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ABSTRACT
Since the late 1990s, there has been a concern about a growing disconnect between Geography in academia and the Geography taught in the school curriculum. The claim is that School Geography has remained, to some degree, stuck with outdated notions of the discipline, resulting in detrimental effects on those making the transition from School Geography to University Geography. This paper investigates whether these issues are present in Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Geography. Drawing upon curriculum materials, a survey of Geography school teachers, university staff and a handful of follow-up interviews, CfE was evaluated with respect to policy and implementation, course content, pedagogy, and the relationship between Scottish Geography’s secondary and tertiary educational sectors. Findings pertained to concerns around non-specialist teaching, and about how transition is impacted by socio-economic inequality between state and independent schools. Significant criticisms were voiced over outdated topics, resulting in declining pupil interest, while issues were identified regarding certain pedagogies and problematic stereotyping of places. A distinct deficit of communication between educational sectors became clear, and it is concluded that there are significant problems with CfE Geography symptomatic of a wider disconnect with University Geography, presenting a serious barrier to transition into Higher Education Geography.
Acknowledgements
I would like to give enormous thanks to those who supported and encouraged me both during the original dissertation and the work done to adapt it for publication. Thank you to all my interviewees for sharing their knowledge and experience. Thank you to my friends and family for all their love and support. Thank you to Chris Philo for seeing the importance of this topic and encouraging me to share it with the geographical community. Lastly, thank you to Morven Mackenzie for being the one who inspired all of this: you will always be fondly remembered.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 For the purposes of this article, when referring to Geography as an academic subject taught in schools and higher education a capital ‘G’ will be used, and when referring to geography as a general noun (a subject-matter in the world) a lower case ‘g’ will be used. The constructions ‘School Geography’ and ‘Higher Education Geography’ or ‘University Geography’ will also occasionally be used.
2 I was admitted to study Geography at the University of Glasgow and graduated with a MA(SocSci) Honours degree in June 2021.
3 Fien and Gerber’s (Citation1988) book Teaching Geography for a Better World is a key text here. Inspired by critical theory, Freirean pedagogies and neo-Marxist schools of thought, these educators advocated for a Geography curriculum that ‘would teach that social and environmental problems result not so much from individual ignorance or unsustainable values but from the operations of this global economy’ (Fien, Citation1999, pp. 147–148).
4 As one anonymous reviewer suggested, ‘[c]ontinuing development and extension of these activities has been hindered by the changing political context in the past twenty years, in particular greater centralisation of the school curriculum (National Curricula, reviews of education, the moves to academies), accountability measures in schools and higher education (REF [Research Excellence Framework], Teaching/learning evaluation, etc.) and the increasing separation of the education systems of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.’
5 There is insufficient space in this paper to reflect further on the precise processes, actors and influences involved in setting the CfE agenda, nor more systematically to assess what may have changed – or likely not much changed – between the CfE Geography curriculum and what preceded it.
6 SAGT is a ‘Scotland-based subject association’ whose aims are to further the development of Geography through education and teaching. Their c.600 members participate in national events such as conferences with a focus on creating resources for geographical teaching (Scottish Association of Geography Teachers, Citationn.d.).
7 There were 357 state secondary schools recorded in Scottish government data for 2021 (https://www.gov.scot/publications/summary-statistics-schools-scotland/pages/3/) compared to 71 independent schools taking 5.4% of all Scotland’s senior school pupils (https://www.scis.org.uk/facts-and-figures/).
8 Interviewees were sent a Participant Information Sheet and a Consent Form. Interviews were audio-video recorded with consent and stored locally on a password-protected computer. They were transcribed by hand from the recordings to ensure accuracy, as the automatically generated transcripts produced by Zoom contained significant errors. The transcriptions incorporated Silverman’s (Citation2001) transcription symbols that add an extra layer to the words, giving scope to include the non-verbal communications that the participants exhibited, suggesting more emotive aspects behind their words. The overall method of qualitative analysis used for this research was based on Richie and Spencer’s (Citation1994) idea of ‘Framework Qualitative Analysis for Applied Policy Research’: even though this was a Geography project, it was also an analysis of education policy. This method calls for a a priori codes, but with scope for emergent themes once coding beings. A coding table was used to organise these major themes, then to delineate them into sub-themes.
9 Unattributed quotes or paraphrases derive from the questionnaire survey returns.
10 As one anonymous reviewer tellingly adds: ‘[c]oncerns about how the school curriculum is not providing a sound grounding in core STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics] elements of the subject may be translating into fewer BSc [Batchelor of Science] Geography undergraduates, which in turn means that the discipline not making the contribution it could to increasing the number of students studying STEM subjects. This disconnect between school and HE could be considered.’
11 The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation is a statistical measure produced and used by the Scottish Government to identify areas of multiple deprivation. Data zones are ranked from most to least deprived and are allocated to deciles based on this ranking.
12 National 5 examinations are taken by pupils in what is called, in Scotland, S4 (Senior School level 4) for pupils typically aged 15–16 years old.
13 As one anonymous reviewer noted, ‘a successful venture in schools/higher education dialogue took place in the production of the latest A-level Criteria for Geography in England. The ALCAB [A-level Content Advisory Board (Geography Panel)] exercise involved higher education geographers, schoolteachers, geography teacher educators and awarding bodies jointly in an exercise to update the kind of geography taught at A level. (see Rawling, Citation2015 and Evans, Citation2016). It is generally thought to have made a positive impact on the kind of geography taught at A level in England and Wales.’ See also Evans (Citation2016) on the role of the ALCAB for Geography. Similar views about multi-actor and cross-sector action – bridging the School-University Geography divide – are actually aired in various publications (e.g. Tate & Swords, Citation2013).
14 There could also be an important role here for Scotland’s Geography Royal, a position that has recently passed from Charles Withers to Joanne Sharp (see Sharp, Citation2022).