to rise as we entered the final few weeks of 2021 and many of the teachers I follow on Twitter tested positive.

Here are the Twitter stats for the month as usual.