Questions children ask

Dr Stephen Scoffham Faculty of Education, Canterbury Christ Church University

Geographical Association Annual Conference University of Derby

April 5th 2013

London

Redcar

Blackburn

Oxford

Grantham

Total number of children134

Total number of boys58Total number of girls76

Very varied catchment areas

All children aged 9-10

QuestionnaireWhat questions do you want to ask about the world and your surroundings? Think carefully and write down no more than six questions in the space below.You might want to think about these themes

Weather, rivers, seas, oceans The environment/creatures Continents and oceans Britain/Your own area Natural disasters Other countries Towns, cities and peoples lives Planet Earth Food and transport Maps

Are you a boy or girl? How old are you?

Analysis categories

(a) School(b) Gender

(c) Themes(d) Times asked

(e) Question type(f) Place names

There were a total of 587 question of which 528 related to geography

Comparison by school and gender

•In general terms the same themes occurred in all five samples

•Influence of previous travel experience and teaching were apparent

•There was evidence of some clustering eg a group of boys in one class asked a lot of questions about death and disasters

•The influence of the Japanese tsunami was strikingly apparent and certainly underlies the frequency of questions about natural hazards

•There were no obvious difference between boys and girls

Factual questionsHow big is our planet?How many continents are there?Is there a core in the middle of the Earth?

Process questionsHow was the Earth made?Why does it rain?Is there a way of stopping natural disasters?

Existential questionsWhy is there a sun and a moon?Why does the world turn round?Can you touch the clouds?

Question Types

Anthropomorphic Questions

• Who built the first mountains? (x3)• How are rivers made?• How do you cause a hurricane?• Who invented water?• Why was the world created?• How was the Earth made?

United Kingdom

England 10Britain 5Redcar 3London 3Blackpool 1Blackburn 1Isle of Man 1UK 1

Total 25

World countries

India 4Japan 3Russia 2South Africa 2Australia 2Iceland 2Finland 1Jamaica 1New Zealand 1USA 1China 1

Total 19

Others

Antarctica 6Amazon 3Pacific Ocean 3North Pole 2River Nile 2Greenland 1Lake Victoria 1Equator 1Himalayas 1Mt Everest 1New York 1

Total 21

Places named by children in their questions

“Taking part in the research has really made me think about facts; we don’t particularly focus on facts because of our cross curricular approach, however the boys seem to love learning them

It has also confirmed the value of fieldwork; this is the first school I have worked in where there are ‘big’ resources just around the corner ie beach, sand dunes, cliffs. All the visits we have done have lasted about 40 minutes but they have clearly made quite a big impression.

Conclusions and Summary

• Considerable number of questions to do with physical geography especially Earth in space

• Surprising number of ‘how’ and ‘what’ questions

• The number of questions about distant places as opposed to a parochial ‘everyday geography’

• The danger of geography becoming a Disney style chronicle of disasters

• The importance of encouraging children to ask questions even when we don’t know the answers

Further thoughts

Children are ‘expert witnesses’ in the

process of curriculum reform and it would be ‘indefensible’ to ignore their views (Alexander 2010 p143)

Questions are one of the ‘learning muscles’ we develop

as we seek to develop our intelligence

(Lucas and Claxton 2011)

Geography provokes and answers

questions about the natural and human

worlds using different scales of enquiry…

(DfEE/QCA 1999)

Children are to be viewed as contributors to our shared

knowledge and understanding of the world rather than as recipients and shared ‘beneficiaries of ‘hand-me-

down curricula(Catling and Martin 2011)

References

Alexander, R. (Ed) (2010) Children, Their World, Their Education, London: Routledge

Catling, C. and Martin, F. (2011) ‘Contesting powerful knowledge: The primary geography curriculum as an articulation between academic and children’s (ethno-) geographies’ in The Curriculum Journal 22, 3 pp317-335

DfEE/QCA (2000) The National Curriculum, London: CrownLucas and Claxton (2011) New Kinds of Smart, Maidenhead: Open

UniversityScoffham, S. (2013) ‘A Question of Research’ in Primary Geography

No 80 pp16-17

Contact: stephen.scoffham@canterbury.ac.uk