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Martin Sutton writes about his Highly Commended dissertation, submitted as part of his MAEd (Geography) from UCL Institute of Education.

Teaching about summative assessment with trainee teachers has long intrigued me, especially the tension between accurately assessing work and the inherent challenges that any assessment process can entail. My interest in geography assessment, coupled with my joint roles of being both a PGCE teacher educator and also a secondary school geography teacher, meant that I could draw upon both perspectives to inform my research. I have often wondered how trainee teachers are ‘taught’ to summatively assess work and how well they can transfer what they have learned into practice.

Popham (2011, p.267) used the phrase ‘assessment literacy’ to describe the understanding and ability of an educator to grapple with the theoretical and practical demands of this field. This study set out to investigate assessment literacy with both trainees and also their school mentors. The relationship between mentor and trainee is well researched (Lord, Atkinson & Mitchell, 2008; Rehman & Al-Bargi, 2014; Roberts, 2019; Healy et al. 2022). The mentoring role is clearly valued by the DfE, who have constructed non-statutory Mentor Standards (DfE, 2016) which stipulate that trainees should receive support from mentors around assessment and marking. My research addressed how this mentor-trainee interaction worked in terms of summative assessment literacy.

Lambert (2011, p.5) summarises the geography assessment landscape when he claims that “assessing progress is particularly challenging in a subject like geography which is not learned in a cumulative or linear sequence.” This is a notion to which many classroom teachers can empathise with. The interconnectedness of the subject has been widely agreed upon from Massey’s “a sense of the global” (2014, p.36) with porous boundaries, to Jackson’s “geographies of connection” (2006, p.199). It is this synoptic characteristic which makes assessing progress in the acquisition of knowledge and skills a demanding task, as the Geographical Association has for many years attempted to clarify (GA undated).

The discussion around formative assessment (for learning, rather than of learning) is a well-trodden path. Black and Wiliam’s (1998) seminal meta-analysis of assessment for learning, sparked the publication of geography specific assessment research, by Weedon and Lambert (2006). They champion the use of formative feedback in a subject specific context and point to further work that suggests that feedback should not be accompanied by a mark or grade (Butler, 1987). In line with work of their predecessors (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Bloom, 1969; Popham, 2008), Weedon and Lambert (2006) outline the advantages of peer assessment, self-assessment and encouraging the pupils to reflect on their own work (such as the use of traffic lighting their own performance, confidence or knowledge). Pupils were positioned at the heart of the assessment process, in line with later work by Weedon, co-authored with Hopkin (2006; Figure 1). However, there is relatively little literature that concentrates on summative assessment or the assessment of learning (although, see Lambert and Lines, 2000).

Dempsey et al. (2009) identified a clear need for improved assessment skills among trainee teachers and tested a web-based coaching software to address this. They found that by exposing the marker to short prompts and hints, coupled with the marks from peers, could help trainee teachers to better assess children’s work at a primary school level. Inspired by their work, my study investigated whether a similar tool could benefit UK trainee geography teachers and their school mentors.

Considering the time constraints reported by both mentors and trainees, I conducted research to evaluate the potential effectiveness of a web-based solution in this context.  

By using a collection of carefully designed coaching comments, the 15 trainee teachers were exposed to a coaching intervention in an attempt to teach them how to mark examination answers. The trainees were shown an exam answer and asked to suggest both a raw score out of 9 and also a more general level (1-3), based on a rubric written by the exam board. The software then displayed a coaching suggestion for the trainee to read, that was specifically written for the question, prompting them to look at a specific part of the rubric. These statements were written based on the feedback from a cluster of qualified teachers. The trainee then had the option to re-score the answer if they wished to.

The research focused on measuring both the self-efficacy and also the accuracy of the trainees’ marking, across a set of 7 sample GCSE examination answers. Additionally, the views of 37 qualified geography teachers, who all work in teacher teaching, was collected and analysed.

By undertaking a pre- and post-questionnaire, the trainees’ change in self-efficacy was found to have significantly improved (p<0.05). Furthermore, their ‘gain scores’ could be calculated by comparing their judgement before and after the coaching intervention. The trainees were shown to have significantly improved their marking accuracy when they were shown a coaching comment, when they were a mark or more away from the ‘correct’ score (p<=0.01). The teachers were asked for their opinion on the coaching software in comparison to their current practice and reported a strong preference for this novel pedagogy (p<0.05). Although nothing can replace to experience gained through actually becoming an examiner, it appears that this coaching intervention was valued as opening up this particular ‘black box’.

The trainees and teachers cited an increase in independent practice and time efficiency as the two main strengths of the experience. They suggested that the face-to-face element of a post task discussion should be maintained in future practice. The study suggests that online coaching software should be used within the ITT year and additionally across the wider subject community, such as the RGS or the GA, to deliver powerful geography CPD to trainees and qualified teachers.

It has become clear to me that since submitting my dissertation, that there has been a recent explosion in the use of generative Artificial Intelligence in education. It would be perfectly feasible for this technology to be coupled with the software that I have designed, so that the intervention statement given to the trainee was generated by AI, based upon their view of the work itself. This would lead to an exceptionally bespoke supportive prompt that would demand more research and thought into its use in geography education.  

Note: Please feel free to contact the author should you wish to know more about the software that he developed as part of his research. m.sutton@reading.ac.uk

References

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi delta kappan, 92(1), 81-90.

Bloom, B.S. (1969). Some theoretical issues relating to educational evaluation. In Educational evaluation: New roles, new means. The 63rd yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, part 2 (Vol. 69), ed. R.W. Tyler, 26–50. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Butler, R. (1987). Task-involving and ego-involving properties of evaluation: Effects of different feedback conditions on motivational perceptions, interest, and performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 79(4), 474.

Dempsey, M. S., PytlikZillig, L. M., & Bruning, R. H. (2009). Helping preservice teachers learn to assess writing: Practice and feedback in a Web-based environment. Assessing writing, 14(1), 38-61.

DfE (2016). National Standards for school-based initial teacher training (ITT) mentors. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/536891/Mentor_standards_report_Final.pdf (Accessed: 05/06/2024).

Geographical Association (undated) Progression in geographical learning, Geographical Association. https://geography.org.uk › students-learning-in-geography

Jackson, P. (2006). Thinking geographically. Geography, 91(3), 199-204.

Healy, G. Hammond, L., Puttick, S., and Walshe, N. (eds) (2022) Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School. Abingdon: Routledge

Lambert, D. (2011). The Geography National Curriculum: GA curriculum proposals and rationale. Geographical Association. Available at: https://www.geography.org.uk/download/ga_gigcccurriculumproposals.pdf  (Accessed: 05/06/2024).

Lambert, D. and Lines, D. (2000) Understanding Assessment: purposes, perceptions, practice. Abingdon: Routledge

Lord, P., Atkinson, M. and Mitchell, H., (2008). Mentoring and coaching for professionals: A study of the research evidence. Variations, 1(4).

Massey, D. (2014). Taking on the world. Geography, 99(1), 36-39.

Popham, W. J. (2011). Assessment literacy overlooked: A teacher educator’s confession. The Teacher Educator, 46(4), pp.265-273.

Popham, W.J. (2008). Transformative assessment, Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Rehman, A. A. & Al-Bargi, A. (2014). Teachers’ Perspectives on Post Observation Conferences: A Study at a Saudi Arabian University. Theory and practice in Language Studies, 4(8), p.1558.

Roberts, R.L. (2019) in Hickman, D. (ed) Mentoring English teachers in the secondary school: a practical guide. London: Routledge.

Weedon, P., & Lambert, D. (2006). Geography inside the black box: Assessment for learning in the geography classroom. Sheffield: The Geographical Association.

Weedon, P., and Hopkin, J. (2006). Assessment for learning in geography. In Jones, M. (2017). Handbook of Secondary Geography. Geographical Association.

Kenneth Y T Lim, National Institute of Education, Singapore; Bryan Z W Kuok, Independent scholar; Ahmed H Hilmy, National Institute of Education, Singapore

Introduction

By their very nature, virtual environments and immersive worlds suggest affordances for learning that geography educators have been particularly suited to speak towards, not least of which being the potential for dynamic, embodied, and multisensory learning experiences to sit alongside field studies in the physical world.  Such environments and their associated technologies are not new, having been marketed to consumers since at least the mid-2000s – and earlier if panoramic photographs are included.

Virtual environments are, however, enjoying a recent resurgence of interest (see, for example, Zhao, et al., 2021), not only because of the recent pandemic but because of the introduction of the mixed reality headset from Apple in February 2024. In its rhetoric of marketing, the company is advancing the paradigm of what it terms ‘spatial computing’.

In this essay, we share our early thoughts on the extent to which the spatiality of ‘spatial computing’ is a gimmick or something that might potentially whet the appetite of geography educators and our associated research community.

The surfacing of geographical intuitions

In the course of a typical school day, members of the school community – staff and students alike – traverse the campus several times a day, sometimes being exposed directly to the elements, while at other times in the shade. The paths we take as we traverse our campuses reflect our tacit responses to such exposure (Lim, et al. 2024). Through our own bodily experience, we therefore develop over time a textured map of our respective school campuses, which in turn influences our decision-making in subconscious ways.

Perhaps a signifier of the skilful teacher is how to design for opportunities for such tacit ‘geographical’ knowledge to be made more explicit, in order for students to connect their everyday embodied lived experiences in authentic ways with the formal codified domain knowledge of the classroom.

The moves we choose to make in our learning environments are constrained by a number of factors, one of which is the effective management of multiple digital devices during our lessons. We do not say this as shorthand for blind advocacy of affording each student access to their own device at all times – while there be some advantages to this, this model has its concomitant implications for classroom management. However, we see tremendous opportunities in digital tools that can serve as creative canvases for students to express their often nascent understandings of geographical concepts. For example, students could manipulate terrain in an immersive environment to depict features such as a river delta. These digital artefacts can then serve as focal points for teacher-facilitated classroom discussions, helping students connect geographical concepts with their own lived experiences.

On Collaborative Observation

In 2015, we published a paper (Cho & Lim, 2015) in the British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET) in which we advanced a pedagogical strategy we termed Collaborative Observation, as part of our work on the Six Learnings curriculum design framework (Lim, 2009). In this paper, we addressed the problem of how teachers could effectively manage and scaffold the learning experiences of pupils in large classes (typically, forty pupils per class), particularly when the learners are operating as avatars in an immersive environment. In that paper, we compared three different conditions, namely learners in a 1:1 ratio with a computer, learners in a 1:40 ratio sharing the use of a single computer, and traditional didactic instruction. With regard to the latter, we advanced the case for Collaborative Observation: namely, learners in a 1:40 ratio sharing the use of a single computer.

Learner-Generated Augmentation

In 2020, we followed up with a second paper in BJET, this time describing the construct of what we term as Learner-Generated Augmentation (Lim & Lim, 2020). The latter

describes activities in which learners use Augmented Reality (AR) tools to annotate their local environments, giving teachers better insight into which aspects of their surroundings students find significant and meaningful. In this context, ‘augmentation’ refers to the addition of digital information onto the physical environment through AR technology. Through this process, students can express their emerging understandings of a topic by linking digital content to personally meaningful elements in their physical environment.

For example, a student learning about local history might choose to digitally annotate a site within the neighbourhood with historical information, while the teacher may have chosen to augment the town hall instead. More often than not the elements in their environments which novices might choose to annotate would be different from those which the teacher (as domain expert) might choose. In the hands of a skilled teacher, such differences represent rich opportunities for discussion and mutual learning. Learner-Generated Augmentation acknowledges where the learners are coming from, helps make their otherwise tacit conceptions more visible to the teacher, and has applications in the sciences as well as in the humanities. For instance, in a geography lesson about their local community, students could be tasked with creating augmented reality annotations on a map to highlight landmarks, infrastructure, or environmental features that are personally significant to them. This would surface the students’ mental models of their neighbourhood to the teacher. The resulting student-created AR content could then serve as boundary objects for class discussion and collaborative knowledge building.

Spatial computing and its implications for geography education

The two papers published in 2015 and 2020 explored pedagogical strategies founded on distinct premises and contexts. Collaborative Observation, as described in the 2015 paper, involved multiple learners observing an expert (the teacher) perform a task in a virtual world, then collaboratively discussing and solving related problems. In contrast, the Learner-Generated Augmentation approach introduced in the 2020 paper tasked learners themselves with creating augmented reality artifacts to represent their emerging understanding of a topic, situated in personally meaningful real-world contexts.

While these two approaches may seem conceptually oppositional in terms of who generates the virtual / augmented content (expert vs learner) and the technology used (virtual world vs AR), the affordances of the Apple Vision Pro allow for a convergence of these premises and contexts. The device’s advanced AR capabilities enable both expert-led demonstrations akin to Collaborative Observation and learner-driven creation as in Learner-Generated Augmentation, all within the learner’s immediate environment. This fusion is enabled by what Apple refers to as the paradigm of ‘spatial computing’.

‘Spatial computing’ refers to the ability of devices like the Vision Pro to understand and interact with the user’s surrounding physical space, blending digital content seamlessly with the real world. It leverages technologies such as advanced computer vision, real-time 3D mapping, and gesture- / eye-tracking to create immersive mixed reality experiences anchored to the user’s environment.

‘Spatial computing’ technologies like the Vision Pro foreground the role of the body in meaning-making and creative expression. By allowing learners to engage with digital content overlaid on their physical surroundings, these devices facilitate an embodied, multisensory approach to learning that bridges the physical and psychological dimensions. Learners can leverage natural interactions and familiar environmental cues to construct personally relevant understandings, moving fluidly between consuming and producing knowledge artifacts in a shared hybrid space.

As a wearable, the Vision Pro lends itself naturally to the notion of embodiment, in that – in such cases – the learners’ auditory and visual sensory inputs are augmented by the affordances of whatever apps the learners are using, but also that the apps have a certain degree of geospatial permanence within the augmented world of the learner. The advanced AR capabilities of the device enable both peer-led demonstrations akin to Collaborative Observation and learner-driven creation as in Learner-Generated Augmentation, all within the learner’s immediate environment. There are competing technologies such as the Meta Quest 3 which is primarily focused on immersive VR experiences and Microsoft’s Hololens, although this appears to have more limited AR capabilities. While these competing headsets tend to be optimized for either VR consumption or basic AR annotations, Apple’s ‘spatial computing’ paradigm appears to better support both expert-guided collaborative experiences as well as open-ended learner creation within a unified device.

Given the cost of the Vision Pro at the time of writing, it will be some years off before schools can afford the luxury of a 1:1 ratio of the Vision Pro (or its successors or future competitors) to pupils. Yet this is not to discount the potential of the Vision Pro today for socially constructed meaning-making in field-based activities in both physical and virtual sites. Thus, for example, it is perfectly possible to imagine the scenario of a field-based lesson in which the learners annotate their local environments as they explore their neighbourhoods, leaving digital notes (such as text and sketches) at locations and sites that they themselves consider significant. In the context of a lesson unit, learners could be tasked to cast or to record their screens as they explore their environments and annotate them, for subsequent post-activity discussion in either small groups or as a class, as facilitated by the teacher.

Concluding remarks

Geographers have a unique appreciation that space is a shared and contested construct and at the same time, understanding that space and place are deeply personal and tacit. One of the earliest attempts to tease these tensions and relationships out through digital means was Moed’s (2002) project: ‘Annotate space: interpretation and storytelling on location’. That project pre-dated smartphones, using early mobile phones in urban environments to document social constructions of space. In the two decades that have since passed, a new generation of geographers has the potential digital wherewithal to annotate space in new and exciting ways. How we as a community of educators interpret these affordances in geography education is a story yet to be written.

References

Cho, Y. H., and K. Y. T. Lim, (2015). “Effectiveness of Collaborative Learning with 3D Virtual Worlds” in British Journal of Educational Technology, 48(1) pp 202-211.

Lim, I. J. E., Low, A. L. Y., and K. Y. T. Lim, (2024). “Optimising learning environments: a microclimate study of a school campus in Singapore using an integrated environment modeller simulation tool (IEMsim)” in Chova, L. G., Martinez, C. G., & Lees, J. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 18th annual International Technology, Education and Development Conference.

Lim. K. Y. T., (2009). “The Six Learnings of Second Life: A Framework for Designing Curricular Interventions In-world” Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 2(1) pp. 4-11.

Lim, K. Y. T., and R. Lim, “Semiotics, memory and Augmented Reality: History education with Learner-Generated Augmentation” British Journal of Educational Technology, special section on “Beyond observation and interaction: Augmented Reality though the lens of constructivism and constructionism”, 51(3) pp 673-691

Moed, A. (2002). Annotate space: Interpretation and storytelling on location. Interactive telecommunications program, New York University.

Zhao, J., Wallgrün, J. O., Sajjadi, P., La Femina, P., Lim, K. Y. T., Springer, J., and A. Klippel, (2021). “Longitudinal effects in the effectiveness of educational virtual field trips” Journal of Educational Computing Research, 60(4), 1008-1034.

Dr David Mitchell, Associate Professor of Geography Education, UCL – Institute of Education

On 13^th July 2023 the UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education (CCCSE) launched the report of a national survey of teachers in England and its flagship professional development programme for teachers, Teaching for Sustainable Futures. In this blog piece, I hope to show how Teaching for Sustainable Futures is not only a response to evidence of accelerating climate change, eco-anxiety and a demand from many parents, children, and teachers for more education about climate change. It is also an outcome of sustained research efforts to explore the educational potential of geography for challenging and uncertain futures. Of particular significance to the approach taken by the geography part of the professional development programme are concepts and tools drawn from GeoCapabilities: in particular, its approach to curriculum making and ‘future 3 curriculum’ scenarios (Young and Muller, 2010; Lambert, Béneker and Bladh, 2021).

The CCCSE’s 2023 teachers’ survey and an earlier survey of parents commissioned by the CCCSE in 2022, show that most parents and teachers want more opportunities for teaching about climate change and for sustainable futures.  The teachers’ survey showed that geography is the subject most likely to teach about climate change – which is no surprise, but it also revealed that 70% of teachers are self-taught when it comes to teaching about climate change and sustainability. There is a pressing need for more support for teachers and structured professional development in this area. In developing Teaching for Sustainable Futures, steered and supported by advisory teachers and academic colleagues, the intention is to connect research around why subject disciplinary knowledge matters in education, with some practical materials to support teachers.

The notion of GeoCapabilities uses the ideas of powerful knowledge (Young 2008), powerful pedagogies (Roberts 2017) and curriculum making, all deployed towards the goal of human development, measured as human capabilities. Capabilities here means achieving the enabling power to think geographically, freeing the individual (intellectually at least) to make real choices about how to live (Lambert et al, 2015). When capabilities become an educational goal geography, through its distinctive knowledge structure, offers a powerful way to understand climate change and can enable young people to make sense of it, and be able to think and act for themselves, toward more sustainable futures.

Concepts of place, space, environment, earth-processes and interconnection make up a key part of geography’s powerful disciplinary knowledge (Geographical Association, 2023). But knowledge is only powerful when teachers and young people are engaged with it. Teachers need access to rapidly evolving ideas which geographers play a part in developing and communicating: such as, the Anthropocene, the sixth mass extinction, and revisions on where we are in relation to keeping to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels (we are at 1.2 degrees at the time of writing). We believe that teachers also benefit from refreshing their understanding and use of the structure of the discipline itself, as this can be rather lost when the focus of teaching can be heavily on content coverage and generic ‘technique’ such as question practice to prepare students for examinations. A re-orientation to geography’s deeper potential (expressed as the ability to ‘think geographically’) supports teachers’ curriculum making so that young people can be more intrinsically interested and engaged, seeing significance in geography lessons beyond exam results. I believe Teaching for Sustainable Futures (TSF)exemplifies a ‘future 3’ curriculum in practice – one of engagement with an emancipatory view of geographical knowledge. Teachers can tap into geography’s potential to help young people to think, participate and ultimately make choices, around the big issues and questions of sustainable futures.

Some geography teachers express a heightened awareness that teaching about climate change can communicate ‘doom and gloom’ for young people. This is corroborated by Alcock’s research (2019) in England which found that both geography lessons and media representations feed into young people’s minds, the majority of who answer ‘no’ when asked: is the world getting better? The programme addresses this by showing ways that the geographical lens can help to explore climate change and the wider crises of sustainability we face, realistically, critically, but also with hope. This reminds us that geographical knowledge has educational potential because knowledge is so entwined with values in the geography classroom (Mitchell, 2022). Both academic geographers (eg Castree et al, 2010) and educationists in the field (notably Hicks, 2007; 2014) have been pioneering thought about how ‘pessimism of the intellect’ (to borrow from the famous phrase usually attributed to Gramsci) can be obviated, and the TSF programme at least tried to avoid this ‘trap’.

Geographical enquiry for action is a key pedagogy used and this is coupled with an emancipatory take on disciplinary knowledge for young people’s engagement in these issues. The programme draws on the Geographical Association’s curriculum framework (2023) amongst other research-informed materials including Huckle’s critical school geography (2022). Discussion questions and short activities are used and there is advice from classroom teachers, academics and others in the form of short video clips. Modules are free, online and can be accessed at any time. These are short courses, designed with busy teachers in mind to take about 90 minutes (or longer when the ‘going further’ options and links are followed). They can be taken individually, but taking them with colleagues, for example a geography department team, is encouraged for the discussion and collaborative curriculum making this supports.

There are separate programmes for primary and secondary age phases. The programme has begun with modules for history and geography, extending later to address the teaching of mathematics and English. The initial geography modules explore the potential of teaching geography for sustainable futures. Potentials are then exemplified using worked-through examples of critical geography teaching, for example, using some lessons created and taught to a group of 12–13-year-old children which examine Arctic ice restoration through a form of ‘biomimicry’. Students are asked to evaluate this with a geographical lens, and critically compare it to other geo-engineering approaches for mitigating climate change.

To access the programme, Teaching for Sustainable Futures, please click here. For the survey report, please click here.

References

Alcock, D. (2019) ‘Optimism, progress and geography – celebration and calibration’, Teaching Geography. 44 (3), pp. 118–121.

Castree, N., Chatterton, P. A., Heynen, N., Larner, W. and Wright, M. W. (Eds) (2010) The Point Is To Change It: Geographies of Hope and Survival in an Age of Crisis. Chichetser: Wiley-Blackwell.

Geographical Association (2023) A framework for the school geography curriculum. Online material. https://geography.org.uk/ga-curriculum-framework/ last accessed July 2023.

Hicks, D. (2007) ‘Lessons for the future: a geographical contribution’, Geography, 92, 4, pp. 179–88.

Hicks, D. (2014) Education for Hope: Climate change, peak oil and the transition to a post-carbon future. London: Trentham Books/Institute of Education Press

Huckle, J. (2022) Critical School Geography. Self-published, online content https://john.huckle.org.uk/critical-school-geography/ last accessed July 2023.

Lambert, D., Béneker, T. and Bladh, G. (2021) The Challenge of Recontextualisation and Future 3 Curriculum Scenarios: an overview. In Fargher, M., Mitchell, D. and Till, E. (eds) Recontextualising Geography in Education. Cham: Springer.

Lambert, D. Solem, M. & Tani, S. (2015) ‘Achieving Human Potential Through Geography Education: A Capabilities Approach to Curriculum-making in Schools’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105, 4), pp. 723-735.

Mitchell, D. (2022): GeoCapabilities 3: knowledge and values in education for the Anthropocene, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education.

UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education (2023) https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departments-and-centres/centres/ucl-centre-climate-change-and-sustainability-education last accessed July 2023.

Young, M. (2008) Bringing Knowledge Back In: From social constructivism to social Realism in the sociology of education. London: Routledge.

Young, M. & Muller, J. (2010) Three Educational Scenarios for the Future: lessons from the sociology of knowledge, European Journal of Education, 45, 1, pp. 11-26.