Moving in from the margins? The
location of concepts in NCEA geography
Mike Taylor
Andrea Milligan
VUW School of Education Policy and Implementation
The study
• To explore the views of secondary school geography
teachers about the place of 'concepts' and
'conceptual understandings' in Geography education
• WellGeog professional development session
(December 2009)
• Four participants (of six)
• Semi-structured interviews
• Pre-dated the final versions of the revised NCEA
Geography achievement standards
The centrality of concepts in geography
Knowledge outcomes:
Theory
“The development of conceptual understanding is
central to this outcomes set. „Conceptual
understanding‟ refers to understanding of
concepts expressed as single words…or elaborated
as ideas or generalisations” (Aitken & Sinnema,
2008, p.229)
For example:
(Erikson , 2002, p.5)
“As people interact with their environment, both
are changed” (Syllabus for Schools Geography,
Forms 5-7, 1990)
Thinking Geographically
“Using some of the big, complex ideas developed
in geography – such as space and scale,
interdependence and environment, and culture
and diversity – we can bring much deeper
understanding to the picture…while geography
is concerned to make sense of the real world, it
does so through its ideas”
Lambert & Morgan (2010) p161
Participant views of concepts
What concepts are important for today?
• Strong identification with concepts identified in
the 1990 syllabus: e.g. environment, change,
processes, interaction
• More recent inclusions from NCEA: Māori
concepts, perspectives
• Two mentioned “new” concepts aligned to
future-focussed themes of the NZC:
globalisation, sustainability, citizenship
The value of a concept-led approach
The Important Geographic Ideas (IGIs) as
a „tag-on” list to be covered:
Making connections and transferability
Pania: We used to add on the IGIs rather
than teach through them…it was an addon, like the case studies were an add-on.
Pania: They can take this
understanding, that they‟ve got about
environments, change, whatever it
might be, and then transpose it to a
different setting, context, whatever; and
isn‟t that what we want from our
geographers, to be able to do that?
Michelle: You‟re always trying to
remind yourself that it‟s not the context
necessarily that‟s the important part it‟s these things that you are learning in
that context, and that‟s the essential
part of your teaching and that‟s the
knowledge that you want them to have.
Because that‟s what they carry through
life, they might forget the topic but if
they remember the concepts then
they‟re geographers.
Continuing importance of concept clarification
Wendy: In every topic those words would come up, and I
would refer the kids back to their list that they have, and we
would say this is an example, this is a process, say what it is;
so for example with Tongariro, we would say what‟s a
process? Ok, orographic rainfall is a process, with the rain
shadow effect; so when you were talking about processes that
have changed the environment, this is an example you would
use.
Michelle: And… certainly for external practice, the IGIs are
very important to us at year 11, 12, and 13, like we have
exercises around learning these…so matching exercises,
drawing diagrams to represent them… we have a bit of a
funny thing in my year 11 class, every time somebody
mentions one of these, just by accident, we go „snap!‟, they go
„change‟, or react to it, and it‟s become a bit of a joke in a
way, but saying how you can‟t have a geographical
conversation about something without mentioning one of
these, and that‟s why they‟re important.
Concepts as a tool for planning
• Pania: When I think of the people that were in that group, a couple I have worked
with since… they‟ve gone from that specific reflection of the assessment structure, to
looking at the concepts in a bigger and a broader way, to organising their whole
course [by identifying key conceptual understandings as the learning goal, rather
than the achievement standard]
• Wendy: So I suppose the challenge for me is that I don‟t want to teach a list of
concepts, I want to try and have a big idea, and the kids have some conceptual
understandings from that…so I‟m thinking of doing environments for term 1, and
change for term 2, and then I‟ll slot the achievement standards – parts of them – into
that. Or maybe the whole thing.
• Martin: So I‟ve approached the year planning from different perspective, in terms of
these are the concepts that I want to get through. And then I‟ve gone how can these…
how can the standards that are out there help me get… help me develop the students‟
thinking? …I think possibly in future, rather than just one overarching concept, I
might start breaking that down into a couple of different concepts; and you‟ve also
got to respond a bit to the students, working out which concepts are going to be
important for them.
Concepts as central to disciplinary thinking
Martin: I‟ve introduced year 11 and 12 students to stage 1 university
readings about [globalisation], because…there‟s not a lot at a secondary
school level at the moment around…last year, in my first year of doing this
course based around the idea of globalisation, as we went through it, they
were writing a definition of globalisation for me, two or three times a term,
and we kept them, and then at the end of the year, we sat down and went
over it. At first, it was based around whatever we had just been doing, but
as we got through the year, they started to make the connections and the
links to other stuff that we had done through the year, which was really
good, and I think that‟s why some of the things that we did later on in the
year, the higher thinking that was going on was quite amazing. I mean, I
had a conversation with a student – we just went for a walk around town
one day, in a double period, looking for signs of globalisation – and I had a
conversation with a year 11 girl, so she was about 15, about the difficulties of
mapping cultural landscapes as compared to natural landscapes. And that
thinking came out of the fact of what we were doing around globalisation,
and I thought, this is real geography that we‟re doing here, this is
geographical thinking.
First level conceptual thinking: the student will become familiar with a particular
organising concept (e.g. scale) and the ways it can be used to make sense of geographical
problems. This is an iterative process that would likely take place over a student‟s entire
school career and would involve the teacher making manifest how the concept is being used
each time to help organise understanding of an issue, place, topic, context or theme being
studied.
Second level conceptual thinking: involves using a number of these organising
concepts simultaneously to make sense of the world. These concepts when used together
characterise geographical thinking. It is when they are used in combination that they
provide a unique and powerful disciplinary perspective on the world. Many of these
concepts are also interdefined. For example, understanding place arguably depends on
conceptions of space, scale, interdependence, interaction, time. Understanding
sustainability will depend on conceptions of scale, time, change and many other concepts
such as limit, capacity, exhaustion and so on. Each of these concepts transforms and
integrates our understanding of related concepts.
Slinger (2011)
NCEA signposting of concepts
• The Title e.g. “Demonstrate geographic understanding
of the sustainable use of an environment”
• The achievement criteria which offer qualitative
guidelines of the extent to which concepts are explored
e.g. “In-depth geographic understanding typically
involves explaining the consequences of the use of the
selected environment on people and environment”
• Explanatory Notes which elaborate on key concepts
e.g. “Sustainable use refers to the extent to which this
use can be maintained in the future to minimise
environmental impacts”
The ambiguous place of concepts across
the NCEA Level 1 revised standards
Caveat: Geo 1.8 is based on GIS, a significant geographical procedural concept in its own right.
The ambiguous place of concepts
within a NCEA standard
Demonstrate Geographic understanding of environments that have been
shaped by extreme natural event(s)
Aspects of learning include, inter alia:
• How different groups of people have responded to the effects of the extreme
natural events
e.gs. „Student Army‟ use of Social Media networks to mobilise silt clearing;
Christchurch residents leaving the city temporarily and permanently
in response to psychological trauma;
Some CBD retailers questioning „red zone‟ cordon access
References
• Bennetts, T. (2010) Whatever has happened to „understanding‟ in
geographical education? Geography 95 (1) pp38-42
• Erickson, H. L. (2002) Concept-based Curriculum and Instruction:
Teaching beyond the Facts. (Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press Inc).
• Lambert, D. & Morgan, J. (2010) Teaching Geography 11-18: A
conceptual approach. (Maidenhead: Open University Press)
• Milligan, A., & Wood, B. (2010). Conceptual understandings as
transition points: Making sense of a complex social world. Journal
of Curriculum Studies. 42: 4. pp. 487-501.
• Slinger, J. (2011) Threshold Concepts in Secondary Geography
Education. Research report presented at The Geographical
Association Annual Conference, University of Surrey, 16th April
2011. Retrieved from www.geography.org.uk