volume 36 | number 2 | summer 2011 · volume 36 number 2 summer 2011 editorial: ‘the danger of a...

Volume 36 | Number 2 | Summer 2011

Focus on diversity

Writing for Teaching Geography –could you contribute?

Teaching Geography provides a forum for sharing:• practical strategies for teaching geography• critical reflection on geography teaching

and learning• curriculum innovation and change in geography.

If you have a teaching strategy, practical idea, resource to share or particular view on educational practice, we would like to hear from you.

Teaching Geography welcomes articles from PGCE students, NQTs and practicing teachers. If you have an idea but have never submitted an article before and would like some advice, please contact Mary Biddulph ([email protected]), the Editor of Teaching Geography, who will be happyto discuss it with you.

Articles are published in the journal and on the GA website. Any additional resources associated with specific articles, such as teaching resources, schemes of work, images and web links, will be made available to download from the GA website.

Each issue of Teaching Geography has a ‘focus’,for which the articles are usually commissioned. However, we also welcome the submission of the following types of article:

1. Planning and pedagogy (1500 words) ■These articles critically discuss and illustrate approaches to teaching geography. Planning and pedagogy articles could be based on:• classroom research• teaching and learning strategies/opportunities• evaluation/reflection• planning• assessment.

They can:• be accompanied by electronic resources to support

the article (PowerPoint, PDFs, Word)• be accompanied by student work• contain photos.

2. The G-Factor (1500 words) ■These are short articles plus a teaching resource (supported by more resources online), based around a practical idea for teaching a lesson or sequence of lessons. G-Factor articles:• set the scene and the context (Who? Where? When?)• cover the geographical learning (What is it?

Why teach it?)• discuss the teaching and learning process• reflect on the quality of learning (What was

effective? What could be developed or changed?)• contain photos, including samples of students’

work, to illustrate points raised in the reflections section

• are supported by a one-side teaching resourceplus additional materials on the GA website.

3. Change and challenge (1000–1500 words) ■These short articles discuss current educational views and how they impact upon geography.

4. How to... (750 words) ■How to... articles provide practical advice and strategies for geography departments.

Teaching Geography encourages authors, where possible, to submit examples of students’ work and photos of students completing the work – these must have parental permission.

Articles should be submitted with two or three stimulating questions at the end to encourage debate.

There is detailed information on preparing articles for publication at www.geography.org.uk/download/GA_GITGGuide.pdf

Please note that authors assign copyright of their articles to the Geographical Association. Articles can only be reproduced with the permission of the Geographical Association. Publication elsewhere will not be permitted during the first 12-month period.

Summer 2011© Teaching Geography

Editor: Mary Biddulph

Email: [email protected]

Editorial contact: Nicola Donkin


Volume 36 Number 2 Copy editing: Andrew Shackleton. Design: Ledgard Jepson Ltd.Printed by: Buxton Press.

ISSN 0305-8018 (print)ISSN 2043-6831 (online)

Cover photo: Symbolising diversity.Photo: istockphoto/urbancow.

The opinions expressed in this journal do not necessarily coincide with those of the Editor or the Geographical Association.

Teaching Geography is published three times a year.

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For copyright enquiries please contact Dorcas Turner ([email protected]). For advertising enquiries please contactNicola Donkin ([email protected]).

© The Geographical Association. As a benefit of membership, the Association allows its members to reproduce material from Teaching Geography for their own internal school use, provided that the copyright is held by the Geographical Association.

Safety: Care has been taken to ensure that articles published in Teaching Geography do not suggest practices which might be dangerous. However, the Geographical Association has not tested the activities described and can offer no guarantee of safety.

The Teaching Geography Editorial Board

Editor: Mary Biddulph University of NottinghamRachel Atherton Southfield Technology College, WorkingtonVictoria Cook University of LeedsJane Ferretti University of SheffieldGraham Goldup Cardinal Newman Catholic School, HoveFred Martin BristolIan Selmes Oakham School, RutlandLiz Taylor University of CambridgeRuth Totterdell Geographical Association, SheffieldJustin Woolliscroft University of Hull

Strategic partners

Summer 2011© Teaching Geography

TeachingGeography

Volume 36Number 2

Summer 2011

Editorial: ‘The danger of a single story’ 45

Mary Biddulph introduces this edition of Teaching Geography which focuses upon diversity.

Diversity, citizenship and cohesion 46

In the focus article, Keith Ajegbo argues that the issues surrounding community cohesion, religion, race and socio-economic status are central to geography teaching, despite the change in the political focus from the coalition government. ■

The negotiation of diveristy 49

The concept of diversity is applicable equally whenstudying the physical environment as when studyingsocial and cultural realms. Liz Taylor discusses diversity within and between places, and provides suggestions of how to approach this when teaching. ■

Imagining distant places: changing representations of Egypt 52

Claire Kennedy examines year 9 students’ representations of Egypt through the lenses of orientalism and ‘othering’. Students’ perceptions of distant places are frequently colourful but often reflect popular stereotypes. ■

Thirdspace: exploring the ‘lived space’ of cultural ‘others’ 55

Richard Bustin discusses how using Soja’s concept of ‘Thirdspace’ can enable students to engage with the ‘lived space’ of homeless people in Las Vegas. ■

Why use AfL? Dusting off the black box 58

Using evidence from a PGCE action research project, Rajiv Sidhu outlines how effective AfL can improve learning and motivation with subsequent affects on attainment. ■

Planning for progression: making sense of famine and feast 61

In this article Suzie Farmer critically examines how the geographical understanding of a class of year 8 students advanced during a sequence of lessons about famine and feast. ■

Creative thinking and geographical investigation 64

Creative thinking is not fixed but something which can be learnt and practiced to allow creativity to flourish. Simon Renshaw suggest four methods with supporting rationales which can be used to promote creative thinking within geography. ■

Sport and geography 67

David Storey explores sport’s evident geographic relevance by considering spatial patterns of sport, the significance of sport and place, globalisation within sport and the use of sport for political and economic ends.

The transition to and through university for non-traditional local students: some observations for teachers 70

Lauren Barnes and Amy Buckley (undergraduate students studying geography at Newcastle University) with Peter Hopkins and Simon Tate (lecturers at the university) offer some considerations for teachers to help with students’ transitions to university life. ■

Promoting geography in your school 72

Andrew McGeown suggests a number of strategies for encouraging students to continue studying geography beyond key stage 3 which are used successfully within his school. ■

Should Jerzy stay or should he go? 74

Catherine Owen suggests using a mock Facebook-style page to help students investigate the advantages and disadvantages of migration for a Polish migrant. ■

Geography resources reviews 75

Reviews of new geography resources.

GA Awards 2011 76

Winners of the 2011 GA Awards, presented at Annual Conference.

Contents

Ajegbo – see page 46

Storey – see page 67

McGeown – see page 72

Environmental policy

At regular intervals we revisit the production arrangements for our journals, ensuring the GA gets best value by putting the production work out to tender and seeking suppliers who share our mission to reduce the environmental impact of our activities.

Our journal printers, Buxton Press, have won several environmental awards, including two national awards for best Environmental Printer of the Year. This journal is printed on paper from forests certified by PEFC as sustainably managed.

Key to articles■ Focus■ Planning and

pedagogy ■ The G-Factor■ Change and

challenge■ How to...

Editorial: ‘The danger of a single story’

Mary Biddulph,

Editor

I recently watched a video of a TED talk given by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie entitled ‘The danger of the single story’ (2009). I recommend watching it. In her talk Adichie argues that the telling of a ‘single story’ about people and places over and over again

can quickly become the definitive story of those places and of the people who live in them: ‘Show a people as one thing, as only one thing over and over again and this is what they become.’

She illustrates her point with a familiar example. When Adichie was studying in the USA, scare stories of Mexicans desperate to cross the border into the allegedly rich USA were regularly repeated in the US media. For Adichie, the impact of this single story on her own perception of Mexico was to unify Mexican people into a single group all desperate to leave their home country; an entire nation became constructed around the telling and retelling of the single story. Such stories, she argues, ‘flatten’ the experience of individuals and result in incomplete stereotypes.

Examples such as this raise many questions forgeography teachers concerning the stories wecreate in our classroom and the unintendedconsequences for young peoples’ geographicalunderstanding if we only tell single stories. Mexicanmigration is often viewed as a ‘classic case study’of international migration, but as geographyteachers, we have to ask ourselves what kind ofgeographical understanding does this single storycreate in the minds of our students? What aretheir mental constructions of Mexico, or any otherplace, if all they have to work with is this singlestory? Single stories such as this, argues Adichie,emphasise difference, rob people of their dignityand create critical misunderstandings.

The focus for this edition of TG is ‘diversity’. The notion of the single story challenges us to consider how we enable young people to critically understand diversity in all its manifestations.

The lead article, written by Sir Keith Ajegbo, raises a series of highly significant questions about geography’s role in developing students’ understanding of the overlapping ideas of race,

religion, socio-economic status and community cohesion. Liz Taylor then reminds us that in pursuing such stories we, as teachers, must be mindful of the tension between complexity and accessibility and that oversimplification of difficult ideas can often lead to the creation of unhelpful binaries. The subsequent two articles, by Kennedy and Bustin, both draw on ideas familiar in academic geography – orientialism (Edward Said) and Thirdspace (Ed Soja) – to provide students with frameworks for questioning their own understanding of difference and to begin to engage with some of the influences that create differences within places.

I hope you also enjoy reading the other articles in this edition of TG as each, in different ways and to different degrees maintain the conversation about diversity – be it university entrants, creative geography or progression and assessment. They each serve to support our understanding of the complex and diverse nature of both the discipline as well as the challenge of teaching it.

This now brings me to a related concern – that of the current review of the school curriculum. It is the intention that future editions of TG will, along with Primary Geography, publish a series of articles that engage with the emerging debates about the shape, development and eventual implementation of a new school curriculum. We are currently in the midst of a curriculum consultation process and the GA has completed a response to the first round on behalf of its members. What is clear is that the ‘knowledge debate’ prompted by references to ‘core knowledge’ in the education White Paper is something the geography education community needs to engage with. We must satisfy ourselves that decisions regarding what students learn are not just ideological decisions. If they are, then we run the risk that school geography in itself becomes a single story limited to pub-quiz facts and disconnected content.

To kick-start your thinking the Summer edition of Primary Geography considers some of the issues presented by core knowledge. The next edition of TG will focus on ‘the place of knowledge’.

Rex Walford made an immense contribution to the development of high quality geography teaching practices during his life. A full obituary for Rex can now be read at www.geography.org.uk/news/rexwalford. | TG

This edition of TG focuses on diversity.

The articles range from considering

cultural diversity in the UK, to exploring

the lived space of homeless people

in Las Vegas and discussing

the transition to university life for

non-traditional students.

Summer 2011© Teaching Geography 45

References Chiamanda, A. (2009) ‘The danger of a single story’, TEDGlobal, Oxford. Available online at http://blog.ted.com/2009/10/07/the_danger_of_a (last accessed 29 March 2011). DfE (2010) The Importance of Teaching: The Schools White Paper 2010. DfE. Available online at www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationdetail/page1/CM%207980 (last accessed 12 April 2011).

Mary Biddulph at the GA Annual Conference 2011. Photo: Bryan Ledgard.

For the latest news and ideasMake sure you read your copy of GA Magazineto keep up to date with the latest geography news! If you don’t subscribe to the GA’s other journals, take a look at the free samples of Primary Geography and Geography onthe GA website to see what you’re missing: www.geography.org.uk/freesample

Summer 2011© Teaching Geography46

In 2006 issues of diversity, identity and national cohesion were very high on the political agenda. The Education and Inspections Act introduced the duty on all schools to promote community cohesion and I was asked by the Secretary of State for Education to lead the writing of a curriculum review entitled Diversity and Citizenship. The focus of the review was the teaching of ethnic, religious and cultural diversity across the curriculum, including whether or not modern British social and cultural history should be the fourth pillar of citizenship education. However, the political agenda has changed with the new coalition government: in the Big Society, issues around religious and ethnic diversity in communities are neglected and community cohesion will no longer be a focus of Ofsted inspections.

In the light of this change it is interesting to look at how the duty to promote community cohesion has impacted on curriculum development in schools, and to assess the moral imperatives for developing and continuing the work. Many of the issues that lie at the heart of this work are, to my understanding, central to geography teaching.

Why was a duty to promote community cohesion introduced in 2006?There were many reasons why issues of identity, diversity and cohesion were of deep political concern in 2006. The terrorist attacks of 7/7 (in 2005) and the fear of terrorism related to religious extremism had created real angst about the depths of the divisions in our society. In September 2005 Trevor Phillips, then Head of the Commission for Race Equality, warned that British schools were ‘sleepwalking to segregation’ as their student intake failed to match the multicultural profile of their catchment areas.

Increasing concern about immigration was also being voiced much more openly. Since Enoch Powell’s 1968 ‘rivers of blood’ speech, major politicians had steered away from using immigration as a political weapon, but in the 2005 general election Michael Howard, then Conservative party leader, put immigration back on the agenda. It was also the biggest issue on the doorstep in the 2010 general election; there was concern both about the extent of immigration and about the rise of far-right parties such as the BNP.

In 2006 the Labour government launched the Respect Agenda to address concerns about relationships between young and old people, and about antisocial behaviour by young people in communities. This followed a 2004 UNESCO

report identifying English youngsters as some of the unhappiest young people in the developed world. This was coupled with much debate in the tabloid press about the country’s underclass and those described recently by the Chancellor, George Osborne, of making ‘the dole a lifestyle choice’.

All of this was taking place against a growing awareness of the global nature of the world we live in. I quote from a talk by Ted Cantle (2008):

In 1965, 75 million people lived outside their home country. This is now 180 million. 600,000 Britons live in Spain and 200,000 in New Zealand.

He noted that there are 25 million tourists to theUK each year and 70 million from the UK to globaldestinations. In June 2010 the New York Times published an article (DeParle, 2010) which stated:

The United Nations estimates that there are 214 million migrants across the globe, an increaseof about 37% in two decades ... “There’s more mobility at this moment than at any time in world history,” said Gary P. Freeman, a political scientist at the University of Texas.

Migration and travel are not the only forms of globalisation: across the world many young people are involved with the instant globalisation offered by the internet.

However, Gary Younge (2010, p. 205) argues:

But the truth is that, when it comes to identity, the global and the parochial have a symbiotic relationship. The smaller the world seems and the less control we have over it, the more likely we are to retreat into the local spheres where we might have influence.

It seems to me that it is increasingly difficult for young people living in the volatility and pace of the 21st century to stake a claim to who they are and where they belong.

The political approach might have changed since 2006 but the issues that led to those requirements are very much still with us: attitudes to globalisation, to migration and to urbanisation continue to cause concern. In this swirling world how do people of different cultures, religions and ethnicities live together? Is it necessary to rebuild the relationship between the young and the old in our communities? Is the world that we see through the instant access of the media and the internet how the world really is? Is the gap between rich and poor inevitable? Are we becoming more insular and less tolerant as the world grows smaller? These are questions that I believe, despite not being a geographer, to be highly relevant to geography teaching today. But at the same time they are not questions

Diversity, citizenship and cohesion

Issues of diversity, identity and cohesion were very high on the previous government’s political agenda but these priorities have changed with the coalition government. However, it is still vitally important for young people to learn about these issues and become educated about differing attitudes to globalisation, migration and urbanisation. Thisarticle arguesthat the issues surrounding community cohesion, religion, race and socio-economic status are central to geography teaching.

Keith Ajegbo


and ethnicity, and socio-economic status? These themes are central to explaining the world today and require teachers to venture into areas that can be difficult and controversial to teach.

Religion

Presumably geography cannot ignore religion. Religion defines cultures and the migration to this country of people with differing religious beliefs has changed the nature of many of our cities (see Figure 1). But can geographers discuss how areas might have changed without understanding the religious nature of the change? Islam has had a hard time in the press and Muslims are subject to much stereotyping. If geographers are to be able to convey the growth and dynamics of particular communities, then it is important to understand the cultures and relationships within those communities. When 7/7 happened, many schools deemed it too controversial to discuss; yet how can geographers talk about the world without, at some time, mentioning 9/11, 7/7, Afghanistan, Palestine or Iraq. Because geography is underpinned by concepts such as place, space, scale and interdependence, I would argue that geographers have more responsibility than many other teachers to discuss these controversial issues with young people.

Race

Issues of race, culture and ethnicity are particularly close to my heart. My late father was Nigerian and my mother English. I was born in south London in 1946. My childhood was spent largely in a white working class community and my idea of what being black meant was through the stereotypes that abounded at the time. To be black to me was to be someone who lived in a more primitive world, who had suffered slavery and who was treated as second class in countries like South Africa and the USA. If a black person was famous it was often in certain accepted categories like music or sport which became part of the stereotype. I do not remember geography at school helping me to deal with this overriding fear of inferiority. How young people view people

for geography teachers alone and it would be a shame in this new political environment to lose the work on the cross-curriculum dimension ‘Identity and Diversity’, established by the QCDA.

From personal to global identityThe work on diversity, citizenship and cohesion foregrounded the notion that young people exist in many circles of identity. The study of geography is central and crucial to this work. How do you move from identifying yourself in your family to seeing yourself as a global citizen? How do we define the school community and the communities in which young people feel they live? To what extent do these communities come together and what keeps them apart? Is it desirable to bring them together and what can be done to enable this? Issues of context are very important – how might life be different if you live in a largely white community or in a multicultural one? In what ways does school geography help young people to understand what living in different situations in different parts of the country might mean to how life is perceived, how life is experienced and how life-chances are created or denied?

Ofsted (2010) felt that schools were weaker in defining and discussing a sense of national identity than one of global identity. To what extent is the notion of national identity an important concept for geography, important to the identity of young people and useful in creating a sense of cohesion? Speeches by the current Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, suggest that, in an ideal world, he would like learning history to be compulsory up to the age of 16, and that this history would tell a binding national story – will this binding story create a greater sense of cohesion?

The Diversity and Citizenship Curriculum Review (2007), which I led, argued that recent British history should be played against British values to help realign our sense of ourselves with what we have become. Geography has a massive part to play in this sense-making process and in discussing the economic, cultural and social pros and cons of immigration in relation to the notion of national identity. Geography is clearly central to understanding our relationship to the Commonwealth and Europe, and for examining some of the myths around illegal immigration and asylum seekers. Again, context is everything. In some schools global conflicts will be fought out in their playgrounds; in others they will be barely understood or mentioned. Similarly, geography is important in understanding how the struggles for equal opportunities in this country are played out across urban and rural environments. For example, how can London be promoted as a vibrant multicultural city for the Olympics if the country is ‘sleepwalking to segregation’?

The big themes of community cohesion and diversityHow does geography relate to the big themes of community cohesion: religion, race, culture

Figure 1: A former Christian church which is now an

Islamic mosque in Redhill, Surrey. Photo: Paula

Richardson.


Citizenship report answered a question about identity with ‘They see Africa as poor, Asia as flooded and England as snobby whites and poor blacks.’ Young people have class ceilings created by how they see the world. Surely geographers, with their particular knowledge, are in a good position to help young people challenge perceptions that might limit their view of themselves and their possibilities.

Continuing curriculum developmentA report from the University of Warwick (Strand, 2007) indicated that black students are three times more likely to be excluded from school than white students and 0.3 times as likely to be on gifted and talented registers. In 2005 there were twice as many black men in prison as at university. The Development Education Association (2008) commissioned research (undertaken by Ipsos Mori) which found that only 47% of white students were positive about different kinds of people living together.

Another boy in Newham said about identity:

I’m black, I live in London – that’s my home. My parents are from the Caribbean but I’m really African. I’m a Christian but I’m E7 – that’s where I hang, they’re my people. That’s who I am.

It is great for young people to have a group of local friends but it was in Newham in 2010 that young people were murdered because someone from E7 found themselves in E8; it must be the concern of geographers that our young people do not become increasingly parochial!

I believe that what we teach has to be relevant to the world we live in, so developing a curriculum that enables the young man from Newham and others like him to understand himself, his community and his world, and that invites him and other young people to engage critically with identity, diversity and cohesion, is a work in progress that has never been more necessary. | TG

of different races and see beyond the stereotypes is important in a world in which many geo-cultural and geo-political conflicts are racialised.

Reading an article by Matthew Syed (2007) entitled ‘So black runners are naturally faster? Wrong’ made me think about how to discuss race and stereotyping in the classroom. His article, amplified in the last chapter of his book Bounce (2010), is based on the fact that ‘every winner of 100m at the World Championships since the inaugural event in 1983 has been black, as has every finalist from the last eight championships.’ But attributing particular successes to racial characteristics can move us quickly into areas of stereotyping and assumptions about different people in our world. Arguably this has happened to African Caribbean boys in our schools. Syedrefutes the generalisation that blacks run faster orthat there is any genetic relevance in the notion ofblackness. Rather, he says that small populationshave distinct genetic traits because naturehas selected physiques that suit their naturalenvironments. He also looks at why 90% of world-class Kenyan distance runners live within a 60-mileradius of the town Eldoret. Detailed research into this group of runners revealed that their success is evidently not due to race or genetics but to geographical factors like living at high altitudes and running long distances to school. Geography teachers are in a great position to discuss the causes of cultural and racial differences to create perspective. My memory of geography has much to do with tying races to places.

Socio-economic status

Geography is better placed than any other mainstream subject to look at issues of socio-economic status in our society and across the world. The growing gap between the rich and poor in Britain is the cause of considerable political angst. Currently, white working class boys perform worse than any other group in a range of academic league tables. Why in geographical terms has white working class culture been devalued? If diversity education is to mean anything in Britain, it has to be relevant to white students and in largely white communities.

What are the factors in terms of housing, schooling, possible racism and opportunity that mean so few black students go to Oxford? Why do 69% of British Muslims of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin live in poverty compared to 20% of white people? To what extent do factors at birth determine ultimate outcomes? One boy we interviewed in Newham for the Diversity and

Sir Keith Ajegbo is a former headteacher and led the Diversity and Citizenship Curriculum Review.


ReferencesCantle, T. (2008) ‘Introducing the duty to promote community cohesion’, Leicester Local Authority, 2 October. DEA (2008) Young People’s Experiences of Global Learning. London: DEA.DeParle, J. (2010) ‘Global migration: a world ever more on the move,’ New York Times, 26 June. Department for Education and Skills (2007) Diversity and Citizenship Curriculum Review. Nottingham: DFES. Ofsted (2010) Citizenship Established? Manchester: Ofsted.Strand, S. (2007). Minority Ethnic Pupils in the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England.Research Report 851/2007. Nottingham: Department for Education and Skills.Syed, M. (2007) ‘So black runners are naturally faster? Wrong,’ The Times, 3 August. Syed, M. (2010) Bounce: How champions are made. London: Fourth Estate. Younge, G. (2010) Who Are We – And why should it matter in the 21st century? London: Viking.

• Do you think geography is the right subject for discussing issues of diversity?

• How do you discuss sensitive issues such as race and religion with your students?

Share your experiences using the ‘Comment on this page’ facility on this article’s page on the GA website.


The negotiation of diversity Liz Taylor

One of the greatest challenges, and attractions, about learning and teaching geography is engagement with an almost infinitely diverse world. While writers often apply the term ‘diversity’ within a cultural and social context (see, for example, Morgan, 2008, and Ajegbo, pages 46–48 of this issue), the concept is just as applicable when studying the physical environment.

If geography is the study of this almost infinitely complex world with its temporal and spatial diversity, then the challenge for teaching geography is in negotiating the tension between complexity and accessibility (Figure 1).

When teaching geography, one aim is to stimulate young people’s interest in the complexity of the world, without overwhelming them by its diversity. Finding the right place on the complexity–accessibility continuum is hard. If we are over-concerned with accessibility, we may easily descend into stereotypes or make geographical models into the ends, rather than the starting points, for understanding. Conversely, if we over-emphasise complexity, we may disappear into a curriculum of never-ending case studies, each valuable in itself, but lacking the ‘so what?’ of synoptic reflection.

So, how to negotiate the complexity–accessibility tension? Thinking explicitly about the concept of diversity in planning can be profitable. In terms of diversity over space, it is useful to balance learning about diversity within and diversity between. So instead of learning about a generic ‘Amazon rainforest’, we plan opportunities for students to consider diversity within the Amazon and between the Amazon and other rainforests (temperate and tropical) in the world. One popular lesson starter ‘Amazon or not?’ (or any other ‘(place of your choice) or not?’) is a simple way of drawing out ideas about diversity. In selecting a range of images for students to analyse, you can either highlight diversity within the place (see Figure 2), or you can compare and contrast it with other related places, considering similarity and difference between. A further stepmight involve students locating and selecting theirown image sets to explore notions of diversity.

In representing ‘other’ places (and here I include people as well as the built/natural environment that also comprises a place), there is a key danger of emphasising diversity between ‘here’ and ‘there’ while minimising diversity within

both here and there. This over-simplification of diversity within a place is a common element of essentialism (see Morgan and Lambert, 2003; Brooks and Morgan, 2006). It often happens as a by-product of the perfectly reasonable aim of making the study of a particular place accessible. This presentation of accessible versions of the world is not limited to geography teaching, but is also fundamental to the media and a feature of normal communication. Thus over-simplified views of other places which minimise difference within and highlight difference between are common within more general social discourses. For example, Inokuchi and Nozaki (2005) researched the discourses of Japan as given by young people in three US schools in the early 1990s. They analysed 372 paragraphs written in response to the question ‘What do you know about Japan?’. Young people’s statements covered a variety of topics, including trade competition, names of products thought to be Japanese, food, clothes, language, people’s physical appearance and the environment. Japan was represented as a nation of technology, and as an economic or industrial power, yet ‘The most prevalent description of Japan … is that it is different’ (2005, p. 66). Physical appearance was linked with ‘race’, which was associated with state and counterposed to the USA, thus essentialising both communities. There was also some conflation of Japan with other Asian countries, especially China. Inokuchi and Nozaki’s study shows how representation of places is tied up with processes of identity formation, in which our own identity is often constructed in opposition to the characteristics we ascribe to others.

If you’d like to read further on issues of identity formation and representation of difference, accessible sources include Giles and Middleton (1999) and Cloke et al. (2005), but there is still the challenge of how to use these ideas from geography to inform learning in the classroom. When teaching about places, a common response to the complexity–accessibility tension has been to present a country as having contrasting ‘sides’. Examples include rich and poor Brazil, traditional and high-tech Japan, and north and south Italy. Such presentations may help students move on from one-dimensional stereotypes, but is there a danger of setting up a new stereotype in this simple binary? Picton (2008) discusses this issue with regard to young people’s understandings of Brazil.

The concept of diversity is applicable

equally when studying the physical

environment as when studying

cultural and social realms. The

challenge when teaching geography

is to negotiate the tension between complexity and accessibility to

enhance students’ learning as much

as possible. This article discusses

diversity within and between places, with

suggestions of how to approach this when teaching.

Complexity Accessiblility

Figure 1: The spectrum between complexity and accessibility.


of disabilities being outside of England, but I mean of course they’re everywhere!

Similarly, email correspondence with Japanese young people through the Japan UK Live website (Japan 21, 2006) encouraged students to engage with the diversity of people’s everyday lives. Holloway and Valentine (2000) also note the use of email correspondence between young people to challenge assumptions and develop more nuanced understandings of distant places, in their case New Zealand. Moving from a simple to a more nuanced understanding of diversity in a distant place is quite complex. I found that students sometimes communicated both stereotypes and more sophisticated understandings regarding certain aspects of Japan. They deployed different representations according to the social and learning context. This is similar to people having an oversimplified, or even prejudiced, view of a certain group of people, while simultaneously making exceptions regarding a person they actually know.

In helping young people to develop their thinking about diversity between places, we need to look out for common confusions and conflations between countries far from the UK yet (relatively) close to each other – China and Japan or New Zealand and Australia are examples discussed in research mentioned in this article. Discussion of prior understandings and their sources early on in an enquiry sequence, or the previously mentioned ‘(country) or not?’ activity can be useful here. It’s also important to consider country studies within their wider locational and geo-political context, which is likely to entail discussion of shared heritages and differing characteristics.

In an earlier article (Taylor, 2008), I suggested that four key concepts were particularly useful for driving enquiry sequences in geography: change, diversity, interaction and perception/representation. Ideas of diversity within and diversity between are both useful in constructing suitable questions for driving short sequences of lessons. For example, Tierney (2010) used the question ‘Sri Lanka: paradise on Earth or land of many problems?’ to help students engage with diversity within that country. Another teacher used ‘Where should the Smiths live in China?’ to present an enquiry in which students took the part of relocation agents to start the sizeable task of engaging with diversity in that country.

Sequences which foreground issues of diversity will inevitably also bump into ideas of interaction. Massey (2005) suggests that the uniqueness of any particular place is formed through its historical and contemporary relationships with other places. Thus the uniqueness of different parts of China is a result of many and complex links, relationships established and curtailed, with a whole range of countries. Interaction leads to change, from the minor to the major scale. Keeping the example of China, we can think of the massive plate movements which formed the Himalayas, or the more contemporary changes in political and economic policies affecting its relationship to the USA, Europe and Africa. It is important that, when considering issues of

In researching young people’s understandings of Japan (Taylor, 2009; Taylor, forthcoming), I was interested to see how different learning activities encouraged students to make singular, binary or more complex and nuanced representations of diversity within the country. Activities which were most effective in encouraging the latter involved contact with the lives of actual young people from Japan in all their complexity. For example, an exhibition of photographs taken by Japanese teenagers which showed aspects of their everyday lives (Stewart et al., 2001) encouraged UK students to engage with diversity within homes, food, interests and personal characteristics. Some students made links between what they saw in the photographs and their own experiences, building a corresponding diversity within their understanding of an aspect of the distant place (see Figure 3). For example, Jo described her response to a photograph of a physically disabled student:

Cos my Mum and Dad both work with disabled people and my Mum childminds a few children with, um, disabilities, um … I’ve never thought

Figure 2: ‘Amazon or not?’ Both of these photos are taken in the Amazon: inside the rainforestin Brazil (top); Manuas in Brazil – the Amazon’s largest city (bottom). Photos: Jorge Andrade/Flickr; Wagner Fontoura/Flickr (both under a Creative Commons licence).


Thus, diversity poses a challenge for negotiating the world as geographers and geography teachers. We need not only to find points on the complexity–accessibility continuum which are appropriate for different classes and individuals, but also to consider how students can progress in their understanding of diversity both within and between places and environments. We need not only to consider the ‘what’ of diversity, but its ‘why’ and its ‘so what’. | TG

diversity, we do not leave things at a rather descriptive level (‘What is it like?’) but also engage with the relational processes which create diversity (‘Why is it like that?’). Such explanations will often bring in issues of power, as diversity in human terms is rarely neutral. Thus we can move to issues of social and environmental justice, and questions like ‘Is it fair?’. Massey (2005) suggests that the juxtaposition of difference inherent in diversity (the ‘surprise of space’) may result in conflict. Such conflicts can only be resolved according to the unique configuration of local circumstances – there are no simply portable rules. Instead, we need to look to the individual power-geometries through which particular places are constructed: ‘particular answers to particular questions of space and place must be asked and answered’ (p. 166).

Liz Taylor coordinates the geography PGCE course at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.


Useful webpages‘GTIP Think Piece – Teaching About Diversity’ on the GA website: www.geography.org.uk/gtip/thinkpieces/diversity/#top

ReferencesBrooks, C. and Morgan, A. (2006) Theory into Practice: Cases and places. Sheffield: Geographical Association.Cloke, P., Crang, P. and Goodwin, M. (eds) (2005) Introducing Human Geographies (2nd edition). London: ArnoldGiles, J. and Middleton, T. (1999) Studying Culture: A practical introduction. Blackwell.Holloway, S., and Valentine, G. (2000) ‘Corked hats and Coronation Street: British and New Zealand children’s imaginative geographies of the other’, Childhood, 7, 3, pp. 335–57.Inokuchi, H., and Nozaki, Y. (2005) ‘‘Different than us’: othering, orientalism, and US middle school students’ discourses on Japan’, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 25, 1, pp. 61–74.Japan 21 (2006) ‘Japan UK Live’. Available online at www.japanuklive.org.uk (last accessed 6 July 2006). Massey, D. (2005) For Space. London: Sage Publications.Morgan, J. (2008) ‘GTIP Think Piece: Teaching about diversity’. Available online at www.geography.org.uk/gtip/thinkpieces/diversity (last accessed 17 February 2011). Morgan, J. and Lambert, D. (2003) Theory into Practice: Place, ‘race’ and teaching geography. Sheffield: Geographical Association.Picton, O. (2008) ‘Teaching and learning about distant places: conceptualising diversity’, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 17, 3, pp. 227–49.Stewart, R., Potter, H. and Flanders, S. (2001) The Way We Are: Japanese high school students’ lives. London: Japan Festival Education Trust.Taylor, L. (2008) ‘Key concepts and medium term planning’, Teaching Geography, 33, 2, pp. 50–54.Taylor, L. (2009) ‘Children constructing Japan: material practices and relational learning’, Children’s Geographies, 7, 2,pp. 173–89.Taylor, L. (forthcoming) ‘Investigating change in young people’s understandings of Japan: a study of learning about a distant place’, British Educational Research Journal.Tierney, M. (2010) ‘Paradise on Earth or a land of many problems? Challenging perceptions of Sri Lanka through enquiry’, Teaching Geography, 35, 2, pp. 70–73.

Figure 3: People enjoyinga festival in Japan.

Photo: Liz Taylor.

• Do you have any tried-and-tested strategies for teaching about diversity?

Share your experiences using the ‘Comment on this page’ facility on this article’s page on the GA website.


This article discusses a research project exploring students’ imaginations of distant places. Students’ perceptions of distant places are frequently colourful, but often reflect popular stereotypes rather than concrete realities of far-off contexts. By examining year 9 students’ representations of Egypt through the lenses of orientalism and ‘othering’, this research project uncovered the ways in which dominant but often hidden discourses impinge upon perceptions of the ‘other’.

Claire Kennedy Imagining distant places:

changing representations of Egypt

We live in an increasingly interconnected world. Films such as Slumdog Millionaire and Invictus bring the global South into our cinemas and homes, seemingly compressing the distance and difference between Mumbai and Manchester. Yet at the same time such films enhance the exoticness of distant places by vividly rendering them as ‘other’, arguably distorting representations of the less economically developed world by presenting a necessarily partial and potentially romanticised view of complex realities. In Invictus, for example, we are shown Nelson Mandela’s greatness as a political leader as exemplified by events surrounding the 1995 Rugby World Cup, but we are not shown the extent to which inequality and political strife persist in South Africa today.

As pre-eminent consumers of mass media, children are perhaps especially susceptible to distorted representations of less economically developed countries. Geography teachers therefore need to consider very carefully how they plan and carry out teaching about distant places.

This study explores the theory and practice of distant place teaching using a classroom-based case study of 20 year 9 students from a secondary school in a village in Cambridgeshire, UK. The research project generated and analyseda range of data to investigate changes in students’perceptions of Egypt throughout a geographical enquiry. By examining students’ initial (pre-sequence) ‘window’ drawings of Egypt, written work and classroom conversations throughout the sequence, and discussion in a post-sequence focus group (incorporating the researcher and six students), this study explores the significance of the academic discourse of orientalism in terms of the impacts of ‘othering’ processes on students’ representations of Egypt. It investigates how an orientalist understanding may in turn help to inform teaching and planning, and engage children in learning about distant places.

Orientalism, ‘othering’, and teaching about distant placeFor literary theorist Edward Said, the term ‘orientalism’ denotes the strong links that existed between academic and artistic representations of ‘Eastern’ cultures on the one hand and European imperialism on the other (Said, 1978; 1993). Said suggested that ‘orientalist’ representations of distant cultures in European art, literature and politics both drew upon and helped to construct an image of ‘the Orient’ as intrinsically different from, and inferior to, the West. For Said, these orientalist representations of Eastern populations as weak, feminine and passive contrasted with

representations of the West as strong, masculine and active. As such, orientalist representations can be interpreted as highly significant examples of ‘othering’: the process by which one’s own identity is confirmed and solidified through the denigration and objectification of ‘degraded’, ‘mystified’, ‘romanticised’ and ‘exoticised’ others (Inokuchi and Nozaki, 2005).

If, as Binns suggests, ‘geography has traditionallybeen responsible for promoting awareness, interestand understanding of the diversity of the world’speople and places’ (1996, p. 177), then geographyteachers bear particular responsibility in termsof understanding and overcoming orientalistdiscourses and othering tendencies in the classroom. As a consequence of the continuing power of orientalist discourses, contemporary geographical teaching about distant places – Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East – must contend with misapprehensions and in accur-acies that result from ongoing othering processes.

Egypt – a rising star? A geographical enquiry Egypt has more often been imagined as an ancienttreasure-house and alluring destination than as a nation with a distinctive culture and territory (Mitchell, 1991). Arguably, touristic stereotypes of Egypt continue to obscure contemporary realities such as high levels of socio-economic inequality and – to date – an undemocratic political regime. As such, Egypt functions as a focal point of orientalist and othering discourses, both historically and in the present day.

For this reason, Egypt was selected as the subject of a sequence of lessons designed to explore the impact of orientalism on students’ changing perceptions of Egypt, considered as a distant place. Following Taylor’s (2004) suggestion of the need for an enquiry question to foster excitement and interest amongst students, the enquiry sequence was based around the question: ‘Egypt – a rising star? You decide’. This question was designed to focus students’ attention on historical shifts in Egypt’s situation in the world and on more recent processes of socio-economic change in the region and further afield. The enquiry sequence, which can be downloaded from the TG pages of the GA website, focused on change over time, beginning with Ancient Egypt and moving on to consider more contemporary issues. The overarching strategy was to allow students to explore their preconceptions about Egypt in the context of present-day socio-economic processes, using a range of activities – e.g. drag and drop, card sort, reading tourist brochures and writing mock United Nations reports – where appropriate.

Accompanying online materials


on widely recognised ‘touristic’ symbols of Egypt, including pyramids, hot weather and the River Nile. In addition to these themes, Figure 1b also includes a range of different themes such as Cairo (described as a ‘busy city’) and danger, symbolised by a gun. (When asked about this depiction, the student explained that the specific danger envisaged arose from terrorism.) Despite these differences in detail (which were typical of many of the students’ drawings), students generally chose to portray Egypt – a modern, urbanising, and developing economy – using stereotypical ‘touristic’ images, a finding that could be interpreted as evidence of an essentially orientalist approach to distant places.

Students’ changing representations of EgyptObservation of classroom discussion and activities, content analysis of students’ written work throughout the enquiry sequence, and analysis of the post-sequence focus group revealed significant changes in students’ representations and understandings of contemporary Egypt, thus highlighting the importance of carefully designed teaching practice in the broadening of students’ worldviews.

Figure 2 presents an overview of selected themes from students’ initial written work on Egypt, carried out at the pre-enquiry sequence stage.

Students’ initial representations of Egypt in ‘window’ drawingsStudents’ initial (pre-sequence) representations of Egypt were evaluated using ‘window’ drawings, with each student being given 20 minutes to draw a picture from a window looking into Egypt. Students were reminded of key geographical concepts such as weather, landscape and people, but were not given any more specific clues with regard to required content. All 20 drawings were then analysed using content analysis (including the labelling and categorisation of pictorial themes) in order to clarify patterns of content inclusion that could otherwise escape notice (Rose, 2001).

Unsurprisingly, themes such as pyramids, heat, desert and camels/wildlife were included in 50% or more of the overall set of drawings. Perhaps more interesting are the remaining themes, all of which occurred in 35% or fewer of the drawings, and which cover a wide range of topics, including poverty, tourism, Islam and danger (relating to terrorism). A notable omission in all drawings was Egypt’s recent colonial past in the French and British Empires.

The simultaneously diverse and similar nature of individual students’ drawings can be seen more clearly by comparing the two drawings presented in Figure 1a and 1b. Figure 1a focuses

Figure 1a and b: Examples of students’pre-sequence

‘window’ drawings of Egypt.

Figure 2: Thematic overview of students’ initial written

work on Egypt.

Theme Illustrative quotation

Physical geography ‘Egypt is mostly desert … In the middle is [sic] lush trees and plants around the Nile.’

Urbanisation and ‘I think its [sic; Egypt] not very built up in general because it’s … poor.’rurality ‘Some people live in Ciro [sic; Cairo] and these people would live very differently to those

in the countryside who farm. These people would live a bit like us and have schools and hospitals and roads and water.’

Religion ‘[Egyptians] worship unusual gods because they believe in an afterlife where you take treasure to heaven with you.’

Danger ‘[T]here is danger from terrorism and so life would not be as safe.’

History and treasure ‘[Egypt] is full of riches and tresure [sic] from Ancient times, and continually being discovered by archeologists [sic] even today.’

Climate and tourism ‘[Egypt] is much hotter and has palm trees so lots of tourists go on holiday there in summer.’

Personal characteristics ‘The people speak Egyptian and I think they look a bit like us, their skin is the of Egyptians same colour.’

‘They would eat lots of rice and they speak a different language, Egyptian, which is very difficult because of all the hieroglyphics.’

Differences in lifestyle ‘I think life would be quite similar [to ours] for some people and different for others between Britain and depending [upon] who you were … School and life would be similar if you had money.Egypt (including However for women life would be different because they can’t do as much because theyinequality and gender) are Islam [sic].’

1a 1b


treasure-house alongside a new but negative awareness of ‘worse’ aspects of contemporary Egypt (such as overcrowding in Cairo).

Students’ understandings of Egypt at the end of the enquiry sequence were examined in a focus group with the researcher and six students who were representative of the wider group. When asked to what extent they would now alter their original ‘window’ drawings, most students said that they would retain much of their original content while adding additional content such as references to Islam, tourism and tall buildings in Cairo. More generally, the students’ remarks confirmed a shift towards a more sophisticated awareness of internal differences within Egypt and the ways in which such differences can be compared to inequalities not just within the UK but also within other countries worldwide.

What are the implications for planning and teaching practice?One of the key outcomes of the ‘rising star’ enquiry was the increased ability of most students to understand an individual country along continua rather than in binary terms (poor/rich, Western/non-Western and so forth). Having initially engaged in othering practices by producing orientalist representations of Egypt as, for example, hot, poor and dangerous, most students’ viewpoints were broadened throughout the lesson sequence as they engaged with course material on socio-economic and cultural aspects of contemporary Egypt. As orientalist discourses typically operate in binary terms, this finding illustrates the ability of carefully-planned enquiry sequences to offset the impact of prejudices on students’ learning about distant places.

The necessity of generalising when teachingabout distant places brings a concomitant dangerof stereotyping (Marsden, 1976). Without anunderstanding of the broader cultural and historicalcontext in which students typically generaterepresentations of a given distant place, teachersrun the risk of failing to challenge powerful (andpower-filled) orientalist discourses and otheringprocesses, thus maintaining long-standingpreconceptions and misapprehensions regardingcountries such as Egypt. By planning lessons inways that take full account of the sensitising lensof orientalism, teachers can emphasise insteadthe diversity that lies at the heart of geography (Massey, 2005), and replace exoticised or negative stereotypes with all the excitement and uniqueness of distant places. | TG

Clearly students’ initial written work exhibited a range of ideas, but with a general emphasis on notions of difference (both positive and negative) between life in Egypt and the UK. As such, while some students exhibited some awareness of internal socio-economic complexities such as rural/urban differences and gender issues, many of these quotations illustrate a widely shared readiness to assume collective appearances and identities (for both ‘us’ and ‘them’) and to portray Egyptians as living in poverty.

Towards the end of the enquiry sequence, studentswere presented with 14 photos and asked to choosethree that they thought best represented Egypt, giving written reasons for their choices. Figure 3 presents a selection of students’ choices of photos together with their written justifications.

Interestingly, almost all students chose at least one photograph representing city life, with some students choosing more than one such photograph because ‘they represent how most people live.’ Many students’ comments demonstrated awareness of Egypt’s middle-tier position in the global economy; many remarks also pointed towards a more nuanced understanding of socio-economic inequalities and cultural factors such as the predominance of Islam. In a small number of cases, however, students’ viewpoints failed to embrace this broader viewpoint, with remarks suggesting a continued understanding of Egypt as a touristic

Claire Kennedy is a secondary geography teacher at Kimbolton School, Cambridgeshire.


ReferencesBinns, T. (1996) ‘Teaching about distant places’ in Bailey, P. and Fox, P. (eds) Geography Teachers’ Handbook. Sheffield:Geographical Association.Inokuchi, H. and Nozaki, Y. (2005) ‘Different than us’: othering, orientalism, and US middle school students’ discourses on Japan’, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 25, 1, pp. 61–74.Marsden, B. (1976) ‘Stereotyping and Third World geography’, Teaching Geography, 1, pp. 228–31.Massey, D. (2005) For Space. London: SAGE Publications.Mitchell, T. (1991) Colonising Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Rose, G. (2001) Visual Methodologies. London: SAGE Publications. Said, E. (1978) Orientalism. London: Penguin Books.Said, E. (1993) Culture and Imperialism. London: Penguin Books.Smith, M. (1999) ‘Teaching the ‘Third World’: unsettling discourses of difference in the school curriculum’, Oxford Reviewof Education, 25, 4, pp. 485–99. Taylor, L. (2004) Re-presenting Geography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

‘I think photo 2 … represents Egypt as it shows … a fairly typical job and most Egyptians would do things like this. Although for tourists we think of Egypt to have [sic] mummies and tombs, this is more of an average lifestyle.’

‘I think photo 5 represents Egypt because most people live around the Nile. It is 95% of peoples [sic] resource, and it is used for food, water, washing, irrigation and fishing … The Nile effects [sic] most peoples [sic] way of life.’

‘I think photo 10 best represents Egypt because most people live in the slums in poor conditions. Their [sic] basically living in a rubbish dump. It shows that the goverment don’t care [sic] about how Egyptians live.’

‘I think photo 14 represents Egypt because farming is the industry for many people.’

Photograph Written rationale for choice

Figure 3: Students’ choice of representative photographs and written justifications. Photos: (from top to bottom) istockphoto/AskinTulayOver; stock.xchng/Genkaku; stock.xchng/tijmen; istockphoto/jcarillet.

2

5

10

14

Online resourcesGo to www.geography.org.uk/tg and click ‘Summer 2011’. • Summary of the

enquiry sequence


Thirdspace: exploring the ‘lived space’ of cultural ‘others’

Richard Bustin

IntroductionDeveloping rigorous, student-centred, relevant lessons which enable students to engage with the geographies of the socially excluded is a challenging task. Many ideas developed in the geography academic discipline can have huge potential to inspire students and to help them to make sense of the world. One such idea is ‘Thirdspace’, developed by urban geographer and sociologist Ed Soja (1996). This is a conceptual tool that can be used to investigate the lived experiences of people and how they are affected by their environment.

ThirdspaceThirdspace looks at three interacting urban spaces:

• Firstspace is the built environment, including architecture, the road network, urban growth, form and function; the traditional urban geography.

• Secondspace is representational space: how the area is marketed and perceived in the minds of people. It is conceptual and can be investigated in school geography by looking at the geographical imaginations held by students.

• Thirdspace is lived space: the experience of living in the Firstspace mediated through the expectations of the Secondspace. It looks at how the Firstspace and Secondspace combine to create a lived experience. It is usually approached from the perspectives of those deemed out of place in an environment. These ‘out of place’ people are those whose viewpoints, ideas and voices are often ignored or forgotten about but who are very much part of any urban space, such as the impoverished, the homeless or the elderly.

This article explores the potential of Thirdspace as a vehicle for helping students understand homelessness and the experiences of homeless people living in the city of excess – Las Vegas.

Las Vegas was chosen as the focus for the sequence of lessons as it could be described as a postmodern city, with each of the three spaces easily identifiable. The Firstspace is vivid – with its larger-than-life casinos, hotels, theatres and neon lights, all of which are centred along the ‘strip’. The Secondspace is also easily recognisable via self-promotion straplines such as ‘We’re world renowned for being world renowned’ (Observer, quoted in Speake, 2007), and artistic representations such as films (e.g. Ocean’s Eleven), music (e.g. ‘Viva Las Vegas’) and numerous American TV shows. In some respects this makes the city an exciting place

to learn about, as students are likely to have some preconceived ideas about the First- and Secondspaces of Las Vegas. Yet there is another, unreported side to Las Vegas – the estimated 6,700 homeless, the majority of whom are men. These are the socially excluded ‘others’, whose personal geographies offer an insight into Las Vegas’ Thirdspace: how they influence and are influenced by the urban environment, both their own and that of others who live in and visit the city.

The homeless come to Las Vegas believing they can earn a living in the expanding building trade or by gambling. However, they quickly find that the Firstspace is inhospitable: they cannot get a job without an address, they are not allowed into the hotels or casinos, and the lights and sounds make sleeping on the street difficult. They do not fulfil the Secondspace image that Las Vegas wants to create for itself, so again they are excluded and moved away from the popular tourist areas to the ‘homeless corridor’ of suburban run-down Las Vegas, with no job prospects and unsympathetic law enforcement. Their lives (the Thirdspace) are very different from the ‘successful Las Vegas’ that attracted them to the city in the first place. The contrast between their Thirdspace and that of many tourists and more affluent residents serves to reinforce societal neglect of their basic needs – warmth, shelter and employment.

The lessonsThese examples were intended to enable year 10 students, studying urban geography, to see the city from the perspective of the often ignored homeless. The initial activity explored students’ geographical imaginations (Secondspace) of various global cities such as New York, London, Tokyo and Mumbai by asking them to write down three words they associated with these places and to identify where they thought their perceptions came from. They came up with words like ‘modern’, ‘poverty’, ‘bright lights’ and ‘busy’. Figure 1 shown one student’s response to Las Vegas.

This article reports on classroom research into teaching the

geography of the socially excluded.

It uses Soja’s ‘Thirdspace’ to

enable students to engage with the

‘lived space’ of homeless people in Las Vegas. The

students build their understanding of the conceptual approach

to see how the lives of these people

are influenced by their physical and

representational urban environments.

Accompanying online materials

Figure 1: Response to‘Las Vegas’ (left) and

exploring where the ideas come from (right).


This led on to a discussion of Thirdspace. The final piece of work combined all these ideas to answer the question ‘How would life in the Thirdspace of Las Vegas affect the homeless?’. After a brief class discussion, the students had to write a response to the question – an example is shown in Figure 3. This shows the work at its best, with the student readily engaging with the social aspects of urban geography. The students could vividly see the interaction of people and place, and this work also contributed to the development of empathy for the homeless in Las Vegas.

When asked for a critical analysis of what they felt they had learnt from the lessons, the students responded in a variety of ways, but one idea was the idea that Thirdspace ‘lets us understand the views (of the homeless culturally excluded) ... this gave us an idea of what people think of cities.’

The potentialUsing lived space to explore culturally diverse lives has much potential for geography students. Thirdspace provides a structure for exploring not only a place, but also the perception of the area and the actual reality of being there. Students could use Thirdspace to explore their local urban areas and look at how these aspects of the area may affect them and the young people growing up in such environments, before considering how other people who also live and interact in the same environment may perceive it and thus experience it differently. Are there any spaces that could be perceived very differently by different groups of people, or diverse

Las Vegas was introduced to the students using a music video (ZZ Top’s ‘Viva Las Vegas’) and film clips, all of which are widely available on the internet. These were open to scrutiny:

• How is Las Vegas presented, and why would this be the image the band/videomakers want to present?

• How have they achieved this image (camera angles, use of music and lighting)?

• Who is the video’s audience and how are they made to feel?

This helped students to explore the Secondspace, and generated comments such as ‘It makes Las Vegas seem like an exciting place’, ‘a place you would want to visit’ and ‘somewhere anything goes’. The idea of ‘selling the city’ through marketing and promotion – the commodification of the city – was introduced here as an aspect of the Secondspace.

Students were then introduced to the three spaces using a PowerPoint presentation (available to download from the GA website). This supported students’ understanding of the concept of different spaces.

The students had to identify how these aspects of Las Vegas might impact on a homeless person. Students completed a worksheet (see Figure 2, available to download from the GA website) to reflect on selected aspects of the Firstspace (buildings, lights, road network and urbanisation) and Secondspace (perception of opportunity, tourism marketing, the American Dream, and Sin City).

Figure 2: A completed student worksheet. How do these elements of the First- and Secondspaces affect a homeless person?


as homelessness, social exclusion and the cultural isolation of individuals and groups; in doing so we also hope to challenge them to critically evaluate their own role in society, their own place and their own geographical lives. As Morgan (2000) has argued:

Subjects such as geography can broaden and deepen young people’s understanding of the world around them, enlarge their knowledge of what they share with other people, and develop a critical awareness of the society and times in which they live. (p. 69)

I hope some of the ideas shared here may contribute to these ideals.

This research fed into QCDA and CABE’s Engaging Places curriculum development project: www.engagingplaces.org.uk | TG

communities? This could also form part of innovative and engaging urban fieldwork.

ConclusionsEngaging with the lives of the socially and culturally excluded ‘others’ can bring educational benefits to students of geography, particularly in contemporary diverse Britain. It enables students to identify, appreciate and value different viewpoints and ways of seeing different places which could enhance tolerance towards these ‘others’. It can also inform other aspects of geographical study. Much of the discussion around urban decline and rejuvenation inevitably looks at people, and a Thirdspace approach allows students to look at the interaction between marginalised groups and individuals and the built form itself. Many urban development projects simply look at providing more jobs or better housing; students who use Thirdspace to study an area would have a much more holistic understanding about the nature of the social dilemmas in an area and could therefore adopt a more informed critical stance on regeneration projects and the extent to which the needs of the local residents, in the form of affordable housing and job provision, have been catered for (see Bustin, 2010).

What is needed is a concerted effort from all geography teachers to ‘throw out crusty old favourites ... in favour of ... lessons that challenge students to make geographical sense of their own lives and experiences’ (Lambert, in Geographical Association, 2009, p. 3). Thirdspace can provide a lens through which young people can begin to make sense of pressing urban social issues such

Richard Bustin teaches geography at Bancroft’s School, Woodford Green and developed this research while studying for an MA in Geography Education at the University of London Institute of Education.


ReferencesBustin, R. (2010) ‘Getting started: urban renewal in Barcelona’, Geography Review, 24, 2, pp. 19–23. Geographical Association (2009) A Different View. Sheffield: Geographical Association.Morgan, J. (2000) ‘Cultural studies go to school’ in Kent, A. (ed), Reflective Practice in Geography Teaching. London: Paul Chapman.Soja, E. (1996) Thirdspace. Oxford: Blackwell.Speake, J. (2007) ‘Sensational cities’, Geography, 91, 2, pp. 3–12.

Figure 3: Student work – how might life in the Thirdspace

of Las Vegas affect the homeless?

Online resourcesGo to www.geography.org.uk/tg and click ‘Summer 2011’. • Thirdspace student worksheet• Thirdspace PowerPoint


This article explains the benefits of engaging with theories when attempting to assess learning within the classroom. Using evidence from a PGCE action research project, it outlines how effective Assessment for Learning (AfL) can improve learning and motivation with subsequent affects on attainment levels. In a sequence of revision lessons, GCSE students were encouraged to define their own learning issues and outcomes, re-inventing the teacher’s role as a facilitator of learning, in the spirit of AfL.

Why use AfL? Dusting off the black box

Rajiv Sidhu

Assessment for Learning (AfL), the focus of many INSET training sessions, swiftly established itself as a direct method of raising educational standards. But is it worth it? Since Inside the Black Box (Black and William, 1998), the role of AfL within the classroom has become diluted, with pressures from league tables and external examinations extensively changing the focus of AfL today. AfL is ‘no better than satisfactory’ in two-thirds of schools (Ofsted, 2008, p. 1), and as such is deemed to be having a limited impact on learning in the classroom. Is AfL relevant for today’s classroom? When planning a sequence of revision lessons for a GCSE class during my PGCE course, I realised the huge impact that AfL could on my students’ learning.

Through a range of social learning activities (from student-led self-evaluations to peer teaching) I planned a sequence of lessons that encouraged students to evaluate and develop their understanding of their examination topics, using AfL feedback from each lesson to define the next. While the school (a comprehensive girls’ school in East London with a predominantly Asian intake) had an active advanced skills teacher who was responsible for AfL, he admitted that practice varied throughout the school. The bulk of the AfL strategy focused on the ‘letter’ of AfL (Stobart, 2008), with an emphasis on learning objectives and traffic-light plenaries (summarised in Figure 1).

While these mechanical elements of AfL were in place, they did not capture the spirit of AfL; nor did they impress students, who commented: ‘All that lesson outcome stuff, they only do it for Ofsted!’ and ‘We just copy the objectives – they don’t really mean anything; we know what we’re doing from the title!’.

In the light of these comments I decided to develop a new focus for AfL within the classroom. Building on the idea that learning is socially constructed (that is, that you learn by going through processes with others), this sequence of revision lessons focused on the students drawing out and developing each other’s knowledge through a range of active learning tasks. Feedback from students at the end of each lesson enabled me to identify subject areas of least/most confidence so I could focus the next lesson on that particular area of the specification.

While this approach is not drastically different towriting a series of lessons on each element of thespecification, I felt it was important for the studentsto have ownership of the lessons, for two reasons:

• to enable revision lessons to be relevant to students’ learning, through a strong student–teacher dialogue

• to investigate the role that this approach to AfL would have on the students’ learning, gauged by both their attainment in summative tests and their own feedback.

The intervention in practiceOver a fortnight’s lessons, students were given a leading role in the development of their revision lessons. The class as a whole began by identifying areas where they felt they were weakest. This defined the learning objective of the lesson. Then, instead of teacher-led episodes during each lesson, a series of activities was used which focused on sharing information between students. One such activity was a carousel mind-mapping activity where students mapped the course content on flipchart paper and then stood by their strongest topic. The class then circulated around the room, explaining key points and issues to each other, targeting their own knowledge deficits. Subsequent lessons required students to work in groups on each topic and then feed back to the class on a wider level, sharing learning throughout the group. Peer feedback then led the development of further content coverage (Stobart, 2008). Figures 2 and 3 depict some examples of this student work. Group work then targeted areas of weakness, with students using their own knowledge and that of their peers to develop their understanding. In this case, the focus is the ‘green revolution’.

Following the six-lesson sequence, the students sat a mock examination in exam conditions, assessing their understanding of the subject.

The risk of the black box – did the intervention work?During the intervention, student focus group feedback, teacher feedback and comparisons with previous summative assessments were made, to assess the impact of this approach to AfL. This was used to determine the impact on student motivation and learning.

Motivation

Student focus groups revealed the extensive impact which this approach had on students’ own motivation and learning. Students felt that ‘the lessons where more relevant’ with one particular girl commenting: ‘I suddenly realised that I knew all this stuff, when I thought at the start I was going to fail.’ A common feature within the feedback to the intervention was that students showed they had enjoyed and been motivated by the lesson sequence, because of their active input into the learning:

• Using Bloom’s taxonomy in lesson objectives

• Sharing lesson objectives in the lesson as a question

• Explaining lesson progression as a series of ‘steps to success’ during the lesson

• Marking work against criteria, so students can identify progress

Figure 1: School X’s AfL strategy.


Learning

Staff comments also emphasised a vast improvement in the pace of learning within the classroom. One teacher commented that students were ‘covering a wider range of new geographical learning in the same amount of lesson time’. Despite these being revision lessons, many topics where being learnt for the first time, as the content had originally been of no obvious relevance to the students: ‘We didn’t pay much attention to changes in farming, because it seemed boring and pointless the first time round.’ However, due to the pressures of the GCSE exam, students noted that in the revision lessons ‘we felt like we could be honest about what we knew, which meant that we learnt the topics we needed to know.’ All students in the classroom felt that they had managed to learn more content per lesson in the intervention sequence than previously, again suggesting an improvement in lesson pace.

Summative assessment comparisons showed a strong positive relationship between student-focused AfL and increases in student attainment. As Figure 4 shows, all of the students improved from their previous grade by at least one grade boundary. The post-intervention grade results indicate that 60% of students exceeded their target grade (based on key stage 3 levels) by one grade boundary.

While this suggests that the intervention was successful, other factors could also explain this increase in attainment. The students were actively revising at home, and had been taught revision strategies as part of a whole school programme which would have impacted positively upon their attainment in these assessments. Similarly, revisiting early course content with skills developed later in the two-year GCSE course may have also enabled students to access the higher-order skills required for high-level responses. It is important to note though, that these alternative explanations complement the in-class interventions that the students were experiencing.

Because the teacher didn’t tell us any answers, he only guided us; we got to the right answers ourselves. It was like proving we actually knew the geography – and we did! It really helped me get stuck in with my revision.

This feedback shows the potential of good AfL, as this student is not only engaged with her subject, but her enthusiasm for learning has spread to her revision. Such engagement is a crucial sign of good AfL in the classroom, as learners are both empowered and enthralled by the learning experience (Stobart, 2008).

Staff observed a 100% increase in motivation, referring to a lesson the week before the intervention where the students ‘all looked asleep’ despite similar revision activities. From this, we can see that the spirit of AfL is key to successful motivation through assessment.

There was also a noticeable increase in how well-prepared students were during the course of the two weeks as they entered the classroom. As one student put it: ‘We knew that Sir was expecting us all to contribute to the lesson, so we needed to be prepared to answer! That’s why I was prepared for each lesson – I knew that I was going to teach and learn at the same time.’ Creating an environment where all students felt able to contribute meant that students were motivated to come into lessons prepared to ‘teach and learn at the same time’. This supports the notion that effective AfL can ‘enhance motivation for learning’ (Assessment Reform Group, 2002).

Figure 2: Effective communication with the students to plan revision.

Students recorded their levels of confidence (happy, OK or worried) against each exam topic area.

The key areas to focus revision on were shared with the class, making the learning relevant(Stobart, 2008).

The majority of topics had at least one confident student, allowing students to share their ideas with limited input from the teacher. (Stobart, 2008)

Revision lessons then targeted areas of least confidence. This provided motivation for students through AfL (Assessment Reform Group, 2002), as the rationale behind the assessment was clearly defined and shared.

Figure 3: Learning as a social process – a carousel revision technique led by students.


Key ingredients for effective AfLAfL is an effective tool for developing learning in the classroom. But no two classes are the same, making good practice difficult to share. However, this project identified some essential ingredients to help develop effective AfL.

Ensuring a strong, positive relationship with the students, with clear boundaries, to establish strong teacher–student dialogues was essential to this intervention. Fairgrieve (1949) is right in saying that: ‘no one likes to be taught.’ As such, the development of lesson sequences should focus upon students developing their own learning (be it independently, in pairs or in groups) while ensuring progression at the same time.

By making lessons relevant, fun and challenging, I found teaching more enjoyable, and learning became natural, making it seems more important to the students – all achieved through effective AfL. My experience showed how easily AfL can be incorporated into any scheme of work, with little effort, but maximum returns. | TG

Students related this increase in attainment to their increased engagement with the subject, and learning, because they were more focused in the lessons. As one student commented, ‘Because we had worked together as a class to cover the content, I felt like I knew the topics inside out.’ Weeden and Lambert (2006) note that ‘students become involved in an active review of learning, enabling them to plan revision for high stakes tests more efficiently’ when AfL is effective. The results of this intervention support this observation, as shown by the improvements in Figure 4.

As the class teacher noted, ‘The girls were lost in their learning at many stages ... this is the most effective AfL I have seen.’ Students who are fully engaged in their learning and who understand how to develop and in which direction they need to shape their knowledge, are the hallmarks of effective AfL (Stobart, 2008).

From this, we can see that effective AfL, where the focus is genuinely student-centred, can raise the motivation and achievement of students. This is due to an increase in the students’ engagement with relevant learning in the classroom (Stobart, 2008) that enables them to develop a deeper understanding of key concepts through socially constructed learning.

Rajiv Sidhu is a newly qualified geography teacher at The Warren School, Chadwell Heath, East London.


Useful webpages‘GTIP Think Piece – Assessment for Learning’ on the GA website: www.geography.org.uk/gtip/thinkpieces/assessmentforlearning/#top

ReferencesAssessment and Reform Group (2002) Testing, Motivation and Learning. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Facultyof Education.Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (1998) Inside the Black Box. Slough: Nelson. Fairgrieve, J. (1949) Geography in School. London: University of London Press. Marley, D. (2008) ‘Ofsted slams teaching to the test’, Times Educational Supplement, 28 July. Available online at www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6000653 (last accessed 24 February 2011).Ofsted (2008) ‘Assessment for learning: the impact of national strategy’. Available online at www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Publications-and-research/Browse-all-by/Education/Curriculum/English/Primary/Assessment-for-learning-the-impact-of-National-Strategy-support/(language)/eng-GB (last accessed 9 March 2011). Stobart, G. (2008) Testing Times: The uses and abuses of assessment. Oxon: Routledge.Weeden, P. and Lambert, D. (2006) Geography Inside the Black Box. Slough: Nelson.

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volume 36 | number 2 | summer 2011 · volume 36 number 2 summer 2011 editorial: ‘the danger of a...

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