GeoCapabilities¹

1. www.geocapabilities.org.

and curriculum leadership: balancing the priorities of aim-based and knowledge-led curriculum thinking in schools

ABSTRACT

The small-scale research presented in this paper was conducted as part of the GeoCapabilities project. Though originating in the Anglophone world, the project attempts to address the purposes and values of geography education internationally. Using the idea of “powerful disciplinary knowledge” the project asks what geography has to offer that helps young people develop the human capabilities they need in order to live a life that they consider valuable. In this paper, we explore the challenges and opportunities presented by GeoCapabilities in several European national contexts. We asked selected teachers and teacher educators in four different countries (Finland, Germany, The Netherlands and Sweden) what role they thought geography plays in enhancing students’ “human potential.” Despite marked differences relating to the legal and structural background in each country we found major similarities in teachers’ and teacher educators’ curriculum thinking in relation to geography's contribution to the future well-being of their students.

KEYWORDS:

• GeoCapabilities
• human capabilities
• powerful disciplinary knowledge
• geographical thinking
• curriculum making
• European teachers and teacher educators

Acknowledgements

Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the European Union Comenius Programme. A summary of the project's activities can be found at www.geocapabilities.org.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. www.geocapabilities.org.

2. Young's contributions to debates about knowledge and the curriculum are of considerable significance. As Morgan (2014) has discussed, Young's recent work renounces his earlier arguments that school subjects represented the “knowledge of the powerful” (and were thus alienating to some groups), arguing instead that equality for all students is dependent on ensuring that all get access to “powerful knowledge”.

3. STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Additional information

Funding

GeoCapabilities, on which this paper is based, was initially supported by the US National Science Foundation [grant number BCS–1155255]. The successor project, “GeoCap 2,” is supported by the European Union [grant number 539079–LLP–1–2013–1–UK- COMENIUS-CMP (2013–6)].