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This publication explores action research as a professional learning tool for geography teachers. It encourages innovative curriculum, good instruction, visual methodologies, and self-correcting models. The publication aims to meet the need for geography-oriented professional learning support materials and provides insights from research reviews on effective learning strategies.
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Resources for geography teachers on action research/professional enquiry GA Teacher Education Working Group
Starting point • GATEWG proposed a publication on action research for geography teachers; • MTL came along – fog descended; • The publication committee liked the idea but questioned the size of the market; • We considered other publication formats; • I discovered Clare Brooks Routledge book.
Personal view Any such resources should: • Encourage innovative curriculum – enquiry, collaboration, narrative approaches, learning beyond school; • Encourage good instruction – high level (and contested) subject knowledge, explanation, feedback; • Encourage visual methodologies – image-based research, mapping methods, visual elicitation; • Encourage models that are ‘self-correcting’.
Questions • What is the need/demand for geography oriented professional learning support materials? (in what format?) • How far is/will this be met? • What good assignment/dissertation exemplars exist? • What are the important context factors? • Who has a professional/research interest in this?
Stumuli: (i) John Hattie’s ‘Visible Learning’ • John Hattie has been collecting effect sizes for 20+ years in relation to research on education interventions and has produced a league table with a crucial benchmark at 0.4. • Does this provide any pointers? • See Geoff Petty’s review.
(ii) Six key themes in curriculum for C21st research reviews • 1. The effectiveness of learning that is ‘context based’ (dealing with ideas and phenomena in real or simulated practical situations) most notably in reviews of science and maths; • 2. The importance of connecting the curriculum with young people’s experiences of home and community and the related, but also distinctive theme of parental involvement in children’s learning in the home;
Six key themes in curriculum for C21st research reviews • 3. The impact on pupil motivation and learning of structured dialogue in group work and of collaborative learning; • 4. The need to create opportunities to identify and build on pupils’ existing conceptual understandings – again notably in science and maths. Several reviewers also found evidence of unexplored poor misunderstandings arising from ‘teaching to the test’;
Six key themes in curriculum for C21st research reviews • 5. The need to remove rigidity in the approach to the curriculum - to allow time and space for conceptual development, to encourage integration of cross-curricular learning; and • 6. The need for excellence and professional development in subject knowledge – without which teachers would be unable to seize opportunities for curriculum innovation, particularly in relation to context-based learning.
(iii) Other influences? • MTL will probably happen but hard to predict; • Evidence does point to the value of collaborative, classroom-focused, school based, dialogue-generating professional learning (Cordingley EPPI reviews); • The value of subject knowledge and challenging dysfunctional teaching beliefs – see http://educationcounts.edcentre.govt.nz/goto/BES‘Teacher Professional Learning and Development’ by Helen Timperley et al.
