Understanding and Teaching Primary Geography

Simon Catling is Assistant Dean of the Westminster Institute of Education at Oxford Brookes University. He spent many years as a classroom teacher in primary schools in London before moving into teacher education, where he has worked with primary trainee teachers as geography tutor. His recent research has been in such areas as children’s understanding of geography, the state of primary geography and the provision of geography in primary teacher training courses. He has run many primary geography workshops and extended geography in-service courses. He has written widely on geography in primary education, including regularly in Primary Geographer. He is author of Placing Places and the Mapstart series Tessa Willy has been Associate Professor, School Director of Teacher Education at Kingston University, UK, since early 2018. She spent the first years of her career as both a primary school teacher in a variety of different settings across the UK and a secondary-school geography teacher in the UK as well as in Malawi. Moving into higher education, she worked as senior lecturer in primary geography at the University of Roehampton, UK, where she developed an outdoor environmental area with colleagues and students that has been used as a model in initial teacher education and continuing professional development for teachers. Tessa′s areas of particular interest are in issues around the ethics of geography, notably climate change, sustainability, social justice and global citizenship. Tessa is been a member of the Editorial Board of the Geographical Association’s journal Primary Geography and has edited several issues

This is a sizeable tome that will make an excellent staffroom resource so all teachers can follow the guidance set out by the book. Sadly, geography is a subject that can be sidelined but it is important for children as geography shapes the world around us and is an essential part of everyday life - it′s also an absorbing subject which children enjoy for its relevance to themselves. This book emphasises and facilitates good teaching of primary geography to extend children′s world awareness and help them make connections between their own environmental and geographical experiences; the case studies are especially helpful for this.

• IntroductionPART 1: Understanding primary geographyGeography in primary schoolsValuing geography; the importance and nature of geographyChildren’s geographies: experience, awareness and understandingExploring places; key ideas in understanding placesUnderstanding the environment: aspects of physical, human and environmental geographyExploring sustainability: environmental impact, sustainability and sustainable schoolsGeography and social justice: citizenship, equity and controversial issuesUnderstanding geographical enquiryExperiencing and visualising geography: fieldwork, photographs, artefacts and mapsPART 2: Exploring geography teaching and curriculumIn the beginning: geographical learning in the early yearsInvestigating the school and its groundsExploring locally, regionally and nationallyExploring global dimensions and places elsewhere in the worldPlanning primary geography teachingAssessing geographical learningDeveloping learning in primary geography educationAppendices