Alan PARKINSON, King's Ely Junior, United Kingdom
In 1964, composer Benjamin Britten was the first recipient of the Robert O. Anderson Aspen Award in the Humanities: honouring “the individual anywhere in the world judged to have made the greatest contribution to the advancement of the humanities.” In an acceptance speech, Britten referred to any composition as being influenced by the conditions in which it would be performed, when it would begin to exist.
National curriculum documents are similar to musical notation: just ink on paper. Bringing them to life requires several elements: a ‘conductor’ (the teacher?), experienced and skilled ‘musicians’ (the students?), ‘instruments’ which are fit for purpose and tuned (resources), deliberate and sustained practice and an audience. Interactions between these elements create an enacted curriculum (Biddulph, 2018) which may be different from the expectations of those developing the original framework. Drawing on previous experience of leading on curriculum development during the UK’s Action Plan for Geography (2006-11) the Geographical Association (GA) supports teachers in the process of curriculum making.
The role of knowledge in the curriculum has been revisited recently (Gericke et al, 2018) and the GeoCapabilities approach has emerged. (Donert, 2015)
In 1976, Norman Graves, who had a long association with the IGU, started his tenure as President of the GA. He wrote extensively on curriculum planning (Graves, 1979) developing models which are worth revisiting. Eleanor Rawling is currently leading work on a UK framework for the school geography curriculum. I will outline the GA’s work to date, before exploring how such frameworks are translated by classroom practitioners into a version which may introduce unintended emphases.
I will reference sources influencing a ‘Curriculum vitae’ project to develop a curriculum within my own school to support the growth of geographical thinking in students: preparing them for formal assessments, but approaching them critically.
Mots clés : Curriculum |Frameworks|Knowledge|GeoCapabilities|pedagogy
A103504AP