2001: Diane Swift

Just before Easter I spent a pleasant hour talking to Diane Swift and asking for her input on some of the projects that she was involved in during her time working for the GA, to help explore some of the connections between them. 

Other former Presidents have previously mentioned Di and the importance of her work for the GA.

From the entry by Jeremy Krause:

"I am proud that I was able to work with others to create the post of Professional Development Coordinator and appoint Di Swift in 2001."

Di was also mentioned by Keith Grimwade and Chris Kington, who were involved in the important decision to 'professionalise the GA'.

She has worked in a number of roles within the GA, and more recently has worked in Initial Teacher Education in Staffordshire.

Di was involved in a number of key projects.

These included the Young People's Geographies project (see separate blog posts) which I was involved in.

The Valuing Places project was a catalyst for many of the others. being one of the early projects when the GA was finding its way in such work. Funded projects have remained important, and the GA has a track record of very successful completion of such projects.

GeoVisions has previously been mentioned, led by Roger Carter. In many ways, this was at the heart of a lot of GA activity during the days of the first Chief Executive and the move towards funded staff at Solly Street.

The OCR Pilot GCSE Geography, which has been mentioned in a number of other posts was also important, and changed the course of my career because of my involvement.

Argumentation - Why argue (in Geography and Science)

I remember a session in Norwich at our PDC - they were good visits during the Rob Lodge era, when Di came to lead a session for us.

She also told me other snippets which will feed into other blog posts in time.

Di still works in teacher education, for a SCITT in Staffordshire.

Di has extensive experience in schools as a teacher, senior leader and a governor. She regularly contributes articles to professional journals and has authored a variety of materials that support teachers to develop both their curriculum and pedagogic thinking. She has worked extensively with teacher-colleagues on a variety of projects in relation to Philosophy for Children, History and Geography. Diane is an advocate for the Chartered College of Teaching. She also works at a national level in relation to ITE, particularly in connection with inclusion. Diane is undertaking an EdD, her research is considering the ways in which beginning teachers develop a professional language to share their developing pedagogic expertise.

She has worked on a number of publications.

I had a copy of this one when it was first published in 2005 and it still sits on my shelf and I find it useful.

She also mentioned the importance of Chris Durbin and Kate Russell and the development of the Staffordshire Learning Network - something I very much agree with.

Image source and copyright: https://www.shaw-education.org.uk/listit2people/diane-swift/61.html

References

Martin, Fred, and Diane Swift. “What Can CD-ROMs Do for Us?” Teaching Geography, vol. 21, no. 1, 1996, pp. 20–23. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23753746. Accessed 26 June 2021.

Thanks to Di for all she did for the Association while working there. 

Update - June 2025

Congratulations to Di for being awarded an OBE in the King's Birthday Honours List.

2003 Conference - thanks to Joseph Kerski

Joseph Kerski attended the GA Conference that year, and has sent through some illustrated reports that he wrote to send to those who helped fund his visit.
Here's the 2003 report:

2003 GA Conference from GeoBlogs

Valuing Places

I spoke to Di Swift recently about the origins of the Valuing Places project which she said was one of the most influential of all the GA's projects and also marked a change in the nature of the Association. The project ran from 2003-2006.

As mentioned in recent posts, it was Chris Kington who made a bold decision to take the GA into deficit by appointing several full time officers, including a CEO.

Valuing Places was a CPD-led curriculum development project (2003-06) which explored how teaching about places within key stages 2 and 3 developed students' understanding of global interconnections. It paving the way for the GA's later work on 'Living Geography'.

Key Aims

• Increase public understanding of our global mutual dependence and the need for international development by valuing the uniqueness of places at a variety of scales and exploring how these are interconnected.
• Educate every pupil in the country about development issues so that they can understand the key global considerations that will shape their lives.
• Establish a real understanding of our interdependence and of the relevance of development issues to people's everyday lives.

By exploring localities familiar to us and linking these at a variety of scales, Valuing Places was about valuing ourselves in those places, revealing our roles and responsibilities towards both the people and environment and all the other places that our place is linked to.

Another key focus of the project was inclusivity. Through the involvement of an extremely large number of teachers and pupils a wide range of teaching and learning styles was used both in terms of professional development and in terms of the resources produced.

Valuing Places also aimed to promote opportunities to raise standards of achievement. Teachers were engaged and motivated by their involvement in some sophisticated debates about the global dimension in their teaching about place. Pupils were equally valued, since they were the starting point of the work - their views, their places and their connections with the wider world.

The project had a number of regional officers.

A special edition of 'Teaching Geography' in 2005 looked back at the project and its outcomes.

References

Valuing Places: https://www.geography.org.uk/Valuing-Places

Teaching Geography, Spring 2005 - special edition, 

2003 Conference - thanks to Joseph Kerski

Thanks to Joseph Kerski for offering this illustrated report from the conference held at the University of London. One of several that he kindly sent me the link for.

2003 GA Conference from GeoBlogs

2002: Chris Kington

Many geographers will be familiar with Chris Kington's publishing output.
His Publishing included some classic books for geography teachers including David Leat's 'Thinking through Geography', Liz Taylor's 'Representing Geography', 'Living Geography', and Rex Walford's 'Games in Geography'.

Many of these spiral bound books sit by my desk in my classroom, or on my shelves at home, along with others. Chris worked mostly in educational publishing (school books and books for teachers). He also spent time in magazines, newspapers and broadcasting.

Chris is delightful company and has been a member of many of the GA's overseas Study Tours over the years. 
He was born in Bristol (another President with a link to the city) in 1946. He remembers bombsites still around in the city during his childhood. He told me about his education:

Education:

Speedwell Boys' School, Bristol.

He enjoyed making models, and remembers a geography teacher called Mr. Alves who drew amazing chalk diagrams on the board, and also a neighbour who sent postcards from exotic overseas locations. While at school he won a prize and was able to choose a book, and chose 'Human Geography' by D C Money. 
Failed 11+ (an early bi-lateral later to become comprehensive).
He was in the frst cohort to form a sixth form and the first to go to university (I think 5 of us)
He studied at the University of Exeter, for a BA in Geography.

Here, he came across the teaching of Peter Toyne, who had come under the influence of Haggett and Chorley.

He describes himself as an 'outsider President' in that he was not from a geographical background, although he completed a geography degree at the University of Exeter.
One early previous outsider President was the author Hilaire Belloc, early in the 20th century, who has been previously featured here on the blog.

He started his Presidential address by saying: "I am not an academic. I am not a practising geographer. But I am a geography graduate and I have been involved in aspects of geographical education and with the GA for the best part of 30 years."

Chris's Presidential theme was "Valuing Geography", although he said it could just as easily be "Valuing Geographers". 

His Presidential address was entitled:
"You can't judge a book by looking at the cover."

It is very well worth reading, as it goes through some of the changes in textbook publishing which those of us who have been teaching for a while will remember. 

Chris himself says that it is about:
"...the wow factor in the classroom, the sparks that lit the fire in the young mind and the desire for concerned teachers (in particular) to win back control of the curriculum and the control of their professional lives in order they could realise the ambitions that took them into the classroom in the first place."

He mentions early texts such as Preece and Wood, and Rex Walford's book on School geography, before talking about his own publishing career and various encounters with geographers. He mentions a Bill Marsden book which he also loaned me: 'The School Textbook" (2001)

He also looked ahead to the future for publishing, which 19 years on has been proved to be quite prescient:

"the future knowledge economy will rapidly change our perception of how learning takes place as content is increasingly commoditised and contextualised and print and broadcast media merge together. This is the challenge for the government and for the Geographical Association too."

His Presidential address ends as follows:

"I am concerned that the children we teach better become not just better geographers, but better people as a result of studying geography".

He has worked with some famous geography authors, including Harry Robinson, who was Head of the Geography Department at Huddersfield Polytechnic just before I started my degree there in the early 1980s, D C Money - who I have mentioned in previous posts and Vincent Tidswell - my PGCE tutor at Hull University and someone else who I have blogged about previously. He also mentions Bill Chambers and Karl Donert working on a book together, and the involvement of Mary Biddulph: another former GA President.

Chris told me about his various roles within the GA, many of which I had been unaware of.

"I have kept my hand in throughout my working life with geography - Trustee of Field Studies Council, a Non Executive Director of the Ordnance Survey (both of whom subsequently became major supporters/strategic partners of the GA), and three stints of six years each on the GA Council."

In 1987(ish?) Bryan Coates (who was then Honorary Treasurer, but later to be President himself) asked me to conduct the Strategic Review of the GA which took three years to develop then two years to get through Council and a further five years to implement (a decade of work in total) - including the appointment of the new roles of Chief Executive, Finance Director, setting up a proper publishing and marketing arm to the business and a re-focus on (Continuing) Professional Development.

This moved the GA from being an organisation with many volunteers in key voluntary positions to a professional Association with salaried officers, and also brought Richard Gill and others into the GA story,

Thanks partly to the work of Chris Kington before his Presidency we have the GA as it currently stands, and which I helped all aspects of while working at Solly Street. Something that, looking back, I hadn't fully appreciated. Chris is also still active in the GA Cambridge Branch, and was chair for 5 years. He hosts events, and leads guided walks for members each year and also supports ITE students. This work will continue once we are able to move more freely again I am sure.

Chris is also one of the founding member of the Worldwise Quiz (along with Rex Walford, Mike Morrish, Ellie Rawling etc) - plenty more on those Presidents in their own blog entries of course as Former Presidents.

Chris still lives in Cambridge and I have met up with him several times in recent years. One of the great things that Chris did to help me with the blog project was to unearth a range of letters from former Presidents which he collected for his own Presidential years.

These explore the 'spark' which led to their initial interest in geography, and have been mentioned in the posts of a lot of recent Presidents.

Of his achievements he said:

I convened the Strategic Review which took 5 years to work through and to implement and a further 5 years to work throughout the system. Broadly this advocated: 

1) the move from an organisation run and managed by good hearted amateurs to one run by appropriately qualified professionals. Appoint a full time Chief Executive and a qualified Business Manager. 

2) a focus on the increasing professional requirements of teachers as the nature of the subject, schools and exams changed. 

3) the provision of high quality CPD and publications through all phases of schooling and teacher training. 

4) the re-organisation of the entire GA to reflect these new demands whilst re-committing to a Branch structure. 

5) asserting professionalism at all levels and the primacy of the Annual conference and its professional journals - something that remains very important.

6) anticipating technological innovation (mostly unspecified) and need to equip both teachers and students for a changed brave new dynamic world.

I last saw Chris at the FSC 75th Anniversary event at the Linnean Society in London just a few months ahead of the lockdown. Since the lockdown in March 2020, Chris has been treating his followers on Facebook to a daily poem. I'm looking forward to being able to return the letters and books that Chris loaned me in due course.

References
See Chris Kington publications - for sale by resellers and from other bookshops.

'Thinking through Geography 1 and 2' - David Leat, Adam Nichol et al

https://www.geography.org.uk/write/mediauploads/teacher%20education/ga_ite_sft_why_thinking_through_is_important.pdf

Also books with Fran Martin (former GA President) and Jeff Battersby

'Representing Geography' - Liz Taylor - still an important book and one I got a 2nd hand copy of recently so that I could reread a section for a project I was writing.

A photography pack with Harry Cory Wright, with Primary and Secondary handbooks was also excellent. It is reviewed here for TES by former GA President Keith Grimwade.

'Contemporary Approaches to Geography' - 2 volumes written by Charles Rawding

'Living Geography' - a number of authors with GA connections, including several GA Presidents - edited by David Mitchell

I also have a copy of 'Reading our Landscapes' by Charles Rawding which won a GA Silver Award

https://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/silver-ga-award-for-reading-our-landscapes-geography-resource/

Image copyright:Bryan Ledgard and the GA (from Flickr account) at the 125th Anniversary event.

2nd image courtesy of Joseph Kerski

Chris Kington - 'the spark'

In late 2019, I met up with GA President for 2002: Chris Kington at an early screening of the film 'The Lighthouse' in Cambridge.

He told me about something that he had done when he was GA President to prepare for his Presidential lecture.
He had asked former GA Presidents, and also long-standing GA members to tell him when they first got the 'spark' that meant they pursued geography rather than other subjects, and moved into academic or other roles with a geographical theme. In early 2020, Chris gave me a series of letters: some tpyed, some word-processed and some hand-written. I was going to give them back to him, but then the first lockdown occurred and I haven't had a chance since.

I've added elements of those letters into the relevant biographies of several GA Presidents, and have another 10 or so to add in as we get nearer to the present day. Some of them are for Presidents who have not had their biography added yet. They are all really interesting letters and hugely variable. There are many references to particular teachers or university lecturers (including other former Presidents in some cases) and one can see the influences on these people who later became GA President in due course.

They include a copy of a letter sent by David Attenborough from his desk at the BBC in reply to a letter by Mike Morrish, who was the previous post on the blog, and the latest President to be added.
I've added some of these contributions to earlier blog posts, particularly when they are relevant...

Image: part of the letter sent by W.G.V. Balchin: author of the GA's Centenary book (1893-1993) and GA President in 1971.

Challenging Times - Charney Papers

In 1993, the Charney Manor Conference focussed on the National Curriculum. A book was published with a series of papers. It included pieces by many former GA Presidents, including Rex Walford, Eleanor Rawling, Chris Kington and Michael Morrish.

There was an analysis by David Lambert where he talked about Hirsch and his ideas - someone he would return to several times over the next 2 decades in his work. Rex contributed an excellent piece on games in Geography.