ABSTRACT

This book brings together recent papers which make important contributions to understanding and developing primary geography. It considers primary teachers’ and trainee teachers’ knowledge of geography; how the primary curriculum uses geography; teachers’ planning of geography teaching; the way in which aspects of geography are taught; what high quality geography might look like; and children’s geographical understanding and voices.

Though geography curricula change quite often in countries around the world, the core matters noted above remain of constant and vital importance. The papers in this book either concern research with primary teachers and children, or consider key concerns in primary geography, providing important perspectives for thinking about future developments in geography teaching and curriculum initiatives in primary schools. This is a stimulating and enticing collection written by leading exponents of, and experts in, primary geography education. This book was originally published as a special issue of Education 3-13.

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design remains likely, with decisions being made for and at secondary level, then filtered ‘down’ to primary schools. The emphasis on the secondary phase is evident through the greater emphasis on secondary curriculum and assessment in the White Paper and curriculum review (DfE 2010, 2011) and in ministerial briefings and speeches on raising older secondary age pupils’ achievements in comparison to other nations (Vasagar 2010). We argue that powerful knowledge as conceived by Young is insufficient in the primary context because it valorises academic knowl-edge above the everyday or ethno-knowledges (Begg 2006) that pupils bring with them into school. It is our contention that primary pupils’ (and primary teachers’) everyday or ethno-geographies should also be seen as valid forms of powerful knowledge, and that their incorporation into the curriculum constitutes a kind of ‘liberatory education’ (Freire 1972). We offer a revised model, rebalancing Young’s perspective, for how academic and ethno-geography can ground a geography curriculum that is based on a dialogic pedagogy (Alexander 2008). We are using geographical education here to illustrate an argument that we believe applies across the primary curriculum. Ethno-geography in the primary phase Ethno-geography as an idea emerged from the findings of a research study that showed how primary novice teachers’ conceptualisations of geography predominantly relied on memories of the geography they were taught in school (Martin 2008a, 2008b). When thinking about geography in a primary education context, novice teachers did not appear to recognise the value of their everyday experiences as a potential source of geographical knowledge, nor did they express an awareness that their personal geographies connected in any way with school geography. This ‘disconnection’ with the subject is problematic for a number of reasons, particularly because those who do not perceive the relevance of the subject will be unlikely to teach it in a way that is relevant to pupils, and because their lack of awareness of their knowledge base affects their ability to recognise the academic potential of pupils’ everyday geographies. This is supported by Ofsted’s (2008, 2011) analysis that many primary teachers’ geographical subject knowledge is weak. We contend that, because of their disconnection with the subject, coupled with the very minimal time allocated to humanities subjects in Initial Teacher Training (ITT) (Catling 2006), primary teachers have a problem making a distinction between information, knowledge and understanding. Thus, when thinking about the subject for teaching, their attention is focused on knowledge as information rather than knowledge

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them will not have the opportunity to acquire at home or socially, and enables social mobility. In other words, Young’s argument is one of social justice. However, unlike Moore and Muller (1999), he does not go on to dismiss completely voice discourse. Instead he proposes amiddle way that recognises ‘the inescapable role of experience in the production of new knowledge’ (Young 2008, 2011) and that sees this as a valid starting point from which more academic, abstract knowledge can be developed. This is achieved through a Vygotskian social constructivist pedagogy that connects everyday, naı¨ve knowledge to the more abstract scientific concepts that are inherent in subjects. In Young’s view, consideration of knowledge and the curriculum cannot be done without consideration of pedagogy since how knowledge is acquired (everyday, tacit) relates directly to how it can then become organised (codified, abstract) within the curriculum:

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This field of study investigates and provides a voice for children’s perspectives on their use of space, places and the environment that identifies and clarifies their personal everyday or ethno-geographies. It draws out: how children feel they are perceived in the environment by adults; how experience in places engages them in practices of identity; the ways in which they utilise environments differently alongside adults, layering places with diverse meanings; as well as how they develop environmental and way-finding skills, understanding and knowledge. While past research has been interested to describe children’s environ-mental and place experience, the focus of children’s geographies has become increasingly engaged in understanding children’s sense of their own geographies. Through such studies researchers have begun to appreciate that children not only develop their experience but construct their knowledge and understanding through that experience, including the affordances and constraints provided by places, their growing sense of values in relation to the environment and their encounters with the wider world through a variety of media. Evidence suggests that while children constantly encounter a wide range of ‘particulars’ and items of ‘information’ as they learn, through trial and error, risk-taking and their application of skills and under-standings to new contexts, they are constantly reflecting on, reconstruct-ing and reapplying their growing ‘geographical’ knowledge and understanding (O’Brien 2003; Ba 2009). Through this broad-based everyday reconstituting of evolving schemas children develop a con-ceptual base about their local world and the wider world and environment, providing a basis for action, further reflection and reconceptualisation. This has been described from the days of early investigations into this area (e.g. Piaget 1929; Piaget and Inhelder 1956) and subsequently in terms of children’s construction of their knowledge in, of and about the world, and is the basis for their everyday spatial, environmental and place competence, that is, their ethno-geographies. Studies of children’s experience of their locality reveal ways in which they construct their knowledge of the environment and their sense of place. The older primary age children in Ba’s (2009) study of their explorationof their local area inNewYork,USA, identifiedhowandwhat they learnt through experience from the affordances an area provides, such as which of the various commercial sites are child-friendly and will accommodate younger children ‘hanging out’ rather than as customers. Pike’s (2008) studies in Dublin and Waterford, Ireland, noted that children’s perspectives included ways in which they appropriated places, naming them for their own use, to be sites of activity. Similarly, Derr (2006) identified that the freedom to explore enables children not only to construct, for instance, ‘dens’ within their own locale but to recognise the specialness of sites that matter to them. Children’s awareness of the

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potential and of its corollary, risk, in an environment is not simply a matter of the state of the physical aspects of the environment but is rooted strongly in the human dimension, the ways in which shopkeepers, park staff and other adults and youth respect and relate to children, providing child-friendly and social contexts for them, and the ways in which they subvert these. Children’s active engagement out in their locality was exhibited in Freeman’s (2010; Freeman and Tranter 2011) study based in Dunedin, New Zealand. This linked with their attachment to their neighbourhood, which had a strong social relationships focus. Children who had ready and direct access to the neighbourhood and wider area, as in Ba’s (2009) study, developed their sense of place through personal exploration and social interaction, giving rise to sensing their experienced places as both physical and social entities, a finding similar to that of Cele’s studies in England and Sweden (2006). Pike (2008) argues that from this experience in their everyday places younger children develop effective spatial and place knowledge of their everyday environments along with understanding of the processes which shape their places. O’Brien (2003) noted London-based younger children’s environmental concerns and interest in place improvement, their clear sense of neighbourhood quality. Their capacity to ‘reconstruct’ less pleasant parts of the environment, such as stairwells, into ‘bases’ did not deter them from clearly expressing their desire that those responsible for the quality and cleanliness of the local area, including its buildings, had a responsibility to undertake this effectively and consistently. Similar views were expressed by children who participated in research with Al-Khalaileh (2008) into their everyday environment in Amman, Jordan, where they argued that environmental improvements included not only collecting the litter and cleaning the streets but also improving the street environment through tree planting, reducing traffic congestion and noise, and tackling crime levels, another source of risk. These world-wide examples illustrate that through their movement about and exploration of their environments children not only develop familiarity with places and learn their way around them, but they build an evident sense of the state of the environment, realise and make use of the opportunities that social responses afford, ‘subvert’ it for their own interests and ends, have a clear appreciation of the risks inherent in the ‘real world’ and develop views about how adults should undertake their responsibilities to places and the people who live there. Younger children are able to propose ways in which places can be improved and sustained, and they do not exempt themselves from such involvement to make a difference (Alexander and Hargreaves 2007). Children come across as informed, engaged and interested in both their own futures and those of others. They know about their places. This is knowledge and

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understanding which continues to evolve – as it does with adults – through daily engagement in their environments. It forms the heart of their ethno-geographies. We contend not only that these are powerful aspects of children’s lives, but that their personal geographies provide powerful knowledge which children use in their daily lives to make sense of their world as they encounter it, to reflect on it and to deepen their appreciation, under-standing and the uses they canmake of it. Children do not enter schooling without a geographical background or without geographical skills, knowledge and understanding that are in and from their lived geographies. However, the notions that children use to understand and make use of their localities and their experiences in them, such as affordance, appropriation, subversion, exploration, social interaction, space and place knowledge, and environmental improvement, are largely not the terms that the academic discipline of geography uses to construct its discourse. The perspective that younger children develop powerful geographical knowledge accords with the argument within the sociology of childhood that we can and must take a more positive sense of childhood and of children’s experience and learning through their lived lives (Holloway and Valentine 2000; Jenks 2005), that children bring valid and valuable experience, understanding and knowledge into the classroom which should be engaged with and not treated as lacking or impaired and needing simply to be replaced or amended (Slater and Morgan 2000). A revised model of the knowledge–curriculum relationship We noted earlier that Freire set out two initial levels or stages in developing everyday or ethno-knowledges. ‘Moment one’ introduced the idea of knowledge in the experience, and ‘moment two’ was explained as a reflection on that experience to know it a second time, epistemologically and as common sense. We suggest that there could further be third and fourth levels or stages – a dialogue with the academic (a meta-reflection) that causes a third sense of knowing, but that in this dialogue the teacher also has a ‘re-knowing’ which develops/extends the sense of knowing the subject. The fourth stage is, then, the dialogue between the teacher knower and the subject community, in which the dialogue between the two in turn changes the subject/discipline – i.e. that teacher practitioners are part of the community that develops the subject as it relates to the school curriculum. In this model both academic and everyday knowledges are powerful. We contest Powerful Knowledge (capital letters), which privileges the academic, and suggest a view of knowledge that is powerful (lower case) in which both academic and everyday knowledges are viewed as equally powerful, albeit for different reasons. These knowledges then come into

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dialogue with each other with the result that both are changed by the encounter in some way – new knowledge is created that has elements of both in it.We draw onGiroux’s notion of becoming here – that as learners children (and, indeed, adults) are becoming (Freire 1998) and that teachers need to approach the job of teaching as learners, as always becoming. Indeed, this is the case with academic subjects, as discipline histories evidently testify (G. Martin 2005; Holt-Jensen 2009; Agnew and Livingstone 2011), that is, they have an identity of their own, but this identity is not fixed, since subjects are dynamic and constantly changing, thus becoming. Giroux discusses the idea of a border pedagogy in which teachers and students occupy a space where meaning is suspended, and where there is space to negotiate meaning in the classroom, as explored in the ‘Enquiring Minds’ project (Morgan and Williamson 2009). In this project the curriculum:

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on their ethno-mathematics (D’Ambrosio 1994). Mathematics is thus a second subject in which the notions that we have discussed have been developed. While there appears to be negligible work on this topic in other subjects, we nevertheless consider this to be a fruitful avenue to explore. Ofsted (2008, 2011) has identified concerns about the nature and depth of primary teachers’ geography subject knowledge and understanding, which affects their confidence in teaching geography. Implicit in teachers’ lack of subject knowledge are the limited residual school geography they recall and a minimal or lost awareness of their personal ethno-geography (Martin 2008a, 2008b). For very many primary teachers this has never been addressed in their minimal initial teacher education programme or through continuing professional development (CPD), which has become increasingly less available (Ofsted 2011). This has evident implications for younger children’s learning. It identifies a need to address both the nature and length of geography units in initial teacher education programmes and the provision of CPD. One means of addressing this concern is to maintain the training of primary geography subject specialists. Such courses will need to engage novice teachers in developing their own connection with their personal or everyday geographies, alongside understanding children’s ethno-geographies, and to develop their under-standing of the academic structure and vocabulary of the discipline of geography. The Geographical Association in the UK has used the government-funded Action Plan for Geography (www.geographytea-chingtoday.org.uk) to develop several such initial e-based CPD pro-grammes (GA2010). This implies that novice teachers should undergo the same dialogue that they then might undertake with their pupils, between their ethno-geographies and academic geography in their own pro-grammes, as indicated in Figure 2. Conclusion Arising from the arguments presented above, we propose that equal value is given to everyday or ethno-geography and to academic geography. Everyday geographies are rational, conceptual and structured, but differently so from academic geography. While ethno-geographies are grounded personally and socially, providing the conceptual base for daily interactions, living and reflection, academic geographies provide an alternative aggregated reflection and conceptualisation, the basis for creating and using subjects. Our case is one of social justice, in which difference is encountered not as an ‘Other’ to be replacedbyonedominant, powerful discourse, but to be brought into dialogue as a democratic partner in the mutual interplay of learning in the process of evolution within and between the everyday knowledges of children and the

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Notes on contributors

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by curriculum guidance at the turn of the 2000s, for example in primary geography (QCA/DfEE, 1998/2000), helped them focus their curriculum to meet the English national curriculum subject requirements more effec-tively (DfES/QCA, 1999). Others viewed these changes to bemore inhibit-ing (Catling, Bowles, Halocha, Martin, & Rawlinson, 2007). The government’s response was to encourage refreshment in teachers’ approaches to the primary curriculum, teaching and learning (DfES, 2003). A broader-based curriculum and greater flexibility for teachers were encouraged to enable them to use their professional skills to develop challenging andmotivating pedagogy, though the reality of this occurring was questioned (Alexander, 2008a). Primary schools were invited to be more creative and adventurous, while using cross-curricular and subject approaches. This was reinforced in the 2008–9 review of England’s pri-mary curriculum (Rose, 2009), which drew on pertinent examples to illus-trate how teachers could exercise increased autonomy in their classroom curriculum decision-making while working with national curriculum requirements and guidance. In particular, there was encouragement to focus on active learning strategies in the primary classroom (Monk & Sil-man, 2011). Linked with these developments, England’s then Training and Devel-opment Agency for Schools (TDA) offered funding to promote teachers’ development of curriculum opportunities as a mechanism to reinvigorate and develop their teaching. This funding was focused on subject leaders who might consequently foster curriculum development and innovation in their schools (TDA, 2007). The Geographical Association (GA) suc-cessfully bid for funding from this stream (GA, 2007) and initiated a cur-riculum enhancement project, Young Geographers – A Living Geography Project for Primary Schools. At the heart of this project was what the GA termed curriculum making. The project provided opportunities for teach-ers to develop a class curriculum topic, with a strong geographical focus, which they could initiate and structure outside their normal scheme of work, but which would enhance it by opening new or additional lines of enquiry with their children. The project was undertaken in the context of the GA’s living geography model which encouraged teachers to draw on and engage children’s environmental experiences (GA, 2007; Mitchell, 2009). This article examines the teachers’ emergent perspectives from their engagement in The Young Geographers Project, focusing on their reflec-tions about curriculummaking. The term curriculum making: antecedents and meanings The phrase curriculum making has been used for a century and more. Bobbitt’s (1918) seminal text on curriculum argued that ‘curriculum making’ was poorly developed in the early twentieth century as a rigorous

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and well-structured approach to curriculum design and content decisions. By adopting a ‘scientific method’ to curriculum making Bobbitt proposed that the school curriculummust focus onwhatwas to be taught in schools for children’s learning and understanding to go beyond their everyday life experiences and knowledge (Bobbitt, 1918, p. 44). He identified extensive lists of human characteristics and abilities from which a curriculum should be created and organised to extend and deepen academic and vocational knowledge (Bobbitt, 1918, 1922). Such content information would be structured and sequenced to enable the curriculum to be planned across year groups as the basis for lessons. Amongst others, Draper (1936) identified an intermediate stage in planning between school and year programmes and lessons, which he termed ‘units of work’. These, he argued, would be fully prescribed and arranged by the teacher who was the key curriculum maker, organising and structuring each unit. Draper also included a more ‘progressive’, child-centred approach to planning units of work, where children would contribute ideas co-operatively with the teacher to their planning and would be engaged through what today are described as ‘active learning’ approaches (Monk & Silman, 2011), influenced, it would seem, by the arguments of Dewey (1902). In subsequent decades, the term ‘curriculum making’ was less fre-quently applied, while the literature and debate about the nature and use of curriculum in schools extended considerably. Curriculum making was described using other terms in England and elsewhere, for example curric-ulum design, curriculum organisation, curriculum planning and curricu-lum construction. It was allied with other phrases, such as curriculum processes and curriculum delivery, to explain curriculum construction and implementation from national to school to classroom levels. These terms encompassed the same aspects as initially set out for ‘curriculum making’, namely curriculum aims and intentions, curriculum and learning objectives or targets, curriculum content and subjects, schemes of work, units of work and lesson plans, as well as assessment foci and methods. Other terms such as syllabus, programme and course became common-place to refer to the nature of curriculum prescriptions, plans and struc-tures influencing or enacted by schools (Brady & Kennedy, 1999; Posner & Rudnitsky, 1986). But, at all levels, this was contentious. Goodson (1988) and Kelly (2009), for example, recognised the curriculum as an arena of conflict – where curriculum content and sequence, and implicit and essential approaches to organisation and teaching, could be contested at levels from government to the classroom. At the level of units of work, taught for periods of half to a whole term, there remains debate about the extent to which teachers should follow pre-determined outlines and pre-structured units or have the flexibility and freedom to decide, organise and develop units which they see as most appropriate for their children

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(Alexander, 2010; Cox, 2011; Male, 2012). The social and political basis for curriculum intentions and, consequently, for the nature of classroom curriculum decisions is not neutral (Mufti & Peace, 2012). In recent years English primary education has focused on the impact of the national cur-riculum and the emphasis placed on the core subjects of English and mathematics. However, primary curriculum discussion has re-engaged with curriculum focus and organisation and debates about product or process approaches to design and practice, as consecutive governments have emphasised strongly curriculum ‘delivery’ by teachers (Alexander, 2000, 2010; Kelly, 2009; Wyse et al., 2012). Ways to enact the primary curriculum at times appear contradictory – even in the same school and classrooms – as teachers use a more structured and formal format when teaching the core subjects, while they try to apply a ‘creative curriculum’ approach to the rest of the subjects (Alexander, 2010) through their medium-term units of work. Over the years curriculum construction, design, organisation and plan-ning have explored how the values and perspectives of teachers influence their own approaches (Hawthorne, 1992) and to what extent even in more controlled contexts curricula ‘emerge’ as teachers determine how to shape them in practice (Grundy, 1988, Wyse et al., 2012). There is much now that ‘curriculum making’ encompasses, but a narrower interpretation is the focus in this study. At the turn of the twenty-first century the term cur-riculum making re-emerged, for instance in the context of post-compulsory education curriculum construction in the late 1990s (Bloomer, 1997) and in reflections on policy, professionalism and design issues affecting the primary curriculum and its future (Hulme & Livingston, 2012). Recently Edwards, Miller, and Priestley (2009a) have considered curriculum making at the classroom level of a unit of study. This and another study (Clayton, 2007) serve as preludes to introducing the use and meaning of curriculum making by the GA as a context for its recent projects. The University of Stirling’s Curriculum Making in School and College research project was initiated to investigate curriculum making practice in an upper secondary school and a further education college in Scotland. The focus was ‘cultures of curriculummaking’ (Edwards et al., 2009a, 2009b), particularly in relation to teacher and student perspec-tives and the enactment of the curriculum in classroom settings. In reviewing the related literature, five factors affecting curriculum making were identified:

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fully. Secondly, curriculum making is about ‘enacting geography’ through its teaching, the point of which is to give it ‘purpose’. Purpose includes the intention to develop geographical understanding, as well as to be pur-poseful for children, which involves studies making sense to them, provid-ing insight and being pertinent to their lives. A key teaching and learning approach to employ through curriculum making is ‘enquiry’, which requires teachers to ‘perform a delicate balancing act’, drawing upon the students’ experiences, the subject resource and their own knowledge and craft skills. Third children’s experiences, attitudes and understandings should be brought to the subject and their learning, such as their geographical experiences in their personal, daily lives. The GA states that through ‘curriculum making’ these three aspects are held in balance (GA, 2009a, 2012). Its key ingredients are the approaches and techniques teachers use, their expertise and practical skills, students’ needs, interests and ways of learning, and geography as a dynamic, evolving subject and its role and value. Within this vision of curriculum making teachers are to use their pas-sion and enthusiasm for geography to create motivating and engaging, even surprising, studies, based in the school’s or department’s geography schemes of work. At the heart of the GA’s case is that curriculum making is a professional activity, the purview of ‘confident, autonomous teachers’. It is argued that:

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of national geography requirements, a positive opportunity for teachers to regain agency and thus develop effective, professional curriculum making. The YoungGeographers Project: investigating teachers’ perspectives The GA’s Young Geographers Project was initiated to encourage primary school geography subject leaders to take initiatives in their professional practice as curriculum makers, as a prelude to curriculum development in their schools. Two cohorts of 10 primary teachers, with varied subject backgrounds in geography but who were strongly committed to the devel-opment of high quality geography in their classrooms and schools, partic-ipated, supported by two primary curriculum leaders in the GA. The project involved five aspects of practice: engaging practically in curriculum making through creating a class-based geography unit of work; using themotivation of ‘living geography’; engaging in learning outside the classroom, through fieldwork activities; focusing on education for sustainable development (one of the four aspects of the key stage 1 and 2 geography programmes of study); involving use of the local environment. It encouraged the use of ‘local solutions’, to enable the projects to be appropriate for each school’s context, including its children and its local-ity. The projects were run over one school term. The geography subject leaders in the two cohorts – one in the north and one in the south of England – met on two occasions to discuss their project ideas and present their work to each other. Following the first meeting they were encouraged to maintain contact across their cohort, as a basis for sharing their ideas for topics, curriculum making approaches and the challenges facing them, and to support and aid each other. This recognised that geography subject leaders, perhaps the only geography enthusiast in their school, were often isolated. In a climate of declining local authority support the teachers found using email communication to exchange ideas and share frustrations enhancing and invigorating. The focus of the study reported here was to investigate and evaluate the perspectives of the teachers about their experience of curriculum mak-ing (Catling, 2011a). The study was constrained by time, funding and the geographical distribution of the participants. Working with the two cur-riculum leaders, questionnaires and interviews were used to gather the teachers’ responses to open-ended questions. An interpretivist approach

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was taken in this small-scale study (Dey, 1993; Thomas, 2009) which examined participants’ views about what they intended to gain from their involvement, their confidence in teaching geography, their experience of fieldwork, the gains they anticipated for the children and the benefits and obstacles they anticipated or found through curriculum making. Partici-pants completed a pre-project questionnaire as they began their curricu-lum making and a post-project questionnaire on completion of their class topic. A follow-up telephone interview was undertaken with half the teachers in each cohort three months after completing the project (Thomas, 2009; Robson, 2011). A number of the project outcomes were written up by teachers and posted on the GA’s website (GA, 2009b). This study focuses and draws on the post-project questionnaires, interviews and written evaluations of 16 of the participants, since four were not able to undertake or engage fully with their projects. The teachers involved were geography subject leaders in their school (and most had more than one subject to lead). They required the support of their head teacher to participate since the Project encouraged them to work outside their prescribed geography or humanities curriculum for the term. This was, essentially, an opportunistic sample of primary teachers who had an interest in teaching geography well (Newby, 2010; Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2011). They came from urban and rural schools of varied sizes and catchments. Only some had studied geography in their first degree or teaching qualification, and they varied in their length of time, teaching experience and responsibility held in their respective schools. The limitations of this small and self-selecting sample are recog-nised, as are the constraints of questionnaires and interviews. The study did not intend to investigate the classroom practice of these teachers but focused on their reflections on their experience of curriculum making. Inevitably, it was based on self-reporting and responses were taken on trust. It drew also on written material provided by some teachers about their projects and on a number of the presented outcomes placed on the GA’s website (GA, 2009b). The views of the two curriculum leaders were sought to gather their reflections on the teachers’ engagement with curric-ulummaking. The variety of data gathered was reviewed and analysed using a con-stant comparative method (Thomas, 2009; Newby, 2010; Cohen et al., 2011). This enabled a number of themes to emerge, based in the responses to the questionnaires and interviews. It was found that there were evident links with the GA’s account of curriculum making. This is not surprising in view of the context in which the teachers involved undertook their proj-ects. What it indicated, though, were additional insights and a number of features in the teachers’ experience of curriculummaking that can provide guidance for primary (and secondary) teachers. This article reports and discusses the emergent themes from the study.

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Curriculum making: the teachers’ perspectives Two key characteristics for being a successful curriculum maker are enthusiasm and commitment (GA, 2009a). The teachers involved in the Young Geographers Project brought these qualities, yet at the same time were, mostly, somewhat nervous of the opportunity provided to them – since their teaching practice was not infrequently inhibited by the con-straints instilled by the directives of the national strategies which still affected primary teaching (Alexander, 2010). Thus, the teachers viewed the opportunity offered by the project as both novel and risky while giv-ing them some freedom to try different approaches to their curriculum and teaching. Several were beginning to experiment with a ‘creative cur-riculum’ which a number of head teachers encouraged. All the heads were supportive of their teachers’ involvement in the project. This does not indicate that there were no constraints, but they were few given the supportive contexts within which the teachers worked. The key limita-tion the participants reported was the time factor, since the wider curric-ulum was not to be set aside and no additional time was available. They were required still to work to core subject requirements within their respective schools. Geography competed in their classes with other cur-riculum demands. At times they found themselves switching during the day between curriculum making and curriculum delivery, though, like the children, they seemed to cope with this. In one case a teacher was not allowed to take children off the school premises, though she could use the school grounds for field and ‘local’ work; she adapted her origi-nal intentions appropriately. There were, inevitably, some resource constraints, but teachers used the web and other means to circumvent these. Given the committed nature of the participants in the Young Geogra-phers Project, it is not surprising that the findings have a largely positive feel to them, though there are some surprises. Seven characteristics emerged from the project grouped under two categories. These categories are termed here curriculum dynamics. These are the ‘ingredients’ which provided opportunities for teachers to be proactive and to have agency as curriculum makers. What seems central to these characteristics is that they are, at heart, reflective of teachers’ attitudes to themselves, the chil-dren and the potential of curriculum making. Without positive attitudes supporting them these characteristics would not function. This is consis-tent with the concept of curriculum making which, while reflective of cur-riculum requirements, requires teachers to be flexible and evolutionary in approach, providing direction and having goals while being discretionary, considering options and being decision-makers as a class project develops. The two categories of curriculum dynamics are termed ‘contextual dynam-ics’ and ‘subject dynamics’.

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The class topics involved were chiefly locally focused. What the teach-ers found was that children’s enthusiasm and local knowledge and under-standing could be harnessed in curriculum making. Children could make rational and reasonable choices about lines of investigation, about sequences and organisation of studies, themes and tasks. They could take responsibility to shape directions within the topic. For many teachers this was an understanding of pupils’ roles which they developed through the topic. It was not that they had not elicited children’s awareness and knowledge in the past but that they had not brought the children into the development of previous topics as partners. By beingmore open to pupils’ involvement from the start, teachers realised that what the children could offer was able to be brought more into the mainstream as the topic evolved. Children’s agency emerged and increased alongside teachers’ developing confidence in them and themselves. Subject dynamics Subject dynamics describe those characteristics which relate to the three core components in curriculum making described by the GA: the subject, the children’s experience and understandings, and the teachers’ subject teaching repertoire (Lambert & Morgan, 2010; GA, 2012; Biddulph, 2013). Four subject dynamics were identified. The first is teachers’ per-sonal appreciation of their subject knowledge. Second was their recogni-tion of the children’s geographical awareness and knowledge, particularly locally. The third concerned children’s developing realisation of their geo-graphical understanding and of the subject. Fourth was teachers’ rein-forcement and development of their teaching repertoire. The participants in this study largely felt confident in their subject knowledge and understanding, the first subject dynamic, though it enabled them to extend their appreciation and use of that knowledge:

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Quality Mark accreditation (GA, 2006), seeking to have their school awarded a gold, silver or bronze mark as a reference point for developing and achieving a high standard of geography teaching in their school. This involves clarity of understanding about geography. There were variations in how the teachers perceived and understood sustainable development. While most related it to recognising people’s use of and impact on envi-ronments and to be about developing responsible attitudes to environ-mental activity locally and globally, several viewed it more narrowly as related to locally evident concerns such as litter and traffic issues. It was evident that there were variations in appreciating what a level of subject knowledge and understanding meant. Overall, teachers considered their subject knowledge had an positive impact on how they saw the potential of their topic and recognised that to provide the fullest and deepest learn-ing opportunities they needed to be knowledgeable and well-informed themselves. A few teachers realised they needed to enhance their under-standing of sustainable development, and that subject knowledge was a key aspect of curriculum making which affected the quality of their teaching. The Project involved aspects of local study, an element of its ‘living geography’ dimension. This connected with the children’s familiar envi-ronment, providing the opportunity for teachers to draw on the children’s everyday geographies (Catling, 2005, 2011b; Martin, 2008; Catling & Martin, 2011):

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subject, geography, and of decision-making about their teaching. This was a refreshing, almost novel, feeling for them, as they had often found themselves constrained by national and school prescriptions in their teaching across the curriculum. This liberation re-energised their commit-ment and enthusiasm, not least because they felt supported to take control and responsibility. While for some time their role might have been described as being ‘agents of change’ in children’s learning on behalf of the government through its edicts about curriculum content, structure and outcomes and about teaching approaches (Cox, 2011; Kelly, 2009), they began to see themselves as having agency as teachers, retaking com-mand of their professional expertise, authority and aspirations (Priestley, Biesta, & Robinson, 2012). This was, to an extent, daunting, but it enabled them to recognise their capability and potential. Curriculum making was emancipatory (Grundy, 1988; Kincheloe, 2008) and they felt themselves to be learning again. Edwards (2009) described five factors impacting on curriculum mak-ing. Each is reflected in the findings of this study. Contextual factors, such as the English national programmes of study for key stage 1 and 2 geogra-phy (DfES/QCA, 1999), formed a backdrop to the Young Geographers Project, since the study encouraged three elements of these programmes: study based in the local area of the school, the use of fieldwork and a focus on sustainable development. These were not inhibiting but rather enabled a clear focus linkedwith the subject of geographywhile providing guidance on aspects of the subject to engage with. This connected the ‘knowledge-base’ of geography with the children. Organisational factors included the issue of time as a key resource for teaching and developing children’s learning and understanding, as well as the permission given by the head teacher to be involved in the project and to work outside the pre-scribed curriculum requirements and expectations, albeit for only a lim-ited part of the working week. This linked closely with curriculum factors, in terms of the interpretation of the national curriculum requirements teachers couldmake. The liberation teachers felt enabled this to be a posi-tive opportunity rather than a constraint, since planning for and with the children would be outside the required plans of the school’s geography scheme of work. This overlapped with micro-political factors, not only through the sense of permission to workmore ‘riskily’ but because it refo-cused teachers’ reflections and self-evaluation on their attitudes to such matters as their ownership of the curriculum and the fuller engagement of the children as partners in curriculum making. The strongest influence was individual factors, which described the opportunity teachers took to reassert their sense of themselves as professionals, to draw on their subject knowledge, and to develop their confidence in drawing the children into the class project. Their enthusiasm and commitment to geographical learning and to exercise agency provided a powerful frame for their

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curriculum making. This supports Clayton’s (2007) suggestion that self-appraisal and questioning one’s own values in the process of curriculum making are essential elements. These may be as important as, or more important than, decision-making about topics and lines of study and about who is to be involved and how in this process. Here curriculum making can be described as praxis (Grundy, 1988). For Clayton, the need through self-reflection to re-evaluate and reconsider personal values and practices is the basis for changing and enhancing how teachers work best, particularly in terms of inclusivity and equity, as curriculum makers in their own classrooms. Draper (1936) presented one approach to curriculum making as medium-term planning which he described as ‘progressive’, in that it expressed an active learning focus to engage and involve children directly. It has been taken further in this project. Draper’s notion is deepened by Alexander (2008b) in his work on dialogic teaching, which is informative for this study. The principles underlying Alexander’s case for dialogic teaching include the need not simply to listen to children but to hear what they say. This means giving children time and support to convey what they want to, and to consider thoughtfully what children propose, rather than dismissing their ideas. It involves mutuality in collective approaches to enquiry, questioning and probing, and means considering together the lines of enquiry to follow, while evaluating at intervals and reappraising directions of study, including agreement to digress where there is useful interest or potential in doing so. This supports the teachers’ perspectives about enhancing children’s engagement in active curriculum making as agents in their own learning. As in a secondary school geography study, the primary teachers recognised children’s need to be listened to and heard clearly and fully, so that a dialogue emerged as a result of teachers’ openness to children’s contributions and partnership (Biddulph, 2011, 2013; Hopwood, 2007, 2012). Likewise, the need for teachers’ teaching repertoires to be broad-based, building on and taking forward enquiries, involves a dialogic approach for this to be meaningful, moving beyond being active to activating children’s contributions. This would appear to be enabled, as Biddulph (2011, 2012) found with secondary geography teachers, when teachers are knowledgeable about their subject, to the extent that they can recognise children’s understandings (and misunderstandings) in the subject and appreciate the relationship of children’s subject learning to their everyday experiences. While most of the primary teachers felt confident in their geography subject knowledge, what surprised themwere the greater extent of children’s knowledge of their local environment and their awareness and views about sustainable development whichweremore informed than expected – in the past children’s views were less fully engaged with in class. Geography topics, it would seem, are fre-quently for children to undertake and learn about, rather than opportunities

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for children learning through sharing their geographical understanding and delving more deeply into it while connecting it with their own experiences. That the teachers, in the main, lacked this appreciation of children’s devel-oping personal geographies through their life experiences (Butt, 2009; Catling, 2005, 2011b; Freeman & Tranter, 2011; Scourfield, Dicks, Drake-ford, & Davies, 2006; Spencer & Blades, 2006) indicates that they need, alongside their personal geographical understanding, to recognise, value and draw in children’s geographical experience and learning beyond school. This last point challenges Bobbitt’s (1918) sense that school learning should essentially only focus children’s learning beyond the everyday. Rather, it supports the GA’s approach to curriculum making which argues that cur-riculum experience must make effective connections with children’s every-day lives so that they see value in their classroom learning (Biddulph, 2011; GA, 2012). The approach used in curriculummaking and the perspectives expressed by the teachers illustrate aspects of Ofsted’s findings about innovation in English schools (Ofsted, 2008a) and in relation to high quality practices in geography teaching in primary schools (Ofsted, 2008b, 2011). Findings about the impact of innovative practices include increased motivation amongst children, raised achievement and more open approaches by teach-ers to curriculummaking. It has been reported that greater curriculumflexi-bility is vital to support improvements through innovation, an opportunity which teachers often considered was not available to them but from which they may well have benefited. Ofsted notes that innovation supports per-sonal development, and that it helps children see themselves as more involved and as improving their learning. Indirectly, this supports the view of the primary teachers that children in their classes felt they were learning from their geographical studies and valued the subject more. In their recent evaluations of the state of geography in primary schools, Ofsted (2008b, 2011) have identified the importance of teachers’ subject knowledge and reinforced the view that this is vital for increasing the effectiveness of geog-raphy teaching – a point also noted by teachers in this study. Equally these reports illustrate the importance of a repertoire of teaching approaches and techniques, in particular drawing out the value and relevance of fieldwork experience and engagement for children, offsite as well as in the school’s grounds. Findings reinforce the importance of a ‘local solutions’ approach where schools are innovative and involve the children in the development of geographical studies. They offer informative examples of investigations in the local area and of ways to develop children’s understanding of sustain-able development which illustrate curriculum making findings summarised here. Where a number of key features of innovative teaching and co-operative planning with children are brought together effectively, curricu-lum making is an exciting process and informs and enables deeper learning by children in geography.

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Reflecting on this discussion, there are features of engagement and practice in curriculum making which emerge for teachers generally to take into account in their curriculum making. These are drawn from the approach advocated by the GA and from the curriculum dynamics which were identified in the teachers’ perspectives on their practice. The first four reflect particular aspects of teachers’ attitudes as essential underpin-nings for curriculum making. The second six emphasise decision-making and organisational aspects as essential to effective curriculum making practices. While not suggested to be original, these features support sev-eral aspects of the UK Teaching, Learning and Research Programme’s espoused 10 principles (James & Pollard, 2012), characteristics of active learning (Monk & Silman, 2011) and a range of elements of effective ped-agogic practice (Hattie, 2009, 2012; Leach & Moon, 2008). The 10 fea-tures are expressed directly to reflect the potentially important role they contribute to effective curriculummaking. Attitudes underpinning curriculum making Be confident in yourself as a curriculum maker. This involves appreci-ating the value of working from the focus and plan of a topic to look for the opportunities it presents; seeking proposals and ideas from all in the class to discuss and lead to decisions, to appreciate that being open-minded involves a capacity to take risks, and to remain flexible to exploit thoughtfully unrecognised possibilities that arise; and being active as a curriculummaker. Be confident in yourself as a teacher. This involves using the skills of listening, hearing, observing and seeing as well as of leading and responding, in order to be able to direct and intervene to encourage and promote understanding of subject ideas and to support child-ren’s ways of learning. Be confident in and inclusive of the children. This involves valuing what children bring to the classroom and the topics they study; har-nessing their enthusiasm and interests; engaging them in discussion and decision-making; involving them in planning and organising themes, foci for study and activities for investigation, analysis, evalu-ation and communication; and working with them as active curricu-lum agents. Be active in your development of your subject understanding. This involves developing and deepening your knowledge of the subject areas and topics you teach; responding to children’s enquiries by investigating with them to broaden your knowledge, understanding and skills; and being an appreciative learner of knowledge, to encourage its reflection by the children.

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Decision-making and organisational aspects of curriculum making Be clear about the purposes of the topics you study. This involves hav-ing a clear sense of direction, based on evident intentions shared and discussed with the children; keeping these uppermost and evaluating them together periodically; being open to additional lines of enquiry and/or a change in direction if the study rationally warrants these. Limit your planning. This involves planning for the medium term partially, not fully; identifying and setting lines of intent and goals; being open-minded to ideas, opportunities and possibilities; being flexible, ready to adapt the focus of study and open new avenues where this is potentially beneficial to do. Recognise and draw upon children’s subject potential and engage-ment. This involves using elicitation, sharing, planning and organi-sational activities to draw in children’s subject, for instance geographical, understanding to the topic of study; working with the children to consider, explain and justify what their knowledge can contribute and to provide insights into both what they know and their misconceptions, how these shape their sense of the subject and what uses their contributions can provide; raising with them new lines of subject enquiry, as well as the gaps in their knowledge, and encouraging them to investigate; and involving the children in reflecting on and evaluating their understandings of subjects and areas of learning. Look always to use and extend your repertoire of teaching skills. This involves choosing wisely to select effective teaching strategies and approaches; taking opportunities to trial approaches new to yourself and the children, being open with them that you want their feedback (as well as that of colleagues you share your ideas with), as well as undertaking self-evaluation; encouraging the children to offer ideas about and undertake teaching tasks and activities as part of the class topic; encouraging and supporting their ideas but engaging them in critical examination of their proposals; working with the children, to provide guidance and direction for their learning; ensuring they jus-tify and explain what they plan to do, reflect on it periodically and evaluate it afterwards; and seeking to make future use of, adapt or reject teaching techniques that you try out. Provide active and experiential learning. This involves teaching inside and outside the classroom, engaging the children practically with the topic; focusing to ensure that the topics studied have meaning for and impact on the children; and engaging the children in planning and risk assessment. Be open to discussion and debate. This involves making your curricu-lum a ‘conversation’, as an active dialogue; being responsive and

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proactive to challenges; being creative; being willing to take risks and to diverge; and reflecting critically on potential lines of develop-ment, with the children. Conclusion Curriculum making is the translation of and transition from school cur-riculum directions, requirements and schemes into classroom lessons. It is a loose rather than tight approach providing for evolving lesson planning and activities. It is exploratory and discretionary while having direction, works within a timescale rather than to a timetable, is based on proactive thinking and decision-making, and is rational, justifiable and defendable. Curriculummaking is proactive and enactive, is purposeful, engaging and rigorous, and is flexible and open to justified divergence. It requires thor-ough reflection on and evaluation of its process and its practice, with the children, to enable progress in their learning and in teachers’ teaching. Curriculum making returns agency to primary teachers as professional decision-makers in their own classrooms, while engaging children’s agency in their learning. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, this study has supported the centrality of the principal elements of curriculum making: the vitality of teachers’ subject knowledge, the value and importance of children’s subject-related experience and developing understanding, and the role which teachers’ pedagogic knowledge and choices play. Its limitation is that it expresses this support only from a small-scale investigation of teachers’ perspectives on their experience. Yet this is an aspect of recent study in curriculum making which has been under-pursued. Future studies need to engage more with the practices of curriculum making, both teachers’ and children’s, to explore further, even chal-lenge, findings that have been noted here and elsewhere. Nonetheless, while undertaken with confident teachers, the Young Geographers Project has provided insights which stress the potential of an open and inclusive approach to medium-term planning in the classroom. It has identified a number of aspects which might be investigated further through curriculum making as praxis. In an evolving curriculum con-text in primary schools (Oates, James, Pollard, & Wiliam, 2011) these aspects might be useful to take into account in developing practice within what may at the same time be both a directed and a more open primary curriculum environment. Acknowledgements

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