Geography

Dear Student

Welcome to the Geography PGCE course at Sheffield Hallam University. I hope that you will enjoy studying here with us whilst working with school-based colleagues and mentors in partner placement schools across the region. The PGCE course is an intensive one and each of you will embark upon the course with different strengths and areas for development. Therefore, I have suggested some things that you might like to reflect on in order to help you prepare for September.

I shall very much look forward to meeting with you all in person.

Best wishes

Vicki Pountney

 

Key Preparations & Readings:

The books below are three of the key texts we use on the course. You may wish to undertake some preliminary reading from these in preparation for September:

  • Jones, M (2017) (ed) The Handbook of Secondary Geography. The Geographical Association, Sheffield
  • Jones, M & Lambert, D (2018) Debates in Geography Education, 2ndEdition, Routledge
  • Roberts, M. (2023) Geography Through Enquiry:  Approaches to teaching and learning in the secondary school (2nd Ed), Geographical Association, Sheffield

The Ofsted ‘research review series: geography was published in June 2021.  This is useful document to explore to provide you with an overview of thinking around curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.  This document can be accessed here. Following this publication, a separate research and analysis subject report for geography was published in September 2023.  This document can be accessed here.

 Links to subject association websites:

As you develop as a novice teacher during the course of the ITE year, you are strongly encouraged to network with other geography educators with the vibrant geography subject community.  Geography has a particularly extensive, well-connected and supportive teacher education community.  As a ITE trainee, may wish to join one or both geography teacher subject communities.  Both organisations offer ITE member discounts and provide a range of membership benefits.  Further information can be found at:

Subject knowledge development:

You will be required to complete a more detailed subject knowledge audit at the start of your course.  To help you to do this, there are several online resources you can access free of charge to support you to develop your confidence to teach different aspects of the geography curriculum in school.  It is important that your own subject knowledge for teaching has been developed to the key stage above the group you are teaching (e.g. KS4 subject knowledge to teach KS3 content).  Begin by looking at the GCSE specifications (below) to identify geographical content you feel less confident or familiar with.  The weblinks below will then provide you with a useful starting point.

  • Time for geography is a fabulous website containing a range of open-access videos covering topics such as coasts, rivers, glaciation, ecosystems, climate change, plate tectonics, the carbon cycle, resource management as well as some aspects of human geography. The videos are split into ‘knowledge boosters’, ‘knowledge insights’, ‘fieldwork boosters’, ‘research spotlights’, ‘research insights’, ‘grade boosters’ and ‘geog clips’ are appropriate for use in the secondary geography classroom.   They also support beginning teachers to refresh their memory to develop subject knowledge for teaching across a range of familiar topic areas.
  • The Royal Metrological Society ‘MetLink‘ website provides a wealth of resources and sources of support for teachers who are less confident when it comes to teaching the topic of weather and climate. Collated collections of resources to support with the development of teacher subject and curriculum knowledge are located on this site can be filtered by key stage and awarding body across KS4-5.
  • The Royal Geographical Society have created a free to access online subject knowledge programme for trainee and Early Career Teachers.  These resources have been designed to support teachers develop aspects of subject knowledge.  You can access these resources here through Google Classroom.
  • The GeogPod series, accessed here provides you with insights into the subject focused conversations geography teachers and educators are having.  The podcasts cover a wider range of topics to help you understand contemporary issues in geography teaching to subject knowledge updates.
  • Finally, you might also find it helpful to take a look at these videos created by the award-winning Curious Geographer.  The videos are aimed at A Level students; however, they offer useful subject knowledge updates and insights.  These can be accessed here

Curriculum and Key Specifications:
National Curriculum Programmes of Study:  This is the document that sets out the ambition of the KS3 national curriculum in England.  You should familiarise yourself with this document.

 GCSE & A Level Specifications

AQA, OCR, Pearson Edexcel, Eduqas are the four awarding bodies in England for GCSE and A Levels.  Different schools teach different awarding body specifications.  You may wish to look at one of the specifications to help develop your understanding of GCSE and A Level content.  The DfE (2014) GCSE geography subject content, aims and learning objectives for GCSE can be found here.  All awarding body specifications were developed from this document for first teaching from 2016.

In order to keep up to date with developments in education we recommend that you read the TES (Times Educational Supplement- www.tes.co.uk) and the Guardian Education supplement (www.theguardian.com/education). We also recommend that you regularly read a broadsheet newspaper.

Questions for consideration:

Teachers are responsible for planning, teaching and assessment.  So … 

 Planning – What teaching content, concepts and skills are specified for teaching in the current National Curriculum for geography (2014)? What rationale does it reflect for the purposes of teaching geography? What teaching content is specified in the GCSE syllabi? What are the implications of this content for you at the beginning of your ITE year?

 Teaching – How can we teach geography most effectively and efficiently? How do we ensure all students are able to engage with the subject and are both inspired and challenged by it to think geographically?

Assessment – What does progression look like in geography? How can we ensure students make good progress?