Geographical Association

Immigration is a regular topic of conversation amongst many groups of people and remains a key issue in our 21st century geography curriculum. As a topic it has an obvious relevance to all our lives but it remains one of those 'difficult' topics to teach. This continues to be the case mainly because there is a lot of misinformation in the public domain and people in general tend to have fairly strong opinions about the 'rights and wrongs' of immigration into the UK. Alongside the focus on immigration as an integral part of any modern geography course, there is a growing debate around and a focus on issues such as 'diversity', 'citizenship' and 'community cohesion' within the broader curriculum.

'It is crucial that all children and young people, through both the formal and informal curricula in schools, have a real understanding of who lives in the UK today, of why they are here, and of what they can contribute.' (Diversity and Citizenship: A Curriculum Review, 2007)

Geography has the potential to play a key role, alongside other subjects, in fulfilling the aim of the new Secondary Curriculum to produce 'responsible citizens' particularly in relation to

'understanding their own and others' cultures and traditions, within the context of British heritage, and have a strong sense of their own place in the world... [and] appreciate the benefits of diversity...'

(The National Curriculum, QCA 2007)

It is always difficult to know where to start a topic such as this, but for me one of the most powerful insights into this often contentious topic is the following series of quotes taken from a BBC Debate: 'Is immigration good for the country?' (2003) Spend a little time reading through and thinking about these quotes.

For me, these quotes illustrate the strength of feeling in the UK about immigrants of all kinds, irrespective of their origin or their reason for coming to the UK. They demonstrate that as geographers dealing with 21st century issues, we are not dealing with simple issues - there are no right or wrong answers. They also highlight some of the challenges that teachers may face when tackling immigration in the classroom in terms of the opinions that some young pupils may already hold about this topical issue.

Think about how these quotes might be used in the classroom and note down your thoughts. Would it be better to use the quotes as a starter, either singly, or grouped into 'for' and 'against'?

There are various kinds of other stimulus material that might be used to introduce this unit. The text that provided the quotes (over 7000 words of comments) has been entered into Wordle, the result of which can be seen below.

Created at Wordle.net

As you can see, this provides a good starting point to look at the words which have the greatest frequency. Photographs can also provide striking resources which can be used to generate discussion and debate but need to be chosen carefully. A good source of photos is Flickr which has an excellent 'Creative Commons' licensed selection of photos. The other key resource might be some data or graphs that could be used to look at the issues involved.

The following two downloads contain sample photos, graphs and data that could be used in starter activities.

In this unit, there are four exemplar teaching and learning activities on immigration followed by a guided opportunity for teachers to develop their own teaching and learning activity. It is important at this early stage to realise that the exemplar material is also there to be amended and added to. With a topic such as this, it is crucial that you think very carefully about the school, the local community and the pupils you are dealing with. Taking these into account can be both a benefit and a challenge when organising and planning work on immigration. We are dealing here with pupils' personal geographies, with young and still developing geographical imaginations and with a very good example of 'living geography' - you will have to build on that when creating your unit of work.

You will also find a section on pedagogy and thinking which asks you to further reflect on approaches to teaching controversial topics such as this, particularly to younger secondary pupils. A conclusion draws together the unit and provides some references for further reading and additional resources that you might want to draw upon.

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