lifelonglearning programme comenius...

D1.1 Report “Defining the Capabilities approach and concept of curriculum making”

526222-LLP-2012-BE-COMENIUS-CMP

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LIFELONGLEARNING PROGRAMME –COMENIUS ACTION

TEACHER EDUCATION

GEOCAPABILITIES 2: TEACHERS AS CURRICULUM

LEADERS

539079-LLP-1-2013-1-UK-COMENIUS-CMP

A EUROPEAN COMENIUS MULTILATERAL PROJECT

With the support of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication report reflects the views only

of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information

contained therein

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526222-LLP-2012-BE-COMENIUS-CMP

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D1.1 Report

Defining the Capabilities Approach and the

concept of Curriculum Making

Author(s) partner:

Professor David Lambert

[Partner 1, Institute of Education]

Due date of deliverable: September 2014 (month 10)

Version: v1

Dissemination Level: Public

Abstract: This report provides an outline of the key ideas underpinning capabilities, their

relevance to geography education and ‘powerful knowledge’ in creating a ‘Futures 3’ curriculum. It

draws from a selection of scientific literature as well as a summary of discussion, issues,

questions and aspirations raised by geography teachers and educators attending several

workshops, papers and panel sessions.


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Contents

Report specification and executive summary

1. Section 1 Introduction

a. Structure of the Report

b. The Capabilities approach

2. Section 2 Synthesis of conceptual findings

a. Putting the ‘geo’ into geo-capabilities

b. GeoCapabilities in a ‘knowledge-led’ curriculum

c. GeoCapabilities and the role of teachers

d. GeoCapabilities in international context

3. Section 3 Exploring the Idea of Capabilities

a. Capabilities in education

b. What is the problem?

c. Further theoretical perspectives

4. Section 4 Knowledge and Geography curriculum

a. What happened to geographical knowledge?

b. On the need to be topical and relevant

c. Subjects, powerful knowledge and pedagogy

d. Powerful knowledge and ‘pedagogic rights’


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e. Conclusion

5. Section 5 The Fine Art of Curriculum Making

a. The need for powerful pedagogies

b. Inferentialism and school geography

c. Teachers as curriculum leaders

d. Curriculum Making (and the GA ‘Manifesto’)

e. Curriculum Making in wider context

6. Section 6 Conclusion and next steps

References

Annexes

1. Country vignettes

England

Finland

USA

China

2. Translations of the ‘capabilities approach’

Chinese

Dutch

English

Finnish

French

German

Greek

Turkish


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Report specification and executive summary

From the original project proposal this deliverable (D1.1) is described as follows:

“Research reviewing and defining the Capabilities approach and methodology in the

partner countries (England, Turkey, Finland, Belgium, and the US as third country

partner). The report will include country-specific chapters discussing the concept of

teachers as curriculum makers in a national context and explore ways that

capabilities are developed within the disciplinary context of geography:

The report will also include a synthesis section to explore the potential of the

capabilities approach to provide teachers with ‘powerful knowledge’ and examine

how this relates to different national situations, standards and curricula. Finally, the

report will discuss the implications of this work for teacher training in other

disciplines.

All partners will contribute to the report which will edited and compiled by partner 1”

Summary

This Report provides an account of the conceptual infrastructure to the

GeoCapabilities project:

Capabilities

Powerful knowledge

Powerful pedagogy (based on an ‘inferentialist’ approach to teaching)

Future 3 curriculum

An essential part of the argument is that all young people have a pedagogic right to

‘powerful disciplinary knowledge’, as this supports individual intellectual growth,

autonomy and the educated person’s potential as an active contribution to society.

The initiation and achievement of powerful knowledge with all children is highly

dependent on excellent teaching. This, in turn, is based upon a sound understanding

of curriculum principles and the capacity to implement a knowledge-led curriculum.


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Thus, the overall goal of the project is to support the notion of ‘curriculum leadership’

for teachers of geography. This is manifest through teachers as ‘curriculum makers’

which, it is argued, is facilitated by the capabilities approach.

Curriculum leadership, enabled by the process of Curriculum Making, requires

teachers to exercise judgement and balance. The balance that needs to be achieved

in practice is that between an outcomes-based and knowledge-led curriculum.


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Section 1 Introduction

a. Structure of the Report

This Report contains a detailed assemblage of conceptual and literature based

research on the principles and approaches that underpin the project GeoCapabilities

Phase 2: Teachers as curriculum leaders.

It takes account of the Phase 1 project referred to in the project proposal (Solem,

Lambert and Tani 3013), and in some cases re-works and extends some of the initial

positions and assumptions of that project. For instance, GeoCapabilities 2 is less

concerned about defining a set of ‘geo-capabilities’ as if they were competences or

discrete skills sets. In addition, GeoCapabilities 2 has clarified substantially the

relationship between powerful knowledge and powerful pedagogies. GeoCapabilities

2 has also adopted a ‘Futures’ framework for thinking through curriculum priorities

first developed by Michael Young and Johan Muller (2010): thus, GeoCapabilities 2

has emerged as a project to promote and develop Future 3 thinking.

The Report has 6 main sections:

1. Introduction

2. Synthesis of the Project’s conceptual findings

3. The Idea of Capabilities

4. Knowledge debates and the geography curriculum

5. The fine art of Curriculum Making

6. Conclusion and next steps

It also contains two large Appendices

1. Country vignettes

2. Translations of the Capabilities approach


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Finally, there is an extensive list of references.

The Report has been compiled mainly by Partner 1 (IOE) working closely with

Partners 2-6 (with the exception of Partner 5 who unfortunately had to withdraw from

the project). It has been compiled in parallel to the research in (Work Programme 2)

and the submission (and acceptance) of a major article to the Annals of the

Association of American Geographers (AAAG).

b. The capabilities approach

The theoretical framework for this project is the “capabilities approach” for education

as inspired by the ideas of economist Amartya Sen and philosopher Martha

Nussbaum (Nussbaum & Sen 1993). In the context of geography education, the

capabilities approach asks teachers, as curriculum leaders, to reflect on the role of

geography in affording people with intellectual, moral, and existential capabilities for

lifelong learning, economic and social agency in citizenship, and the pursuit of

personal well-being (Hinchcliffe 2007; Kuklys 2005). As such, the approach offers a

“new space to evaluate what is of value in education” (Hart 2009: 391), which for this

project includes geographical knowledge and understanding.

This project investigates and develops capabilities specifically through the lens of

geography, a subject discipline that takes different forms and occupies different

curriculum spaces internationally, ranging from close association with the biological

sciences, earth science, social studies and the humanities depending on cultural and

educational traditions and assumptions.


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Section 2 Synthesis of the project’s conceptual findings

Introduction: the meaning and significance of ‘GeoCapabilities’

This section overviews the findings of the conceptualization phase of the project.

The notion of ‘geo-capabilities’ can be thought of as a hypothesis. The synthesis in

this section seeks to explicate the idea. This is not so much to ‘test’ the hypothesis at

this stage, but to draw out it conceptual underpinnings built on several key ideas:

Geography

Capabilities

Powerful Knowledge

Powerful Pedagogies

Curriculum making

Working through this conceptual landscape leads to a further working hypothesis –

articulated through the teacher training materials disseminated and developed for the

teacher training ‘Platform’ (the main output for work programme 3) – that the

GeoCapabilities approach in effect operationalizes a ‘Future 3’ knowledge-led school

curriculum1.

a. Putting the ‘geo’ into Geo-capabilities

Geography is an ancient idea, often traced back to Ptolemy and the continuing

struggle to describe and make sense of the world as our home: where human

relations with the earth is taken as an object of human thought and study. As UK

geographer Alastair Bonnet (2012) shows, geography is in this sense always

concerned with human survival. Geography is a fundamental idea.

1 Young, M., Lambert, D., Roberts, C. and Roberts, M. (2014) Knowledge and the Future School:

curriculum and social justice, London: Bloomsbury.


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The role of geographical knowledge in primary and secondary education systems

around the world does not always reflect this degree of significance. In some

jurisdictions, geography is a specialist subject taught by specialist teachers: China,

Singapore, England would be examples. In others, geography is less visible: USA

would be an example, where geography is ‘hidden’ within the Social Studies. In

some, geography is being rediscovered – as in Australia where a national curriculum

in geography is being introduced after years of geography being ‘lost’ to Studies of

Society and Environment. In others, the subject is at risk in curriculum reforms driven

by notions of ‘21st century skills’ and generic competences.

GeoCapabilities is an international approach to articulating the aims, purposes and

outcomes of an effective geography curriculum. It is derived from the ‘capabilities

approach’ to human welfare economics, originally espoused by economist Amartya

Sen and political philosopher Martha Nussbaum (see Solem, Lambert and Tani

2013; Lambert, Solem and Tani, Forthcoming). GeoCapabilities argues that human

capability is deprived or diminished without the deep descriptive ‘world knowledge’

that enables individuals can extend and deepen their thinking beyond the immediate

‘everyday’ experience of their surroundings. Geographical knowledge also enables

them to appreciate how places, both near and far, have come to be and how they

might become as a result of the interaction of people with the physical and built

environment. Thus, geographical knowledge is not only descriptive. It is also

explanatory and relational, incorporating perspectives that ‘hold the world together’:

place and space, local and global, people and environment, physical and human.

Furthermore, in an increasingly interdependent and globalised world, and a world in

which humans seem to have an increasing influence in shaping natural processes,

GeoCapability enhances an individual’s capacity to take responsibility for their lives,

to make decisions and act according to what they believe is right. Thus it is argued

that ‘thinking geographically’ contributes to cultural, spiritual, social and moral

understanding (Lambert & Morgan, 2010, p. 54) through a comparative and critical

appreciation of the world and humankind’s relationship with the planet.

Thus we see human capability as (at least in part) knowledge based: human agency

and possibility is related to the acquisition and development of knowledge. Rather

than listing discrete skills or competences, capability rests on acquiring and

developing a range of ‘functionings’ that contribute to human autonomy and potential

- in thought and action. Thus the ‘world knowledge’ envisioned by GeoCapabilities is

not just a collection of memorized facts about locations and places, or a set of

competences/skills to be achieved. It is more a way of seeing and understanding the

world from multiple perspectives through the ‘systematicity’ provided by key

geographical concepts and principles.


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b. GeoCapabilities and a ‘knowledge-led’ curriculum.

The GeoCapabilities project uses capabilities to express the purposes and values of

geography as a school subject. The capabilities approach is linked directly to

curriculum debates concerning specialist knowledge, introducing and developing

Basil Bernstein’s ideas of pedagogic rights and Michael Young’s notion of ‘powerful

knowledge’ (introduced in Young, Lambert, Roberts and Roberts 2014). One

important outcome of GeoCapabilities is that those teaching geography have a

means to communicate the value of their work in terms of how the development of

geographical knowledge and understanding contributes to the educated person.

Key advocates of the GeoCapabilities approach take it as axiomatic that young

people’s geo-capability will be enhanced through formal education. The main reason

for this is that the school curriculum provides young people with access to

specialized, disciplinary knowledge. Following Basil Bernstein, the capabilities

approach to curriculum thinking recognizes the power of specialized knowledge

enabling individuals and societies to ‘think the unthinkable’ and ‘the not yet thought’.

To repeat, this project is concerned with how the development of geographical

knowledge and understanding contributes to the educated person.

Thus, the GeoCapabilities approach draws from the idea of ‘powerful knowledge’ as

proposed by educationist Michael Young as a key concept and driver of curriculum

thinking and construction. Young argues that ‘powerful knowledge’ rests upon the

distinction between two types of concept – the theoretical (disciplinary) and the

everyday or common sense. He elaborates by saying that ‘It is everyday concepts

which constitute the experience which pupils bring to school. On the other hand, it is

the theoretical concepts associated with different subjects that the curriculum can

give them access to.’ Acquiring ‘powerful knowledge’ is learning to use these

theoretical concepts.

“The opportunity provided by schools for pupils to move between their

everyday concepts and the theoretical concepts that are located in school

subjects lies at the heart of the purpose of schools and aims of any

curriculum. The crucial difference between the two types of concept is that a

pupil’s ‘everyday concepts’ limit them to their experience, whereas the

theoretical concepts to which subject teaching gives students access enable

them to reflect on and move beyond the particulars of their experience.”

(Young 2012).

Young and colleagues argue that everyone is entitled to be taught a subject-based

curriculum to enable access to ‘powerful knowledge’. The GeoCapabilities project


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investigates and develops this notion in contemporary schools internationally. The

notion of ‘powerful knowledge’ provides principles to underpin the design and

justification of geography in the curriculum. The geo-capabilities approach does this.

It takes us beyond knowledge as ‘facts’ and beyond the ‘competences’ of a skills-led

curriculum.

In summary, GeoCapabilities argues that the ‘powerful knowledge’ offered by

geography education consists of a deep descriptive ‘world knowledge’; a

theoretically-informed relational understanding of people and places in the world; and

a propensity and disposition to think about alternative social, economic and

environmental futures (Solem, Lambert, Tani, 2013; Lambert, Solem and Tani

,Forthcoming). GeoCapabilities asks teachers to consider the role of geography in

helping young people reach their full human potential.

Geography does not tell us how to live. But thinking geographically, and thus

extending and developing our innate geographical imaginations, can provide the

intellectual means for visioning ourselves on planet earth.

c. GeoCapabilities and the role of teachers

Capabilities expands and deepens the conceptual language of teaching and

curriculum in secondary schools. ‘GeoCapabilities’, helps connect a progressive form

of discipline-oriented teaching to broad and ambitious educational aims. It does this

through the dialogic space offered by curriculum making (Lambert and Biddulph

2014; Mitchell and Lambert, forthcoming).

This project seeks to extend and further develop the idea of curriculum making more

fully: we have found that powerful knowledge is not enough on its own. What use is

powerful knowledge if it remains inaccessible to students (or teachers)? Following

Margaret Roberts (Roberts 2013; 2014) we suggest that it needs to be

complemented by ‘powerful pedagogies’ enabling students to:

enhance their everyday experiences by extending and modifying their

personal geographies,

ask challenging and appropriate geographical questions,

see the world in a variety of different ways and understand ‘perspective’,

informed by the academic discipline,

apply what they have learnt to new situations and places,

be critical of sources of geographical information,

analyse conflicting data and different viewpoints,

consider ethical issues implicit in geographical knowledge.


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Thus, in a capabilities approach, what is learned and how it is learned matters (see

also Lambert & Morgan 2010: 64). The teacher can exercise enormous influence

through the choices she makes over what happens in lessons. The teacher is the

curriculum maker. Thus, the GeoCapabilities project fully endorses and values both

the intellectual and practical role of the teacher. It seeks to provide a means to

conceptualise and illustrate the process of curriculum making.

For these reasons we see GeoCapabilities as a way to ‘frame’ the continuous

professional development of teachers. Put simply, geography taught well contributes

significantly to the development of educated persons, and this is what we strive to

do. It goes without saying that geography taught poorly may have little to contribute

to helping young people develop their potentials as independently minded and

autonomous individuals. This is why the project maintains that teacher preparation

and training should stress teachers’ role in curriculum leadership.

d. GeoCapabilities (and school geography) in international context

As a school subject and academic discipline, geography is concerned with social and

environmental issues affecting people, places and environments worldwide. It is

therefore ironic that there has been very little international dialogue among

geography teachers on what the aims of geography education ought to be in a

rapidly globalizing and increasingly interdependent world. Many assertions can be

found in the US and European national curriculum standards regarding the

importance of geographic literacy for what we might refer to as “global citizenship” or

“global learning” (Falk 1993; Gaudelli & Heilman 2009). At present, however,

American and European teachers have few opportunities during their initial training

and careers to engage the perspectives of peers and experts in different countries

concerning the nature and impacts of environmental change, political conflict,

resource consumption, migration, urban growth, natural disasters, and other issues

they are expected to understand well enough to teach effectively. Consequently,

students tend to learn the subject from the perspective of their local and national

contexts without acquiring international perspectives providing critical insights on

issues.

GeoCapabilities will, we hope, enable and facilitate international communication

about geography in education. To date this has been notoriously difficult because

there are distinctive traditions and cultures of geography in the school curriculum. For

example, geography in the US is often taught as a social science. In the UK, the

humanities have a relatively stronger presence in geography, whereas in Finland

there are more explicit connections between biology and geography. The capabilities

approach, by bridging curriculum content and broader educational aims, is a


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framework that allows for national differences in a manner that encourages dialogue

across national jurisdictions. Such curriculum-focused dialogue, articulated through

capabilities as a language that captures broad educational goals common to different

nations, whilst valuing the ‘power’ of geographical knowledge, is a means of

nurturing an international dimension to curriculum leadership in schools across the

US, Europe and beyond.

Adopting a capabilities approach therefore has broad implications for educational

practice and policy, coming as it does at a time when reforms are dramatically

changing the character of geography in schools and, in turn, how teachers are

prepared and trained. In the US, teacher preparation in many states gives only

cursory attention to geography even though geography is present in state standards.

This situation owes to the lack of geography courses offered on the campuses of

many teacher education programs. Because of their inadequate preparation in

geography, American teachers have long felt unprepared to teach the subject

(Anderson & Leinhardt 2002; Chiodo 1993; Diem 1982; Reinfried 2006; Segall 2002;

Segall & Helfenbein 2008).

European nations are also experiencing significant developments in their geography

education systems (e.g. Lambert 2009a, 2009b, 2011a, 2011b) often in the face of

pressures to think less about the knowledge contents of lessons and more about

‘twenty-first century skills’. However, David Leat and colleagues point to the difficulty

of national systems accommodating to what they describe as the “paradigm shift”

required to introduce a competence-based curriculum, as it …

“... explodes conventional understandings of school learning which rely

predominantly on the acquisition of knowledge and the development of

understanding and skills, often completely disaggregated and

decontextualized from real-life experience.” (Leat et al 2012, 401)

While Leat and his colleagues seek to demonstrate that “national politics have a

habit of overwhelming EU policies” (ibid: 409), GeoCapabilities seeks a different

approach: not to castigate national policies for failure of ambition, but to understand

and harness different perspectives and the disciplinary identities of teachers. This will

be done with a language and conceptual apparatus, provided by the capabilities

approach, that encourages productive pan-European (and transatlantic) dialogue

about subject knowledge contents, but in the context of broader educational aims,

centered on developing teachers’ leadership capacities through building their

curriculum understanding and practical curriculum-making skills.


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Section 3 Exploring the Idea of Capabilities

a. Introducing the capabilities approach in education

The theoretical framework we use in this project is the capabilities approach to

theorising human development, based on Amartya Sen’s (Sen 1995) welfare

economics (see also Alkire 2005; Kuklys 2005).

Human development demands the development of human capabilities, defined as

the different combinations of human functionings that can be achieved by people

and/or groups. Functionings are the ‘beings and doings’ available to people that

together make a life valuable. At a basic level this includes access to clean water and

health care, for example. However, the capabilities approach also asks us to grasp

one of the fundamental dimensions of human development, which is human

empowerment. The assumption is that empowerment follows the expansion of

human capabilities. It is not guaranteed of course, and in this sense there is a useful

distinction to be made between capabilities and functionings, the former being

concerned with the provision of opportunity and the latter to do with the achievement

or realisation of choices or options made available. Thus, capabilities could be said

to be ‘the freedom to enjoy valuable functionings’ (Boni and Walker 2013, 3). For

society to develop, the extension of such freedoms is essential. Thus, in the field of

human welfare economics, measures to reduce or even eliminate completely the

obstacles to such freedoms are crucial: for example, the need to enhance people’s

freedom from the deprivations caused by hunger, the gendered exclusion from

primary education, and so forth.

It is straightforward to see how the capabilities approach has been adopted and

applied widely to education (Saito 2003; Walker 2005; Hinchliffe 2007). Learning how

to read and write is a fundamental capability in itself, but it also provides the basis for

further capabilities development. In this sense it is a basic competence without which

further learning is severely impeded, as well as the ‘freedom’ to use a mobile phone


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or laptop computer, follow the instructions on the use of a new fertilizer or join a

political party or campaign group. However as Walker and Boni argue in the context

of university education, the capabilities approach offers education far more than this

perhaps rather mundane interpretation. It offers nothing less than the possibility of

‘expand(ing) our conceptual language’ of education (Walker and Boni 2013, 24) by

locating graduate achievement in the context of their transformative development as

human beings. They explain,

‘In all this it may be that university teaching is one sure way to reinstate the

public good and to advance the social good – to once again understand the

hugely transformative potential of good teaching on undergraduates and

postgraduates alike. This is the space in which we might educate, form and

shape public citizens, as critical reasoners and democratic citizens who

understand their obligations to others, who are equipped to ask what the

public implications of their actions are, and are morally prepared to ask of

their actions and those of others, is it right?’ (Walker and Boni 2013, 24–5)

There are two important observations we would like to make arising from Walker and

Boni’s statement of educational purpose. First, it is expressly different from many

other contemporary expressions of the social and economic function of the

university; the statement is far more than an expression of the development of

‘human capital’. Secondly, although the statement does not exclude the role of the

university in developing human capital it specifies the university’s additional role in

providing the circumstances for human flourishing. Interestingly, in the UK it has

been stated recently that the single aim of schools in the 21st century should simply

be to enable young people to lead flourishing lives – and enable others to do so as

well (Reiss and White 2013). This is a grand all-embracing aim, and our purpose in

the GeoCapabilities project is to say how, and in what way, geography can make a

specific (and we emphasise the knowledge domain in this specificity) contribution

towards the realisation of this goal.

Both Reiss and White’s (2013) grand aim of education and Walker and Boni’s vision

of the university are expressed in generic terms. However, capabilities, as we

understand it, are not the same as general competences or free-floating thinking


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‘skills’. The transformative potential of a university education is based on the

individual’s acquisition of disciplinary knowledge, and there is some empirical

evidence to indicate that students value greatly the way such knowledge

development enables them to think more broadly about the world (McLean et al.

2011). It is the induction into a discipline that may provide aspects of what Martha

Nussbaum calls the capability of ‘affiliation’: it is, according to Nussbaum (2000, 82),

to ‘behave in an incompletely human way’ if a person thinks about the world and their

place in it as if only their views and experience mattered. Disciplines provide a way to

enter complex forms of discourse and perspectives that have arisen in communities

using procedures of argument and contestation. This includes abstract and

theoretical knowledge, which almost by definition is beyond the experience of the

‘everyday’. As we are initiated into disciplines we gain access to some of the

excitement – and the significance – of knowledge creation: we can become deeply

committed to what it means to be, or to think like, a historian, scientist, musician... or

a geographer. This article is written partly from the conviction that such ‘initiation’ into

disciplinary thought is of great value. It should happen in schools on the grounds that

all young people (not only those who go to university) have the right to the

capabilities offered through such ‘epistemic ascent’ (Winch 2013).

Through the GeoCapabilities project, we explore the potential of the capabilities

approach to express the purposes and values of geography as a school subject. The

study is unique in that this is the first attempt to apply the capabilities approach to

school level subject teaching and curriculum development.

In the following section we outline the rationale for doing this. In a sense we use the

following section to spell out in more detail, ‘what the problem is’ and how we justify

our hypothesis that ‘geo-capabilities’ are worth identifying. Following Walker and

Boni above, we therefore argue that the capabilities approach expands and deepens

the conceptual language of teaching and curriculum in secondary schools. In our

study, we show that the capabilities approach in geography, or more specifically what

we term GeoCapabilities, helps connect a progressive form of discipline-oriented

teaching to the context of broad educational aims. It does this through the dialogic

space offered by curriculum making (Lambert and Biddulph, 2014; Mitchell and

Lambert, forthcoming).


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b. A rationale: what is the problem that a capabilities approach helps

address?

Walker and Boni (2013) ask: ‘How did we get to this point of the more or less global

capture of [higher] education by economic argument and neoliberal policy?’ (p 15).

Without really answering the question they do nevertheless conclude that there is no

inevitability about such movements and indeed that the ‘argument is by no means

concluded’ (ibid; see also Burawoy 2011). In the field of geography education we

can, for example, refer to David Wadley’s use of the metaphor ‘garden of peace’ to

elicit the purpose of educational encounters in the context of the global neoliberal

‘vibrant city’ which has ‘dulled our ability to think for and beyond ourselves’ (Wadley

2008, 312). The ‘vibrant city’ of our neoliberal times offers an environment of

constant innovation and change, rapid and bewildering movement and the 24/7, just-

in-time economic setting of globalised economics. Specifically in education, one

response to this setting is to ensure that universities and schools become globally

competitive and that they turn out people with marketable skills; that is, graduates

who are ‘flexible’ and ‘employable’. Unrestrained, corporatized universities and high

schools diminish what education may do for people. Its role in advancing the

common good, based on a deep and critical knowledge of human and environmental

relations, is undermined. The ‘garden of peace’ is inevitably part of the vibrant city,

but it is also different, like an oasis of calm. This is the space that Wadley argues that

higher education in the context of its intellectual independence needs to protect and

nurture within the ‘vibrant city’ for it is here that the possibility of a more expansive

and discipline-oriented education encounter can take place.

Wadley (and Boni and Walker cited in the above paragraph) argue in the context of

higher education. GeoCapabilities adopts a similar position with regard to secondary

education in schools. It is an unremarkable statement that secondary schools too,

worldwide, are in thrall to policy makers driven by notions of international

competitiveness. The intense pressure to perform in relation to international

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings percolates

through national systems and ultimately to the individual students. Again


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employability, the vital measure of success, is often described in terms of basic skills

and flexibilities (dressed up with faux-progressive overtones as ‘learning to learn’),

with the consequence of undermining harder won disciplinary knowledge (see

Lambert and Hopkin 2014, for a fuller account of these trends in relation specifically

to the geography curriculum in schools in England). As we observed in the context

of higher education, we do not believe arguments about the spirit and purpose of

education to be over. And yet it is quite difficult to compose an argument for

disciplinary knowledge in school education without this sounding reactionary and

backward looking. Therefore GeoCapabilities explores the potential of articulating a

progressive knowledge-led curriculum, in a manner that does not entirely reject the

human capital approach to education but which does show cogently what is special

and of value in a more deliberative approach to education, as with Wadley’s ‘garden

of peace’.

The problem we are addressing therefore is how to describe an expansive and

convincing view of geography in education for this day and age. We need a means to

do this which resists the reductive tendencies of neoliberal orthodoxies that appear to

hollow out education and its true potential to enable people and societies to imagine

alternative futures. Truly educational encounters set us apart from the day-to-day to

enable us, as the British sociologist Basil Bernstein expressed it, to think the ‘not yet

thought’ (Bernstein 2000, 30), a formulation that works both for the individuals and

for societies. The problem is how to do this in a way that does not appear to turn its

back on the everyday, which apart from any other consideration would be resisted by

many teachers who on a daily basis have to interact with students who are not

convinced by traditional exhortations to buckle down and ‘defer gratification’. But as

we shall see, for Bernstein it is the very interchange between expert or disciplinary

discourses and ‘common sense’ or everyday knowledge that is pedagogically

powerful.

It can be argued, correctly, that universities and schools have a quite different

function when it comes to knowledge. Universities are in the knowledge producing

business, and it is straightforward to follow the proposition that therefore part of their

function is to induct young people into the procedures and methods of the disciplines.

Schools however have a different relation to knowledge: they do not produce new


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knowledge, but they do need to transfer or communicate selections of what is known.

This distinction itself can become somewhat fuzzy largely because of the important

pedagogic advances of recent decades, contributing to our understanding of the

strength of active or ‘constructivist’ learning strategies (see Roberts 2003; 2013).

However, although students may be engaged in what is frequently referred to as

knowledge construction in the geography classroom, what they are really doing is

making meaning for themselves. This is extremely important, but only very rarely

does this result in new knowledge in the way we mean in the university setting.

Making meaning may result in knowledge that is new to the individual, but it is not

necessarily new to the wider community or society. The distinction being made here

is important for two reasons.

First, it raises a question about the relationship between the school subject and the

university-based research discipline. For example, is the school subject defined by

extracting elements of the constellations of knowledge produced by the discipline? If

so, who selects this and on what basis? If the university discipline takes the lead,

how do school subject teachers ‘keep up’ with discoveries and developments in the

discipline? (and if they do not, doesn’t the school subject simply become increasingly

irrelevant?). These are particularly interesting questions for such an unruly discipline

as geography can appear to be, for unlike mathematics or the natural sciences there

is relatively little of what Bernstein calls ‘verticality’. There is no simple lineage

between secondary school geography and what is being taught and learned closer to

the research frontieri; geography as a school subject appears to have a weak

‘grammar’ (Bernstein 1999).

The second problem relates closely to the first. It is to do with locus of power and

control of the curriculum. In schools the curriculum foregrounds knowledge. In some

countries, for example in England, a statutory national curriculum frames what counts

as the ‘core of essential knowledge’ – or at least the authorized knowledge – to be

taught and learned in schools (see Lambert and Hopkin 2014). Other countries

without a national curriculum, such as the US, nevertheless often have voluntary

“standards” that are recognized nationally and which serve as important references

for curriculum making at the level of states or local jurisdictions. In both cases,

national curricula and standards are usually augmented with statements of aims,


22

outcomes, and some indication of appropriate pedagogies. Even so, the formal

curriculum, especially when expressed in brief as in the case of England and Finland,

is a statement of intent only. It offers no guarantees over what is actually taught and

learned in schools, especially as is often the case in many countries including the

US, geography is taught by teachers with little or no specialist training. We conclude

therefore that there is a serious ‘curriculum problem’ in school geography which we

specify as a curriculum making issue (as distinct from a design or planning issue).

The geography curriculum as it is implemented by teachers and experienced by

students can be at odds with the official intentions laid down in the standards or

implied by the statutes. We ask therefore whether there is a perspective on

geography that offers a bridge between the discipline and the school subject (the

latter especially has to operate within a space defined by educational purposes and

aims), and between the discipline and the everyday geographical knowledge, that

may help teachers of geography (including non-specialists) in their curriculum

making activities.

Finally, our task is to address the problems identified here internationally. We do this

mindful of the fact that geography – both as a discipline and as a school subject –

varies considerably between nations and educational jurisdictions even within

nations as is the case in the US and the UK. This is a problem only in so far as it can

be difficult sharing assumptions, especially about the contents of the subject

curriculum. Our intention is not to attempt to smooth such differences out. However,

GeoCapabilities is interested in determining whether there is a possibility to share

across jurisdictions a notion of what it means to ‘think geographically’, that would

hold true whether geography were part of the social studies as in the US, or more

linked to the humanities (albeit with a significant component of earth science) as in

England, or more closely associated with the natural sciences as in Finland, for

example.

c. Further theoretical perspectives and the capabilities approach in

educational context


23

In this section we need to say a little more about how we relate the capabilities

approach to educational provision as expressed specifically through geography in the

school curriculum. We seek a better understanding of how geography supports the

expansion of human capabilities to enable people to ‘lead more worthwhile and more

free lives’ (Sen 1999, 295). This section begins with further discussion on capabilities

and how these can be expressed.

Expressing capabilities

From the start, the GeoCapabilities project has been careful to emphasise that

Amartya Sen himself has refused to specify an inventory of human capabilities, partly

to avoid the risk of reducing the concept to a tick box list, but also in recognition that

capabilities may vary according to cultural, social and economic context. On the

other hand, following her collaboration with Sen (Nussbaum and Sen 1993) Martha

Nussbaum (2000; 2013) has attempted to define a list of universal, individual human

capabilities driven by the simple question: what is each person actually able to do

and to be and what are the opportunities available to them? The ten capabilities that

enable the realisation of human ‘beings and doings’, and the reality of opportunities

available to people, in abbreviated form are as follows:

Life itself; bodily health; bodily integrity (including the freedom from assault

from others); the freedom to use and develop the senses, imagination and

thought; emotional health; to engage in practical reason; affiliation; respect for

other species and nature; play (including enjoyment and laughter); control

over one’s material and political environment. (Nussbaum 2000)

It goes without saying that this list, which is neither definitive nor unchanging2, is

enormous in scope and initially it may seem obtuse to seek to apply this thinking to

2 There are several attempts in the literature to extend and develop a capabilities approach, including in the field of education.

Hinchliffe (2007) has discussed the approach in humanities education and personal development, and contributes to a special

issue of Studies in the Philosophy of Education (2009) which unpacks capabilities and its relation to education. Terzi (2005) has

applied the capabilities perspective to the education of people with special educational needs. However, the work discussed in

this article is the first attempt to apply the capabilities approach to the teaching of specific knowledge.


24

what geography teachers may accomplish with young people. Clearly, in supporting

life, health and bodily integrity geography lessons may have very little to contribute

directly in comparison to society’s capacity to provide clean water, primary health

care and the rule of law (although it is possible to make a case that in studying

distributions and the gross inequalities of access to such capabilities within and

between nations, geography in the school curriculum occupies a vital role in

educating citizens; indirectly this may have great impact on society’s willingness to

tolerate the uneven distributions of these human capabilities in the future). But to

what extent do some of Nussbaum’s capabilities have a more direct relation with

geography education, say in the realm of developing imagination and thought, or in

the engagement of practical reason?

In the pilot GeoCapabilities project (see Solem, Lambert and Tani 2013), which was

essentially exploratory and a scoping exercise, we selected for convenience just

three of Nussbaum’s capabilities, which we modified slightly to add a geographical

flavour, as follows. To what extent, we asked, can geography

1. Promote individual autonomy and freedom, and the ability of children to use

their imagination and to be able to think and reason?

2. Help young people identify and exercise their choices in how to live, based on

worthwhile distinctions with regard to their citizenship and to sustainability?

3. Contribute to understanding one’s potential as a creative and productive

citizen in the context of the global economy and culture?

We set out to answer these questions within geography’s knowledge domain,

however this was expressed within the national standards and frameworks of the US,

England and Finland. In adopting a human development approach we acknowledge

that, very broadly, we are aligned to the notion of geography as being concerned with

social justice, and ultimately human life on earth. In the Anthropocene epoch

(Castree forthcoming; Stromberg 2013), human-physical environmental relationships

on earth demand to be taught. Imagining alternative futures (Hicks 2007; 2013),

applying geographical (relational) thinking and engaging in practical reason about

how to live are arguably important elements of a geography programme that takes

the development of human capabilities (to grasp and face the future) seriously.


25

However, the key question then to arise is how to express the discipline specific

claims we are making for geography – that is, the particular relevance of the ‘geo’ in

human capabilities development. The theoretical basis we draw on to help achieve

the stress we wish to place on geographical knowledge, and therefore resist the pull

toward generic ‘21st century skills’ and such like, is from the sociology of knowledge,

and specifically Michael Young’s notion of powerful knowledge (see section 4).

The original contribution of GeoCapabilities is to take a critical perspective on

powerful knowledge and combine this with appropriate pedagogic approaches in

order to promote capabilities though geographical thinking.


26

Section 4 Knowledge and the geography curriculum

a. What happened to geographical knowledge?

One of the working assumptions of GeoCapabilities has been the need to address

head-on knowledge questions in the context of the school curriculum (derived from

what Ben Major and others have characterized as a ‘fear of knowledge’ - see Major,

forthcoming). The widespread turn away from a knowledge-led curriculum, as a

result of educational trends leading to what Michael Young calls ‘Future 2’ (see

Young, Lambert, Roberts and Roberts, 20143), has been particularly strongly felt in

geography with some national systems seeming to write geography out of the

curriculum altogether: Ireland, Scotland, Sweden and Italy are examples in Europe.

Of course, in themed lessons oriented by g e n e r i c skills and competences,

even in the most extreme Future 2 setting, students will be learning about

something. Truly content free lessons are hard to envisage, and for this reason

to argue for a knowledge-led school or curriculum appears to some as a

somewhat superfluous, unnecessary claim. So why would we expend effort on

bringing knowledge back in? Surely, it never went away.

The problem here is the confusion between knowledge and content. Many who

advocate a skills-based curriculum, often do so in the context of the loosely

defined idea of the twenty-first century ‘knowledge society’ with its enormous

computing power and free and easy access to infinite quantities of information. It is

remarkable watching young people operate smart phones and other gadgets with

such remarkable dexterity that they can find answers to questions that arise in

their daily lives almost instantly. Teachers cannot ignore this or pretend that

digital technologies have not transformed some of our received understandings of

3 Knowledge and the Future School: curriculum and social justice, London: Bloomsbury. This sub-section of the

Report is based upon Chapter 7 of this book.


27

education and how it functions. And why would they even want to ignore the

wonderful affordances of technology? However, to imagine that almost instant

access to several million references to whatever key word has been ‘googled’

equates with the development of knowledge is confusing information skills with

knowledge development. We can illustrate this with a very simple example in

geography, of digitised mapping. Many of us now use satnav as a matter of

course. Satnav devices are remarkable, a fabulous outcome of satellite

technology providing cheap, accurate navigational assistance via your smart

phone or at the switch of a button in your car. Furthermore, as Geographic

Information Science (GIS) is becoming part of everyday experience, as with

the satnav device, its use is also unremarkable. However, knowledge and

understanding of what GIS is, why it has been developed and how it can be used

is important to learn in school. As with maps, drawn to represent places,

landscapes and spatial relationship over the centuries, we can learn about the

power and the limits of GIS. We might also marvel at the beauty of maps (and

GIS images) and how they can lie and distort our viewpoint. Mapwork was

never simply about practising skills. Mapwork can take us into the realm of

imagination, of speculation, of propaganda, but anchored in the knowledge of

rules and conventions and practices (of grids, projections, symbols, isolines,

choropleth, and so on).

Specialist knowledge about maps and GIS is developed in geography lessons.

Or put it this way: if it is not, then it probably is not developed anywhere else

and the school student has no means of beginning to comprehend this aspect of

‘everyday magic’. Their curiosity has not been pricked and their knowledge has not

been developed beyond the everyday and taken-for-granted. It could be argued

that anyone to whom this applies in this day and age is under-educated. In this

project, we explore why this matters in terms of capability deprivation.

The purpose of this section is acknowledge the truth that while geography

lessons - pretty well all lessons – are usually about something, this does not

absolve us of the responsibility to think hard about the quality of the knowledge

being developed in geography lessons. This is not because lessons have become

somehow ‘content free’, but because there may be serious doubts over how the


28

lessons contribute to pupils’ knowledge development - meaning conceptual

development and the intellectual resources students acquire to help them make

sense of the world. In all subjects, geography included, there is ‘better knowledge’

and knowledge that is not so good. Moreover, disciplines have developed

procedures and process to adjudicate the best knowledge: expert teachers are able

to induct young people into this epistemic ‘space of reasons4’.

If disciplinary geographical knowledge is undermined in the school curriculum,

we can ask in what specific ways may we be weakening the educational outcomes

of young people? This, as Roger Firth (2011) has shown, i s to ask in what

ways we diminish the educational experience for young people if we do not

systematically induct them into ways of encountering the Earth as an object of

thought, and what the study of geography reveals to us through this effort.

b. On the need to be ‘topical and relevant’

In a chapter exploring the nature of school geography in changing times in the UK

context, Charles Rawding probably speaks for many in urging that the subject, as

expressed in school curriculum, should be up to date and ‘relevant’.

This is the basis for lamenting the national curriculum in 1991 for ‘imposing a more

traditional geography curriculum’ and for taking ‘a distinct backwards step’

(Rawding 2013 p 284). This sentiment leads Rawding to conclude that under

the theme of population geography for example, the demographic transition

model should be abandoned as ‘old hat’. It seems to me that although

‘demographic transition’ may not be inevitable and invariable, it is a powerful model

that forms part of an architecture with which to think – and which can be

modified and refined, extended and developed. In this sense it is powerful

knowledge. It provides us with a space for reasoning.

4 Reference to the ‘space of reasons’ anticipates an ‘inferentialist’ approach to teaching which this project seeks

to explore through practical curriculum making.


29

Other iconic figures and models are consigned to the waste bin, again

because they are old and deemed ‘invalid’ to the present day: landscape analysis

derived from WM Davis is one such (Rawding 2013 p 287), despite a leading

academic geographer, Tim Cresswell, recently commenting on D a v i s ’

remarkable contribution to the development of geography as a discipline5: ‘one of

the two or three most important people in the development of physical geography’

(Cresswell, 2013 p11). To brush this aside completely, mainly to allow for a more

‘issues’ oriented physical geography is in line with those who advocate topicality or

relevance for the school curriculum. Clearly, it is not easy to justify Davis’s cycles of

erosion on the grounds of everyday relevance. It is, however, somewhat reckless

to ignore the disciplinary hinterland, the ideas and the figures who have

contributed and the notion that our knowledge progresses, for in the end this

undermines the notion of discipline itself (and therefore part of the case for the

subject on the school curriculum).

An inferentialist approach to teaching does not merely ‘present’ the demographic

transition model as an objective, singular account (that is, as a ‘fact’) that cannot

be challenged or modified. Similarly, the Davisian ‘cycle of erosion’ is not best

taught as ‘factual’ representation to be proved right or wrong. But neither is it

suggested that because few if any present day researchers in physical geography

attach much contemporary credence to Davis we therefore need to remove his

ideas from the school curriculum. As a pedagogic model, ideas such as ‘cycles of

erosion’ remain powerful. It is as unhelpful in geography to assume that the only

relevant knowledge is recent, as it is in English literature, science, mathematics or

art. Clearly, non-recent ideas have a very different role in say physics and literature:

for example, Newton is not studied as a figure in the same way as Shakespeare.

But the question remains how to realise the potential of using school subjects

to provide epistemic access to forms and fields of ‘powerful knowledge’.

5 W M Davis, the American physical geographer working in the early years of the last century, was

enormously influential in his approach to landscape evolution, an approach to understanding

landscape change that was superceded by a greater focus on process studies.


30

As we have seen, t h e r e a r e g e o g r a p h y e d u c a t o r s w h o stress

the claim that geography in schools is (or should be) a b o v e a l l about the

contemporary world: that is, there is no time for the ‘theories of the dead’. The

GeoCapabilities project has much sympathy for geography’s place in the school

curriculum being justified in terms of its capacity to help students meet and

comprehend contemporary events, issues and processes. However, the mistake is

to imagine that focusing only on our day-to-day experience of the world is the

best way of understanding it. All school subjects – certainly, all those listed in the

previous paragraph, and in addition history – claim their curriculum space in

terms of understanding the world and our place in it today. Even the classics can

do this. The curriculum question is to do with selecting the knowledge that

exists outside the direct experience of the students and the teachers; that is,

knowledge which has been created and developed by the wider disciplinary

communities, which is worthwhile and relevant - relevant in the sense that it

helps develop systematicity in our thinking plus a deepening and broadening

of our perspectives. This knowledge is conceptual and in geography it often takes

the form, as we have seen through the examples cited, of systems and models

(which sometimes take the form of maps!).

An inferentialist approach to teaching, one that seeks to induct students into a

disciplined ‘space of reasons’, heaps enormous responsibilities onto teachers as

curriculum makers (see Section 5) and we can readily see why well prepared and

knowledgeable subject specialist teachers are required to meet these

responsibilities. Any national curriculum or set of curriculum standards in itself

need not be motivating or exciting: it is often merely a selection of essential

contents (expressed as concepts – in geography examples include: weather

and climate; cities; population migration). However teachers certainly do need to

be interesting, engaging and occasionally exciting. They need to be able to

provide motivating ways and means for students to access the curriculum. It is

for this reason alone that the widely adopted delivery metaphor in teaching (we

‘deliver’ the curriculum) is so woefully inadequate. Curriculum making, focuses

on engagement rather than delivery. It is a creative activity, which in effect

melds knowledge-led curriculum principles with powerful (inferentialist) pedagogy.


31

c. Subjects, powerful knowledge and pedagogy

The question addressed in the GeoCapabilities project is how to express a

progressive case for subjects in the school curriculum. The project’s priority is that

all students (not just the academically more gifted) are given the opportunity to learn

to ‘think geographically’. Through this process, the acquisition of geographical

knowledge and understanding becomes a resource for them even after they leave

school. We emphasise subjects because they embody the purpose of schools in

taking students beyond their everyday experience. Furthermore, subjects provide

boundaries and hence a sense of identity for teachers and learners and

collective resource for teachers, for example through subject associations (such the

Association of American Geographers, Eurogeo and the Geographical Association,

all partners of the GeoCapabilities project).

This Section as a whole seeks to describe an expansive and convincing view of

subjects in the school curriculum fit for this day and age. We do this in a way that

resists the reductive tendencies present in both more ‘traditionalist’ and

‘progressive’ education discourses which hollow out education and its true potential

to enable people to imagine alternative futures. This results either from a fixed and

restricted concept of ‘given’ knowledge, albeit sometimes dressed up in the UK

context in classic Arnoldian terms as the ‘best of what is thought and written’, or

from a rejection of the efficacy of subjects themselves in favour of generic skills

and competences, often grounded in the ‘relevance’ of the everyday.

We argue, with the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, that truly educational

encounters set us apart from the day-to-day to enable us to think the ‘not yet

thought’ (Bernstein, 2000: 30). As we no t e d i n t h e p r e v i ous s ec t i o n ,

universities are both in the knowledge producing business (research) and in

taking students (some of whom will be researchers) to the leading edge of their

disciplines and in so doing inducting young people into the procedures and

methods of the discipline. Schools however have a different relation to

knowledge: they do not produce knowledge, but they do transfer and

communicate it. This no longer means that students are simply expected to listen,


32

take notes and regurgitate, activities that only a minority are any good at. Teachers

encourage their students to enquire and investigate. In doing so students use and

manipulate data to draw and then test conclusions, and they debate and learn how

to argue. Indeed, the important pedagogic advances of recent decades,

contributing to our understanding of the strength of active or ‘constructivist’

pedgagogic strategies (see Roberts, 2003; 2013) may have b lu r red

somewhat t he d i s t inc t ion be tween k nowledge c rea t ion o r

deve lopment ( in t he un ive rs i t i es ) and k nowledge acqu is i t i on and

deve lopment in schoo ls .

However, if there is no easily agreed lineage between secondary school

geography and what is being taught and learned closer to the research frontier,

how can geography prepare students for undergraduate subjects and a possible

research future? Moreover, how can we be sure teachers are engaging all

children with the state of the art of thought and practice in the discipline (as

opposed to some form of congealed and uncontested or ‘given’ knowledge that

belongs to a Future 1 curriculum)? A sense of disciplinary advancement is vital:

after all, we should acknowledge that geographical perspectives in the past have

been misleading – or even downright harmful, as in the uncritical adoption of

theoretical perspectives such as environmental determinism6. The idea of

knowledge that GeoCapabilities promotes is Future 3: it is that which is dynamic,

and even though can be relied upon is nevertheless not timeless and can be (must

be) contested.

d. Powerful knowledge and pedagogic rights

The key to conceptualizing a Future 3 curriculum is powerful knowledge (see Young,

Lambert, Roberts and Roberts 2014). Here, we attempt a concise definition of this

concept.

6 Put simply, the idea that environmental circumstances such as climate has a direct bearing on human

inventiveness and productivity, leading to flawed but convenient conclusions about the ‘superiority’ of the

temperate latitudes and its peoples over the tropics


33

In his fifth and final volume of Class, Codes and Control, Bernstein (2000)

introduced the idea of the ‘pedagogic rights’ of young people to individual

enhancement, social inclusion and political participation. These ‘rights’ are

expressed as outcomes of educational processes. For Bernstein, access to

knowledge is the key educational contribution to fighting the inequalities that are

implicit in his identification of pedagogic rights. This provides a context for Michael

Young’s (a former student and colleague of Bernstein’s) concept of ‘powerful

knowledge’. In direct opposition to those who urge a skills-based curriculum based

on the development of generic ‘competences’ (often deemed especially

appropriate to ‘less academic’ students), Young argues that it is a matter of social

equity that all young people have the right of access to ‘powerful’ – or

disciplinary – knowledge. This argument which we have developed in various

ways throughout this report and which is crucial to GeoCapabilities, counters both

the relativism of much ‘progressive’ skills-led educational thinking and its corollary

that the curriculum should be based on pupil’s interests (referred to by Young

and colleagues as Future 2), and the inadequacies of ‘traditionalist’ views which

see the contents of the school curriculum as a largely fixed selection of ‘core

knowledge’ (Hirsch, 1987; 2007) which we characterize as Future 1.

Powerful knowledge emphasises intellectual resources that are difficult to identify

from a Hirschian list of core knowledge. The following list is an abridged and

revised list (Young 2009) from one attempt to define ‘powerful knowledge’:

• It is abstract and theoretical (conceptual) - it is concerned with the general

not the particular7

• the concepts associated with it are inter-related: they are part of a system

• it is reliable, but open to challenge

• it is often counter-intuitive to experience, and therefore sometimes ‘hard-

7 This is of special interest to geographers who recognize the uniqueness of places. However,

uniqueness does not mean that every place and every region can only be studied as a singularity.

People too, are unique - but we can study bodily functions and the workings of the mind for example

using generalities, models and systems. In geography we can study global processes at the same time

as recognizing that ‘place matters’.


34

won’ and challenging to conventional wisdom. The classic example: we do

not experience our world going round the sun;

• it has a reality that is independent of the direct experience of the teacher

and the learner. Thus, we do not learn about society or gravity solely

through experience, but we know they are ‘real’ - if we break their rules for

example.

The working assumption of GeoCapabilities is that it is helpful to express school

subject knowledge (in this case, geography) as ‘powerful knowledge’ as

conceptually it counters the inadequacies of both s u b j e c t - traditionalist

(Future1) and generic-progressive (Future 2) educational thought. It firms up the

notion of children’s pedagogic rights: it forms a rationale for progressive educational

thought that is knowledge oriented. The capabilities approach encourages the

bridging of a knowledge led curriculum to the pedagogic rights Bernstein identified:

of young people’s right to individual enhancement, social inclusion and political

participation.

e. Conclusion

We have concluded from this discussion that there is a serious ‘curriculum problem’

in schools which we describe as a curriculum making issue (as distinct from a

design or planning issue). The geography curriculum as it is implemented by

teachers and experienced by students is always open to interpretation which is

why we do need specialist trained teachers – teachers who are able to interpret

the official intentions laid down in statute through the lens of their specialist

knowledge, for it is this that provides the subject curriculum with its educational

potential. It is for this reason that the GeoCapabilities project has found the idea of

‘powerful knowledge’ instructive and useful.

The knowledge contents of geography lessons, and moreover how this is taught and

for what reasons, is vitally important and teachers need a means to think about this.

The capabilities approach offers this.


35

Section 5 The Fine Art of Curriculum Making

a. The need for powerful pedagogies

So far in this report we have stressed the importance of the curriculum being

‘knowledge-led’. We have been careful to justify this position, particularly in terms of

the analysis of ‘curriculum futures’ which helps us distinguish not only the risks and

possible dis-benefits of a Future 2 skills oriented curriculum, but the Future 3

alternative to the deficiencies and restrictions of a Future 1 subject based

curriculum.

A signature feature of Future 3 thinking (and one not yet explored fully by Young et

al 2014) is the focus on what the geography educationist Margaret Roberts (2014)

has called powerful pedagogy; after all, powerful knowledge is a redundant concept

if it remains inaccessible to a large number of students. The term was first used in

a set piece seminar discussion where Roberts and Young debated powerful

knowledge: this is now available at www.geocapabilities.org. In the UK context,

Roberts has described this in detail in her books ‘Learning Through Enquiry’,

subsequently revised as ‘Geography Through Enquiry’ (Roberts 2003; 2013). The

books set out for practitioners the rationale for constructivist approaches to

teaching and learning: these value active, dialogic learning with students engaged

with data analysis and evaluation - fired by good questions and a genuine ‘need to

know’. Done well enquiry approaches embody exemplary teaching: highly

motivated students are challenged and stretched beyond the known, to the ‘not yet

thought’. Done less well, enquiry approaches can become rather formulaic in the

sense that the technique or activity itself becomes the lesson objective. Done badly,

and the students remain locked into their own experience, simply ‘pooling their

ignorance’ - a widely acknowledged pitfall of ‘classroom discussion’.

http://www.geocapabilities.org/


36

Roberts is well aware of the risk of pedagogic technique becoming an end in itself,

rather than a means to an end Roberts 2012), which is one reason why the 2013

edition of her book carries a significantly changed title. In the GeoCapabilities project

we explore a fresh way of expressing enquiry learning with the arguably more

philosophically precise approach described as ‘inferentialism’ (Backhurst 2011; Derry

2013a; Derry 2013b). Roger Firth, a geography educationist with a long-standing

interest in disciplinary epistemology and its possible relevance to pedagogical theory

and classroom practice makes the following observation:

"recently, there has been little creative engagement with the subject, let alone

issues of epistemology. In fact, many geography teachers are themselves the

product of an archetypal education which has largely ignored the epistemic

base and nature of (geography). This is not to say that teachers necessary

hold or endorse outmoded positivist or empiricist views of subject knowledge,

though their teaching and assessment methods usually seem to presuppose

it." (Firth 2007)

If Firth’s observation is in any way true, then it may explain why some enquiry

techniques can appear ‘bolt on’ and unconnected to subject knowledge outcomes -

which to put in crudely may be restricted to ‘the delivery of required content’. Such

teaching remains enquiry -led in name only - the teacher fails to break away from a

representationalist approach to knowledge. And yet, “one cannot understand and

cannot have knowledge of the content of a proposition unless one can understand

the inferences that can be made from and to it, and can articulate at least some of

them.” (Winch 2013). This alludes to the inferentialist approach that takes is to the

idea that knowledge is not ‘given’ and inert and simply right or wrong, but is created

and exists in a space of reasons. Jan Derry (2013) argues that being “responsive to

reason” is second nature to human beings. Taking this argument further,

GeoCapabilities aims to show that by inducting students into a disciplinary “space

of reasons” it is possible to enhance epistemic access (Winch 2013) through

inference training. We examine this is a little more detail in the next part.


37

b. Inferentialism and school geography

As we have seen constructivist learning theory (e.g. as espoused by Robert 2013)

has been helpful to geography teachers in bringing to their attention the ideas that

students bring with them to classrooms and to enabling students to be active

participants in the learning process rather than receivers of knowledge. Teachers

have reoriented the hierarchical structure of teaching and learning into a more

horizontal one in which student constructions of knowledge play a central role;

there is continuity between everyday and disciplinary knowledge. For some

students and teachers this is comforting, for it implies that if the going gets tough

we may ‘settle’ for the everyday - a point that Meyer and Land (2005; 2006) make

in the context of ‘threshold concepts’.

A tension exists, therefore, between allowing students to construct their own sense

of disciplinary ideas and the development of students’ disciplined modes of

thought. The effect of an over-simplified application of constructivism is that

geographical knowledge appears static; this is because in helping students to

judge the merits of the understanding they have constructed geography teachers

commonly ignore the normative practices of the discipline, which would help

students establish criteria for creating and evaluating both their own and others’

functional constructions. In consequence, students (and many teachers) see

geographical knowledge as content to be learned rather than constructions to be

meaningfully interrogated in terms of their potential worth to function in the world.

Inferentialism can give geography teachers disciplinary (epistemological)

specificity in the active learning process. It constrains the pedagogical choices

open to teachers by offering a direct pedagogical point of entry into disciplinary

knowledge and reasoning itself. Inferentialism emphasises that coming to know

geographical knowledge requires attention to and accurate interpretation of the

inferences implicit in its use in a social practice of giving and asking for reasons. A

crucial aspect of active learning, therefore, involves providing the opportunity for


38

students to operate with geographical concepts and ideas in the space of reasons

within which they were created and by which their meaning is constituted.

Inferentialism is an epistemological structure that allows the tensions inherent in

students’ fledgling attempts at disciplinary knowledge constructions and the kinds

of knowledge that are the product of advanced disciplinary thinking to be played

out. It brings the knowledge that has been constructed, both disciplinary and

individual into sharper relief for both teachers and their students. Participation in

such a space does not require an immediate and full grasp of the reasons

constituting a particular concept or idea but rather only the ability to inhabit the

space in which reasons and the concept or idea operate in the first place.

Curriculum reform in itself is not sufficient to alter and modify teachers’ practices,

but the inferentialist orientation towards subject knowledge is an opportunity for

geography teachers, in the context of any national curriculum requirements or

standards, to begin to afford a model of disciplinary practice as a part of

constructivist practice.

Thus, in summary, relative lack of attention to knowledge in recent years,

particularly in curriculum contexts that may be deemed Future 2, has created a

number of problems:

subject knowledge is seen as inert ‘content’ by teachers;

students acquire isolated and unconnected content of the school

subject;

students can reproduce such content, but

students do not learn the systems of meaning, and

do not develop the capacity to integrate meanings so that these

meanings are not merely consumed at the point of its delivery;

students are not inducted into the body of knowledge that is geography

it creates a simple referential relation to the world for the student.


39

Once accepted and understood, inferentialism offers a point of entry to a more robust

view of geographical knowledge and reasoning. As Derry (2008) argues:

The prioritisation of inference over reference entails, in terms of

pedagogy, that the grasping of a concept (knowing) requires

committing to the inferences implicit in its use in a social practice of

giving and asking for reasons. Effective teaching involves providing

the opportunity for learners to operate with a concept in the space

of reasons within which it falls and by which its meaning is

constituted. Participation in such a space does not require an

immediate and full grasp of the reasons constituting the concept but

rather only the ability to inhabit the space in which reasons and the

concept operate in the first place.

The idea of reorienting teachers’ knowledge to pay attention to how inferential

reasoning drives geographical thinking, harnessing geographical knowledge and

discourse on the one hand and philosophical development on the other, is seen as

potentially very significant for transforming geography education.

In GeoCapabilities the emphasis will be on how modelling an inferential approach

might allow teachers to more effectively shape their curriculum making - through

appropriate lesson sequences and task design oriented to helping students to

reason geographically and, often in decision making contexts, answer interesting

real world questions. Vitally, this situates school geography within an

epistemological framework of enquiry-based learning.

c. Teachers as curriculum leaders

Interesting and challenging questions arises at this point: who ‘owns’

geographical powerful knowledge? Whose responsibility is it?

The words in a curriculum specification or standards document o f c o u r s e

require interpretation and application by teachers to form a coherent teaching

programme. Even if this work is mediated through the adoption of a textbook, the


40

quality of that book and how the textbook is used will have significant impact on

the curriculum as it is experienced by the students. This partly results from the

extent of the teacher’s grasp of the subject matter. By the latter we mean a little

more than ‘the amount and organization of knowledge per se in the mind of the

teacher, and something different from a technically sound ‘pedagogic content

knowledge’ (Schulman 1986: 9), important though these attributes are. We are

alluding to the quality of the teacher’s understanding of the subject’s goals and

purposes in the context of the discipline; that is, the potential and possibilities of

geography contributing to the idea of students ‘being educated’. We are referring

to the clarity with which the teacher has grasped why the subject is worth

teaching.

The capabilities approach adopted in this project can help in this regard. The project

argues at all teachers are ‘curriculum makers’. This is to say that the act of

‘curriculum making’ can be performed well and it can be done badly, but it

cannot be avoided. GeoCapabilities promotes a Future 3 curriculum, but accepts

that this needs to be created by teachers. Teachers need to be curriculum leaders

and GeoCapabilities assists by providing a way to ‘frame’ their ‘curriculum

making’. T h i s i s d r i v e n b y fulfilling a school’s (or society’s) broader

educational goals, but is based on the twinned concepts of powerful (disciplinary)

knowledge and powerful (inferentialist) pedagogies.

What this Section sets out to show is that young people have a pedagogic right

to powerful subject-based knowledge as the best knowledge we have in a

particular field (in this case geography). This places a significant responsibility

on the shoulders of teachers that goes far beyond the requirement to

demonstrate ‘competence’: they need to show a particular form of leadership -

curriculum leadership. It is clear that teachers need to do much deep and careful

thinking before they even enter the classroom. This thinking revolves around the

crucial (curriculum) question, ‘what shall I teach?’ and the highly significant

(pedagogic) question: ‘how shall it teach it?’ As we have seen in this Report so far,

both these questions are limited by epistemological considerations.


41

d. Curriculum Making espoused by the Geographical Association’s

‘Manifesto’

The Geographical Association’s (GA’s) 2 0 0 9 Manifesto, A Different View, was a

product of a particular set of circumstances, which resulted in a combination of

assumptions, policies and practices which we have characterized as Future 2. It

can be explored at www.geography.org.uk/adifferentview .

In 2008, a new National Curriculum for England had been launched based on a

vast, complicated curriculum model known as the ‘big picture’. This summed up

state of the art curriculum thinking, sometimes known as ‘grand curriculum design’,

and took a distinctive focus provided by three innocuous aims: to create

successful learners, confident individuals and responsible citizens. Whilst it is not

impossible to align geography (or any other subject) to these aims, the starting

point of this curriculum design was clearly not ‘what to teach’. It was instead the

perceived ‘needs’ of the child in the context of twenty- first century society. This is

not the place to critique the ‘big picture’ in any detail: suffice to say that subjects

were undermined under a complex set of whole school requirements of

dimensions, themes and skills. Such an approach to ‘grand curriculum design’ is

still argued for by its main advocate Mick Waters (2013)

The Manifesto was an attempt by the GA to make a strong and perhaps

provocative statement about geography, expressed as a ‘disciplinary resource’,

and a n a p p r o a c h t o education which was articulated partly through

Richard Peters’ concept of ‘initiation’ (Peters 1963) using his well-known position

that to be educated is not so much to arrive at a destination, but to ‘travel with

a different view’. The Manifesto, in effect, asked how geographical knowledge

contributes to our being able to understand the world in new ways.

A fundamental component of the Manifesto was ‘curriculum making’ which

explicitly recognised the responsibility and the role of specialist teachers in

working with the subject to create a ‘curriculum of engagement’. In short,

pedagogic competence and a respect for children’s experiences and prior

knowledge, though important, were not enough. The diagram (Figure 1) attempts to

illustrate this.

http://www.geography.org.uk/adifferentview


42

Figure 1 ‘Curriculum Making’ for geography teachers (source: Lambert and Biddulph 2014)

Curriculum Making in Geography

StudentExperiences

SchoolGeography

TeacherChoices

UnderpinnedbyKeyConcepts

ThinkingGeographically

Whichlearningac vity?

Doesthistakethelearnerbeyondwhattheyalreadyknow?

In the context of the discipline of geography

The diagram is readily interpreted in terms of its self-evident invitation to work

towards ‘balance’ in the midst of the competing priorities:

to serve d i v e r s e student needs,

to demonstrate practical classroom knowledge and skill and


43

to impart the knowledge contents.

Of course, these categories are rarely as distinct from each other as this model

implies. However, teaching that is too focused in any one of these domains risks

being inadequate. For instance, if it is too child-centred it runs the risk of failing to

move children beyond their everyday knowledge (Future 2); and too subject

centred we run the risk of failing to enable all students access specialised

disciplinary knowledge as we are insensitive to the need to provide opportunities for

meaning making and possibly have a too fixed view of subject knowledge (Future

1). In this sense the model describes the practical act of curriculum making in

terms of merging the conceptually distinct categories of curriculum and pedagogy

(that is, the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ in teaching).

A more sophisticated reading of this model is also possible, one that recognises

that the intellectual and practical work that it implies takes place within a wider

context of the disciplinary community (which also has its own socio-political

context). In particular, this points to the relationship that exists between the

school subject and the wider discipline which in geography is every bit as complex

and problematic as it is in other subjects, whether in science, mathematics,

history or the arts.

It may be unreasonable to expect school teachers to read research literature

emerging from highly specialised disciplinary communities, just as it probably

unrealistic to expect academics to have much more than a lay-person’s working

knowledge of the school system. However, this is not to say that school science,

or geography teachers should tolerate the kind of break with their disciplines that

the 2008 National Curriculum implied. It is healthy to be sceptical about Future 1

and Future 2 trends in education as noted in the previous sections. Whereas the

former take knowledge for granted, the latter can undermine the place of knowledge

altogether. It is time to argue for better access to a Future 3 curriculum, which

requires school subject teachers carry more responsibility for curriculum making.

The curriculum is perhaps one of very few genuinely educational ideas even

though in many schools it often appears to be understood simplistically, as a


44

management device - and reduced in meaning to the timetable. However it is a

central concept in the knowledge-led school, and of great importance to teachers

as it is concerned with the question of what to teach. In schools today this

question has never been more important, nor more difficult to answer. As we

have seen in this Report there are several reasons why this is so,

including the confusion over the distinction between information and

knowledge in the digital age. There has also been an inexorable rise in forms of

‘pupil centredness’ in which pupils’ experience or t he i r ‘voice’ h a s b e e n

g i v e n e n h a n c e d s t a t u s even influencing in some cases what should be

taught. Effective curriculum making ensures that pupils are acknowledged and

their experiences and views valued, but not privileged in relation other

competing priorities. For equally important is the responsibility for teachers to take

students beyond what they already know, or even think they want to know. In

geography pupils learn about a range of physical and human features and

processes that shape and change the earth and its environments. They are often,

rightly, asked to use this knowledge to interpret events in the news and also in

their own lives. This is in line with constructivist theories of learning. This is good

but not if it inadvertently fosters the idea that students must ‘create’ this

knowledge for themselves; that they can only discover meaning for themselves.

This can easily place a limit on what teachers imagine they can (or should) teach

children.

In terms of a capabilities analysis, this may inadvertently place limits on what we

imagine education is for and can achieve.

e. The role of Curriculum Making in wider context

In their recent work The Global Fourth Way: The Quest for Educational Excellence,

Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley reflect on three decades of research on

educational change in different countries. From their review they conclude that

developing teachers as leaders is key to future educational innovation and effective

schools:


45

“We need to establish platforms for teachers to initiate their own changes and

make their own judgments on the frontline, to invest more in the change

capacities of local districts and communities, and to pursue prudent rather

than profligate approaches to testing.” (Hargreaves and Shirley, quoted in

Rubin 2013).

Meta analyses of educational research by Marzano (2003) and Hattie (2009) also

point to the key role of teachers regarding the effectiveness of schools.

As we have seen earlier in this Report, a capabilities approach to geography

education asks teachers to consider the role of geography in helping young people

think about their life in relation to themselves in the world and what may become of

their communities as well as people, places, and environments around the world

(Wadley 2008). Geography does not tell us how to live; but thinking geographically

and developing our innate geographical imaginations can provide the intellectual

means for visioning ourselves on planet earth. This disciplinary knowledge base and

perspective are components of what Michael Young (2008, 2011) refers to as

“powerful knowledge,” which he defines as the knowledge children and young people

are unlikely to acquire at home or in their workplace, and knowledge they will need if

they are to become active citizens and workers in the complex modern world.

Teachers who work in settings with weak traditions in subject specialist education, or

who individually do not see themselves as confident or knowledgeable specialist

teachers, may have difficulty providing their students with access to powerful

knowledge through their pedagogical practices. These teachers in particular, but in

truth all teachers who aspire to leadership roles, must find a means to “connect” or

bridge their subject-specialist knowledge content (such as that identified in national

geography standards, for example) with broader educational aims, articulated in such

a way that captures the spirit and purposes of powerful knowledge as defined above.

In effect, we are arguing that an absence of high quality geography in a school

deprives in specific ways the potential of that school’s curriculum to develop human

capability: students will have been deprived of certain epistemic access which will

undermine their capabilities to think and act in a rapidly changing world.


46

Several decades of research have verified the critical need for secondary teachers to

have a deep knowledge of their subject areas (Deleplace & Niclot 2005; Yager 2005;

Metzler & Woessmann 2012). Beyond content knowledge, teachers must have

pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, a knowledge of learners,

knowledge of curriculum, and knowledge of instructional design and technologies

(Shulman 1987; Harris, Mishra & Koehler 2009). Even though research has

extensively explored these areas of teacher knowledge, there remains a problem of

inadequately trained teachers in disciplines like geography, often at the level of

leadership in helping to define the aims and purposes that can be served by the

subject.


47

Section 6 Conclusion and next steps

This Report provides an account of the conceptual infrastructure to the

GeoCapabilities project:

Capabilities

Powerful knowledge

Powerful pedagogy (based on an inferentialist approach)

Future 3 curriculum

An essential part of the argument is that all young people have a pedagogic right to

‘powerful knowledge’, as this support individual intellectual growth, autonomy and the

educated person’s contribution to society.

The overall goal of the project is to support the notion of ‘curriculum leadership’ for

teachers of geography. This, it is argued, is facilitated by the capabilities approach.

Curriculum leadership is enabled by the process of Curriculum Making, which

requires teachers to exercise judgement and balance. Philosophically, the balance is

that between educational praxis that is outcomes-based and the curriculum that is

knowledge-led.

The next stage of the project is to develop materials and resources for the four

planned modules for the teacher-training platform. The platform itself is to be agreed

in principle by the end of the year 2014 (M13 of the project).

The modules are:

1. Defining and developing disciplinary Capabilities

2. Development of subject specific materials concerning curriculum making by

teachers

3. Connecting Capabilities (with curriculum making): video case studies


48

4. Communicating capabilities (in the classroom): leadership development,

subject leaders, curriculum leader, head teacher, and developing leadership

capacity through collaborative work


49

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Appendix 1 Country vignettes

The following Appendix presents three main country studies: England, Finland and

the USA. There is also a short report on a workshop consducted in China.

The analysis presented forms one of the key outcomes of the predecessor project to

GeoCapabilities 2 - essentially a pilot project funded in the USA by the National

Science Foundation under Grant No. BCS-1155255.

As explained in the Report the methodology of GeoCapabilities has evolved following

this essential initial work: it has become more ‘bottom up’, and less focused on the

detail of country standards.

Nevertheless we believe it is useful, to re-present these findings as ‘country

vignettes’ in order to ‘colour’ the general findings in the main body of the Report.

We hope to be in a position to add to these vignettes through the reporting of

research under work programme 2 of GeoCapabilities 2 - with data from Germany,

Greece, Netherlands and Sweden for example.


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1. Capabilities and curriculum change in England

Introduction

In this report we subject the geography national curriculum standards for England,

known as “programmes of study”, to a capabilities analysis. The national curriculum

in England has, since its first inception in 1991, undergone three major revisions (in

1995, 2000 and 2008) and is currently undergoing a fourth (implemented from 2014).

The analysis attempts to take account of this dynamic context.

Although the geography national curriculum for England has been subject to

extensive and critical review over the years (e.g., Graves et al 1990; Lambert 2004;

Rawling 1996; 2001; Winter 2009; 2011; 2012) it is possible to summarise the overall

“arc” of development, through the successive revisions, as follows:

The stipulation, in 1991, of a detailed “content rich” programme of study

for geography for key stages 1, 2, 3 and 4 (5-16 years). This consisted of

184 separate “statements of attainment” spanning those years. There

were no explicit aims.

Withdrawal (in 1994) of geography (and history) as a statutory subject in

the national curriculum for key stage 4 (14-16 years) owing to acute

curriculum overload.

Abolition of the statements of attainment in 1995, and replacement with 8

“level descriptions” purporting to cover progression in learning through

key stages 1, 2 and 3.

Simplified programme of study, in 2000, with less specific content

requirements, but with clearer aims.

In 2008, key stage 3 organised around “key concepts” and “key

processes” rather than prescribed content, within an aims-based ‘big

picture’ of the whole curriculum.

New proposals (2013) for the abolition of level descriptions and the

introduction of a new curriculum (key stages 1-3) based on the “core of

essential knowledge” of geography, driven by a statement of aims and

purposes.

Throughout this extended period of uncertainty and change, school geography in

England has retained its place as a statutory subject on the national curriculum from

5 to 14 years old, and an identity that aligns the subject broadly within the

humanities, a point stressed in the Geographical Association’s 2009 ‘manifesto’ A

Different View.


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At 14 years old (at the end of key stage 3 and statutory geography) students are

often encouraged to choose either geography or history to study to GCSE level

(approximately one-third of students nationally study neither). The introduction in

2011 of the English Baccalaureate formalised this optional status, narrowly defining

its requirement of a humanities subject as being either geography or history. School

geography still retains a strong tradition of physical geography although in recent

years it is the case that the scientific component of this has declined somewhat, the

emphasis shifting towards people-environment interaction and impact studies rather

than on physical processes per se.

Thus, in summary, geography is a statutory subject in the national curriculum from 5-

14 years. The standards are set out in programmes of study written by the

government’s curriculum agency (or, since its abolition in 2010, by government

officials). From 14 years geography becomes optional, chosen by about 30% of

students. The 14-16 curriculum standards are dictated by public examinations

(GCSE), the specifications for which are written by one of four awarding bodies in a

competitive market situation. A non-governmental agency, Ofqual, is the market

regulator which sets out the national criteria.

Details of the current (and proposed) national curriculum programmes of study are

set out in Appendix A, together with the current national criteria for GCSE geography.

Together these form the raw materials for the capabilities analysis of the national

curriculum for England.

Capabilities analysis of geography education in England

This section provides some preliminary analysis of the standards for geography in

England. For addressing our research questions, it is impractical and unproductive to

assign capability outcomes to specific content requirements. It is more appropriate to

focus our analysis on the level of aims (where these have been stated) and possibly

outcomes (which at present in England are expressed as NC ‘Levels’ and GCSE

‘Grade Descriptions’). Each of the three selected ‘capabilities’ is taken in turn.

The analysis is based on a reading of the 2008 KS3 National Curriculum general

aims and purposes. One of the main criticisms and difficulties of this curriculum

(which remains in statute until 2014) is that there are no statutory subject specific

aims (apart from those implied in the so-called “importance statement”) and very little

prescribed, substantive content.

All subjects, including geography, were to serve three overarching general aims: to

create successful learners, confident individuals and responsible citizens. These


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statements are revealing of a curriculum expressed in terms of generic skills and

competency outcomes. Geography is seen, through the non-statutory guidance, to

contribute in terms of broad skills development within a quite vaguely defined

‘context’ – e.g., reference to place, location, scale, the global and the real world.

Analysis: Focusing on the capability: ‘Promoting individual autonomy and freedom,

and the ability to use one’s imagination and to be able to think and reason’

There is absolutely no doubt that at the level of general aims, or what the curriculum

designers called the ‘big picture’, there is an explicit intention to address individual

freedoms. The following gives examples under the three curriculum aims:

Successful Learners (who enjoy learning make progress and achieve)

‘are creative, resourceful and able to identify and solve problems’

‘have enquiring minds and think for themselves ...’

‘know about big ideas and events that shape our world’

Confident individuals (who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives)

‘have a sense of self-worth and personal identity’

‘have secure values and beliefs and have principles to distinguish right from

wrong’

Become increasingly independent, are able to take the initiative and organise

themselves

‘recognise their talents and have ambitions’

Responsible citizens (who make a positive contribution to society)

‘respect others and act with integrity’

‘understand their own and others’ cultures and traditions... and have a strong

sense of their own place in the world’

‘challenge injustice, are committed to human rights ..’

‘take account of the needs of present and future generations in the choices

they make’


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As we have seen, in the 2008 geography programme of study there are no ‘aims and

purposes’ for geography. Instead there is a programme of study expressed under

five headings:

The importance statement

Key concepts

Key processes

Range and Content

Curriculum opportunities

In addition there are 8 “level descriptions” purporting to express progression in

learning geography from age 5 to age 14.

Below, we have extracted a number of statements from the 2008 statutory national

curriculum that appear to express geography in relation to the capability “enhancing

individual freedoms”.

The ‘Importance Statement’

Geographical enquiry encourages questioning, investigation and critical

thinking about issues affecting the world and people’s lives, now and in the

future ...

... Geography inspires pupils to become global citizens by exploring their own

place in the world, their values and their responsibilities to other people, to

the environment and to the sustainability of the planet.

Key concepts

7b. Appreciating how people’s values and attitudes differ and may influence

social, environmental, economic and political issues, and developing their

own values and attitudes about such issues

Key processes

Under ‘enquiry’:

a. ask geographical questions, thinking critically, constructively and creatively’


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f. plan geographical enquiries, suggesting appropriate sequences of

investigation

g. solve problems and make decisions to develop analytical skills and

creative thinking about geographical issues.

Range and content

Study of geography should include:

h. interactions between people and their environments, including causes and

consequences of these interactions, and how to plan for and manage their

future impact.

Curriculum Opportunities

The curriculum should provide opportunities for pupils to:

a. build on and expand their personal experiences of geography

b. explore real and relevant contemporary contexts

f. participate in informed responsible action in relation to geographical issues

that affect them and those around them

g. examine geographical issues in the news

h. investigate important issues of relevance to the UK and globally using a

range of skills, including ICT

i. make links between geography and other subjects, including citizenship and

ICT, and areas of the curriculum including sustainability and global

dimension.

National curriculum reform (2012-14)

The 2008 KS3 National Curriculum for geography, on which the above analysis is

based, is set to change. The new curriculum (for first teaching 2014) is likely to be

simplified with less emphasis on the general aims and generic skills development.

The geography curriculum is likely to be strengthened, with subject specific purposes

and aims, but also stripped down: it will stress ‘core of essential knowledge’ of

geography. Furthermore, the current Level Descriptions, which together successfully

express a sense of intellectual and personal growth in geographical knowledge

understanding and skills (and therefore may be associated with ‘enhancing


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freedoms’), are also set to be abolished, replaced with assessment that relates

directly to the knowledge content of the curriculum.

Taken together, do these proposed reforms mean it will be more difficult to analyse

the geography curriculum according to the capability of ‘enhancing individual

freedoms’ (and understanding autonomy and rights)? In many ways it will be for

others (publishers, Associations – and indeed individual teachers) to interpret how a

core of essential knowledge may be inserted into a more complete localised

curriculum or specification. It is in this context that a capabilities approach may be of

particular significance, in providing a ‘frame’ for curriculum thinking: in effect a bridge

between the knowledge content of the curriculum and the wider educational aims

and purposes this serves.

However, as in the previous section, at the level of aims and purposes for geography

(Key Stages 1-3) it is possible to express geography in terms of the capability to

‘enhance individual freedoms’. The following extracts have been selected to show

this:

“Teaching should equip pupils with a deep knowledge and understanding of

the Earth’s key physical and human characteristics and processes, and an

understanding of how human activity affects, and is affected by the physical

environment”.

and

“... using frameworks which explain at different scales, how geographical

features are shaped, interconnected and change over time.”

In each case we can claim an individual’s autonomy and capacity to promote their

individual freedom is enhanced through a deep knowledge of their relationship with

the Earth and its physical and human systems.

Discussion

As we have acknowledged from the start, the claim made at the end of the previous

section is to some extent a confection. We could use a statement of geographical

aims, expressed primarily in terms of knowledge and understanding (but also

encompassing skills development and specifically communicating geographical

information) in any number of ways. The value of applying capabilities is that it

provides a means of doing this that lifts us above the level of particular content and

individual lessons. The challenge this project identifies is not to assess how a

capability concept such as “autonomy” might be developed through the content of a

geography lesson (in accordance with the learning expectations, or outputs, of the


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national curriculum framework) but to express the outcomes of an education that

includes geography. Or, conversely, how the development of human capabilities may

be impaired if geography were not a component of the school curriculum.

A national curriculum focussed solely on core knowledge may say comparatively little

that is explicitly concerned with human capabilities development. But what our initial

analysis may show is the importance of distinguishing aims from the content of the

national standards. National content standards – in England referred to as the

national curriculum – are not in themselves a fully formed curriculum. The latter is

made locally by teachers and the question this project raises is whether ‘curriculum

making’ in this sense is supported by the sense of educational purpose offered by a

capabilities approach.

Thus, auditing standards for ‘capabilities’ may have some initial value. Even so, we

should remain alert to the possibility that its longer term value may be limited,

because such a methodology may fall into a similar trap as auditing curricula for

competences or transversal skills: these are essentially reductive processes that may

undervalue learning subject content as a justifiable end in itself. The judgement this

research must therefore make is the degree to which developing and refining

geocapabilities may result in a concept that helps teachers translate a standard into

a defensible form of educational practice (which has a distinctive knowledge

component as well as skills and competences). It may be a concept, or device, that is

useful for teachers to comprehend the wider purposes of geography, and to plan

their teaching accordingly.

An enduring and crucial question that follows in this discussion is whether geography

as a school subject, with its loose and sometimes tenuous links with the wider

disciplinary practice, is justifiable and comprehensible simply in its own terms

(expressed in the national curriculum/standards) or whether it needs the educational

scaffold supplied by the capabilities approach. If a capabilities approach helps lift the

level of discourse about geography beyond what is expressed colourfully by the

following quote then we may conclude this would be a good thing, especially if it

helps support improved practices in geography classrooms:

“Other things are in the national curriculum that, when I was at school, I found

inimical to education. Geography was the most extreme example. We were

made to do geography. I was not persuaded then and I am not persuaded

now that geography should be part of anybody's education. If I want to know

where somewhere is … I go to my computer. These days, I have to type in

the name of countries that did not exist in my day, but I can find out where

they are.” Lord Peston, House of Lords, July 2011 (Hansard 2011)


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Capabilities at GCSE level (16 years old)

In this section, the two other capabilities are explored, using the GCSE as the main

setting. The criteria and the grade descriptions are the main reference point and the

capabilities under investigation are:

Identifying and exercising one’s choices in how to live based on

worthwhile distinctions with regard to citizenship and sustainability

and

Understanding one’s potential as a creative and productive citizen in

the context of the global economy and culture.

These capabilities are, arguably, more oriented to the content of geography. Unlike in

the previous sections, concerned with autonomy and enhancing individual freedoms,

we may be less reliant on general educational aims.

Analysis: Focusing on the capability: ‘Identifying and exercising one’s choices in

how to live based on worthwhile distinctions with regard to citizenship and

sustainability’

At the level of aims the national criteria for geography are interesting. They explicitly

speak of geography specifications having “to enable students”. For example, in

relation to ‘choices about how to live’ geography specifications must enable learners

to:

develop their knowledge and understanding of geographical concepts

and appreciate the relevance of these concepts to our changing world;

appreciate the differences and similarities between people’s views of

the world and its environments, societies and cultures;

understand the significance of values and attitudes to the

development and resolution of issues;

develop their responsibilities as global citizens and recognise how

they can contribute to a future that is sustainable and inclusive;


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The outcomes statement (the grade description) provides clear indication that to

enhance students’ capabilities in this regard is an explicit intention. Students need to

show that:

‘They recognise and understand complex relationships between people and the

environment, identifying and evaluating current problems and issues, and making

perceptive and informed geographical decisions. They understand how these

can contribute to a future that is sustainable.’ (our emphasis)

Furthermore, the national criteria state that specifications must address:

a range of places, at local, regional, national and international scales,

selected from the UK, other parts of Europe and other continents, to

include places at different levels of development;

aspects of physical and human geography, and their associated

processes, including relationships between people and environments;

current issues of local, national and global importance, including

climate change and sustainable development;

The following skills statements enhance this yet more explicitly:

make informed geographical decisions;

describe, analyse and interpret evidence, making decisions, drawing

and justifying conclusions, and communicating findings in ways

appropriate to the task audience;

evaluate methods of collecting, presenting and analysing evidence,

and the validity and limitations of evidence and conclusions.

Of course, whilst this mix of knowledge and skills can combine to enhance the

capability concerning choices of how to live, the case can also be made that they

contribute to students’ sense of autonomy and personal freedom by explicitly

promoting participation in decision-making activity – based on close description,

analysis, evaluation in geographic context and a range of practical skills and

competences, including communication.

Analysis: Focusing on the capability: ‘Understanding one’s potential as a creative

and productive citizen in the context of the global economy and culture’


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Capabilities in this regard are perhaps a little less visible at the level of aims and

outcomes in comparison with the others explored in this exercise. It may be worth

examining specific contents of specifications and syllabuses, to examine how studies

of production and consumption are dealt with in geography programmes: of food,

water and energy security for example, of the distribution of manufacturing and

service industries in relation to research and development activity and the role of

technologies. In other words, there are arguably specific geographical knowledge

domains to this capability.

However, still at the level of aims GCSE specifications in Geography must enable

learners to:

actively engage in the process of geography to develop as effective

and independent learners, and as critical and reflective thinkers

enquiring minds;

understand the significance of values and attitudes to the

development and resolution of issues;

develop their responsibilities as global citizens and recognise how

they can contribute to a future that is sustainable and inclusive;

develop and apply their learning to the real world through fieldwork

and other out-of-classroom learning;

All these can be directly relevant to the nurturing young people who can respond

intelligently, with a knowledge base, to significant issues to do with development and

sustainability.

In terms of outcomes relating to specification contents, students need to understand

and appreciate:

the use of new technologies, including GIS, to assist geographical

investigation;

geographical concepts and ideas including uneven development and

alternative futures;

the relevance of geographical studies to their lives and to the real

world.

Again, it is possible to articulate the educational outcomes of teaching geography in

terms of enhancing students’ capabilities – their potentials as productive and creative

participants in rapidly changing economic, social and political environments.


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Some concluding observations and comments

This analysis has been conducted with care, but is nevertheless partial and

incomplete. It is also perhaps inevitably subjective at this stage. It will be

interesting to see whether we can achieve a more systematic and objective way

of subjecting curriculum/standards documents, which come in many forms and

genres. Whilst it may be impossible to devise a simple transferable method of

analysis, it will be very important to achieve some inter-rater reliability through

extending this approach with others (e.g., at the Bruges Eurogeo workshop May

2013). We need to avoid, in making claims about geo-capabilities, accusations

that we are simply ‘reading them into’ the standards.

The significance of curriculum aims, as opposed to contents, is clear from the first

phase analysis above. Perhaps the bigger test will be to follow this through to

subject contents – possibly the USA standards, being far more detailed than what

pertains in England or Finland, has already ventured to this point. But in England,

as national standards and criteria become more content focussed, capabilities

may apply, but be less explicit. The capabilities approach may be even more

significant in such contexts as a means to enable local curriculum making.

Do ‘geo-capabilities’ have to be shown explicitly in curriculum documents or are

they a meta concept? Thus, in the England context, it seems likely that with the

current round of reform there is be far less visible orientation to capabilities. This

does not however mean that this suddenly ceases to be valid or important as an

expression of curriculum goals and purposes.

‘Levels’ of curriculum is perhaps something we should pay attention to. We are

operating this analysis at a top level. But when it comes to capabilities and

teacher development we are inevitably operating at a more local level.

Should we look at IGU International Charter and its original intentions – and learn

from what this achieved and failed to achieve?

How are we using ‘capability’ and is this project beginning to use it consistently –

do we have a strong shared sense of what it is?

How does our notion of ‘geo-capability’ relate to the hypothesis of geography as a

‘powerful knowledge’ (Young 2008) and how does the concept help articulate

geography in a ‘Futures 3’ curriculum (Young and Muller 2010). See page 38 in

this report for an initial outline of this framework.


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2. Capabilities and curriculum change in Finland

Introduction

Framework curricula for the Finnish primary, secondary and upper secondary

schools are renewed approximately every tenth year. The present version of the

curriculum for basic education (grades 1–9; seven to fifteen year-old students) was

published in 2004. The renewal process for the new curriculum was started in June

2012 when the Decree on national objectives and distribution of teaching hours in

basic education was issued by the Finnish government. In autumn 2012 a draft

version of the general part of the curriculum document was published online. It

describes for example basic values, conception of learning and main objectives of

education. These sections were made available for public comment during a short

period of time in November-December 2012 on the website of the Finnish National

Board of Education. The summary of the comments was published in January 2013.

Subject-specific groups started their work in the beginning of 2013 and first versions

on these texts will be made available for public comment during spring 2014. The

renewed core curriculum will be completed by the end of 2014.

The analysis presented below is based on the core curriculum of 2004 where, in

addition to the aims and contents of all the school subjects, mission and underlying

values of education, conception of learning and cross-curricular themes are defined.

For the purposes of the analysis of GeoCapabilities, I found it useful also to

investigate these general parts of the curriculum. In the first part of the document,

learning is defined as an individual and communal process of building knowledge

and skills, and students are seen as active agents who construct knowledge in

different learning contexts. Situationality of the learning is highlighted, and the

importance of different learning environments is acknowledged. The underlying

values of education which have been defined in the document are ‘human rights,

equality, democracy, natural diversity, preservation of environmental viability, and the

endorsement of multiculturalism’. Education is designed to promote ‘responsibility, a

sense of community, and respect for the rights and freedoms of the individual’ (p.

12). These aims can be connected to the ideas of GeoCapabilities, and that will be

done in the following sections of this chapter.

Teaching in Finnish primary and secondary schools is organized under separate

subjects, but there are also some cross-curricular themes which are meant to be

taken into account in all the subjects. They are designed to stress the importance of


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integration between the subjects and thus to promote collaboration between different

fields of study as well as between the teachers. In the present version of the

framework curriculum, seven cross-curricular themes are defined:1) Growth as a

person, 2) Cultural identity and internationalism, 3) Media skills and communication,

4) Participatory citizenship and entrepreneurship, 5) Responsibility for the

environment, well-being, and a sustainable future, 6) Safety and traffic, and 7)

Technology and the individual (pp. 36–41). Some of these themes have links to the

ideas of the three GeoCapabilities and they will be analysed together with the aims

and contents of geography education.

In the present national framework from the year 2004, during the first four school

years, geography is taught as part of the subject Environmental and Natural Studies,

which integrates contents of biology, geography, physics, chemistry, and health

education. From the 5th to the 6th grade geography is taught together with biology,

and from the 7th to the 9th grade as an individual subject. Geography is mandatory for

all the students during the nine years of basic education. It has been decided that in

the next core curriculum, the name of the integrated subject will be changed into

Environmental Studies and it will be taught from the 1st until the 6th grade. Geography

will stay as a separate subject from the 7th to the 9th grade. The aims and contents of

each school subject are defined quite briefly in the national core curriculum. There

are altogether only eleven pages describing the aims, contents, good performance at

the end of the fourth and the sixth grades, as well as the final assessment criteria for

the 9th grade for the subjects ‘Environmental and Natural Studies’, ‘Biology and

Geography’(5th and 6th grades), and Geography.

CAPABILITIES CONCERNED WITH CHOICES ABOUT HOW TO LIVE

(UNDERSTANDING CITIZENSHIP AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT)

‘Understanding citizenship and sustainable development’ is a capability which can be

easily read from different parts of the Finnish core curriculum. Two of the seven

cross-curricular themes have clear connection to ‘citizenship’ and ‘sustainability’.

First of them, Participatory citizenship and entrepreneurship, has the aim to help the

students ‘perceive society from the viewpoints of different players, to develop the

capabilities needed for civic involvement, and to create a foundation for

entrepreneurial methods’ (p. 38). In the same context, it is also noted that the school

should support the students’ development as ‘independent, initiative-taking, goal-

conscious, cooperative, engaged citizens’, and help them form ‘a realistic picture of

their own possibilities for influence’.

Another cross-curricular theme which can be linked with the capability dealing with

citizenship and sustainable development is called Responsibility for the environment,


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well-being, and a sustainable future. The aim of this theme is to augment the

students’ ‘abilities and motivation to act for the environment and human well-being’

and thus ‘raise environmentally conscious citizens who are committed to a

sustainable way of life’. The role of the school in teaching future-oriented thinking

and the construction of the future upon ecologically, economically, socially, and

culturally sustainable premises is also highlighted. Objectives of this theme are

defined as follows (p. 39): ‘The pupils will come to understand the prerequisites for

human well-being, the necessity of environmental protection, and the relationship

between the two. They will learn ‘to observe changes taking place in the environment

and human well-being, to clarify these changes’ causes and consequences, and to

act for the good of the living environment and the enhancement of well-being. They

will also learn ‘to evaluate the impacts of their consumption and daily practices, and

will adopt the courses of action required for sustainable development; ‘to learn to

promote well-being in their own communities and to understand the threats to, and

potential for, well-being at a global level’. Students will also ‘come to understand that,

through their choices, individuals construct both their own futures and our common

future; the pupils will learn to act constructively for a sustainable future.’

Environmental and Natural Studies is defined as a subject with the perspective of

sustainable development. The relationship of individuals with their environments is

highlighted, and the problem-based learning together with students’ prior knowledge,

their personal experiences as well as their skills, are emphasized. Students’ actions

as members of the society are mentioned in the description of the subject but, when

the aims and contents of the subjects are examined, the focus is strongly put on the

natural sciences and their ways to study the (natural) environment. Geographical

contents include studies of student’s daily environments, basics of cartographic and

planetary issues and regional geography starting from regions of Finland, followed by

Nordic countries and other nearby regions and then the global level. In the

description of the good performance at the end of the fourth grade, however, there is

also emphasis on the importance of an interest in and a responsibility for both the

natural and built environments. In this context the ability to evaluate ‘beauty,

diversity, and pleasantness of an environment’ is noticed. The main emphasis in

Environmental and Natural Studies has been put on the environmental knowledge

and scientific methods of observing, measuring, and analysis of the environmental

phenomena. The core curriculum does not give any explicit models with which

teaching could be organized so that active citizenship or responsible action for

sustainable future could be fostered in youth.

Biology and Geography are taught as one subject in the 5th and the 6th grades.

Despite the idea of integration, there are separate goals described for both of the

disciplines and the links between them are very weakly constructed. In the aims of

geography the importance of both natural and cultural environments is highlighted so

that their appreciation would be enhanced. Responsibility, the protection of nature,


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and the preservation of living environments are also emphasized in the goals of the

subject, where it is also mentioned that instruction ‘must also support the pupil’s

growth as an active citizen committed to a sustainable lifestyle’ (p. 176).

In the more detailed goals of the subject, there are some links to citizenship and

sustainability education. It is stated that the pupils will ‘come to understand that

people depend on the rest of nature in their food production’; they will ‘develop their

environmental literacy, act in an environmentally friendly way, care for their local

environment, and protect nature; ‘ponder questions bearing on growth, development,

human diversity, and social interaction’; ‘take responsibility for their own actions and

take other people into consideration’; and they will ‘understand the dependence of

human activity on the possibilities that the environment offers on earth’ (pp. 176–

177). Even when there are quite many aims which could be connected with the

aspects of sustainability and citizenship as listed above, it must be noted that there

are not any contents which could be easily connected with these issues. The

mentioned contents emphasize the knowledge which should be learned in the

subject.

While the natural and built environments were highlighted and social environments

were not mentioned in the description of the Environmental and Natural Studies, in

the description of Geography for secondary schools these three aspects are noted.

Interaction between people and the environment, from the local to the global level,

should be examined and students’ impact on nature and human activity should be

evaluated. Geography is seen as a connecting link between natural and social

sciences. It is mentioned how the geography instruction should support students’

growth as active citizens who are committed to a sustainable way of life’ (p. 182).

The same which have been said earlier on the mismatch between the basic

description and the more detailed aims of the subjects ‘Environmental and Natural

Studies’ and ‘Biology and Geography’, can be seen also in the context of the

Geography subject. Most of the described aims concentrate on defining the needed

knowledge, and only few of the mentions deal with any value-based issues. These

exceptions are the following ones: ‘The pupils will know how every citizen in Finland

can have an impact on the planning and development of his or her own living

environment’; ‘The pupils will understand and evaluate critically news information on

such issues as global environmental and development questions, and learn to act in

accordance with sustainable development themselves’ (p. 182).

The contents of the subject are divided into four themes, which are ‘Earth – the

human being’s home planet’; ‘Europe’; ‘Finland in the world’; and ‘The common

environment’ (p. 183). Issues which can be linked to sustainability and citizenship,

include questions of planning (in the context of Finland), consumption as well as

environmental and developmental questions from the local to global level. In the

description of final assessment criteria themes of the subject are evaluated from the


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viewpoints of geographical skills, regional geography (analyzing the world, Europe,

and Finland), and the common environments. Knowledge on how every citizen can

influence the planning and development of his/her own environment as well as

students’ ability to ‘describe their own opportunities for contributing to the

improvement of the environment’s status’ are mentioned among other issues.

Capabilities concerned with being creative and productive in the ‘knowledge

economy’ (understanding economy and culture)

‘Understanding economy and culture’ refer to capabilities which are not clearly

identified in the Finnish geography curriculum, but they are more strongly defined in

the general parts of the curriculum document. The underlying values of education

include mentions of Finnish culture and its diversification, multiculturalism,

importance of sense of community, students’ own cultural identities and promotion of

tolerance and intercultural understanding (p. 12). As part of the ‘mission of basic

education’ the need to support students’ linguistic and cultural identities and the task

to transfer cultural traditions to next generations are mentioned. At the same time

revitalization of ways to think and act and the need to develop students’ abilities to

critical evaluation are highlighted (p. 12).

One of the seven cross-curricular themes of the core curriculum is named as Cultural

Identity and Internationalism, which have many links with issues dealing with

economy and culture. Its goal is defined to help students ‘to understand the essence

of the Finnish and European cultural identities, discover his or her own cultural

identity, and develop capabilities for cross-cultural interaction and internationalism’

(p. 37). With the help of this theme students are meant to ‘come to know and

appreciate their respective cultural inheritances’; ‘to see the Finnish cultural identity

as an element of indigenous, Nordic, and European cultures’; ‘to understand the

roots and diversity of their own cultures and to see their own generation as a

continuer and developer of previous generations’ way of life’. They are also aimed to

be given an introduction ‘to other cultures and philosophies of life, and acquire

capabilities for functioning in a multicultural community, and in international

cooperation’; and to ‘come to understand the component factors of cultural identity

and their meaning for the individual and community’. Core contents of the theme

Cultural Identity and Internationalism include ‘one’s own culture, the culture of one’s

home region, and the nature of being Finnish, Nordic and European’; ‘other cultures

and multiculturalism’; human rights and prerequisites for trust, mutual respect, and

successful cooperation among human groups’; ‘internationalism in different spheres

of life, and skills for functioning in international interaction’; and ‘the importance of the

culture of manners’ (p. 37).


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The other cross-curricular theme which has some connection to the ideas of the

capability concerning with being creative and productive in the ‘knowledge economy’

is called Participatory citizenship and entrepreneurship. Its contents have been

described earlier in the context of the capability dealing with sustainability and

citizenship. From the perspective of economic and cultural aspects, some of its

contents can be mentioned here: aspects of entrepreneurialism (p. 38),

understanding of the business world and organizations; information about division on

labour between the school community, the public sector, the business world, and

organizations.

In Environmental and Natural Studies there are no clear connections to economic or

cultural aspects. In the subject Biology and Geography geography education deals

with regional geography. Education is meant to expand students’ conception of the

world ‘from Finland to the whole of Europe and the rest of the world’. A foundation for

intercultural tolerance and internationalism (p. 176) is meant to be constructed in

geography teaching.

Among the aims of geography education (from the 7th to 9th grades) it is mentioned

that ‘the geography instruction is provided so that the pupils’ cultural knowledge

increases and their ability to understand the diversity of human life and living

environments around the world improves’. Among the objectives the following is

mentioned (p. 182): ‘learn to recognize the features of different cultures and to take a

positive stance towards foreign countries, their peoples, and representatives of

various cultures’. It is also said that ‘they will learn to perceive their own regional

identity’.

Contents of the subject have some connection with economy and culture: When two

or more continents are studied, their natural conditions, human activity and cultural

features are compared. In the context of geography of Finland, population of the

country and its minority cultures are studied, and the cultural features of their own

and other cultures are explored. Among the described assessment criteria in the end

of the 9th grade it is mentioned how students should be able to depict and analyze

‘the location and regional features of settlement and business activity in Finland’ (p.

184)

The capability ‘Enhancing individual freedoms’ (understanding autonomy and rights)

The capability which refers to understanding autonomy and rights is the most

vaguely connected to geography in the Finnish core curriculum. One of the seven

cross-curricular themes, Growth as a Person (p. 36) has the goal ‘to support the

pupil’s comprehensive growth and the development of his or her life management

skills’. Its aim is ‘to create a growth environment that supports individuality and


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healthy self-esteem on the one hand, and, on the other, development of a sense of

community based on equality and tolerance’. In the objectives of the theme some

ethical issues are highlighted: students are described to ‘learn to evaluate the ethics

of their actions and to recognize right and wrong’. Core contents of this theme

include for example the following aspects: justice and equality; ethical observation

and interpretation of ethical phenomena; study skills and long-term, purposeful self-

development; and consideration for other people; rights, obligations and

responsibilities within a group, various ways of cooperation’ (p. 36).

In Environmental and Natural Studies teaching is defined to be based on

investigative, problem-centered approach where students’ own prior knowledge,

skills and experiences should be starting points for studying. For geography

education the most emphasis is put on the content knowledge and the skills (for

example observation skills, working with maps and diagrams, etc.) which stress more

on the knowledge than values or capabilities. For the grades 5 and 6, among the

objectives it is mentioned (p. 177) that students should learn how to ‘take

responsibility for their own actions and take other people into consideration’. There

are no clear connection to autonomy and rights in the geography curriculum for the

grades 7, 8 and 9 either. Some ideas which could be connected to this theme can be

mentioned. Among the objectives (p. 182) the following is mentioned: ‘The pupil will

understand and evaluate critically news information on such issues as global

environmental and development questions, and learn to act in accordance with

sustainable development themselves’.

Discussion

Based on the analysis of geography curriculum, there seems to be a gap between

the described aims and the defined contents of the subject. The curriculum leaves

the major responsibility to local authorities and teachers to decide how to apply this

framework into teaching practices. In the Finnish case, textbooks have a remarkable

role in guiding teaching, and at least the young teachers who do not have much

experience on teaching, rely heavily on the textbooks and teacher’s materials which

are available. It is thus difficult to know exactly what is going on in the classrooms if

the aims and contents of teaching are examined only on the basis of national core

curriculum. From my earlier experience, however, I dare to argue that geography

teaching in Finnish primary and secondary schools is strongly attached to regional

geography and learning about different natural and built environments. The strong

connection to biology has kept the physical geography quite important in the

contents, and maybe the scientific background of geography teachers (having almost

always biology as their second teaching subject) has made it somewhat difficult to

implement any more critical social and cultural aspects of geography in curricula,

textbooks, or practices of teaching. Even when the curricula could make out-of-


76

school education possible, it is seldom done in geography. Cross-curricular themes

which are planned to be implemented in all the school subjects are often taught

during some theme weeks or special occasions, and, when their ideas are not

emphasized in the aims and contents of separate school subjects, they are easily

forgotten.

There will be some major changes in the next core curriculum. It has noted how the

cross-curricular themes have seldom been taken as integral parts in school subjects

and, therefore, the plan is to include these integrating and value-based ideas more

strongly into each subject. It has also been acknowledged by the Finnish National

Board of Education how content knowledge has been in a central position in the

present curriculum and thus in future more emphasis will be put on defining skills and

competences.


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3. Capabilities and the standards for geography in USA

A. Structure and Organizational Framework of the U.S. National Geography

Standards

National geography standards for the United States were first published in 1994 in

the volume Geography for Life: National Geography Standards (Geography

Education Standards Project 1994). Geography for Life presents 18 content

standards, organized into six broader essential elements, that specified what

students should know and be able to do as a “geographically informed person” at the

fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades. As would be expected, the standards exhibit a

progressive level of complexity and sophistication of geographic knowledge across

grade bands. Beyond knowledge-oriented outcomes, the standards further define a

geographically informed person as an individual capable of applying a process of

geographic inquiry, consisting of five skills: asking geographic questions, acquiring

geographic information, organizing geographic information, analyzing geographic

information, and answering geographic questions. Through geography education,

students acquire both a spatial perspective and an ecological perspective of their

world. Collectively, geographic knowledge, skills, and perspectives are the

fundamental components of geographic literacy and proficiency.

Geography for Life also set forth a rationale for geography in education. It advocated

four arguments for an expanded presence of geography in the school curriculum,

paraphrased as follows:

1. Existential reasons: Geography can help us understand our place in the

world.

2. Practical reasons: Geography provides knowledge and skills important for

careers and the nation’s economic competitiveness.

3. Intellectual reasons: Geography improves the capacity of individuals to make

sound decisions using facts and concepts about people, places, and

environments.

4. Ethical reasons: Geography teaches stewardship of natural and cultural

environments for the benefit of present and future generations.

All U.S. states and territories have created their own geography standards using

Geography for Life as a template (although there is considerable variation from state


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to state in the extent to which the national standards were adopted and adapted). As

states begin to revise their standards the coming years, they will have a new set of

U.S. geography standards to consider. Released in the fall of 2012, the second

edition of Geography for Life largely retains the structure and organizational

framework of the 1994 standards (Heffron and Downs 2012). There are, however,

some important differences.

First, the new standards incorporate a deeper foundation of educational

research in spatial thinking, a mode of cognition that focuses on environments and

phenomena at geographic scales (e.g., communities, ecosystems, nations). As an

integral component of scientific inquiry and problem solving, the new standards

present spatial thinking as being essential for performance in areas as diverse as

environmental conservation, transportation, national security, and natural hazards.

A second change in the standards is the emphasis on classroom uses of

geospatial technologies including digital maps, geographic information systems

(GIS), remote sensing, virtual globes, geovisualizations, and other technologies for

displaying and analyzing spatial data (modeling). Since the publication of the first

edition of the standards, these technologies have revolutionized the ways that people

practice geography and geographic information science (Gewin, 2004).

Third, Geography for Life, 2nd edition draws on research in the learning

sciences regarding how children and young adults process, reason with, and learn

geographic information. Learning progressions within standards and across grade

levels emphasize principles of alignment and scaffolding. Moreover, scope and

sequencing of geographic content is based on research and practical teaching

experiences in the fields of psychology, cognitive theory and geography education.

This research foundation, however, is rather thin, and more empirical evidence on

learning progressions is needed to further refine the standards in the future

(Bednarz, Heffron and Huynh 2013).

A fourth change in the standards can be detected in the ways they address

theoretical and methodological developments in the discipline, as well as changes in

national and global affairs. Geographic content and the questions that geographers

ask have continued to develop since the standards were first released in 1994. For

example, in the early 1990s geographers were well aware of and participated in the

discussions of global change, globalization, natural disasters, and ethnic conflicts. At

the beginning o the 21st century those topics are widely pursued in the discipline and

represent a large part of what the public considers to be within the realm of

geography. Additionally, the new standards introduce more contemporary concepts

and topics such as social justice, terrorism, and displaced persons, while noting the

contextual importance of viewing the world from the perspectives of age, gender,

race and ethnicity, and other standpoints.


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Finally, the new standards provide a discussion of how geographic

knowledge, skills and perspectives work together for “doing geography” in a variety

of home, work, and leisure settings. In the past decade there has been significant

growth in applications of geography in geographic information technologies across

business, government, and nonprofit sectors of the global economy (Solem, Foote,

and Monk 2013). This trend coincides with new federal investments to establish

common core standards in math and science, including social science disciplines. At

the time of this report, twenty state education agencies are collaborating with fifteen

professional organizations in the social studies to develop a common set of

standards which will include geography. The ultimate goal is to produce a set of

fewer, higher, clearer standards that prepare all students for college, careers, and

citizenship.

B. Results of capabilities analysis of U.S. national geography standards

The preamble for Geography for Life, 2nd edition (pp. 7-16) sets forth a broad

rationale for the inclusion of geography and the need for rigorous academic

standards in the American school curriculum. The purpose of this analysis is to

identify language that explicitly or implicitly relates to or otherwise supports three

capabilities.

Capability 1: Promoting individual autonomy and freedom, and the ability to use

one’s imagination and to be able to think and reason.

Page 7, paragraph 2: “Geographic literacy will also be necessary for …

preserving quality of life … and ensuring national security.” In the context

of the American political system, government exists to protect the inalienable

rights” of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (Declaration of

Independence).

Page 7, paragraph 2: “As individuals and as members of society, humans

face decisions on where to live, what to build where, how and where to

travel, how to conserve energy, how to wisely manage scarce resources, and

how to cooperate or compete with others.”

Page 7, paragraph 3: “Making all of these decisions, personal and collective,

requires a geographically informed person …” This implies geography

contributes to the ability to make and act upon personal decisions freely.

Page 7, paragraph 7: “With a strong grasp of geography, people are better

equipped to solve personal issues …”

Page 7, paragraph 8: “By understanding their own places in the world,

people can overcome parochialism and ethnocentrism.”

Page 10, paragraph 2: Text notes that since the 1994 standards geographers

have increasingly examined topics such as terrorism, genocide, displaced


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persons, and social justice. Such issues deal explicitly with issues of

autonomy, freedom, and rights.

Page 13, paragraph 1: “Geographic education enables students … to engage

in ethical action with regard to self …”

Capability 2: Identifying and exercising one’s choices in how to live based on

worthwhile distinctions with regard to citizenship and sustainability;

Page 7, paragraph 2: “Geographic literacy will also be necessary for …

sustaining the environment.”

Page 7, paragraph 2: “As individuals and as members of society, humans

face decisions on where to live, what to build where, how and where to

travel, how to conserve energy, how to wisely manage scarce resources,

and how to cooperate or compete with others.”

Page 7, paragraph 3: “Making all of these decisions, personal and collective,

requires a geographically informed person …” This implies geography

contributes to the ability to make decisions by taking into consideration the

implications for one’s community, state, and people and places in other world

regions (different scales of citizenship).

Page 7, paragraph 3: Text gives this example, “To understand the rapid

growth of megacities in South Asia, an understanding is required of the

connections among subsistence farming, population growth rates, rural-

to-urban migration, infrastructure, comparative economic advantage, and

factors of production.”

Page 7, paragraph 5: The geographically informed person is prepared to

meet the challenges of understanding what is happening in the world,

why it is happening in a particular locale, how those things might

change in the future, and how to make geographically informed and

reasoned decisions.

Page 7, paragraph 7: “With a strong grasp of geography, people are better

equipped to solve … collective issues at the global level.”

Page 7, paragraph 7: “Geography focuses attention on fascinating people

and places … knowing them enables people to make better-informed and

wiser decisions.”

Page 8: “Geography … provides an ethical grounding for understanding

the future of the planet … a basis for people to cooperate in the best

interests of the planet and the future.

Page 9, paragraph 1: “The goal of schools was to ‘ensure that all students …

may be prepared for responsible citizenship.”


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Page 10, paragraph 2: Text explains the standards were revised/updated to

recognize that “greater attention is being paid to the idea of a green world

and to mandates for sustainability and environmental stewardship”.

Page 13, paragraph 1: “Geographic education enables students … to engage

in ethical action with regard to self, other people, other species, and

Earth’s diverse cultures and natural environments.”

Page 13, paragraph 3: Becoming an informed citizen requires going beyond

only knowing the disciplinary content of geography. Students must also be

able to use geographic reasoning and do geography.

Capability 3: Understanding one’s potential as a creative and productive citizen in the

context of the global economy and culture.

Page 7, paragraph 1: The text notes in the 21st century the "global economy

will be even more competitive and interconnected"

Page 7, paragraph 2: The text asserts "geographic literacy" is important

because it "enhances economic competitiveness" and helps an individual

understand "how to manage scarce resources" and "compete or

cooperate with others"

Page 7, paragraph 7: The text states that "with a strong grasp of geography"

people are better able to “solve personal and community issues”

Page 8: The text argues that geography education provides "a basis for

people to cooperate in the best interests of the planet and the future"

Page 9: The text refers to the Goals 2000 legislation of the early 1990s which

spawned the original standards. That legislation specified the goal for schools

to be one of ensuring youth "learn to use their minds well ... and are

prepared for productive employment in the nation's modern economy".

GFL2 refers to this goal as "still relevant".

Page 13: In a section on Doing Geography, the text argues that a

geographically informed person is able to apply "geographic perspectives,

knowledge, and skills" to make "well-reasoned decisions" for personal and

community problem-solving and to "engage in ethical action ... with regard to

Earth's diverse cultures."

Page 13: The combination of geographic perspectives, knowledge, and skills

creates a "lens" through which a person sees how "cultures are deeply

connected to physical and human features that define places and

regions"

A separate analysis of the three capabilities was performed on the full set of 18

standards in Geography for Life, 2nd edition. These findings capture relevant areas of


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subject matter and examples of geographic skills and perspectives that could

potentially serve as examples of learning objectives for capabilities-based curriculum

making (see recommendations in Chapter 6). Because the intent of the capabilities

analysis is to identify shared examples at the level of aims and goals for geography

in American, English and Finnish education, we will restrict our analysis to the

relevant statements of curricular purposes and roles in Geography for Life. Detailed

findings for individual geography standards and similar grade-level learning

outcomes appear in Appendix A.


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Capabilities in China (March 2014)

A report on a workshop from Michael Solem (Third Country Partner [10])

How does geography education contribute to human potential and wellbeing? How

do different national curriculums express the purposes and values of geography?

The AAG’s GeoCapabilities project is exploring these questions in partnership with

several universities and scientific organizations in different countries1. Through

comparative methods, researchers are analyzing the ways geography is considered

by nations to be a form of knowledge that enables the development of human

capabilities.

Whereas much of the current reforms shaping curricula in schools and universities

can be traced to neoliberal economic pressures for producing human capital (skills

and competencies), capabilities offer a different (yet complementary) view of the role

of education in human life. Rooted in the early writings of economist Amartya Sen

and philosopher Martha Nussbaum, capabilities refer to sets of “functionings” that,

once attained, provide people with real opportunities to reach their potential and

wellbeing over the lifespan. The GeoCapabilities project is interested in the role of

education, and specifically geography education, in affording people with intellectual,

moral, and existential capabilities for lifelong learning, economic and social agency in

citizenship, and the pursuit of personal wellbeing.

What, then, are the human capabilities that accrue from the knowledge gained from a

geographical education? The GeoCapabilities project commenced in 2012 with a

preliminary study focusing on the national geography curriculums and standards in

the U.S., England and Finland (Solem, Lambert, & Tani, 2013). That work found that,

despite the considerable variation in geography content and sequencing across

grade levels, all three nations share a view that the role of geography in schools is to

prepare students for life in specific ways, as follows.

First, geography promotes individual autonomy and freedom by cultivating the ability

to use one’s imagination and to be able to think and reason with geographic

information and concepts. A second capability of geography is being able to identify

and exercise choices in how to live based on worthwhile distinctions with regard to

citizenship and sustainability. A third contribution of geography to American, English,

and Finnish education is the way the subject helps people see their potential as a


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creative and productive citizen in the context of the global economy and culture.

Collectively, these are the ways geography education in the U.S., England, and

Finland is seen to provide students with opportunities to achieve their life’s potential

and wellbeing; without it, they are restricted and deprived in ways that have a real

impact on their lives and others.

This initial set of three “geo-capabilities” is now being further elucidated in new

studies involving teachers and schools in Turkey, Greece, and Belgium. With new

funding from the European Commission’s COMENIUS program2, GeoCapabilities

researchers will implement a series of qualitative studies through 2014, including

interviews and surveys with teachers and teacher educators and comparative

analyses of teacher preparation systems. Findings will inform the creation of an

online platform for connecting teachers in different nations for discussions about

curriculum making based on the capabilities approach.

Michael Solem

Beyond Western Europe, the GeoCapabilities project has begun to initiate work in

countries where educational cultures and newly emerging geography curriculums

offer richer and more diverse contexts for exploring relationships between geography

and human capabilities. In recent months the AAG’s Michael Solem traveled to

Romania, Singapore and China to engage aspiring geography teachers in the work

of the project. The aim was to interpret with these students their conceptions of

http://news.aag.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/solem_michael_geocapabilities_china_crop.png

http://news.aag.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/solem_michael_geocapabilities_china_crop.png


85

human potential and wellbeing to understand better how they define the broader

goals of geography in the school curriculum. After reflecting on examples of

capabilities, the students were asked to develop and share their ideas for what a

geography curriculum might look like if it were based on capabilities principles.

Although many students were able to create examples of classroom materials

supporting geo-capabilities, some struggled with the challenge of thinking about

capabilities as goals from which emanate specific learning objectives, activities, and

teaching and assessment methods. One reason for this was the reliance on more

didactic approaches to classroom instruction that students felt was expected of them.

Although the national curriculums in China, Singapore, and other nations offer

explicit statements on educational values and desired outcomes (e.g., fostering

citizenship, personal freedom, care for the environment), many students exhibited a

tendency to begin their lesson planning with a particular skill set or knowledge

objective in mind, with no consideration of the broader purposes of teaching that

content. This issue is common across the nations studied thus far and warrants

further attention as the project proceeds in the coming years.


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Appendix 2 Translations of the Capabilities approach

These translations can be found at www.geocapabilities.com

Chinese

我们所谓的“能力”1 是指什么?

为达至潜能,人们需要能保持健康,参与文化、经济、社会和政治生活。

广义地讲,他们需要处于一种能对他们的生活负责的状态。他们需要能

思考、

做出决定并能按照他们认为是对的来行事。所有的这些才能、办事能力

和特质,我们称之为人类的“能力”。

人们(个体和他们所从属的不同群体)在达至他们的潜能时能力各不相

同。这是由于他们背景环境特征因素各不相同。例如,有权使用洁净的水

和食

物能成为一个人当前和将来的潜能和幸福的决定性因素。接受小学教育能决

定

识字率,这依次又对健康、学习新农业实践的能力有巨大的影响,如此等

等。

该项目的假设是:在学校获取专门的知识也能影响人类的能力。源自学

科共同体的知识使年轻人能够“想所未想”。

驱动我们研究的问题是:1)是否可能表达出地理教育如何对人类能力的

http://www.geocapabilities.com/


87

发

展做出贡献?2)从年轻人的将来潜能和幸福来看,他们若没有获取地理教育

其后果将会如何?

1 通过能力的方法研究人的发展和福利经济学是由 Amartya Sen 发展的,Amartya Sen

进行了进一步的发展,随后被许多人发展。

Dutch

Wat verstaan wij onder ‘capabilities’ of ‘vermogens’?

Een poging tot definiëring

Om als mens je volledige mogelijkheden (of potentieel) te kunnen bereiken, moet je

gezond blijven en deel kunnen nemen aan het politieke, economische, sociale en

culturele leven. Je moet in staat zijn om verantwoordelijkheid te kunnen nemen voor

je eigen leven. Je moet kunnen denken, beslissingen kunnen nemen en kunnen

handelen naar wat je denkt dat goed is. Al deze bekwaamheden en eigenschappen

noemen we (menselijke) vermogens (capabilities).

Mensen verschillen in hun vermogens (individueel en groepsgewijs) om hun

potentieel te kunnen bereiken. Verschillende context specifieke factoren zijn hier

debet aan. Bijvoorbeeld toegang tot schoon drinkwater en voedsel is een bepalende

factor in het hedendaagse en toekomstige welzijn en potentieel van een persoon.

Toegang tot basisonderwijs kan het kunnen lezen en schrijven bepalen en kan

daarmee een grote invloed hebben op gezondheid, de mogelijkheid om nieuwe

agrarische toepassingen te leren, enzovoort.

De onderliggende aanname van dit project is dat toegang tot gespecialiseerde

kennis op school ook invloed heeft op menselijke vermogens. Kennis verworven uit

disciplines kan jonge mensen in staat stellen ‘te bedenken wat nog niet bedacht is’.

De vragen die dit onderzoek sturen, zijn: 1. Is het mogelijk om aan te geven hoe

aardrijkskundeonderwijs kan bijdragen aan de ontwikkeling van (menselijke)

vermogens? 2. Wat zijn de consequenties voor jonge mensen, in termen van hun


88

toekomstig potentieel of welzijn, wanneer zij geen toegang hebben tot

aardrijkskundeonderwijs?

1) De ‘capabilities’ benadering op het terrein van sociaal-economische ontwikkeling

(human development & welfare economics) is bedacht door Amartya Sen. Het is

verder ontwikkeld door Martha Nussbaum en vervolgens gebruikt door vele anderen.

English

What do we mean by ʻcapabilitiesʼ?8 Towards a definition

In order to achieve their potential people need to be able to stay healthy and take

part in cultural, economic, social and political life. Broadly speaking they need to be

in a position to take responsibility for their lives. They need to be able to think, make

decisions and act according to what they believe is right. All these abilities, capacities

and attributes we refer to as human ʻcapabilitiesʼ.

People (individually and in different groups they belong to) vary in their capability to

achieve their human potential. This is because of various context-specific factors. For

example, access to clean water and food can be a determining factor of a personʼs

present and future potential and well- being. Access to primary education can

determine literacy rates, which in turn can have a dramatic impact on health, ability to

learn new agricultural practices and so forth.

The hypothesis underlying this project is that access to specialised knowledge in

school can also influence human capabilities. Knowledge derived from disciplined

communities enables young people ʻto think the not yet thoughtʼ.

8 The capabilities approach to human development and welfare economics was developed by Amartya Sen. It has

been further developed by Martha Nussbaum and subsequently by many others.


89

The questions that drive our research are:

1) is it possible to express how geography education may contribute to the

development of human capabilities?

2) What are the consequences for young people, in terms of their future potential and

well-being, of not having access to geography education?


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Finnish

Mitä tarkoitamme “toimintavalmiuksilla”9?

Käsitteen määrittelyä

Saavuttaakseen oman potentiaalinsa (kasvaakseen täyteen mittaansa ihmisenä)

ihmisellä on oltava mahdollisuus tyydyttää perustarpeensa, huolehtia terveydestään

ja kantaa vastuuta omasta elämästään. Tärkeää on myös mahdollisuus osallistua

kulttuuriseen, sosiaaliseen, poliittiseen ja talouselämään. Jokaisella on oltava vapaus

ajatella, tehdä päätöksiä ja toimia sen mukaisesti, mitä hän pitää oikeana.

Viittaamme kaikilla näillä tärkeillä tekijöillä ja ominaisuuksilla inhimillisiin

toimintavalmiuksiin (human capabilities).

Mahdollisuus kasvaa täyteen mittaansa ihmisenä vaihtelee sekä yksittäisten ihmisten

että ihmisryhmien välillä. Syinä tähän ovat erilaiset tilannekohtaiset tekijät.

Esimerkiksi puhtaan veden ja ravinnon tai muun perustarpeen saatavuus voi

ratkaisevasti vaikuttaa siihen, millaiset mahdollisuudet yksilöllä on hyvinvointiin ja

inhimillisen potentiaalinsa saavuttamiseen nyt ja tulevaisuudessa. Mahdollisuus

koulutukseen voi vaikuttaa esimerkiksi lukutaidon oppimiseen, ja tällä puolestaan voi

olla keskeinen vaikutus esimerkiksi terveyteen tai uusien viljelymenetelmien

omaksumiseen.

Tämän projektin hypoteesina on, että koulu tarjoaa mahdollisuuden erityiseen tietoon

(specialised knowledge), joka edistää yksilön toimintavalmiuksien kehittymistä.

Tieteenaloihin perustuva tieto tekee osaltaan mahdolliseksi sen, että nuoret

kykenevät ajattelemaan sellaista, mitä he eivät ole ennen ajatelleet.

Tutkimuksessa kysymme: 1) Millä tavoin maantieteen opetus tukee inhimillisten

toimintavalmiuksien kehittymistä? 2) Jos nuori ei opiskelisi maantiedettä, miten tämä

9 Näkemys toimintavalmiuksista ja niiden merkityksestä inhimilliselle kehitykselle ja

hyvinvoinnille perustuu Amartya Senin ajatteluun. Myöhemmin erityisesti Martha Nussbaum

on edelleen kehittänyt toimintavalmiuksiin liittyvää teoriaa.


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vaikuttaisi hänen hyvinvointiinsa ja mahdollisuuksiinsa kasvaa täyteen mittaansa

ihmisenä?

French

Que signifie “capabilités”10 pour nous ? Pour trouver une définition

Afin dʼaccomplir leur potentiel, les personnes doivent pouvoir rester en bonne santé

et prendre part à la vie culturelle, économique, sociale et politique. Dʼune façon

générale, elles doivent être capables de réfléchir, de prendre des décisions et dʼagir

selon ce quʼelles croient être correct. Ce sont toutes ces capacités et attributs que

nous appelons « capabilités » humaines.

Les personnes (individuellement et dans les différents groupes auxquels elles

appartiennent) ont des « capabilités » variables pour atteindre leur potentiel humain.

Ceci et dû aux facteurs spécifiques de contexte. Par exemple, lʼaccès à lʼeau potable

et à la nourriture peut être un facteur déterminant pour leur potentiel présent et futur

et leur santé. Lʼaccès à lʼéducation primaire peut déterminer les taux

dʼalphabétisation qui, à leur tour peuvent avoir un impact dramatique sur la santé, la

capacité dʼapprendre de nouvelles pratiques dʼagriculture etcetera.

Lʼhypothèse sous-jacente à ce projet est que lʼaccès à des connaissances

spécialisées à lʼécole peut aussi influencer les « capabilités » humaines. La

connaissance provenant de disciplines donne aux jeunes le pouvoir de « penser à ce

à quoi personne nʼavait pensé ».

Les questions qui motivent notre recherche sont les suivantes :

1) Est-il possible dʼexprimer comment lʼéducation géographique peut

contribuer au développement de capabilités humaines ?

2) Quelles sont les conséquences de nʼavoir pas accès à lʼéducation

géographique pour le futur potentiel et la bonne santé des jeunes ?

10 Le notion de « capabilités » liée au développement humain et à celle de « welfare

economics » a été développée par Amartya Sen. Elle a été développée ensuite par Martha

Nussbaum et bien d’autres.


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German

Was verstehen wir unter “Befähigungen”?[1]

Versuch einer Definition

Um ihr gesamtes persönliches Potential nutzen zu können, müssen Menschen die

Möglichkeit haben, gesund zu bleiben und am kulturellen, wirtschaftlichen und

politischen Leben teilhaben zu können. Allgemein formuliert müssen Menschen

befähig werden, Verantwortung für ihr eigenes Leben zu übernehmen. Sie müssen

fähig sein zu denken, Entscheidungen zu fällen und entsprechend ihrer

Überzeugungen davon, was richtig ist, zu handeln. Diese Fähigkeiten, Eigenschaften

und Merkmale fassen wir unter dem Begriff der menschlichen ‚Befähigungen‘

zusammen.

Menschen (individuell und in verschiedenen Gruppen) unterscheiden sich in ihren

Befähigungen ihr menschliches Potential zu verwirklichen. Diese Unterschiede

lassen sich auf eine Vielzahl von kontextspezifischen Faktoren zurückführen. So

kann der Zugang zu sauberem Wasser und zu Lebensmitteln das derzeitige und

zukünftige Potential und Wohlergehen eines Menschen beeinflussen. Der Zugang zu

einer Grundschulbildung wirkt sich auf die Alphabetisierungsrate aus, die ihrerseits

einen großen Einfluss auf die Gesundheit, die Fähigkeit neue

Landwirtschaftstechniken zu erlernen usw. haben kann.

Die diesem Projekt zugrundeliegende These lautet, dass der in der Schule

angebotene Zugang zu Fachwissen die Entwicklung von menschlichen

Befähigungen positiv beeinflussen kann. In disziplinär strukturierten Gemeinschaften

konstruiertes Wissen ermöglicht es jungen Menschen, „das bisher nicht Gedachte zu

denken“.

Die erkenntnisleitenden Fragen unserer Forschung lauten:

1) Ist es möglich zu bestimmen, wie geographische Bildung zur Entwicklung von menschlichen Befähigungen beitragen kann? 2)

2) Mit welchen Folgen für ihre zukünftigen Möglichkeiten und ihr zukünftiges Wohlergehen müssen junge Menschen rechnen, wenn sie über keine geographische Bildung verfügen?

[1] Der Ansatz der Befähigungen wurde von Amartya Sen im Kontext der

Überlegungen zur menschlichen Entwicklung und der Wohlfahrtsökonomie

entwickelt. Der Ansatz wurde zunächst von Martha Nussbaum und später auch von


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anderen weiterentwickelt

Greek

Τι εννοουμε με τον ορο ‘capabilities’1;

Προς εναν ορισμο

Για την επιτευξη των δυνατοτητων τους οι ανθρωποι χρειαζεται να

μπορουν να παραμενουν υγιεις και να συμμετεχουν στη

πολιτιστικη, οικονομικη, κοινωνικη και πολιτικη ζωη. Σε γενικοτερο

επιπεδο οφειλουν να ειναι σε θεση να αναλαμβανουν την ευθυνη

για τις ζωες τους. Οφειλουν να μπορουν να σκεπτονται, να

λαμβανουν αποφασεις και να δρουν, συμφωνα με το αυτο που

πιστευουν οτι ειναι σωστο. Ολες αυτες οι ικανοτητες, οι ιδιοτητες

και τα γνωρισματα περιγραφονται με τον ορο ανθρωπινες

‘δυνατοτητες’.

Οι ανθρωποι (σε ατομικο επιπεδο και στις διαφορετικες ομαδες

στις οποιες ανηκουν) διαφερουν στην ικανοτητα τους να

εκπληρωνουν τη δυναμικη τους. Αυτο οφειλεται σε διαφορους

παραγοντες συγκεκριμενου πλαισιου. Για παραδειγμα, η

προσβαση σε καθαρο νερο και φαγητο μπορει να αποτελεσει εναν

καθοριστικο παραγοντα της σημερινης και μελλοντικης

δυνατοτητας και ευημεριας του ανθρωπου. Η προσβαση στην

πρωτοβαθμια εκπαιδευση μπορει να καθορισει τα επιπεδα

γραμματισμου, τα οποια με τη σειρα τους δυνανται να εχουν ενα

δραματικο αντικτυπο στην υγεια, στην ικανοτητα της μαθησης

νεων γεωργικων πρακτικων και ουτω καθεξης.

Η υποθεση που χαρακτηριζει το συγκεκριμενο ερευνητικο εργο


94

ειναι οτι η προσβαση σε εξειδικευμενη γνωση στο σχολειο μπορει

να επηρεασει με τη σειρα της τις ανθρωπινες δυνατοτητες. Η

γνωση που πηγαζει απο εξειδικευμενες κοινοτητες επιτρεπει στους

νεους ανθρωπους να «σκεπτονται αυτο που οι υπολοιποι δεν

εχουν ακομα σκεφτει».

Οι ερωτησεις που μπορουν να οδηγησουν την ερευνα μας ειναι:

1) ειναι εφικτο να εκφρασουμε τους τροπους με τους

οποιους το μαθημα της Γεωγραφιας μπορει να συνεισφερει

στην αναπτυξη των ανθρωπινων δυνατοτητων;

2) Ποιες ειναι οι συνεπειες για τους νεους ανθρωπους, σε

σχεση με τις μελλοντικες τους δυνατοτητες και την

μελλοντικη τους ευημερια, εαν δεν εχουν προσβαση στην

διδασκαλια της Γεωγραφιας;

1 Η προσεγγιση των δυνατοτητων (capabilities) για την αναπτυξη

του ανθρωπου και των οικονομικων της ευημεριας αναπτυχθηκε

απο την Amartya Sen. Αναπτυχθηκε περαιτερω απο την Martha

Nussbaum και ακολουθως απο πολλους αλλους.


95

Turkish

“Kapasiteler” ile Ne Demek İstiyoruz?11

Bir Tanıma Doğru

İnsanların, potansiyellerine ulaşmak için sağlıklı kalmaları ve ekonomik, sosyal ve

kültürel yaşamda yer almaları gereklidir. Genel olarak insanlar hayatları için

sorumluluk alacak bir pozisyonda olmalıdırlar. İnsanların düşünebilmesi, kararlar

alabilmesi ve doğru olduğuna inandığı şeyler için eylemde bulunabilmesi gereklidir.

Bütün bu kabiliyetleri, kapasiteyi ve nitelikleri biz beşeri “kapasite” olarak

adlandırıyoruz.

İnsanlar (gerek bireysel ve gerek farklı gruplarda), beşeri potansiyellerine ulaşmada,

kapasiteleri açısından farklılık gösterirler. Bunun nedeni konuya özel muhtelif

faktörlerin olmasıdır. Örneğin, temiz suya erişebilme ve yiyecek, bir kişinin şimdiki ve

gelecekteki potansiyeli ve refahı için belirleyici bir faktör olabilir. Okur-yazarlık

oranını belirleyebilen ilköğretime erişme, sırasıyla sağlık, yeni tarımsal uygulamalar

öğrenme yeteneği ve benzerleri üzerinde dramatik bir etkiye sahip olabilir.

Bu projenin altını çizdiği hipotez, okulda uzmanlaşmış bilgiye erişmenin de beşeri

kapasiteyi etkileyebileceğidir. Disiplinli toplulukların ortaya koyduğu bilgi, gençlere

"henüz düşünülmeyeni düşünme" imkanı verir.

Bizim araştırmamızı sürükleyen sorular: 1) Coğrafi bilginin beşeri kapasitenin

gelişmesine nasıl katkı sağlayabileceğini ifade etmek mümkün müdür?

2) Gençler için, coğrafi bilgiye erişim olmamasının onların gelecekteki potansiyeli ve

refahı açısından sonuçları nelerdir?

11İnsani gelişme ve refah ekonomisi için “Kapasite” yaklaşımı Amartya Sen tarafından geliştirildi. Daha sonra

Martha Nussbaum tarafından ve daha sonradan birçok kişi tarafından geliştirildi.


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