Bringing geography home

I am now gearing up to begin my MRes and subsequent PhD at the Institute of Education in London this October. Here is a taster of some of the things that I will be working on...

"The geographer Tim Cresswell informs us that prospective geography undergraduates often arrive at his university for interview expressing an interest in places and the differences between them. However, this interest is rarely about a deeply theorised notion of what place is as a concept. Cresswell argues that if students at school were to engage with thinking more deeply about place then it might not only ease their transition to university geography, but their experience of studying geography could be enlivened and their understanding of contemporary social and cultural issues enhanced. I find this an appealing argument. The ideas of place, home, identity and belonging are often evoked in the media, and are part of young people's everyday experience. It would seem therefore to be important for them to develop the capacity to think about these issues carefully and critically, in order to take them beyond the 'everyday'. This is a crucial part of what has been termed 'geo-capability'. However, more research is required in order to how to see precisely how this conceptual approach might work in practice. In response to this perceived gap, my research project will be focusing on these two key questions:

• How can we teach and learn geography in way that fosters a richer and more critical understanding of place, home and belonging by drawing upon both the resource that is the academic subject of geography and the experiences of young people?

• What would a geography curriculum built upon and led by such concepts look like and what benefits would this would bring about for learners, in terms of their 'geo-capability'?

My intention is to carry out research with young people and teachers from three Sheffield schools representing considerably varied catchment areas. They will be involved in a project about place, home and belonging. The young people will be asked to keep a multi-media diary documenting personal and shared geographies of their 'home' city of Sheffield over the period of one year. Although the group will have a high degree of autonomy over their project, it is anticipated that they will use an experiential fieldwork approach that may include creative writing, photography and the use of digital media such as online mapping and Twitter. I aim to find an approach that allows young people's voices to speak honestly and freely. My methodology will be chiefly qualitative and will include a large ethnographic component, as I will be accompanying the young people as they carry out fieldwork and compile their diaries, thus being at once researcher and participant. Other techniques that I may employ include interviewing and the analysis of media that students produce during the project.

It is important to recognise that this research will also contribute to broader debates about the role of geography in the school curriculum. It has become commonplace to hear arguments about the irrelevance of 'traditional' school subjects in the information age and their inability to provide young people with the skills they require for the 21st century. However, David Lambert and John Morgan argue that the 'curriculum wars' here alluded to are based on a superficial reading on the relationship between subject knowledge and the curriculum. I agree, and my research is located in opposition to both the idea of a subject discipline as a 'transmittable' body of knowledge but also to the 'debilitating anti-intellectualism' that occurs when subject content is supplanted by a sole focus on educational processes and skills-building. I wish to contribute to an emerging vision for geography education that integrates student experience, teacher knowledge and skills, and the subject resource that is geography. I believe that my research will help clarify important distinctions between everyday experience, pedagogy and the school curriculum as well as contribute to academic discourse on place, home and belonging.."

Photo is by Flickr user Kirk Siang and is made available under a Creative Commons license