GeoCapabilities
Teachers as curriculum leaders
539079-LLP-1-2013-1-UK-COMENIUS-CMP
“Thinking geographically means to think and finally also to act from different perspectives.”
Images© Barking Photographic/Geographical Association.
“Without geography education young people would not be able to understand or even question their position in the world. This does not refer to the knowledge of their hometown’s latitude and longitude, but to the understanding of influencing factors between the environment and the individual. Without this, the student would be denied the opportunity of seeing things beyond his own world.”
Welcome to the GeoCapabilities Project
Background
The key objective of the project is to create teacher education materials that help teachers to develop as curriculum leaders through a 'capabilities' approach. A capabilities approach to education considers how the individual in his or her context can lead a life that she or he has reason to value. A geo-capabilities approach argues that an individual will develop greater capabilities if they acquire geographical knowledge. Consequently the project is especially interested in the role of knowledge, and what the project terms 'powerful disciplinary knowledge' (PDK).
The project explores the importance of perspectives from curriculum studies and how PDK can be translated into meaningful school-based geography experiences, which has led to the concept of ‘curriculum making’. Teachers are seen as central in this process with curriculum making being developed as a means to conceptualise the notion of distributed curriculum leadership in schools.
In providing high quality teaching about complex issues in geography, it is critically important for teachers to have sound subject knowledge and pedagogic awareness - they draw on pedagogic content knowledge and their knowledge of the students they teach to be effective in the classroom. In short, teachers need to be effective ‘curriculum makers’. So, a key objective of the GeoCapabilities approach is to enable teachers to take greater professional responsibility for interpreting a curriculum in a meaningful way that conveys and emphasises the value of geographical knowledge and thinking.
Impact
We are producing a conceptual framework and materials for curriculum thinking in geography. This will be different from, yet complementary to, ‘competence-based’ curricula. The latter tend to stress learning outcomes rather than educational aims. We say both are important. Curriculum leadership is .
GeoCapabilities
The capabilities approach ensures we keep educational aims clearly in sight. Geo-capabilities ensures that geographical knowledge underpins our curriculum making efforts. In short, the project supports and helps develop progressive knowledge-led curriculum making in geography.
International
The GeoCapabilities project is international in scope; a geocapabilities approach can be applied to any particular national context.
The project has official partners in:
Belgium, England, Finland, Greece and the USA.
Associate partners already include:
China, Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Seychelles, Serbia, Spain, Singapore, Sweden, Turkey, UK and USA.
Introduction to GeoCapabilities video
This short introductory video, with project partner Richard Bustin,
outlines the key features, principles and ideas of the GeoCapabilities
project and approach to teaching.
Learn how we think that thinking about school geography in terms of
developing student capabilities offers a very different way to thinking
about the subject of geography.
We think the video will inspire you to explore other pages of
this website and project, and it links to a second short video with an
introductory activity that features on the Teacher Education pages.
What do we mean by 'capabilities'?
Towards a definition
Read our one-page summary statement written in different languages - click on the desired language to download.
Chinese Dutch English Finnish French German Greek Japanese Serbian Spanish Turkish
