The move towards learners' active involvement in assessment can be seen in parallel with communities engaged in and responsible for change and improvement. Neither can be seen as a detached and top-down approach. Gone are the assumptions that there are processes done to you. Learning and place-making both require activities and outcomes with and for the participants.
Unit review
In Activity 1 you imagined how you could move the spokes of the wheel to demonstrate the importance given to each component in the conventional teaching of the geography of settlement. Now adjust the spokes to how you might expect to them to appear with the teaching of geography about communities.
You might not have completely revised your scheme of work at this time but it would be useful to record some action points for a specified later date. Curriculum making is not meant to be a solitary task so, if you have followed this unit independently, you could take your ideas and plans to a department or cluster group meeting. You could suggest it as a focus for a Living Geography group in your learners' community.
As a stimulus, it was claimed that this unit would place the learner's experience at the heart of their geographical education and the reward would be putting geography at the heart of their lifelong learning. It is a 'big ask' but imagine all these geographers making 'places people want'.
References
Assessment Reform Group (1999) Assessment for Learning: Beyond the Black Box, Cambridge: University of Cambridge School of Education.
Landry, C. (no date) 'Risk and the creation of liveable cities' in What are we scared of? The value of risk in designing public space, London: CABE.
QCA (2007) GCSE Geography subject criteria.
Further reading
If you want to read more about risk and street and park design see this 88-page report: CABE (2007) Living with risk: promoting better public space design, London: CABE. A briefing and the full report may be downloaded without charge here.
Roberts, M. (2003) Learning through enquiry: making sense of geography in the key stage 3 classroom, Sheffield: Geographical Association. This remains an essential source of inspiration.
Weeden, P. and Hopkin, J. (2006) 'Assessment for learning in geography' in Balderstone, D. (ed) Secondary Geography Handbook, Sheffield: Geographical Association. Essential chapter in this essential handbook.
Roberts, A. (2008) KS3 Geography Teachers' Toolkit. Faster, Higher, Stronger: Is the Olympics the best way to regenerate East London? Sheffield: Geographical Association.
Current conversations
What our website visitors are talking about.