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,
