How do we understand conceptual development in school geography?

Abstract

At the time of writing, a review of the English National Curriculum is underway. The Coalition government’s preference for ‘core’ or ‘essential’ knowledge (as indicated in their White Paper, The Importance of Teaching , DfE, 2010) would suggest that the new national curriculum will articulate school geography in a different way to the 2007 version. The 2007 Geography National Curriculum (GNC) expressed the Programme of Study through Key Concepts and Key Processes. However, this approach has been critiqued due to its lack of specifi c reference to geographical knowledge, and the seemingly knowledge-weak school curriculum it produced. It is likely that the revised Geography National Curriculum will defi ne the curriculum through identifying ‘core’ knowledge. The curriculum consultation exercise (conducted through the Geographical Association’s (GA) website) highlighted that many geography teachers value the concept-based approach to the curriculum. This is a key time then to question what key concepts are, how they have contributed to geography education, and what will be lost if key concepts are removed from the formal curriculum documents. As the opening quotation to this chapter suggests, how we understand concepts determines how we use them and affects our understanding of geographical phenomena. In order to answer these questions, this chapter will explore how concepts have been used and understood in geography education, and how they relate to concepts as they are discussed and understood in academic geography.

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