This document outlines the GeoCapabilities project which aims to develop geography teachers as curriculum leaders through a capabilities approach. The project has five main goals: 1) raising awareness of geography's contribution to society; 2) describing geography teaching requirements; 3) developing an international exchange of best practices; 4) establishing a research agenda; and 5) creating a professional network. It involves two phases: theoretical perspectives on curriculum, powerful knowledge, capabilities and leadership; and a teacher training course covering disciplinary capabilities and curriculum making. The goal is to empower teachers as curriculum advocates through online resources and professional development.

1. Project partners
Teachers as Curriculum Leaders: a
geocapabilities approach
Karl Donert, President EUROGEO,
Director: European Centre of Excellence: digital-earth.eu
eurogeomail@yahoo.co.uk
Geo-Capabilities

2. Project partners
Curriculum Making
What is “Geocapabilties”?
Phase 1: Theoretical perspectives
Phase 2: Teacher training
Powerful knowledge and Story maps
Teachers as leaders in Curriculum making

3. Project partners
GeoCapabilities is ….
1) raising awareness of the focus
and contribution of geography
education for society
• Compiling international examples
of purposes and values of
geography in schools.
• Expressing the importance of
geographical knowledge for
human capability development.

4. Project partners
GeoCapabilities is ….
2) describing minimum
requirements for geography
teaching in schools, teacher
training
Developing teachers as curriculum
leaders by helping them connect
geographical knowledge with
broader educational aims, using
capabilities as the bridge.

5. Project partners
GeoCapabilities is ….
3) developing an (inter)national
exchange of good practices.
Creating an online teacher-training
course for sharing, communicating
ideas, information, and good
practices - developing geography
teachers as curriculum leaders.
Embracing how geography is
understood and expressed.

6. Project partners
GeoCapabilities is ….
4) developing a research agenda for
geography education
Assembling, collating and analyzing
information on existing models of
teacher training
Analyzing ‘cases’ of best practice in
geography teacher education (in depth
interviews with teachers, teacher
trainers, and mentors).
.

7. Project partners
GeoCapabilities is ….
5) creating a strong professional
network structure
Forging worldwide collaborations
among geography organizations
and teacher education programs.
Growing a community of practice
among geography teachers.

8. Project partners
GeoCapabilities Phase 1
National Geography
standards - contribution to
the development of human
capabilities
In what ways is geography a
“powerful knowledge”?

9. Project partners
GeoCapabilities Phase 1
In what ways is a capabilities
approach helpful to teachers
in “bridging” geography
content and broader
educational goals for human
development?

10. Project partners
Preliminary Framework for
Curriculum Making
• Promote individual autonomy and freedom
• Ability to use their imagination and to be able to think
and reason.
• Identifying and exercising one’s choices in how to live
based on worthwhile distinctions with regard to
citizenship and sustainability.
• Understanding one’s potential as a creative and
productive citizen in the context of the global economy
and culture.

11. Project partners
Phase 2: Theoretical Background
Four interconnected ideas:
• Curriculum
• Powerful knowledge
• Curriculum making
• Capabilities
Training Teachers
Professional
Development
Course

12. Project partners
1. Curriculum
1. The importance of Aims
Every student should be able to lead a flourishing life, to help
others to do so too, to form a broad background of understanding
(Reiss and White 2013)
2. The importance of Content
Every student needs access to essential knowledge and
understanding, skills for capacity development (eg making choices)

13. Project partners
1. Curriculum
1. The importance of Aims
Every student should be able to lead a flourishing life, to help
others to do so too, to form a broad background of understanding
(Reiss and White 2013)
2. The importance of Content
Every student needs access to essential knowledge and
understanding, skills for capacity development (eg making choices)
The overarching ‘curriculum
questions’ are:
What shall we teach?
How do we justify this?

14. Project partners
2. Powerful Knowledge (PK)
• Developed by Michael Young (2008).
• Refers to knowledge you are unlikely to acquire
at home or in the workplace
• Knowledge needed to become active citizens
and workers in the complex modern world,
sometimes called a ‘knowledge society’
Young, M. (2008). From constructivism to realism in the sociology of the
curriculum. Review of research in Education, 32(1), 1-28.

15. Project partners
PK Characteristics – (PDK)
Young, M. (2008). From constructivism to realism in the sociology of the
curriculum. Review of research in Education, 32(1), 1-28.
evidence
based
conceptual,
theoretical part of a system
of thought
dynamic,
evolving,
changing
beyond the direct
experience of the
teacher /learner
sometimes
counter-
intuitive
discipline based

16. Project partners
3. Curriculum Making (Lambert et al, 2015)
• Leadership, taking responsibility through
‘curriculum making’
• ‘Future 3 curriculum’: led by ‘... the epistemic
rules of specialist communities’
• Ways to understand the world and take pupils
beyond their everyday experience
Lambert, D., Solem, M., & Tani, S. (2015). Achieving Human Potential Through Geography Education: A
Capabilities Approach to Curriculum Making in Schools, Annals of American Association of
Geographers, 105(4), 723-735

17. Project partners
http://www.geography.org.uk/cpdevents/curriculum/curriculummaking/
3. Curriculum Making
Student Experiences
Geography: the disciplineTeacher Choices
Which
learning
activity ?
Thinking
Geographically
Underpinned
by Key
Concepts
Does this take the
learner beyond
what they
already know ?

18. Project partners
4. Capabilities (Sen and Nussbaum, 2015)
• Relates closely to active citizenship education
• What is essential in education for us to be
“capable” human beings?
• GeoCapabilities = what does Geography
education offer?
Nussbaum, M. and Sen, A. (1993). The quality of life. Oxford: Oxford University Press

19. Project partners
Geography as powerful
knowledge (in the Anthropocene)
Geography encourages,
• ‘world knowledge’: deep, descriptive and explanatory
• the development of the relational thinking that
underpins geographical thought
• a propensity to think about social, economic and
environmental futures (Lambert, 2013)
Lambert, D. (2013). Geography in school and a curriculum of survival. Theory
and Research in Education, 11(1), 85-98.

20. Project partners
http://www.geocapabilities.org
Story Mapping to express PDK
• conservation areas and National Parks
http://tinyurl.com/geocapsm1
• climate change, greenhouse emissions and
consumerism http://tinyurl.com/geocapsm2

21. Project partners
Story Mapping to express PDK
http://tinyurl.com/geocapsm2

22. Project partners
Leadership (Bolden et al., 2012)
• engagement with influential colleagues - mentor
• professional autonomy in academic work
• Informal process, engage in ‘self-leadership’
• Develop shared academic values
• Span boundaries - externally related actions
• Identity construction - empowered
Bolden, R., Gosling, J., O'Brien, A., Peters, K., Ryan, M. K., Haslam, S. A., ... &
Winklemann, K. (2012). Academic leadership: changing conceptions, identities and
experiences in UK higher education. Leadership Foundation for Higher Education,.

23. Project partners
Four teacher training modules
1. Defining and developing disciplinary
capabilities
2. Curriculum making by teachers
3. Connecting capability with curriculum making
- video case studies.
4. Curriculum leadership and advocacy

24. Project partners
GeoCapabilities
http://www.geocapabilities.org

25. Project partners
WEBSITE
http://www.geocapabilities.org
EMAIL
http://geocapabilities@gmail.com
TWITTER
http://twitter.com/geocapabilities
FACEBOOK
http://tinyurl.com/geocap-fb