ABSTRACT
There is common agreement amongst educators that effective planning is vital to success in the classroom. Lambert and Balderstone (2000) claim plenty of evidence of a very close relationship between the quality of the classroom experience and thoroughness in planning. There is much less agreement upon how to approach planning. Certainly it is true that planning can be personal and idiosyncratic and that, as Roberts (1997: 46) states, ‘the way in which teachers plan is a matter of professional judgement’. In a review of findings from Ofsted inspections of Geography, Smith (1997) pointed out that good planning was a feature of the best teaching and that the best lessons were those that offered an opportunity for investigative work. QCA (1998) commissioned two focused studies to investigate how teachers in a range of schools were seeking to integrate enquiry into their geographical work. The studies revealed a wide range of interpretations of enquiry activities and different ways of planning these activities, once again highlighting that planning is a matter of professional judgement. However, it is useful for beginning teachers to start by using a model for planning and, once they are competent, to adapt it to their own needs. It is equally important to understand the principles underlying different approaches. This chapter outlines a particular approach to planning that promotes enquiry as the basis for learning and teaching Geography.
