Friday 5 March 2010

Leading the way in primary geography

I'm running a series of conference at the moment focused on `Quality Geography' and the Primary Geography Quality Mark and have been doing some additional thinking about subject leadership for a conference seminar, held at the Birmingham NEC, yesterday.  In practice this proved to be a bit like performing in the middle of a circus ring with the whole Education Show going on around me - not really my style!  I did meet some very nice and positive people who smiled at me and nodded just when I needed the reassurance.  I've just been looking up the word `seminar' in an online dictionary and the following definition:  `any meeting for an exchange of ideas',  is much closer to my own understanding of the word than anything that was possible yesterday. 



I've become really interested in the idea of `leadership and vision' and the way this can help to shape the kind of curriculum we offer children.  Having a vision for what we want to teach and why within a subject context is going to become increasingly important as we move towards a more integrated curriculum following the Rose Review.  If this doesn't make sense as a freestanding PowerPoint I'll be very happy to chat about it if you want to contact me or leave a comment here.

As part of the session I also introduced this interactive `Nine Number Grid' to explore the idea of what contributes to `distinctly geographical activity'.



A CPD unit designed to support Primary Geography Subject Leadership, written in collaboration with Paula Owens, has just been launched on the Geographical Association website.  We'd love to hear from you if you find any parts of it useful.

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