1) The document discusses the changing nature of skills needed for jobs and the economy, citing sources that argue education needs to focus more on developing flexible, adaptive skills rather than rigid curriculum content. 2) It also discusses the "learning fetish" where learning is seen as valuable in itself without consideration for what is being learned, and the need to avoid losing sight of broader purposes of education like building understanding. 3) While skills are important, there is a risk of "throwing the baby out with the bath water" if focus shifts too much from curriculum and subject knowledge, so a balanced approach is needed that promotes both knowledge and skills.

2. Is there a crisis
for subjects?
David Lambert
2
www.geography.org.uk/resources/adifferentview/downloads
A Different View

3. The World Subject
3

4. Beginning in wonder
4

5. Tackling complexity: place, identity, context
5

6. 6

7. Remarkably enduring images
• of teachers
• of classrooms
• of subjects
Are subjects nineteenth century creations?
7

8. QCA 2004
“The UK has moved from a manufacturing economy to a service and
knowledge-based economy. In an increasingly technological world,
jobs migrate ... In an uncertain future (we need people who are)
flexible and equipped to learn and adapt ...”

9. OECD (on ‘21st century skills’)
“ ... for jobs that have not yet been created, using technologies
that have not yet been invented to solve problems that cannot
be foreseen”

10. Mick Waters (2010)
“A school shouldn’t start with curriculum content. It should start
with designing a learning experience and then check it has met
national curriculum requirements.”

11. The neo-liberal orthodoxy has “dulled our ability to think for, or beyond, ourselves”
[Wadley 2008]

12. The learning fetish
Where learning is regarded as:
• A good thing in itself - and assumed to be value free in this sense.
(Of course, it is not. Learning can be trivial, dangerous or wrong)
• An essentially scientific or technical process –thus, with correct technique,
learning ‘accelerated’, as if this were an end in itself.
(But understanding aspects of science, history or art can be counter-
intuitive, and require sustained, sometimes painstaking effort)
• Paramount. Teaching is subservient to, and led by, the learning. We become
embarrassed by teaching, and instead talk only about ‘facilitating’ learning.
(A society that abrogates responsibility in this way may be one that has lost
confidence in itself)

13. The baby and the bath water
“There is no evidence that being able to solve
simultaneous equations, or discuss the plot of
Hamlet, equips young people to deal with life.
We have lazily assumed that, somehow, it
must do, but research shows that even
successful students are often left timid and
unsettled when they step outside the narrow
comfort zones of their academic success”
(Guy Claxton BLP)

14. Summary
There is much to take from Claxton’s idea of
building learning power
He reminds us of the broader purposes of
education
But is there a danger of throwing the baby out
with the bath water?

15. Counter Arguments
Must avoid:
– Swinging pendulums and false dichotomies
• Knowledge versus skills
• Curriculum versus pedagogy
• New versus old
– Defending subject knowledge/expertise
Must promote:
– Teachers as ‘boundary workers’
– Subject disciplines as resources
– An evolving theory of knowledge

16. “Bringing Knowledge Back In”
(Michael Young)
• Schools are special places (they are not
‘everyday places’)
• Inducting young people into ‘powerful
knowledge’ (not simply the knowledge of the
powerful)
• Clear distinction between curriculum and
pedagogy

17. 17

18. Geographical Association Manifesto
Section 2
“Thinking geographically”
“An essential educational outcome of learning
geography is to be able to apply knowledge and
conceptual understanding to new settings: that is,
to ‘think geographically’ about the changing world”.

19. .
• “
“Vocabulary”
This is a metaphor for Core Knowledge
“Grammar”
This is a metaphor for conceptual understanding

20. .
• “
“Capability”
In geography, ‘capability’ is enhanced through:
• Acquisition and development of ‘world knowledge’
(this may be equated with ‘core knowledge’, or essential
and enabling knowledge)
• Development of ‘inter-relational understanding’
(grasping global interdependence and a ‘global sense of
place’)
• Propensity to think, through ‘decision making’ and other
applied pedagogic activities, about how places, societies
and environments are made, and what they may become

21. Identity
Who am I? Where am I from? Who is my ‘family’?
What is their story? And the people around me?
Society
Who decides on who gets what, where and why?
What is fair? Why care?

22. The physical environment
What is the world (and this place) made of?
Why do things move?
What becomes of things?
Our place in the world
Where do I live?
How does it look? How is it changing?
How might it become?

23. Student Experiences
Geography: the subjectTeacher Choices
Underpinned by
Key Concepts Thinking
Geographically
Learning
Activity
How does this take
the learner beyond
what they already
know?
Curriculum Making
23

24. 24

25. Geography in school matters
Geography underpins a lifelong ‘conversation’
about the earth as the home of humankind
Source: the GA Manifesto A Different View
(www.geography.org.uk/adifferentview)
d.lambert@ioe.ac.uk
dlambert@geography.org.uk