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Physical Geography (secondary)
In this Think Piece Roger Trend (Lecturer in Education at the Department of Education, Oxford University) identifies some of the key issues surrounding physical geography in the curriculum and suggests some activities for PGCE students.
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In the interests of brevity, I take physical geography as dealing with all the non-human processes and features which occur on or near the Earth’s surface. You may wish to elaborate further, obviously.
Say 'physical geography' to any geography teacher and ask them for their next five thoughts: boring; exciting; old-fashioned; topical; content-laden; conceptual; pedagogically constraining; controversial; descriptive; opportunities for debate and opinion? The odd ones represent one stereotypical position and the even ones another, as you spotted. For some teachers physical geography gives feelings of warm delight yet for others it is rarely in their vocabulary: an expletive to be deleted from geog. ed. utterances! What explains this (admittedly caricatured) situation?
Physical geography, possibly the Cinderella of secondary school geography, is seen by some teachers as:
- not readily lending itself to enquiry approaches
- not directly relevant to young people's immediate priorities
- merely the context for socio-economic and cultural ('human') geography
- old fashioned and dominated by description
- heavy on factual content and specialist terminology
- not able to stimulate contrasting opinions or positions
- only pedagogically powerful when it is closely integrated with human geography
- less physically and conceptually accessible than most human geography
Space does not permit me to take this debate further here, but this Think Piece is designed to show how these assertions can be challenged and overcome. Of course, some might be aunt sallies anyway! You can read more (Ferguson, 2003; Gregory, 2004; Johnston, 2006; Pitman, 2005; Thrift, 2002; Turner, 2002).
In his chapter in the GA Secondary Geography Handbook Tom Inman addresses such matters, suggesting some imaginative teaching strategies involving enquiry, sequencing, process/form linkages and analogy: I do not repeat his ideas here.
Physical geography is exceptionally buoyant in many UK universities in a number of guises, including environmental change and Earth systems. In schools the picture has been less rosy, but the new KS3 NC provides a tremendous opportunity for teachers to develop exciting physical geography curricula and learning situations. The shackles are now off. GCSE and AS/A2 syllabi also continue to provide ample scope for such work. It is timely to be addressing these issues, with the ever-strengthening profile of sustainability and climate change. Such big ideas warrant teachers' attention in relation to children's learning needs so clearly publicised by the GA.
Consider the topics of 'natural hazards' or 'extreme environments' in the geography classroom. Look through most of the published curriculum resources, print and web-based, and you are likely to find the following elements:
- Varied case studies, well illustrated
- Strong focus on human responses
- Narratives of various kinds
- Emphasis on personal accounts
- Abundant images of death and destruction!
The science is often the missing ingredient, yet this often comprises the heart of physical geography learning. The physical geography is often oversimplified but the key point is that, in such materials, the human geography usually receives far more careful attention than does the physical geography. It is typically imaginative, accurate, carefully pitched, stimulating and up-to-date. It is the contrast which needs attention.
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| Key issues and PGCE activities |
1. Is physical geography best integrated with human geography or separated from it?
This oft-heard question has no sensible answer: it all depends on the timescale you adopt. Is time the right word? Are these ends of the continuum related to timescale? We can imagine an 'integration continuum': one extreme involves very close integration, with physical and human geography addressed in a single sentence, 3-minute video clip, A4 learning resource or PowerPoint slide. Here, for example, learners might be trying to work out: how a fast-flowing river can move a car; what rock properties render it good for building; or how people and features respond during an earthquake. At the other extreme we find physical geography entirely separated from human geography in the scheme of work, typically involving a half-or full-term on physical geography processes and forms (remember, this is the extreme case!).
In the fully-integrated approach, I find that physical geography is liable to become invisible very soon after its initial appearance or, even worse, distorted, over-simplified and taught with little imagination and an emphasis on description. At the other extreme we run the obvious risk of a dry, pedagogically unimaginative, fact-laden and sterile physical geography curriculum unit dragging on for weeks with no mention of a human being! So, integration is not black and white: it is all a matter of degree, and this needs addressing at the planning stage.
Go to PGCE activities on integration.
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2. PGCE student's starting points
Initially, some PGCE students label themselves as 'physical geographers' or they might prefer human geography. We know the reasons. I hear pennies dropping loudly when it dawns on them that they have a professional responsibility to be enthusiastic (and clued-up) about whatever geography they are teaching at the time! On balance, there is far more insecurity in physical geography than human geography, and this gets recycled through the educational system. Undergraduate dissertations can be exploited profitably by PGCE students and the task of selecting appropriate elements helps them to focus on all the basic educational issues. This is a grand way to help PGCE students think about the characteristics of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (Shulman, 1986): that which is most likely to foster pupil learning.
Go to PGCE activities on starting points.
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3. Concepts or labels?
This issue applies to all conceptual learning, but is particularly important in physical geography teaching (see Liz Taylor's Think Piece on Concepts: it deals both with principles and examples). My main point is simple: PGCE students often start a teaching episode with the name-label of a concept, rather than trying to develop conceptual understanding using the learners' own language. Indeed, if it is a particularly unfamiliar and/or long word, it can become a barrier to progressive understanding of the concept. It is usually best to introduce it at the end of an episode, or at least to plan deliberately how the teaching can foster conceptual learning.
Go to PGCE activities on concepts and labels.
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4. Recycling Misconceptions
Misconception-spotting is a popular professional pastime nowadays and there are no better opportunities than the glaciers, frontal zones and tectonic plates of physical geography! The 'misconception' label covers a multitude of conditions across pupils, teachers and authors: there are many examples in widely-used texts and internet resources. Of course this is a complex business (Dove, 2000) and we cannot cover this field in a few sentences: so my key points for PGCE students are:
- Be alive to potential misconceptions by getting well-informed yourself and get into the habit of routinely listening to pupils, formally and informally. The student voice has something valuable to say.
- Build your own collection of physical geography misconceptions. Start with: 'liquid mantle' and other elements of Earth's internal structure; 'crustal plates'; 'black ice'; 'look at that water vapour'; perceptions of geological time; salt in seawater; relationship (?) between earthquakes and climate; the vertical scales of (i) subduction zones and (ii) atmosphere cross section, e.g. through mid-latitude depression. The list is endless.
Go to PGCE activities on recycling misconceptions.
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5. Enquiry
Enquiry approaches in physical geography are addressed in Margaret Roberts' and Tom Inman's GA Handbook chapters (Inman, 2006; Roberts, 2006), including hypothesis testing, using data as evidence, and speculation, so I won’t repeat those important ideas here.
Many topics readily lend themselves to enquiry learning, such as river flooding (why, how, when in the past?), coastal cliff collapse (why here, marine processes?), earthquakes (how, why here?). With such events it is often human interest which dominates a lesson's stimulus activity. How can a teacher raise the profile of natural processes in order to establish an enquiring stance among pupils? Some options are:
- Introduce pupils to puzzling ideas as cues for further enquiry-based work:
- Why does it get colder as you move vertically up towards the sun?
- Why do we claim bays have been eroded by wave action when we see maximum wave action occurring on headlands, with depositional features (beaches!) in bays?
- Why is the sea salty, since rivers comprise fresh water?
- Why do continents continue to exist, despite sufficient time for them to have been eroded to sea level?
- If the Pacific Plate changed direction 43 million years ago, as evidenced by the Emperor-Hawaii ridge, what happened at all the plate boundaries?
- Draw on historical controversies (see later sections on biographies)
- Use a photograph or video clip and pose questions that require further investigation (such as the puzzlers listed above)
- Establish links with scientists or organisations working in physical geography: hydrologists, British Geological Survey, academics. Draw on the 'Teacher Scientist Network'.
Go to PGCE activity on enquiry.
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6. Teacher demonstration
Pupil investigations using physical models in the classroom are covered in Tom Inman's GA Handbook chapter, but here I consider small, teacher-presented demonstrations, with teacher as performer (not actor). The opportunities are endless, but in all cases success and efficacy are enhanced by the timing and richness of the performance:
- Boil a kettle (one with a narrow spout is best) and watch the (invisible!) water vapour condense about 1 cm from the spout. The question 'those at the back: can you see the water vapour okay?' is probably an unfair trick, but it works when done carefully!
- Use a slinky to demonstrate seismic waves (but beware of reflection, so practise first!)
- Use 'Silly Putty' to represent mantle flow. This strange substance exhibits plastic deformation under gentle stress, elastic deformation under rapid compression and brittle fracture under rapid tension. So, starting with a sphere, it can be (i) bounced like a ball, leaving no flat surface (elastic), (ii) drawn out like well-chewed gum (plastic), or (iii) suddenly pulled apart (brittle fracture). The mantle behaves as a very viscous fluid, given steady pressure and long times: convection currents. However, it transmits both P and S seismic waves so it is rigid (made of rock!) and exhibits elastic properties.
- Any glass utensil containing water and sediment can be displayed on a screen using a traditional Overhead projector. This is good for showing ripple marks and sorting: see the example given at Earth Learning Idea under "Sand ripple marks in a washbowl"
- The rock cycle in wax, as described at Earth Learning Idea.
Go to PGCE activity on teacher demonstration.
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7. People and physical geography
One way to stimulate pupil interest in physical geography is to link theories and explanations with the people behind them, but not in such a way that defeats the object by becoming a biographical study! For example, the oft-cited drifting continents model, the forerunner of plate tectonics, can be linked with some fascinating biographical details of Alfred Wegener and his contemporaries such as Alexander du Toit. The 'stretching India' phenomenon of Wegener's famous fragmenting Pangaea map can become a starting point for plate tectonics: what do we know now that we didn’t know then? Other ideas are given in the table that you can download below. This is another good way to help PGCE students think about the characteristics of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK): that which is most likely to foster pupil learning.
Download table (Word document).
Go to PGCE activity on people and physical geography.
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8. The learning sequence
One approach that pays learning dividends in physical geography is to allow pupils to start with the evidence rather than the final theory or explanation. This is clearly not a very novel approach, yet so often I find PGCE students neglect it, preferring to engage pupils with the complexities of the explanatory model (and its terminology!) very early in the learning experiences. A classic example arises with tectonic plate boundaries and the global distribution of earthquakes and volcanoes. Traditional teaching engages pupils with diagrams of subduction zones and so forth, followed by an earthquake and volcanoes distribution map which purports to show those plate boundaries. However, the map is merely a record of past events and current features and should be presented as such. Details should be examined (e.g. earthquake depth in relation to location; volcano age and location) and possible explanations considered.
Air masses and fronts represent another example where pupils profitably engage with the evidence before the explanatory model. The evidence comprises data on temperature, air pressure, relative humidity, cloud cover, wind strength and direction and so forth. The drawing of a line on a map, to be labelled 'cold front' is usually best done later, once the idea of marked change over short distance has been identified.
Of course details of work involving evidence before explanatory model will be appropriate for the particular learners: it is the principle that matters, viz that the evidence should be considered by the pupils before they are given the 'right answer' (plate boundary; cold front). Of course, this approach also allows engagement with the idea that theories are transient and liable to be refined or displaced. It also allows the teacher to bring in biographical and other sociological details relating to the model in question.
Go to PGCE activities on the learning sequence.
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9. Working with the scientists
Geography/science overlap has long been neglected in some schools and PGCE students are often unaware of the potential benefits (Trend, 1995) which are:
- Teacher expertise: some have a geography and/or geoscience background
- Textbooks and similar resources, often under-used by science teachers. Many are labelled 'The Earth'
- Field equipment, obviously
- Knowledge of good field localities: important for NQTs new to the area
- Cross referencing geography/science work in your teaching, so that pupils make links too!
- Parallel teaching: the curriculum content overlap is sometimes staggering, but problems only arise when there is mutual ignorance. So, find out what geoscience is being taught in science courses: you will find much overlap, such as rocks, weathering, geomorphological processes and forms (true!) meteorology, climate and climate change, ecosystems and nutrient cycling, systems thinking, volcanoes, earthquakes and plate tectonics. Science courses even include issues such as land-use conflict over quarrying and issues relating to pollution: in other words, core geography themes. Although my 'overlap' label suggests simple repetition, it is usually more complex than that.
Go to PGCE activities on work with the scientists.
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10. Working with geography resources
Many published resources, especially textbooks, minimise or distort physical geography, at least until A2 level. This is bound to influence teaching and learning in physical geography, so PGCE students need to become skilled in using textbooks with imagination and in a discriminatory way. The new Key Stage 3 National Curriculum releases teachers from many constraints, so new geography teachers will have opportunities and responsibilities to develop curricula which restore the position of physical geography.
Go to PGCE activities on working with geography resources.
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11. Climate change
Three key points to start.
- Climate change has always been with us: this takes us to Earth's past climates (full square in the Science NC) and the likely causes (and even rates) of variation. Snowball Earth, Little Ice Age and Hothouse Earth are possible contenders for some exciting short learning activities in this area.
- The greenhouse effect is normal: it is the 'enhanced greenhouse effect' that causes concern.
- The level of consensus among scientists over anthropogenic causes of climate change is itself controversial: the analysis of such opinion contrasts is unlikely to be geographical, although it might stimulate physical geography learning.
Weather, climate and climate change are explicit in the Geography National Curriculum: they have a far lower profile in the Science NC. This has significant implications for geography teachers who must engage KS3 pupils with the 'interactions between people and their environments'. This involves possible anthropogenic causes of climate change, as well as human responses to it. The science of climate change is a necessary context for such geographical studies and PGCE geography students should become as well-informed as feasible in order to devise secure learning activities, enquiry-based or otherwise. In a comprehensive overview of the key issues, Stuart Lane (2008) introduces a series of articles on climate change in the journal Geography, the first of which is on sea-level change (Gehrels & Long, 2008). Some new entrants to the profession lack the relevant background in meteorology and environmental science: this is understandable, but they must carry out the necessary work in order to develop their climate change conceptual frameworks: how?
Go to PGCE activities on climate change.
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12. Deep time
Time is important in physical geography, yet it is often ignored, overlooked or taken for granted in the classroom. How long does it take for: a coast to retreat; the soil to form; a vegetation succession to reach climatic climax; a warm front to pass over; sea-level to rise; climate to change; post-glacial isostatic readjustment? When was the Dartmoor granite intruded and how old are the Chiltern Hills (and the chalk?). What was the weather like when dinosaurs roamed the Earth (Valdes, 1999)? Perhaps some geography teachers feel insecure in some of these areas, especially those relating to geological time (deep time)? As a minimum the post-glacial eustatic sea-level rise (Flandrian Transgression) needs to be on the teaching & learning agenda (in some format from Key Stage 3 onwards): how else can we address coastal and drainage basin evolution, not to mention climate change and current sea-level change? Further reading in this area is available (Pyle, 2007; Trend, 2001).
Go to PGCE activities on deep time.
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These weblinks go beyond those routinely accessed by geography teachers for physical geography material, such as: Met Office; US Geological Survey; Staffordshire Learning Net; Teacher Training Resource Bank.
Earth Science Teachers' Association (ESTA). A good starting point for news, events and resources across geoscience and physical geography.
Earth Science Education Unit (ESEU). Another good starting point for news, in-service courses and teaching resources across geoscience and physical geography.
Joint Earth Science Education Initiative (JESEI). A collection of over 40 activities, of all shapes and sizes, for science teachers: but including units on limestone quarrying, weathering, plate tectonics, earthquakes, volcanoes and rocks.
Natural England. A collection of detailed learning activities covering a wide range of physical geography topics including (i) weathering and the rock cycle (ii) coastal environments and (iii) materials and the environment.
Earth Learning Idea. A new website arising from the International Year of Planet Earth (2008), containing many practical activities. A new activity is added each week throughout 2008.
The Geography Site. A useful and comprehensive source of ideas, resources and much else. UK-based.
The Teacher Scientist Network
Snowball Earth
Hothouse Earth
Climate Change (reliable website)
Nature on Climate Change (reliable website)
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Dove, J. (2000) Immaculate Misconceptions. Sheffield: Geographical Association.
Ferguson, R. (2003) 'Publication practices in physical and human geography: a comment on Nigel Thrift's "The future of geography"'. Geoforum, 34, 1, pp. 9-11.
Gehrels, R., & Long, A. (2008) 'Sea level is not level: the case for a new approach to predicting UK sea-level rise'. Geography, 93, 1, pp.11-16.
Goudie, A. (1995) The Changing Earth: rates of geomorphological process. Oxford: Blackwell.
Gregory, K. J. (2004) 'Valuing physical geography'. Geography, 89, 1, pp. 18-25.
Inman, T. (2006) 'Let's get physical'. In D. Balderstone (Ed.), Secondary Geography Handbook (pp. 264-275). Sheffield: Geographical Association.
Johnston, R. (2006) 'Geography (or geographers) and earth system science'. Geoforum, 37, pp. 7-11.
Knight, P. G. (2007) 'Physical geography: learning and teaching in a dynamic discipline so dynamic that textbooks can't keep up!' Geography, 92, 1, pp. 57-61.
Lane, S. N. (2008) 'Thinking through climate change: an introduction'. Geography, 93, 1, pp. 4-10.
Pitman, A. J. (2005) 'On the role of geography in Earth System Science'. Geoforum, 36, pp. 137-148.
Pyle, C. (2007) 'Teaching the time: physical geography in four dimensions'. Teaching Geography, 32, 3, pp. 121-123.
Raymo, M. E., & Huybers, P. (2008) 'Unlocking the mysteries of the ice ages'. Nature, 451, pp. 284-285.
Roberts, M. (2003) Learning Through Enquiry: making sense of geography in the key stage 3 classroom. Sheffield: Geographical Association.
Roberts, M. (2006) 'Geographical enquiry'. In D. Balderstone (Ed.), Secondary Geography Handbook (pp. 90-105). Sheffield: Geographical Association.
Shulman, L. (1986) 'Those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching'. Educational Researcher, 15, 2, pp. 4-14.
Thrift, N. (2002) 'The future of geography'. Geoforum, 33, pp. 291-298.
Trend, R. D. (1995) Geography and Science: Forging Links at Key Stage 3. Sheffield: Geographical Association.
Trend, R. D. (2001) 'Perceptions of the Planet: Deep Time'. Teaching Earth Sciences, 26, 1, pp. 30-38.
Turner, B. L. I. (2002) 'Response to Thrift's "The future of geography"'. Geoforum, 33, 4, pp. 427-429.
Valdes, P. J. (1999) 'Weather forecasting for dinosaurs'. Geology Today, 15, 1, pp. 24-29.
Zachos, J. C., Dickens, G. R., & Zeebe, R. E. (2008) 'An early Cenozoic perspective on greenhouse warming and carbon-cycle dynamics'. Nature, 451, pp. 279-283.
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(Added 10.04.08) |
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