1.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
Teaching migration
with geocapabilities 3
Luc Zwartjes
Ghent University, geography department
Sint-Lodewijkscollege Brugge
EUROGEO
luc.zwartjes@ugent.be
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

2.
Projet Erasmus+

3.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
A capability approach
A capabilityy approach is about human potential.
Alternatively, we could say that it is about the potential to become
fully human.
So it's about human freedom: to 'be' and 'do' for a person – and to
have a number of choices.
A capacity approach increases our awareness of factors that can
deprive individuals and communities of their abilities.
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

4.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
competencies vs. Geocapabilities
« Know-act status based on the
mobilisation and effective use of
resources, both internally and externally »
(Legendre, 2008)
 transversal and transdisciplinary
 Depending on the situation
 Understand system of knowledge, skills,
attitudes, interpersonal skills, etc
« The opportunity to build a view of the
world with a disciplinary basis. »
(http://www.geocapabilities.org/)
 disciplinary
 Not depending on the situation.
 Depends on disciplinary
knowledge and reasoning
methods
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

5.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
Credit: Richard Bustin, school teacher partner of the
GeoCapabilities project

6.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
What can students learn from this?

7.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
Why are we using this image?
What do we want students to learn from it?
Why do we want students to learn this?

8.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
Why do we want students to learn geography?
What do they gain from it?
What would their education be without significant geographical input?
What is the contribution of geography to a young person's education in
preparation for life and work at the beginning of the 21st century?

9.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
• They deal with what is needed to lead a flourishing and truly human life, a good, valuable and
productive life. For that you need capabilities, certain abilities.
• Capabilities are the chances and choices people have to lead the life they want to lead. The
capabilities that people have, form as it were the choice pallet of life. People choose the
colours on the selection pallet to give shape to their lives. These colours are called
functionings.
Amartya Sen en Martha Nussbaum
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

10.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
Nussbaum mentions ten capabilities, interesting in the perspective of
geography education::
• the ability to imagine, think and reason,
• to be able to show concern for others,
• to live with care for the natural environment, and
• to participate in political choices that affect life
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

11.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

12.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
The GeoCapabilities scenario
Capacities express what all young people have a 'pedagogical right' to expect from
school.
School contributes to their 'substantive freedoms' (to do and to be):
to make healthy choices about how to live
to function productively in society, with
develop discernment in relation to economic, social, political and
environmental issues
GeoCapabilities states that one element of that 'right' is geographical knowledge. That is,
to learn to think geographically.
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

13.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
The GeoCapabilities scenario
Geocapabilities framed by 3 ideas:
1) Powerful disciplinary knowledge (PDK)
2) “Future 3” curriculum (F3)
3) Curriculum making
Connected
to social
justice
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

14.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
3 criteria for ‘powerful knowledge’:
1. It is distinct from ‘common sense’ knowledge acquired through everyday experience
and therefore context-specific and limited.
2. It is systematic. Its concepts are related to each as part of a discipline with its specific
rules and conventions. It can be the basis for generalisations and predictions beyond
specific cases or contexts.
3. It is specialized; developed by specialists within defined fields of expertise and enquiry.
1 Powerful disciplinary knowledge
Knowledge is powerful "when it predicts, when it
explains, when it allows you to think of alternatives
Michael Young
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

15.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
 Powerful geographical knowledge
… according the The National Center for Research in Geography Education (NCRGE)
• content-related geographical knowledge, e.g. knowledge and understanding of
geographical terminology and content-related concepts such as alluvial plain,
metropolitan area, ethnic group, tertiary economy, coniferous forest, geological fault,
flood plain, natural hazards, etc.
• conceptual geographical knowledge, e.g. using "big ideas" in geography, such as
location, place, region, interconnection, spatial relations, etc., to think about people,
places and environments, from the local to the global
• procedural geographic knowledge, e.g. spatial analysis with a GIS or other geospatial
technology, designing a geographic survey and research study, collecting spatial data
in the field, etc.
Knowledge thus consists of 'knowing that’ and two kinds of 'knowing how’*.
* Winch, C. (2013) Curriculum Design and Epistemic Ascent, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 47, 1
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

16.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
2 A ‘Future 3’ curriculum
Three alternative futures or ways of thinking about the school curriculum:
 Future 1: "Knowledge for the sake of knowledge", with a lot of factual knowledge in
an often static and conservative curriculum
 Future 2: attention shifts from knowledge to learning. attention is paid to learning
and thinking as independent goals of education, regardless of the themes that need
to be learned or thought about
 Future 3: This knowledge is dynamic and related to disciplinary concepts and ways
of thinking. It is a curriculum of engagement with professional thinking
It is to enable all students to acquire knowledge that takes them beyond their experience. It is knowledge which many
will not have access to at home, among their friends, or in the communities in which they live. As such, access to this
knowledge is the “right” of all pupils as future citizens Michael Young
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

17.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
3 Curriculum making
teachers must combine
three things when designing
their education:
1. the student and the
world in which he lives,
2. the professional
discipline and what it
has to offer,
3. and the didactics to get
the student involved
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

18.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
Social justice
• a concept of fair and just relationships between the individual and
society, measured by the distribution of wealth, opportunities for
personal activity and social privileges.
• embedded to geocapablities as distinction between powerful
knowledge – the emancipatory potential of disciplinary, university-
based knowledge made accessible to a young person, and
‘knowledge of the powerful’ – a narrower, fixed school subject
knowledge that is more exclusionary and divisive in society.
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

19.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
Applied to migration
• an area of curriculum commonality across participating partners1, thus
enabling comparisons across jurisdictions.
• A value-laden contemporary issue dominating aspects of current social
and political discourses in Europe and beyond,
• as a field of enquiry it has strong social justice threads of its own.
• a personally relevant topic for many children. Some children are
themselves refugees, they may be recent migrants or from second or
third generation migrant movements
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

20.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
Phase 1: teacher interviews
• comparable pressures in terms of time (performance, curriculum, quality,
examination outcomes)
• In addition to lack of resources, the quality of resources is also identified as
problematic
• When teaching migration from a more quantitative approach (using data
sources, diagrammatic representations etc), it was felt that migration as a
topic becomes too abstract for some students to relate to.
• students’ individual attitudes present barriers to understanding migratory
phenomena.
• how to deal with the stereotyping of migrants in a class with migrant
students. need to develop teachers own PDK in order
to support teacher agency in curriculum makingv
Research paper available: https://doi.org/10.1080/10382046.2020.1749756
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

21.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
Phase 2: activate teachers
1 Creating a set of pedagogical
principles & strategies
• Meeting to discuss how to recognize
PDK in the teaching of migration
• reflect on PDK and the ‘significance’
of subject content for their students
• Tested with teachers in schools
2 Create a toolkit for
dealing with social justice
in schools, including online exhibition
with storymaps
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

22.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
Using vignettes
= a resource (map, chart,
photo…) that the teacher uses
to identify and analyze
powerful knowledge.
= more than a source, build a
series of lessons around it,
keeps returning,
supplemented with
other relevant information.
The best vignettes conceal
multiple layers and stories
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021

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VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE

24.
VAKGROEP GEOGRAFIE
www.geocapabilities.org
EUROGEO CONFERENCE 22-23 APRIL 2021
Vignettes already available,
toolkit will be online after
the summer.