Constructing the world through the curriculum
of the world, but multiple maps of meaning (Jackson, 1989). Post-modern approaches have emphasised different geographies, different viewpoints, and different repre-sentations of the world and how place identity is constructed through relationships with other places (Massey, 2002).
Just as the discourses of academic geography change the map of the studied world, so do the discourses of the educational world. Before the introduction of the Geography National Curriculum (GNC) in 1991 the dominant approach to syllabus construction was through thematic studies, influenced variably by the quantitative revolution and by radical geography’s concerns with issues. A minority of schools still influenced by a regional approach studied the world through a curriculum structured by continents and countries (Roberts, 1998). As teachers could choose what they taught, the curriculum worlds constructed through these frameworks varied.
Concern about the under-emphasis of place studies in schools (Walford 2000, Rawling, 2001) influenced the first GNC (DES, 1991) with the result that it included, in addition to the study of themes, the compulsory study of specified places: the home region; one of France, Germany, Italy and Spain; one of twelve named Less Economically Developed Countries (LEDCs), and one of USA, Japan and USSR. The emphasis was on descriptive studies. The two revisions of the GNC in 1995 (DFE, 1995) and 2000 (DfEE, 1999) still included the study of place, but countries were no longer specified and only two countries had to be studied. Instead of emphasis on description there was emphasis on studying at a range of scales within regional and global contexts and independence (DFE, 1995) and on the distinctive character of places, the causes and consequences of regional differences, change and issues of topical significance (DfEE, 1999).
Methodology
I used both quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the shape of the world created by the choice of countries and case studies. I sent a questionnaire survey to schools in an attempt to produce some generalisations about which countries were studied and why. The response rate was 69%. I used qualitative methods to examine the particular worlds created in individual schools through choice of countries and case studies and to explore the thinking behind the choices made. I interviewed heads of geography in six schools, focusing on the whole curriculum in three schools and on Europe in three different schools.
Survey findings
The current GNC in the UK requires pupils to study any ‘two countries in signifi-cantly different states of economic development’. Four countries dominated the choices. Italy and Japan dominated the MEDCs chosen, with 72% of schools choosing one or both of these countries. 75% of schools chose either Brazil or Kenya.
An open question on why particular countries were studied produced a variety of responses. A large majority (90%) explained their choices in terms of resources, some stating simply that they were ‘in the texts we purchased’, others indicating a more
active engagement in curriculum development, e.g. ‘over the last 4/5 years we have built up resources and staff knowledge of Nigeria. We had some useful videos and an Oxfam resources pack’. 40% justified their choices in terms of geographical content with a minority referring specifically to the GNC place requirements e.g. ‘Italy is good for looking at regional disparities’. Most justified the choices in terms of opportunities to use the countries as case studies for themes. A minority justified choices in terms of the broader curriculum, mentioning links with modern languages, citizenship, and history e.g. ‘India is studied alongside the study of Mogul Empire’.
Teachers’ and pupils’ experiences and preferences were important for some: ‘We have a teacher who lived in Kenya’; ‘Some students of Italian descent’; ‘Brazil: to enthuse and motivate boys (football link)’, and India: ‘pupils bring some knowledge and images to discuss’. A minority had chosen the UK as the country for study because they thought pupils should study their own country. Two responses justified their choices in terms of intrinsic importance of the country: ‘USA is a large important country and frequently in the news’ and ‘India is important in itself’.
Interview findings
The general interviews in Schools A, B and C revealed that the flexibility of the GNC allowed schools to construct completely different curriculum worlds consisting of their chosen countries and case studies.
School A chose to study Japan and Tanzania, the latter because of an exchange link of pupils and staff with a subsistence village in Zanzibar. A discussion of places used for case studies revealed significant areas of neglect. No case studies were selected from North America, Europe or the Middle East or from South America apart from the tropical rainforest or from Asia apart from flooding in Bangladesh.
School B studied USA, in spite of limited published resources, because of its importance in the world, and also Australia and Brazil. These three countries were studied in some detail with cross referencing to other comparable places, thus delib-erately enlarging the curriculum world. Case studies from many parts of the world were chosen to illustrate the GNC themes, but Asia was not studied at all apart from flooding in Bangladesh.
School C studied Italy, Japan and India, spending a whole term on each, a longer period than in other schools. Pupils were told why these countries were chosen and were encouraged to do extended reading on them through a collection of newspaper cuttings. Although there was no use of case studies from USA, Africa, Russia or the Middle East, there was some study of all parts of the world through a series of lessons on each continent focusing on key information and issues.
Interviews in Schools D, E and F were focused on Europe, excluding the UK. In all three schools, work on the whole of Europe was limited to a lesson on general map work and one or two lessons on the European Union, its purposes and member countries. All three schools had chosen Italy as its MEDC. This was explained in terms of availability of resources, because of teachers’ and pupils’ visits to Italy and because pupils had some knowledge through Italian cultural influences in England.
The approach to studying Italy varied. School D adopted a systematic approach
focused on landscape, climate, population and contrasts between north and south.
School E included a more enquiry-based approach with pupils being asked to inves-tigate whether the north/south divide was still valid. School E had developed a series of activities designed to develop ‘thinking skills’ through the study of Italy.
When studying the themes prescribed in the GNC, teachers chose very few illustra-tive case studies from Europe. The examples included: tourism in Majorca, Benidorm and the Alps; migration from Kosovo; volcanoes in Italy and pollution in the North Sea. Thus, the map of Europe constructed in these schools was as peculiar as the world maps in Schools A, B and C. Italy dominated the study of Europe. Areas of neglect included Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Germany and the Republic of Ireland.
In all six interview schools, the places studied were almost all chosen by the teacher; pupils had extremely limited opportunities to choose which places they studied or to incorporate their own personal experiences of place into their study of geography. There was little evidence that teachers consciously thought about the world they were constructing through the curriculum. Views differed on whether the patterns of attention and neglect mattered. Some thought that pupils should have a framework of knowledge about places and a sense of place and attempted to develop this a bit through map work and quizzes. Others thought it was more important to develop a range of skills than to develop knowledge about particular places.
Discussion
Just as every map projection distorts in its own way, so did the curriculum choices of each geography department. There were distinct patterns of attention and neglect.
The countries that received the most attention were Italy, Japan, Brazil and Kenya, which I’ll term the ‘big four’. This is an odd list. Although these countries were named in the first GNC, this is insufficient to explain their dominance. Other coun-tries specified in GNC 1991 such as USA, Germany and China are almost totally neglected now.
There are several reasons why the big four have become so dominant. Hopkins (2001) studied the shape of the world constructed through the different textbooks series produced for successive versions of the GNC. He noted the emergence of a limited number of countries for study (Brazil, Kenya, India, Italy and Japan) and the neglect of countries that might have significance for minority groups in England (e.g. Pakistan). Three of the ‘big four’, Italy, Japan and Kenya, were selected for inclusion in the first edition of Key Geography (Waugh and Bushell, 1991), which became by far the most popular of the textbook series written for GNC 1991. Key Geography books had been used at some stage by % of the survey schools, with 74% continuing to use them. Choices made by textbook authors became further entrenched as producers of television programmes, atlases and textbooks tended to follow the dominant choices. The curriculum position of the ‘big four’ became further embedded by schools linking the study of themes with the chosen countries, e.g. linking Brazil with the study of tropical rainforests, and Italy and Japan with the study of volcanoes and earthquakes. A sort of curriculum inertia has now set in with teachers continuing with their existing choices even when not constrained by
prescription. Interviews showed that departments had invested time and money in developing resources on their chosen places and that teachers had developed confi-dence in teaching them.
The use of case studies to illustrate themes extended areas of attention. In the interview schools, the UK, although not selected as a country for study, was given a lot of attention because of its use for case studies to illustrate the themes. This could be explained by its dominance in textbook case studies (Hopkins, 2002). The use of case studies, while extending coverage of the world, was not without its problems.
China was studied mainly as an example of population policy. Bangladesh was studied only as an example of flooding. Such studies, if unsupported by a broader contextual study, could lead to stereotypical and misleading images.
There were distinct patterns of neglect. Little or no attention was given to the study of USA, Russia or the Middle East and only a minority of schools gave any attention to China or India. These omissions, which were common among all schools, made the KS3 worlds very peculiar. The interviews showed that the worlds of individual schools were made even odder by additional areas of neglect e.g. the whole of Africa, or Europe or Asia.
Several issues have emerged from this small study. First there is the dilemma of depth versus breadth of study. The interview schools illustrated the value of depth of study developed through school exchange links with Zanzibar, through extended reading on Japan and through the use of the same country for case studies to illustrate issues and themes. Breadth of study was developed through references to similar cases in other parts of the world, through providing overviews of issues in each continent and through studying the wider context of the countries chosen for study, e.g. the European Union. GNC 2000 encourages breadth of study through the requirement to study interdependence of countries and to study at a range of scales from the local to the global, and through the study of topical issues. These aspects of the GNC requirements related to place were not emphasised in the interview schools. The disadvantages of studying a few places in depth could be reduced if topical issues were to be regularly studied in schools. Study of the enlargement of the EU and debates about its future would enhance the curriculum map of Europe considerably.
Second, there are issues related to areas of neglect. The worlds constructed at KS3 excluded the most powerful, the most rapidly changing, the most populous and the most globally significant countries in the world. Can pupils whose geographical imaginations are being shaped by such peculiar worlds, really develop much under-standing of the world they live in? Are there places in the world that should be included in every curriculum and if so who should decide? Increased study of global context and interdependence would inevitably draw these neglected areas, e.g. China and the USA, into the KS3 worlds.
Third, there are issues of representation. The worlds that pupils study in their textbooks are very different from the world of current affairs or the world as it is represented in photographs, reports and advertisements that pupils encounter in their particular cultures. A cultural turn in school geography, drawing on
develop-ments in academic geography, could develop pupils’ geographical imaginations by encouraging them to investigate and become critically aware of how the world is represented in the media (Morgan, 2003) and in the textbooks they use.
Fourth, there is the issue of who should control the curriculum. GNC 1991 was criticised for being centrally controlled and prescriptive. Although the legacy of GNC 1991 is still significant, GNC 2000 is neither prescriptive nor controlling. Its flex-ibility gives apparent control to teachers, but when choices are influenced so much by resources it seems that it is the authors of best selling textbooks who are shaping the world. Pupils could be given more control by giving them the choice of places to be studied. In this study, only a few departments allowed such choices.
Lastly, there is the issue of difference. Whatever we do in schools, pupils will construct different worlds and develop different geographical imaginations through the interplay between what they learn inside and outside of the classroom. There is scope for greater acknowledgement of the different worlds pupils bring into the classroom, worlds shaped by their own direct experiences, through their contacts with other people, through their cultures and through the media. In this study, only a minority of schools justified choices in terms of pupils’ interests, experiences, family connections or existing knowledge.
Conclusions
The worlds created through the geography curriculum are influenced by the require-ments of the GNC, by availability of resources and by ways of thinking about the geography and the curriculum. This study revealed peculiar curriculum worlds with strange patterns of attention and neglect. It is inevitable that any world created through the curriculum is simply a partial representation. In the same way as it is impossible to produce an accurate map projection, so it is impossible to produce a curriculum that represents the world accurately. The findings of this small piece of research, however, has implications for initial teacher education and for the contin-uous professional development of teachers. It is worth considering ways in which teachers can become more critically aware of the peculiar yet taken-for-granted worlds they are constructing through the curriculum. It is worth endeavouring to make these curriculum worlds more extensive and more balanced and more related to the worlds that 11−14 year olds experience. This can be done through giving more time to the study of topical issues and of enabling pupils to make use of their own personal geographies gained directly through experience and indirectly through the media and through other people.
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