30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)
Paper
Understanding Geography Education’s Indispensable Role in Developing Knowledge, Understanding and Criticality for Action Competence for the Future of the Planet
Sally Windsor1, Jeana Kriewaldt2
1Gothenburg University, Sw, Sweden; 2Melbourne University, Vic, Australia
Presenting Author: Windsor, Sally
In this theoretical paper we draw on the concepts of powerful knowledge (Muller & Young, 2019; Muller, 2023; Young & Muller, 2013) and powerful pedagogies (Roberts, 2017) to argue that school geography curriculum is a key site to develop structured teaching programmes for students to extend their knowledge and act as citizens for a sustainable future. We argue that Geography education uniquely opens up opportunities for action with its focus on place-based experiences, that centre students’ schools and their communities. We posit that while important, merely identifying powerful knowledge in geography is not enough, teachers must also engage with geographical ‘powerful pedagogies’ (Roberts, 2017; 2023). Geography as a discipline holds a critical role when it comes to sustainability and education for the future as it makes the links between people and the environment clearly visible, opening their eyes to the bigger picture. Yet for Geography to be a discipline that is powerful for students to navigate their current and future life-worlds it must encompasses action through fieldwork and incorporate dialogue between students, teachers, experts and the public that focus on perspectives and possibilities for praxis – action for the good of humankind (Kemmis, 2023; Mahon, 2020).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis research is a conceptual exploration of powerful knowledge within the context of geography education to demonstrate its influence in shaping a more sustainable future. Acknowledging the abstract nature of the subject matter, our methodology explores and synthesises literature of key theoretical constructs of powerful knowledge, powerful pedagogical practices and praxis. The aim is to unravel the intricacies through a (novel) theoretical lens, providing a nuanced understanding that extends beyond empirical evidence.
Our approach began with a comprehensive literature review, drawing from seminal works and use the contemporary perspective of the theory of practice architectures (TPA- Kemmis et al, 2014) to offer a new standpoint that connects the constructs. The TPA serves as the foundation for our exploration to offer a fresh theorising about how powerful pedagogical practices can help to induct pupils into characteristic ways of thinking, saying, doing and relating. This methodological choice allows us to transcend the confines of empirical research methods, opening avenues for new lines of enquiry and critical thinking. By engaging with diverse scholarly perspectives, this research aspires to offer a comprehensive and nuanced conceptual understanding that probes the boundaries of empirical scholarship.
Our methodology, a collaborative approach based on many professional conversations over the years, incorporates a synthesis of divergent conceptual perspectives with the analytical framework of the TPA. By bringing these together we offer an integrative synthesis that not only contributes to the theoretical discourse but also offers a platform for generating novel insights and hypotheses. This collaborative approach ensures a multifaceted examination of our evolving conceptual framework, enriching our understanding and refining our interpretations. In conclusion, our methodology is firmly non-empirical to navigate the abstract terrain of geography education in the powerful knowledge debate to offer a new synthesis of theories connecting curriculum, practice architectures and praxis/action for the future.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsAs educators, we must better understand how to empower young people to be able to access and contribute to powerful knowledge that helps explain and understand the natural and social worlds. Further, we want to equip younger generations to be able to recognise misinformation so they can influence debates to foster a better future in a world grappling with climate change, social inequality and devastating conflicts. In this presentation we argue that geography education, when it incorporates both powerful knowledge and powerful pedagogical practices, is well positioned to engage students in thinking and acting for the good of humankind and, importantly, every other living and non-living thing on the planet -and indeed, the planet itself (Authors, 2023).
The theory of practice architectures has provided us a framework to bring together the concepts of powerful geographical knowledge and powerful geographical pedagogical practices for a sustainable future, which is evidence of the notion of geography as a fertile ground for critical educational praxis (Mahon et al. 2020). Critical educational praxis is the action that is driven by knowledge and understanding and a commitment to what is good (Authors, 2023). Geography has an indispensable place in school education to develop knowledge, understanding and criticality for action competence for the future of the planet (Authors, 2023).
ReferencesAuthors (2023)
Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. Springer Science & Business Media.
Mahon, K., Heikkinen, H. L., Huttunen, R., Boyle, T., & Sjølie, E. (2020). What Is Educational Praxis? In Pedagogy, education, and praxis in critical times (pp. 15-38). Springer.
Muller, Johan. (2023). Powerful knowledge, disciplinary knowledge, curriculum knowledge: Educational knowledge in question. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education. 32:1, 20-34. https://doi-org.ezproxy.ub.gu.se/10.1080/10382046.2022.2058349
Muller, J., & Young, M. (2019). Knowledge, power and powerful knowledge re-visited. The Curriculum Journal, 30(2), 196-214. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/09585176.2019.1570292
Roberts, M. (2017). Geographical education is powerful if. Teaching geography, 42(1), 6-9.
Roberts, M. (2023). Powerful pedagogies for the school geography curriculum. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 32(1), 69-84. https://doi.org/10.1080/10382046.2022.2146840
Young, Michael &Johan Muller. 2013. On the powers of powerful knowledge. Review of Education, 1:3, 229–250. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3017
30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)
Paper
Powerful Knowledge in Geography Education: towards a critical appraisal
Jesus Granados Sanchez1, Alan Reid2
1University of Girona; 2Monash University, Australia
Presenting Author: Granados Sanchez, Jesus;
Reid, Alan
INTRODUCTION
The idea of ‘powerful knowledge’ is heavily associated with the scholarship, students and interlocuters of Michael Young (e.g. 2009, 2013a, 2013b). It has generated much debate in recent years in the field of education, including in geography education. While it is an attractive and promising idea, it can also be subject to critique. In this paper we explore the main lines of critique by way of the following questions:
1. What is meant by powerful knowledge for teachers and students?
2. What is powerful geographical knowledge?
3. What might a powerful geography education be?
4. How might we evaluate the claim that it powerful knowledge benefits students of geography in schools?
Our full paper is structured into four corresponding sections. Each section presents a synthesis of the debates and contributions that have been made in recent years regarding the meaning of powerful knowledge and its use and development in the field of geography education. (llustrative extracts are included below.)
The first section introduces the origin of the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ and includes the main criticisms raised in debate in recent years (e.g. Beck 2013, Biesta 2014, Young et al. 2015, Muller & Young 2015, Deng 2021, 2022). The next provides a contemporary definition of what the notion of ‘powerful geographical knowledge’ implies (see Béneker & van der Vaart 2020, Bladh 2020, Roberts 2014), including its relevance to companion fields, such as environmental and sustainability education (see Mitchell 2022, Reid 2018). The third focuses on whether and how we can talk about a powerful geography education (drawing on Biddulph et al. 2020, Boehm et al 2018, Maude 2018, Slater et al. 2016). The fourth includes the importance of research on students’ learning and how teaching and curriculum are decisive for concluding that the knowledge they may deploy or acquire is ‘powerful’ (Bouwmans & Béneker 2018, Catling & Martin, 2017, Hordern 2021, Gericke et al. 2018, Virranmäki 2022).
ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF ‘POWERFUL KNOWLEDGE’
For this proposal, we note Young (2009) approached the concept from a curriculum studies perspective in an effort to restore attention to the importance of knowledge in curriculum development and learning, e.g. during 'curriculum making' by practitioners. A key argument revolves around the fundamental role that an agreed curriculum (e.g. national or state), plays in promoting social justice, as well as framing who makes curriculum within particulary parameters, or tries to subvert or repurpose this (Roberts 2014). According to Young, while there are young people who, due to their particular social situation and standing, will have access to knowledge, there are others who will not (see Deng 2022). Therefore, the school has a duty to combat this inequality by offering all students access to the best possible knowledge, in others words, a 'powerful knowledge' that is true, trustworthy, and valuable.
Much of the academic debate about powerful knowledge has focused on elucidating what is meant by ‘powerful’, critiquing that and suggesting alternatives. Young (2014, 74), for example, distinguished three characteristics of powerful knowledge: 1) It is different from everyday knowledge, 2) It is produced in specialized scientific communities; and 3) It is systematically categorized into the concepts that are part of the disciplines. For Young (2013b), it is necessary to recover the content of the subjects and teach the most strategic and valuable knowledge of each discipline so that students can gain an idea of how the world works. Muller and Young (2019) state that this knowledge can be found in school subjects since these are taught according to the canons of their reference disciplines, and thus create a 'knowledge-rich curriculum' too.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedFor geography education, Maude (2016) suggests this should be both grounded and pushed further by focusing attention on the quality of knowledge and whether it is reliable, fallible, and demonstrable. Moreover, in relation to quality, powerful knowledge should be the best knowledge that has been generated so far in each discipline to explain reality that can be comprehended and engaged at school level. A second way to explain powerful knowledge then is through what it allows students who possess it to do in a shared reality – the sphere of social justice. Criticisms of this conception centred around curricular aspects include the lack of specificity (Slater et al 2015); ambiguities in the terms and relations between powerful, systematic and specialised (Hordern 2021); the risk of depersonalising what is learnt by diverse students (Catling & Martin 2017) and downplaying personal knowledge and experience (Roberts 2014).
TOWARDS DEFINING A POWERFUL GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION
Béneker and Van Der Vaart (2020) affirm that geographical knowledge offers a set of essential “lenses” to look at and interpret the world around us, a theme familiar to the Geocapabilities project (Mitchell 2022). It provides a necessary perspective to understand many of the world's great problems and phenomena. In light of this, Maude (2018) proposes a powerful school geographical education fosters geographical knowledge that:
- provides students with new ways of thinking about the world,
- allows us to understand, explain and analyse the world in a powerful way,
- gives students a certain power over their own knowledge,
- allows people to participate in debates on significant problems, at all scales (from local, to national and global),
- shows how the world works (e.g. economically, politically, socially and environmentally).
In other words, engagement with powerful geographical knowledge makes possible the discovery of new ways of thinking; a better understanding and explanations of how natural systems and society work; and thinking about alternative futures, including what we can do to influence them, having power over what one knows, and being able to participate in important debates that go beyond one's own personal experience, situation and horizons.
...
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsCombining this with Virranmäki (2022), we can anticipate classroom and fieldwork activities in geography education designed and structured around outcomes involving creating, applying, analysing, evaluating and understanding. These necessitate engaging students in assessing (i) current and new ways of thinking about the world and their worlds, (ii) tools for explaining how the world works, (iii) the power they have through a geographical education to go beyond what they already know, (iv) the capabilities that have to argue, debate and participate in the resolution of significant issues at all scales.
SUBJECT-BASED AND ADJECTIVAL EDUCATIONS
As discussed elsewhere, we note these features are also expected in quality environmental and sustainability education (Reid 2018). They are also recommended as features in UNESCO (2021) "Learn for Our Planet. Act for Responsibility. Berlin Declaration on Education for Sustainable Development", and UNESCO's (2017) "Education for Sustainable Development Goals: learning objectives", but neither reference a powerful knowledge framework as a key method, facilitator or priority for curriculum development ...
CONCLUSIONS
Biesta (2015) proposes the idea that we move from a vision of survival to that of living with meaning when assessing 'why teaching matters'. In this, education could be deemed 'powerful' if students are involved in their learning, but it also requires them to be interested in what they learn, involved in decisions about what they learn, and developing agency in the learning process. In short, what counts as powerful education is the ability to live in a dynamic world as an engaged and engaging global citizen, where connections are created between acquired knowledge and scales of analysis, as well as interconnections between people and spaces. For geography in schools, it is about developing skills and competencies to understand oneself, the places diverse people occupy in society and environments, as well as understanding other people and cultures. ...
ReferencesBeck, J. (2013) Powerful knowledge, esoteric knowledge, curriculum knowledge, Cambridge Journal of Education, 43(2), 177-193.
Béneker, T. & van der Vaart, R. (2020) The knowledge curve: combining types of knowledges leads to powerful thinking, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education (IRGEE), 29(3), 221-231.
Biddulph, M. et al. (2020) Teaching powerful geographical knowledge – a matter of social justice: initial findings from the GeoCapabilities 3 project, IRGEE, 29(3), 260-274.
Biesta, G. (2015) What is education for? On good education, teacher judgement, and educational professionalism, European Journal of Education 50(1), 449-461.
Bladh, G. (2020) GeoCapabilities, didaktical analysis and curriculum thinking – furthering the dialogue between Didaktik and curriculum, IRGEE, 29(3), 206-220.
Boehm, R.G., et al. (2018) The Rise of Powerful Geography, The Social Studies, 109(2), 125-135.
Bouwmans, M. & Béneker, T. (2018) Identifying powerful geographical knowledge in integrated curricula in Dutch schools. London Review of Education (LRE), 16(3), 445–459.
Catling, S. & Martin, F. (2017) Contesting powerful knowledge: The primary geography curriculum as an articulation between academic and children’s (ethno-) geographies. Curriculum Journal, 22(3), 317-335.
Deng, Z. (2021) Powerful knowledge, transformations and didaktik/curriculum thinking. British Educational Research Journal, 47(6), 1652–1674.
Deng, Z. (2022) Powerful knowledge, educational potential, and knowledge-rich curriculum: pushing the boundaries. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 54(5), 599-617.
Gericke, N., et al. (2018). Powerful knowledge, transformations and the need for empirical studies across school subjects. LRE, 16(3), 428-44.
Hordern, J. (2021) Specialized, systematic and powerful knowledge. LRE, 19(1), 1-11.
Maude, A. (2018) Geography and powerful knowledge: a contribution to the debate. IRGEE, 27(2), 179-190.
Mitchell, D. (2022) GeoCapabilities 3—knowledge and values in education for the Anthropocene. IRGEE, 31(4), 265-281.
Muller, J. & Young, M. (2019) Knowledge, power and powerful knowledge re-visited. Curriculum Journal, 30(2), 196-214.
Reid, A. (ed) (2018) Curriculum and Environmental Education. Routledge.
Roberts, M. (2014) Powerful knowledge and geographical education, The Curriculum Journal, 25:2, 187-209.
Slater, F., et al. (2016) Editorial. IRGEE 25(3), 189-194.
Virranmäki, E. (2022) Geography’s ability to enhance powerful thinking skills and knowledge. Nordia Geographical Publications, 51(1), 1-78.
Young, M. (2009) Education, globalisation and the “voice of knowledge. Journal of Education and Work, 22(3), 193-204.
Young, M. (2013a) Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: A knowledge-based approach. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(2), 101–18.
Young, M. (2013b) Powerful knowledge: an analytically useful concept or just a ‘sexy sounding term’? Cambridge Journal of Education, 43(2), 195-198.
Young, M., et al. (2015) Knowledge and the Future School. Bloomsbury.
30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)
Paper
How Socio-Scientific Inquiry-Based Learning in Communities of Practice Fosters Students’ Science Attitudes and Action Competence For Sustainability
Jelle Boeve-de Pauw1,2, Mart Doms2, Marie-Christine Knippels1, Andri Christodoulou3
1Utrecht University, Freudenthal Institute; 2Karel de Grote University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Research Center for Future Driven Education; 3University of Southampton, Education School
Presenting Author: Boeve-de Pauw, Jelle
In the ever-increasing VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex & ambiguous; Bennet & Lemoine, 2014) reality of societies across Europe and beyond, there is a strong need for scientifically literate citizens who are willing and able to contribute to a more sustainable future. Education is seen by many as one of the key factors that can and should contribute to this goal. SDG4.7 explicitly addresses the need to equip all learners with competences that allow them to be(come) active and responsible citizens. SSIBL (Socio-Scientific Inquiry-Based Learning) is a pedagogy that aims to foster responsible citizenship by connecting inquiry driven by socio-scientific issues (SSI) and taking responsible action (Levinson, 2018). In the Horizon2020 project COSMOS, we aim to support schools in their development towards openness (Sarid et al., 2023) by connecting science education to learners’ real lives and stakeholders beyond school walls. An approach combing SSIBL and Communities of Practice (CoP) is central.
SSIBL combines citizenship education, SSI-based education and inquiry-based learning, in an attempt to promote science in, with and for society underpinned by the responsible research and innovation (RRI) principles of social desirability, ethical acceptability, and sustainability (Levison, 2018). SSIBL consists of three concrete didactical stages: (1) ASK: raising authentic questions through salient SSIs that require a solution; (2) FIND OUT: explore and find answers to these questions through social, personal and scientific inquiry; (3) ACT: collectively taking responsible action towards addressing the SSI (Knippels & van Harskamp, 2018). The focus of SSIBL on identifying solutions through personally-relevant inquiries fosters collective work by students and teachers to address issues relevant to them and their communities.
A CoP is characterised by joint enterprise, which is agreed and negotiated through collective participation and mutual engagement using a shared repertoire of resources co-created over time (e.g., language, values), created when individuals work together within a certain set of social norms and routines and thus develop a shared way of seeing, doing and being, a shared practice (Wenger, 1999). Using SSIBL to learn and mitigate against local, relevant SSIs and contributing to the community can demonstrate the relevance of science to all participating members, creating common ground for collaboration and shared learning, and thus supporting the development of CoPs within these social settings.
The COSMOS project seeks to explore opportunities to include stakeholders in SSIs (teachers, students, families, scientists, companies, science centres) creating CoP (Wenger, 1999) that collaboratively work towards addressing SSIs through implementing SSIBL in their science education. Through this, we aim to empower teachers with the competency to build their students’ learning of science attitudes as well as their action competence in sustainable development (Sass et al., 2020). Engaging students in SSIBL inherently provides a powerful formative educational experience for science learning and for experiencing the relevance of science to the lives of students, their peers and their families. Employing SSIBL also supports the development of students as personally responsible and justice-oriented citizens (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004). The aim for change in students’ attitudes towards science as well as their action competence in sustainable development, enables students to critically engage with local, global and intercultural issues, understand and appreciate different perspectives, interact respectfully with others, and take responsible action towards sustainability and well-being.
We hypothesize that SSIBL’s explicit focus on scientific, social and personal inquiry and its orientation towards learners’ deliberate action taking, combined with the real-world and collaborative nature of the CoP approach, are a potent mixture to drive student learning. Our central research question in the current proposal is, therefore: What is the impact of SSIBL-CoP implementation on students’ attitudes towards science and action competence?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedResearch context, data collection. COSMOS aims at supporting open schooling . Teacher teams from primary and secondary schools from the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Portugal, the UK and Israel are supported to implement SSIBL-CoP into their science education, in two rounds of professional development and implementation in practice. The current proposal works with the student data collected from the first implementation round. In total, 480 students from 12 schools participated in online pre-post surveys, complemented with 27 semi-structured group interviews. Data was collected before and within two weeks after SSIBL-CoP implementations. Most implementations centered around environmental and/or sustainability issues.
Surveys. The students’ learning outcomes were assessed by using two commonly applied validated quantitative measurement instruments: the Pupils’ Attitudes Towards Technology/Science (PATT; Ardies et al., 2014), and the Self-Perceived Action Competence Scale (SPACS; Olsson et al., 2020). While the first taps into students’ science career aspirations, interest in science, tediousness of science, gendered science views, relevance and perceived difficulty, the latter taps into students’ self-perceptions of how much they know about contributing to sustainability, their self-effectiveness and willingness to act towards sustainability. Each of these concepts is measured through a minimum of three items on a 5-point Likert-scale.
Interviews. The survey data were supported by qualitative data using semi-structured group interviews with three students per project implementation. The group interviews provide extra information on the effect of the SSIBL-CoP-implementation on students, in more particular the experience of the pedagogical processes within the implementation and its influence on their attitudes towards science and action competence.
Data analyses. We used personal identifiers of individual students within schools to track the students’ responses to the surveys across time. Given the limited number of schools in the first implementation round, the current data analyses apply repeated measures t-tests to study differences pre-post implementation. By the time of the presentation itself, the second implementation round will have passed, and more advanced data analyses will be possible. For the group interviews, we conducted a synthesis in the form of a deductive thematic analysis. We structured our inquiry using the concepts of the modified version of the PATT (Ardies et al., 2014) and the SPACS (Olsson et al., 2020) as potential themes in our analysis.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsFindings.The current quantitative results show differences pre-post implementation for some of the subscales of the two main learning outcomes targeted. Overall, the current intermediate results after one round of professional development and implementation of SSIBL-CoP , show small to moderate effects (Cohen’s d < 0.5) in terms of the students’ interest in science and perceived relevance of science. No overall effects were observed for the students’ science career aspirations, gendered views of science, perceived tediousness and difficulty of science. In terms of action competence, the intermediate results point out small to moderate effects (Cohen’s d < 0.5) in terms of confidence in their own influence to contribute to a more sustainable world as well as their willingness to act accordingly. No overall effect was observed for the student’s self-perceived knowledge of action possibilities. Analyses of the group interviews are ongoing, and will be included in the presentation at ECER.
Conclusions. Across the 12 schools that participated in the first implementation round, students report increased interest in science as well as attributing increased relevance to science. The initial results also show that implementing SSIBL-CoP, in which schools specifically work on real world SSI, apply scientific, social and personal inquiry, and collaborate with stakeholders in that SSI, positively impact students’ confidence in in their own influence and their willingness to act towards sustainability. It is important to stress that these are initial results, and they are aggregated across all the schools in the sample. Differences among schools will exist, e.g. pertaining to the educational level (primary and secondary), the type of education offered at the schools (academic or vocational), and the implementation fidelity of the SSIBL-CoP approach. After the second implementation round, we will be able to address such differences in more detail.
ReferencesArdies, J., De Maeyer, D., Gijbels, S., & Van Keulen, H. (2014). Students’ attitudes towards technology. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 25(1), 43-65.
Bennet, N., & Lemoine, G.J. (2014). What a difference a world makes: Understanding threats to performance in a VUCA world. Business Horizons, 57(3), 311-317.
Knippels, M.C., & Van Harskamp, M., (2018). An educational sequence for implementing socio-scientific inquiry-based learning (SSIBL). School Science Review, 100, 46-52.
Levinson, R. (2018). Introducing socio-scientific inquiry-based learning (SSIBL). School Science Review, 100(371), 31-35.
Olsson, D., Gericke, N., Sass, W., & Boeve-de Pauw, J., (2020). Self-perceived action competence for sustainability: The theoretical grounding and empirical validation of a novel research instrument. Environmental Education Research, 26(5), 742-760.
Sass, W., Boeve-de Pauw, J., Olsson, D., Gericke, N., De Maeyer, S., & Van Petegem, P. (2020). Redefining action competence: The case of sustainable development. The Journal of Environmental Education, 51(4), 292–305.
Wenger, E. (1999). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press.
Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 237-269.
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