The document discusses the development of a framework for the school geography curriculum by the Geographical Association. It aims to influence future national curriculum documents by outlining the key concepts and practices of geography. The framework is intended to guide curriculum development at the national level while also supporting teachers. It will define geography's contributions to education and shape curricula to reflect the modern discipline. The framework's goal is to ensure curricula are informed by geographic expertise and support teacher agency in enacting curricula.

1. Rehearsing a curriculum ‘performance’ - thoughts on translating curriculum
frameworks into classroom practice.
Alan Parkinson
IGU Session: A101571AP - 20th July - 8.30am
‘Geography underpins a lifelong ‘conversation’ about Earth as the home of humankind’
(GA 2009)
Keywords
Curriculum making, framework, knowledge, pedagogy, geocapabilities, enacted
curriculum
Summary
Drawing on previous experience of leading on curriculum development during the
UK’s Action Plan for Geography (2006-11) the Geographical Association (GA)
supports teachers in the process of curriculum making. The role of knowledge in the
curriculum has been revisited recently (Gericke et al, 2018) and the GeoCapabilities
project, which has influenced curriculum thinking for many in the interim between the
emergence of national guidance. (Donert, 2015; Bustin, 2019)
Eleanor Rawling is currently (2021-23) leading work on developing a framework for
the school geography curriculum for the Geographical Association. This paper
outlines the work to date, before exploring how such frameworks influence national

2. curriculum documents, which are translated by classroom practitioners into an
enacted version which may introduce unintended emphases as the enacted
curriculum emerges in the classroom. The value of such frameworks to practitioners
is to inform their understanding of the nature and fundamental features of the
discipline and school subject, so that they can use this to support their school-based
planning and classroom practice. This paper is written from the perspective of a
classroom practitioner rather than an academic geographer.
Introduction
The Geographical Association believes that geography has a valuable and enriching
contribution to make to the education of young people. The further we move into the
present century the clearer it becomes that geography’s focus on the big picture: on
the complexity and diversity of space and place, and the interdependence of physical
and human worlds is of more importance than ever before. (Baerwald, 2010) Insights
gained from a geographical perspective have assumed greater significance. The climate
and biodiversity emergencies will change human lives, environments, and landscapes
irrevocably, thus (unfortunately) demonstrating how interlinked these systems are.
Young people are entitled to be geographically informed, although this entitlement is
not met in all countries, where the position of geography in school education is
precarious. Statements on the importance of geography have previously been made by
the Association at crucial times for the discipline in the UK, both before and since the
first National curriculum in 1991. (Bailey and Binns, 1987; Roberts, 1998) A recent
National Research Report (Kinder and Rawlings Smith, 2022) reinforced the

3. importance of curriculum content to keep pace with societal change, as the profession
reflects on the impact of COVID19 on its practice. During the Action Plan for
Geography (2006-11), the GA developed the curriculum making model (Fig. 1) which
has influenced many teachers’ curriculum thinking. This refers to geography the subject
which will already have been framed by national and sub-national agencies - national
curriculum, exam boards, publishers etc. Teachers must start with what they are given:
if the national curricula they are given are poor or faulty, then teachers will have to
compensate. (Rawling, 2020)
Fig 1: Curriculum Making Model, Geographical Association
Despite work (from Graves 1979 to Hordern 2021) to support teachers’ professional
and pedagogical work by establishing ‘ground rules’ for (changing) content selection,
there has not been enough consideration given to the nature of subject frameworks at
national level. The GA are aiming to create something that will influence national

4. curricula and requirements for the better. Teachers and schools should not be required
to ‘compensate’ for a lack of appropriate curriculum thinking at the national level.
(Rawling, 2020) Eleanor Rawling and a group of subject experts are currently working
to create a document which will sit at level zero (Fig. 2) and help shape future iterations
of the national curriculum and influence future curriculum conversations'
Fig 2: Positioning the National Curriculum Framework - Geographical Association,
2022
Such work can prove controversial, with the model UK curriculum for history which is
due in 2024 already proving to be problematic for some in the post George Floyd era,
but producing a framework is not the same as producing a ‘model curriculum’.12
1
https://www.keystagehistory.co.uk/in-the-news/inclusive-history-curriculum/
2
https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/05/26/a-new-history-curriculum-will-not-cool-the-culture-
wars

5. The framework document’s purpose is to highlight the big ideas, significant features
and distinctive approaches of the discipline of geography, to highlight how these
features can contribute to the education of young people and to clarify how this should
inform the development of the school curriculum at national level. It is intended to do
two things:
Firstly, an outline of the nature of the school subject, its disciplinary foundations, and
the significant features of 21st century geography that should underpin any geography
curriculum or course.
Secondly, accompanying guidance about how to use this understanding in the design
and preparation of future curricula, mainly at national level, but also to support school-
level professional development and curriculum-making. (Rawling, 2022)
The document is intended to be used by those developing the curriculum at the
national level, including government departments, national working groups and
consultants but also, as appropriate, by examination boards, educational publishers,
national subject organisations - such as the RGS-IBG and GA in the UK, and geography
educators working nationally or regionally such as independent school geographers
and those in groups of schools (called multi-academy trusts or MATs in the UK). It
would also no doubt be of interest to curriculum developers in other countries.
Fig.3 shows that these different audiences would generally approach curriculum from
opposing directions, with teachers starting from the bottom, rather than the top.

6. Fig 3: National Curriculum Framework - curriculum influences - Geographical
Association (2022)
Curriculum development starts from aims and moves through recognising disciplinary
features to selecting substantive content (i.e., from top of Figure 2 downward).
The framework will also have value for professional development and planning
purposes by groups of schools, teacher educators, and individual schools and teachers,
both primary and secondary. Accompanying guidance will be prepared to support
school-level professional development and curriculum-making.
This requires combining the three elements of the discipline which connect together
as shown in Fig. 4:
a) Practices and processes which encourage thinking like a geographer
b) Concepts and ideas which lead to knowing and understanding like a geographer
c) Applications and challenges which lead to applying geography in the world

7. Fig 4: The three-fold nature of the discipline - Image: Geographical Association (2022)
Four key geographical concepts have been identified: place, space, earth systems and
environment have been selected for this curriculum framework since they play a crucial
role in categorising the diverse and substantial content of geography and have been
remarkably persistent in their use over time. They also have a significance beyond
geography and are shared with other subjects e.g., literature and poetry are also
involved in representation of place; mathematicians study space; environment is crucial
to biology; earth systems underlie much of geology and meteorology. Five organising
concepts for geography are also recognised. These are time, scale, diversity,
interconnection and representation – each of which can be characterised as drawing
attention to dimensions of geographical thinking.

8. The school geography curriculum should (among many other things) offer a sound base
for those pupils wishing to proceed to geography in higher education, those who apply
it in a professional capacity or those who make other choices. This is not an attempt to
design an example national curriculum nor an outline of an ideal geography course;
these will always be initiatives that are subject to negotiation and renewal over time.
Curriculum is never complete. In the UK, the QAA Benchmark Statements for
Geography have recently (2022) been updated to reflect the changing nature of the
discipline.3
In 1964, composer Benjamin Britten was the first recipient of the Robert O. Anderson
Aspen Award in the Humanities: honouring “the individual anywhere in the world judged
to have made the greatest contribution to the advancement of the humanities.” In an
acceptance speech, Britten referred to any composition as being influenced by the
conditions in which it would be performed, when it would begin to exist. 4
National curriculum documents are similar to musical notation: just ink on paper.
Bringing them to life requires several elements: a ‘conductor’ (the teacher?),
experienced and skilled ‘musicians’ (the students?), ‘instruments’ which are fit for
purpose and tuned (resources), deliberate and sustained practice and an audience.
Interactions between these elements create an enacted curriculum (Biddulph, 2018)
Powerful knowledge requires powerful pedagogy. (Roberts, 2014) Mitchell (2016)
suggests that in practice a range of individual responses to curriculum change occur.
Individual teachers will take particular approaches: including those who might view the
curriculum as a way to advance ideological aims, or impart a preferred powerful
3
https://www.qaa.ac.uk/quality-code/subject-benchmark-statements/geography
4
http://www.aspenmusicfestival.com/benjamin-britten/

9. knowledge. Others have their curriculum journey to some extent dictated by
curriculum leads across large groups of schools (sometimes called multi-academy trusts
(MATS)). The GeoCapabilities project began in the USA, before receiving ERASMUS
funding for the 2nd phase. (Bustin, Lambert and Tani, 2020)5
I was proud to have been
involved in this work, developing the idea of curriculum vignettes, framed around
particular artefacts. Projects like this can also influence those who come across such
work or attend training where the outcomes are disseminated.
Gaps between curriculum revisions lead to drift away from the original conception in
schools and colleges. As Hordern (2020) has argued, as teachers our knowledge of ‘the
propositional and procedural structure of the subject [we teach], its specific mode of
disciplinarity and form of inquiry, and the role of the subject in the development of
students’ (p.12) matters greatly, because this knowledge empowers us to think and act
independently of ‘official’ accounts of the subject produced by the Government,
awarding organisations or publishers, whose interpretations of the subject may become
the de facto curriculum. Teacher agency is important in curriculum making.
The GA’s curriculum framework exercise therefore represents an important
opportunity for the geography teaching community not only to pool its wisdom but to
support teacher agency.6
The framework offers an opportunity to influence future
geography curricula and qualifications and to ensure that these reflect contemporary
ideas from the discipline of geography, and geography teachers. Whilst the exercise is
being undertaken from the background of schooling in England in the 21st
century, it is
5
https://www.geocapabilities.org/about/aims/ - this is described as providing a robust framework for
describing the value and worth of school geography - the author of this paper was part of the project
team
6
https://www.geography.org.uk/write/MediaUploads/Support%20and%20guidance/GA_National_Res
earch_Report_2022.pdf

10. not necessarily directed to the context of any specific nation or region; rather the
intention is to highlight the big ideas and structures of geographical knowledge that
should lie behind any attempt at curriculum development or curriculum making. The
aim of the exercise is to produce a framework for the school geography curriculum:
one that will take a very wide range of evidence and perspectives into account, exert a
strong influence on national and international curriculum conversations in coming
years and support curriculum development at the local scale. The framework is not
meant to be directly translated into classroom practice, although it has value for
considering how national curriculum documents are translated into exam syllabuses,
and thereby into classroom practice Future developments will be shared freely on the
Geographical Association’s website.7
References
With thanks to Eleanor Rawling for documents which form the spine of this paper.
Eleanor is the lead author of the work. Thanks to the volunteers who supported her
work.
Baerwald, T.J (2010) Prospects for Geography as an Interdisciplinary
Discipline, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100:3, 493-501
Bailey, P. & Binns, T. (1987) A case for Geography. Sheffield. Geographical
Association.
7
http://www.geography.org.uk

11. Biddulph, M. (2018) Curriculum enactment in David Lambert & Mark Jones (eds)
Debates in Geography Education,2nd edition. London: Routledge, 156-170
Biddulph, M. (2014) “What Kind of Geography Curriculum Do We Really Want?”
Teaching Geography, vol. 39, no. 1, 2014, pp. 6–9
Matthijs Bouwmans and Tine Béneker. (2018) Identifying powerful geographical
knowledge in integrated curricula in Dutch schools. London Review of Education. Vol.
16(3):445-459. DOI: 10.18546/LRE.16.3.07
Bustin, R. (2019) Geography Education's Potential and the Capability Approach:
GeoCapabilities and Schools. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bustin, R, Lambert, D & Tani,S (2020) The development of GeoCapabilities:
reflections, and the spread of an idea, International Research in Geographical and
Environmental Education, 29:3, 201-205, DOI: 10.1080/10382046.2020.1749773
Deng Z. (2021) Powerful knowledge, transformations and Didaktik/curriculum
thinking in British Educational Research Journal,
Donert K (2015), GeoCapabilities: empowering teachers as subject leaders, Higher
Education Academy, pp1-30.
Niklas Gericke, Brian Hudson and Christina Olin-Scheller et al. (2018) Powerful
knowledge, transformations and the need for empirical studies across school subjects.
London Review of Education. Vol. 16(3):428-444. DOI: 10.18546/LRE.16.3.06

12. Geographical Association - a different view (2009) - available from
https://www.geography.org.uk/GA-Manifesto-for-geography
Kinder, A and Rawlings Smith, E (2022) A National Research Report Geographical
Association - available from
https://www.geography.org.uk/write/MediaUploads/Support%20and%20guidance/
GA_National_Research_Report_2022.pdf
Graves, N. (1979) Curriculum Planning in Geography London, Pearson Education
Limited
Hammond, L. and McKendrick, J.H. (2020) Geography teacher educators’
perspectives on the place of children’s geographies in the classroom, Geography,
105.2: 86-93.
Hordern, J. (2020) ‘Recontextualisation and the teaching of subjects’, The Curriculum
Journal, 32, 4, pp. 592-606
Jackson, P. (2006) Thinking geographically. Geography, 91 (3) 199–204.
Lambert, D and León, K (2022) The value of geography to an individual’s education in
M. Biddulph, M., Catling, S., Hammond, L. & McKendrick, J. H. (Eds) “Children,
education and geography: Rethinking intersections.” Abingdon: Routledge.
Mitchell, D (2016) Geography teachers and curriculum making in “changing times”,
International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 25:2, 121-133

13. Rawling, E (2020) How and why national curriculum frameworks are failing
geography, Geography, 105:2, 69-77, DOI: 10.1080/00167487.2020.12094091
Roberts, M. (1998) “The Impact and the Legacy of the 1991 Geography National
Curriculum at Key Stage 3.” Geography, vol. 83, no. 1, 1998, pp. 15–27
Roberts, M. (2014) Powerful knowledge and geographical education. The Curriculum
Journal 25 (2), 187-209
Walshe, N. and Healy, G. (Eds) (2021) Geography Education in the Digital World:
linking theory and practice. Abingdon: Routledge.
All websites last accessed 20th June 2022
Thanks to Eleanor Rawling and Alan Kinder for their comments on an earlier version of this
paper.
Alan Parkinson, FRGS, FRSGS, CGeog is Head of Geography at King’s Ely Junior and
President of the Geographical Association for 2021-22
Contact: a.parkinson@gmail.com
@GeoBlogs