Workshop at National Sustainable Schools Conference 10 July 2013 London Angus Willson http://www.pannage.com

1. Linking
Sustainability
and Geography
Angus Willson
Pannage.com
National Sustainable
Schools Conference
10 July 2013

2. Curriculum clamour
“And a bit more monitor, if you’ve got it.”
“Can we have everything louder than everything
else?”
Ian Gillan of Deep Purple, Live in Japan,1972

3. School curriculum
“It is intended that the
new curriculum will
provide a benchmark
for all schools including
those that are not
required by law to
teach the national
curriculum.”
DfE (May 2013)

4. What is curriculum making?
• the creative act of interpreting a curriculum specification or
scheme of work and turning it into a
coherent, challenging, engaging and enjoyable scheme of
work.
• a job that really never ends and lies at the heart of good
teaching.
The ingredients of curriculum making
Teachers make it happen in the classroom by drawing from
their knowledge of:
• teaching approaches and specific teaching techniques
• students and how they learn
• the subject - geography - and what it is for

6. Why think about significance?
Thinking about geographical significance may
help as we choose what to include in our new
curriculum - themes, case studies, place
studies etc.
What makes something sufficiently significant
for students to need and want to learn about
it?

7. Why think about significance? 2
Is it… personal relevance, general
interest, global relevance – who decides?
How do we build on pupils’ experiences?
• Can you justify your choice of places, themes
and issues?
• How do we explain to learners the importance
of what we teach?

8. Effective?
Periodically evaluate and record the impact of
your curriculum developments on learners by
collecting clear evidence of the number of
learners affected and the degree of difference
seen in them.
Maintain, change or move on…

9. Task – choose a topic
What keywords might we associate with this
topic?
What will your children already know about this
topic?
What do your students want to learn about?

10. Documentation
Department handbook
• KS curriculum plan < localisation
• National Curriculum
• Topic outline
• Schemes of (SoW) < significance
• Units
• Lesson plans

11. The 5 minute Lesson PlanThe BIG picture?
Engagement?
Stickability!
Differentiation A f L
Learning
Episodes
Teacher Led or Student Led?
Teacher Led or Student Led? Teacher Led or Student Led? Teacher Led or Student Led?
R.McGill 2012 - @TeacherToolkit
Objectives
along the way….
….print and scribble your way to Outstanding!

12. Habitat, home and community
Everyone has to live somewhere. The youngest
child has their own sense of ‘home’ and what it
means to live with others. Older children become
aware of the variety of housing and the equivalent
ways animals and insects live together. They gain an
understanding of interdependence and become
young people making their own choices connected
with how we live with each other.
• How is this developing experience related to
sustainability in our school curriculum?

13. Reflection and evaluation
• Why do we do it like this?
• How do we know it is successful?
• What is the impact on teaching and learning?

14. £ $ £
“It is difficult to look at mainstream
educational discourse without observing
that, in the main, educational institutions
are becoming increasingly more efficient at
aligning their structures and processes
with the logic of neoliberal institutions,

15. [ 
institutions that have been shown to be
more interested in maximizing efficiencies
in natural and human resource production
than they are in caring for the well-being of
diverse people and the environments in
which we live (Lipman, 2011; Pierce,
2013).”

16. Online discussion

19. Cross-references
Y7:1 Where we live
Y7:2 Our amazing world
Y7:3 Wild weather
Y7:4 Globalisation
Y7:5 People everywhere
Y7:6 Mapping decisions

20. Y8:1 Flood disaster
Y8:2 Local actions – global
effects
Y8:3 Kenya enquiry
Y8:4 Countries compared
Y8:5 Ecosystems
Y8:6 Coastal landscape

21. Y9:1 Hazards
Y9:2 Tourism
Y9:3 In the news
Y9:4 Australia
Y9:5 Stuff
Y9:6 Development issues

22. Geography - Purpose of study
A high-quality geography education should inspire in pupils a curiosity and
fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the
rest of their lives.
Teaching should equip pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people,
resources and environments, together with a deep understanding of the
Earth’s key physical and human processes.
As pupils progress, their growing knowledge about the world helps them to
deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human
processes, and of the formation of landscapes and environments.
Geographical knowledge provides the tools and approaches that explain how
the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and
change over time.

23. Task – make the links
• Where are the sustainability opportunities?
• Do certain localities lend themselves to a
study or an understanding of sustainability?
• Which items of core knowledge might be a
preparation for sustainability?

24. Pupils should be taught to: Sustainability
opportunities
describe and understand key aspects of:
physical geography, including: climate zones,
biomes and vegetation belts, rivers,
mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes, and
the water cycle
Bio-diversity; climate
change; rainforest
destruction and
desertification;
systems
human geography, including: settlements,
land use, economic activity including trade
links, and the distribution of natural resources
including energy, food, minerals, and water
supplies
Habitats, homes and
community; urban
impact on
countryside; rural
protection;
renewables; peak-oil;
food security and
waste; food miles;
water consumption;
supply chain

25. Pupils should be taught to: Sustainability
opportunities
understand, through the use of detailed place
based exemplars at a variety of scales, the
key processes in:
physical geography relating to: glaciation,
plate tectonics, rocks, soils, weathering,
geological timescales, weather and climate,
rivers and coasts
Climate change,
desertification,
water cycle
human geography relating to: population,
international development, economic activity
in the primary, secondary, tertiary and
quaternary sectors, urbanisation, and the use
of natural resources
Finite and renewable
resources, waste
and re-cycling,
understand how human and physical
processes interact to have an impact on and
form distinctive landscapes
Habitat loss, flood
threat, coastal
management

26. Physical geography: processes and change
Geomorphic processes and landscape […]
Changing weather and climate – The causes,
consequences of and responses to extreme
weather conditions and natural weather
hazards, together with their changing
distribution in time and space. The spatial and
temporal characteristics, evidence for and
causes of climatic change over the past two
million years to the present day.

27. People and environment: processes and
interactions
Global ecosystems – An overview of the
distribution and characteristics of large scale
natural global ecosystems (such as tundra,
rainforest and temperate forest), drawing out
the interdependence of climate, soil, water,
plants, animals and humans and the issues
related to sustainable use and management.

28. Resource management and biodiversity - How
humans use, modify and change natural
ecosystems in ways that may be sustainable or
unsustainable. At least three specific examples
at local and regional scales should be chosen to
illustrate how this may lead to beneficial (e.g.
agriculture and food production, identifying new
energy resources) and/or detrimental outcomes
(e.g. desertification, loss of biodiversity, soil
degradation) for human well-being.

29. Ecosystems
Levels of organisation within an ecosystem
• recognise the different levels of organisation from
individual organisms to the whole ecosystem
• the components of an ecosystem
• describe abiotic and biotic factors that affect
communities
• explain the importance of interdependence and
competition in a community.

30. Pyramids of biomass and transfer through trophic
levels
• recognise trophic levels
• describe pyramids of biomass and deduce the
sources of the loss of biomass between them
• calculate the efficiency of energy transfers
between trophic levels.

31. Biodiversity
• carry out an investigation into the distribution
and abundance of organisms in an ecosystem and
determine their numbers in a given area
• explain what is meant by biodiversity and discuss
the challenges
• recognise both positive and negative human
interactions with ecosystems and their impact on
biodiversity
• discuss benefits of maintaining local and global
biodiversity.

32. Task – report back
Are we confident that sustainability has staying
power in the school curriculum?
Yes < - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -> No
Explain.

33. We need to know more about…
• how to link transmissive with transformative
learning;
• the ways in which geography teachers build up
their own conceptions of ESD;
• how to connect whole school approaches to
ESD with curriculum-based approaches to
ESD;

34. and…
• the role of leadership in promoting ESD within
the geography department and across the
school;
• how pupils feel about ESD in geography and
what they want to know; and
• ways of developing ESD as an overarching
frame of mind.
Maggie Smith (2013)

35. Implications for
primary geography practice
1. Pupils come to school with experience, knowledge,
understanding and concerns.
2. Pupils don’t learn what teachers teach.
3. Pupils are reluctant to absorb other people’s
preoccupations and prejudices.
4. Pupils never respond well to pessimism and tales of
looming disaster and dread.
5. Pupils are not there to cure their parents’ bad habits.
6. Pupils rarely judge school in terms of how relevant the
content is.
7. Pupils cannot fully develop social and citizenly skills until
they can practise them for real.
Bill Scott (2013)

36. www.unesco.org/education/
tlsf/index.html

37. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xn1gfcefh318adj/9D3koV2lqf

38. References
• See the ‘notes’ section below each slide for web
references
• Key documentation for sustainability here