The role of geography’s concepts and powerful knowledge in a future 3 curriculum

Abstract

This article examines whether geography can provide the powerful knowledge that is a key element of a Future 3 curriculum, and an important component of the GeoCapabilities Project’s proposals for the teaching of geography. Powerful knowledge is knowledge that gives students the intellectual ability to analyse, explain, predict, evaluate and think about the world in ways that are beyond their personal experience. The article focuses on two aspects of this knowledge. The first is the use of concepts to think in new ways, and the second is the ability to make generalisations and apply them to new contexts. The article also reviews and responds to arguments that geography’s concepts cannot produce powerful knowledge. It concludes that geography in a Future 3 curriculum would emphasise building student understanding of geographical ways of thinking, based on its major concepts and their application. This understanding can be developed through a wide range of content, varying from place to place in an appropriately geographical way.

Keywords:

• Future 3 curriculum
• geographical concepts
• geography curriculum
• powerful knowledge

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge, with thanks, the assistance of David Lambert, and the comments of two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1 In two publications (Maude, 2016, 2017) I have described five types of powerful geographical knowledge based on Michael Young’s ideas. This typology is included in the training materials for the GeoCapabilities project (http://www.geocapabilities.org/training-materials/module-1-the-capabilities-approach/into-practice/).

2 The main sources for this list of geography’s major concepts are Clifford, Holloway, Rice, and Valentine (2009), Gregory and Lewin (2018), Hanson (2004), Harvey (2005), Jackson (2006), Johnson and Sidaway (2015), Maude (2013).

3 These descriptions are based on a review of a very large number of books and articles. Major sources are Clifford et al. (2009), Creswell (2008), Harvey (2005), Jackson (2006), Lambert (2017), Lambert and Morgan (2010), Murphy (2018).

4 Unreferenced statements are by the author.

5 For an example of a school topic that develops students’ understanding of the concept of space, see Maude (2018).