Fawcett Fellowship Research Questionnaire - your help is requested

Updated

Thanks to those colleagues who helped out.

I'm proud to have been a UCL-IOE Fawcett Fellow for this academic year, working with others to explore curriculum thinking and epistemic quality in the curriculum.

In 1987 Edith Fawcett endowed annual Fellowships in the Department of Geography at UCL in memory of her father, Professor C B Fawcett, who was head of the department between 1928 and 1949. The Fellowships were originally designed to enable UK-based teachers and other professional geographers in mid-career to spend a sabbatical term studying at UCL. The teaching Fellows continued to be paid their full salary and the scheme funded replacement geography teaching. This has now been opened up to a second model, where regular meetings are held across a year. 

This year's group of fellows has had regular meetings at UCL, and discussions about curriculum, curriculum making and the influences which shape our professional practice. We have been discussing our decisions over what to teach, how to sequence it, and how to assess it. We have been using a number of books for inspiration, which have included the excellent David Gardner book published by the GA and others, including Alex Standish. We are drawn from different stages of our careers and different school contexts. It's been fascinating to learn from the other fellows, and I have a bulging notebook of notes and documents. We also have an input from Dr. Alex Standish during each session, and are also encouraged to follow up the Fellowship by applying for Masters level study.

We are now reaching the final stage of the year, and writing up our research and thinking. I've now got ethics clearance to launch the questionnaire which will inform the final part of my work and writing. The questionnaire is linked to and also embedded below.

This questionnaire is aimed at teachers who teach GEOGRAPHY, and refers to these lessons specifically. You don't have to be a full time Geography teacher to get involved. All responses are anonymous and may be referenced in a chapter for a forthcoming publication on curriculum thinking in geography. 

The aim of my Fawcett Fellowship is to research the impact of "everyday geographies" and how these are unpicked and taught by individual schools. My GA Presidential theme for 2021-22 was Everyday Geographies, and an exploration of the quotidian. 

As significant local / national / global news stories and related content (such as images and videos on social media accounts) appear, I'm keen to discover  how  you, as geography  teachers, react  to them and make time for them. 

This is particularly aimed at KS3 Geography teachers, but KS2 teachers would also be welcome to respond.

At  what point might these news stories prove weighty enough to displace other content in your curriculum and earn a place in your curriculum for the next few years, and what thought is given to the longevity of these stories placed against topics which form a stronger foundation for GCSE courses as they appear in the specification?  How are these stories combined with existing curriculum content, or used to displace previous case studies? Is thought given to how this might create an imbalance in the parts of the world covered, or the extent to which this reinforces partial views of the world?

Is there a tendency for these topics to skew curriculum offerings away from ‘physical geography’ or what might be considered important disciplinary knowledge because of their nature? Are more news stories likely to be what might be termed 'human' or 'environmental geography'?

I'd be interested in your thoughts on the questions below. 

Please provide as much detail as you are happy to provide.

You can fill in the survey on the embedded form below, or by clicking this link.

I am very grateful for any and all contributions.

If you want to let me know more thoughts, feel free to add a comment on the blogpost below, or DM me on Twitter: @GeoBlogs.

The application process for next year's Fawcett Fellowship will be open shortly, and I shall let you know all the details as soon as they are available.

Professor Alice Coleman - RIP

'Bad design does not determine anything, but it increases the odds against which people have to struggle to maintain civilised standards'

Alice Coleman

I recently heard that Alice Coleman had sadly passed away just short of her 100th birthday.

We had prepared a celebration of her work with the help of Peter Vujakovic. It was published in the Summer 2023 issue of GA Magazine.

GA Magazine is received three times a year by GA members.

There will be further comment later, but the piece can be seen below. Alice leaves a tremendous legacy of work and did a great deal to support and further the cause of the GA in several respects. I have a copy of the handbook for the Land Use Survey she coordinated. 

She was a teacher, as well as working at King's College, London - with which the GA has had many close connections over the years.

Alice Coleman from GeoBlogs

Update

An obituary of #geographer Prof Alice Coleman is included in the latest episode of @BBCRadio4
The Last Word by @Bannmatt

Listen belowhttps://t.co/y7uDYsOkZ0

— Steve Brace (@SteveBraceGeog) June 9, 2023

Telegraph obituary. 

Just hearing @LorettaCLees
talking of theory iflack of defensible space in modernist housing developed in #geographer Alice Coleman's work. & Coleman's advocacy her work to M. Thatcher & taking Prince Charles on field trip to the blocks too #thelastwordhttps://t.co/y7uDYsOkZ0

— Steve Brace (@SteveBraceGeog) June 11, 2023

Reading

Utopia on Trial - available from the Internet Archive. 

Update August 2023

Here's an image of Alice with a former GA President: W G V Balchin.

He was the guest speaker at the GA Thanet Branch in 1996

Alice wrote Balchin's Obituary for the GA.

Tribute to pioneering geography professor and former Broadstairs resident Alice Coleman - https://t.co/WXkdXKgaYq

— Isle of Thanet News (@IsleThanetNews) June 13, 2023

Tribute to pioneering geography professor and former Broadstairs resident Alice Coleman - https://t.co/WXkdXKgaYq

— Isle of Thanet News (@IsleThanetNews) June 13, 2023

Bob Digby on Coffee and Geography

Bob Digby was the GA President in 2012.

Here he is talking to Kit Rackley.

Bill Mead on the Commonplace

"A commonplace book has no ending; the snapping up of unconsidered trifles continues"

A little post in response to a post by Ryan Bate over on his blog from earlier today.

Ryan talked about the idea of the commonplace book.

He describes them as:

notebooks which act as a record of any and all interesting quotes, facts and ideas that a person would come across in the course of their reading and other pursuits.

I guess a blog is a modern example of a commonplace book. I mentioned a Commonplace Book that I own, whose cover is pictured here, compiled by Professor Bill Mead.

It was published in 2015, and was unfortunately published posthumously by John T Smith, who had been working on the book with Bill - who died just over a week short of what would have been his 100th birthday.

Bill was GA President in 1981. I met him several times when he came to Solly Street, and also at GA Conferences. He was a true gentleman and also an expert on Scandinavian geography.

The book is a collection of lecture transcripts (some previously unpublished - often on the theme of Finland and Scandinavia but ranging over a great many themes), including landscapes, statistics and Bill's own varied and rather wonderful life. He describes how he jotted down quotes from books in his home, and filled over 20 notebooks over the years - filling them with extracts and things which drew his attention. 

Such work relies on serendipitous discovery, and I've certainly done that over the years.

The book also includes a quote from a Historian called Zachris Topelius which I appropriated from my GA Presidential Lecture.

Bill provides a copy of the Maconochie Lecture he delivered at UCL forty years ago called 'Changing Lives, Changing Landscapes'. It also includes images of GA Presidents at a gathering, which was helpful for the research for my GA Presidents Blog.

There's also an excellent piece on the changing language of geography, which references the work of another former GA President Sidney Wooldridge who (with G Gordon East) wrote 'The Spirit and Purpose of Geography', of which I have a 1955 copy along with Dudley Stamp, Frank Monkhouse (the definitive text for my own 'A' level geography revision) and Torsten Hägerstrand.

There are some great quotes which I've gleaned for my own version of a 'commonplace book': these include:

"the principle of progress is the principle of superfluity' - Edwin Muir

"Rocks are metaphors for lansdscapes past" - Robert MacFarlane

"What makes life worth living is not the pursuit of happiness, but the happiness of the pursuit" - Brian Little

and this with which I shall conclude this post:

"Every continent has its own spirit of place. Every people is polarised in some particular locality, which is home, the homeland. Different places on the face of the earth hafe different vital effleuence, different vibration, different chemical exhalation, different polarity with different stars; call it what you like. But the spirit of place is a great reality." - D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classical Americal Literature, 1924

From the archive - letter to Fairgrieve

Occasional images taken in the GA archive.

This an image regarding a Geography Society set up at St. Marylebone Grammar School from 1946.

Read more about Fairgrieve here.

More memories of Fulwood Road

My thanks to Hilary Bradley (nee Todd) for sending me some memories of her time as a GA Staff member.

My apologies also for not having posted them at the time as well. I rediscovered them when looking for something else recently.

I was a member of the GA staff, starting in September 1969 and leaving in spring of 1974 (cutting my ties with Sheffield). 

I ran the library and information service, with support from the Hon Librarian Mr (Jim) Jay (we were so formal back then, I had to look up his first name!). 

He was a lovely man and very supportive. I shared my office on the ground floor with the delightful Mrs (Mary) Ellis who was the editor of Geography. 

 My role also included editing assorted publications, including British landscapes through maps (series editor Professor KC Edwards of Nottingham University). 

We would travel to the Peak District to discuss issues in some convivial pub or other! 

I launched a new publication – Resources for geography - which would seem to still going strong in a new guise. And I shall not forget compiling the Dudley Stamp Memorial Index to Geography. 

All the entries were hand-written on index cards which were then alphabetised by computer at the University. So revolutionary was this technology that we wrote an appendix to the index explaining how it was done! (I was taken to see the computer, my second encounter with one – it filled an entire room.)

343 Fulwood Road was a substantial Victorian or Edwardian mansion set in a large garden in a very upmarket suburb of Sheffield. 

The Fleure Library took up most of the ground floor and the admin team worked upstairs. 

My office had a wonderful outlook over the garden – it was an idyllic place to work in, if a little unreal. It was a real treat then to travel to London for regular meetings of the executive committee, usually held in a room at LSE or King's, and the annual conference. These were happy times – a sense of shared purpose, a passion for geography, many wonderful and inspiring people. I looked up to them all as demi-gods.

I need a bit more time to put together a cast list of who was involved at that time. Sheila Jones is the person I best remember. As President she was unique as she was a hands-on secondary school teacher ‘working at the chalk face’ as she put it in her presidential address (I still remember that much!). 

All of her predecessors were in higher education I think. As most of our members were in secondary education, she must have been a real role model.

If this post has prompted some memories I'd love to hear from you.

GA Governing Body vacancies for September 2023

 After four years as a trustee as part of my Presidential journey through the GA, my term in office comes to an end at the end of August 2023.

At the same time, there is also the end of a term of office for several other GA colleagues who I have worked with for the last four years. This means that there some vacancies on the GA's Governing Body, which is of course a good training ground for those who may have ambitions to become more involved with the Association and give back to the association and perhaps ultimately put themselves forward for Election for GA President.

There are actually four vacancies to be filled, which carry different responsibilities.

You can read more about them on the GA website page, and the links here.

Chair of Trustees

Honorary Treasurer

Elected Trustees

Co-opted trustee

For those who may have previously suggested that the GA and its Governing Body needs to become more inclusive and diverse, this is your opportunity!

Happy to answer any questions about the roles and the wider work of the GA's Governing Body if anyone is interested in finding out more.

I will blog my thanks to some of those people who are leaving GB later in the year...

GA President for 2024-5 announced as Hina Robinson

The GA Conference 2023 was a great success and I am blogging my experiences over at LivingGeography.

One of the events that happens at the GA Conference is the big reveal of who will be the GA President in two years time, and begin as Vice President in September of that year.

So this happened today...excited but daunting!! @The_GA #GAConf23 pic.twitter.com/zEtORtsiw3

— Hina Robinson 🌍 (@RobboGeog) April 13, 2023

This year, the person revealed was Hina Robinson. 

Hina is already an elected trustee and has also been involved with several GA events in the past. She has also presented at the GA Conference a number of times, and last year brought her students to an event at my conference in Guildford. She is the Chair of Governors of a Primary school and co-chair of the GA's working group which has been exploring inclusion and diversity.

She teaches at Southend High School for Girls, where she is also Diversity Lead.

You can see her in action on this GERECO page where she was part of an event exploring teaching about the anthropocene along with a range of speakers and contributors. If you haven't seen this before it's well worth a watch by the way.

Hina is on Twitter and is worth a follow so that you can follow her progress through the next three years.

Hina's appointment is a significant moment for the GA.

A 1991 Award

Steve Brace recently shared an image of the GA Award that he received at the Conference in 1991, signed by the President of that year: Eleanor Rawling, and a former colleague Frances Soar.

Now back at work having been off for quite a while, & looking forward to catching up with #geography colleagues at #GAconf21.

Emptied a draw recently & found this relic from the 1991 conference.! #chembakolli @ActionAidUK pic.twitter.com/UQoeyQ7GyS

— Steve Brace (@SteveBraceGeog) April 11, 2023

GA Conference 2023: Sheffield Hallam University

Another GA Conference is about to start - less than a week to go now.

This will be the 130th Anniversary conference of the GA.

This year's event takes place at Sheffield Hallam University between 13th and 15th of April.

Professor Alastair Owens is the GA President this year, and his theme is Collaborative Geographies.

A full programme can be downloaded from here. Click the link for a PDF download.

Next year's theme has also been revealed by Denise Freeman: GA President for 2023-24.

Geography for Everyone

We will be adding a biography of Denise on the 1st of September. 

We will also be revealing the name of the President for 2024-25 at the event as well.

I hope to see you (and several other former GA Presidents) in Sheffield next week...

Environment Agency - Rivercraft 2

Updated May 2023

The Environment Agency launched their Rivercraft resource in 2022, which explores the changes made along the River Ribble in Preston using the popular platform of Minecraft to allow students to explore the area.

More details here.

Find out more about it here too.

A new version of the resource is coming soon.

The Environment Agency is one of the GA's Strategic Partners. We worked with the creators of the new version of the game, called Rivercraft 2.

Update

The resource was launched and entered for an award.

The resource won in its category in the Geography in Government Awards!

Read the story here.

Charney Manor Primary Geography Conference 2023

I had booked to attend this annual event during 2022 and my Presidential year, but the conference had to be postponed after a storm took out the electricity supply to the venue, and I had to quickly email all the delegates to let them know that the event was cancelled, managing to catch some people just before they set off on lengthy drives, or to catch a plane.

This year's event was the 25th conference, so there was cake of course.

I have just finished blogging the event over on my LivingGeography blog.

Head over there now to see the 10 posts summarising the event. Search on Charney Manor Primary to find the posts.

GA Conference Bookclub - The Edge of the Plain

 The first of what may become an annual book club event is going to take place on the first day of the GA Conference in a month's time. This is part of the changes to the format of the first day, which includes the fact that the conference dinner is included in the delegate fees.

I have been asked to lead a discussion around a book and provide some thoughts on how it could be used in the classroom. There will also be an opportunity for you to swap books once again as we repeat the book swap which was originally the idea of Kate Stockings and seemed to work well last year, with many people going away with a new read for the journey home.

The book that has been chosen for this first session is:

 'The Edge of the Plain' by James Crawford.

You can follow James on Twitter here.

On a day when Suella Braverman is in Rwanda touring the places where asylum seekers may be housed, when we have a growing rhetoric of exclusion, and a week after the furore over Gary Lineker's comments which led to the BBC being put under pressure, it shows the borders are just as topical as ever. Next month will also see the launch of the new Tim Marshall book. There are over 100 million displaced people globally, and the coming decades will see millions on the move...

You can read the first 50+ pages of the book on Google Books using the link here.

The book is also available to purchase (no obligation to do that) - currently in hardback, but with a paperback version later this year. 

There is also an Audible version of the book, read by James himself, which you may find a useful departmental resource as well. I have a copy for that purpose.

The book has a number of case studies which would be of relevance for many different school contexts and different key stages. They include: 

- Sápmi - the territory of the Sámi people, and the threats of HEP schemes and climate change, and the fight for the cultural identity of the people

- the development of 'no-man's land' during conflicts including World War One.

- Historical walls including those marking the edge of Empires such as the Roman

- The Mason-Dixon line

- how melting glaciers have changed some borders, and also revealed the body of Ötzi the Ice Man, who I have a particular connection with (some good second hand prices to be had)

- the issues facing people crossing from Mexico into the USA, and the project which maps the belongings they leave behind when they often tragically fail to complete the crossing of the desert

- the West Bank and Israel and Palestinian walls behind which lies Banksy's Walled Off Hotel, which James visits - this connects with a unit I used to teach on Israel & Palestine

- the Moroccan border territory of Melilla, which is an entry point into the EU potentially, but is guarded by razor wire, which the Haragas are desperate to cross

- the movement of viruses across borders... 

- the African Great Green Wall to stop desertification

James has also recorded a number of podcasts and interviews which you could watch ahead of the session and they are referenced in the talk as well.

The session will run from 12.30 - 1.30 on the opening day of the conference. I will provide a short input with some ideas for how to use the book, and share some thoughts on other border options. There will then be prompts for discussions and sharing.

There will also be a small input from James himself.

There are other border related books of course including Cal Flyn's book on abandoned places, and Klaus Dodds' 'Border Wars', which is excellent. Tim Marshall's books have also touched on the notion of borders.

Klaus in fact tweeted earlier this morning about the growing relevance of borders...

All of this seems to have taken on added salience in recent days. In my book Border Wars I reflected on four strategies of many governments. Construction, expansion, deflection and expulsion. #borders pic.twitter.com/rYkJs9MMIC

— Klaus Dodds (@klausdodds) March 19, 2023

There's also a relevant piece in today's Observer about the language of stopping the boats...

 

I will also be mentioning an article in 'Teaching Geography' written by my friend and colleague Claire Kyndt, published in 2015, describing our work on a unit on Borders for Year 8 and 9 students. This includes a useful framework for exploring borders which I will be sharing.

It would be lovely to see plenty of people there to start off what I'm sure will be a wonderful conference.

GA Conference 2023 - Geo Live

Preparations are now in the final changes for the forthcoming GA Conference 2023.

The Geo LIVE event for students is also available once again.

This year's event is called PLACE Stories and has been curated by Denise Freeman and Alastair Owens.

2023 Programme: Place stories

9.30 - 10.00 - Registration

10.10 - Keynote lecture: Shabna Begum

11.30 - 12.15 - Introduction to the day and the Voices Project

Focusing on space, place and identity, students explore where groups have felt in place/out of place, exploring similarities and differences; as well as critically questioning why these patterns exist.

12.15 - 12.45 - Lunch on site (students bring their own lunch).

12.45 - 2.00 - Fieldwork with Duncan Hawley - Stories in Urban Stonework

Going outside, students join Duncan to look at the rock cycle in an urban environment and consider dynamic changes in the landscape and a changing world.

2.00 - Part two of the voices project

Engaging with recordings from the Voices Project, students explore how to collect their own oral geographies and how they could be used in the NEA, at school, or in the future.

3.30 pm End

Alice Coleman's Centenary

There is a separate post for Alice Coleman on the blog.

This year marks the centenary of her birth.

See later update.

Image source: https://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/mui/sius2014/LorettaLees_SIUS.pdf

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2427.12047

In an article in 'The Guardian' in 2019, Lynsey Hanley (author of the excellent 'Estates') talks about Alice's contributions to improving people's lives and campaigning against concrete tower blocks. 

I am reminded here of some classic schools' TV programmes from the 1980s set in Glasgow - part of the 'Geography Casebook' and looking at the problems of the city's redevelopment, with Kitty Murphy describing how it used to be in the tenements they replaced with the streets "so warm and good".

https://theconversation.com/tower-block-boom-how-high-rise-apartments-became-the-height-of-luxury-56178

Source:

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/28/delicate-sense-of-terror-what-does-concrete-do-to-our-mental-health 

More to come as the Centenary gets nearer.

UPDATE

Sadly we heard of Alice's passing in May this year, just before her 100th birthday. 

A celebration of her work is in the Summer 2023 issue of GA Magazine.