Recent events in England andWales would suggest that geography teachers need to re-engage with their subject matter to enable them to improve how they teach the geography. However, this requires a detailed understanding of how teachers use their subject knowledge. This paper outlines how two geography teachers experience tension between how they understand geography at an academic level and the ways they prefer to teach it. How they resolve these conflicts shows that these teachers have an active relationship with their subject that enables them to develop curricula in line with their values about geography.
The future of Master's-level work in initial teacher education (ITE) in England seems uncertain. Whilst the coalition government has expressed support for Master's-level work, its recent White Paper focuses on teaching skills as the dominant form of professional development. This training discourse is in tension with the view of professional learning advocated by ITE courses that offer Master's credits. Following a survey of the changing perceptions of Master's-level study during a Post Graduate Certificate in Education course by student teachers in four subject groups, this paper highlights how the process of professional learning can have the most impact on how they value studying at a higher level during their early professional development.
In response to the recent trends in geography initial teacher education, this paper sets out an argument for why it is important for new teachers to be supported by geography specialists. The argument is in two parts. In the first part, the paper outlines why having a strong geographical identity is important for teachers. In the second part, the paper explores different approaches to what it means to be a "good" geography teacher and the pedagogical implications for teacher education. Taken together, the paper argues that new geography teachers need to develop their disciplinary perspective on why teaching geography matters, and are best placed to do so when supported by other geography specialists. The recent research conducted by Andrea Tapsfield et al (2015, 2016) reveals some worrying trends in secondary geography initial teacher education as a result of government policy shifts towards school-led teacher training. As a response to these trends, this paper outlines why subject specialist teacher education is vital for new geography teachers. By this I mean why it is so important to develop a subject identity and maintain a relationship with geography as a discipline when learning to become a geography teacher. To support this case, this paper is in two parts. In the first part, I draw upon findings from my recent research with established teachers that reveals the longer term benefits of teachers having a strong geographical identity. In the second part, I outline three trends approaches to initial teacher education (ITE) taken from Moore's work on good teaching, and how
In this paper I report on a review of over 400 Masters level dissertations in geography education completed since 1968 at the UCL, Institute of Education, London. The aim of this review is to understand how the field of geography education has been understood and problematised by practitioners within the field. Unlike the Road Map report on Geography Education Research which reviews geography education research from a strategic perspective, this research explores the field from the perspective of the practitioners and therefore asks what are the issues that concern practitioner researchers. Whilst practitioners add an important perspective on the field, their concerns are often not evident in the published literature. This paper argues that the practitioner focus on "problems of the day" is a key dimension that needs to be more widely recognised in the academic literature. This goes beyond a simple definition of research as describing "what works" in education, but as part of an ongoing dialogue between research and practice that is characteristic of a practical field of research enquiry. The research contributes to our understanding of how the field of geography education (within specific contexts) is experienced and problematised by practitioners.
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