A capabilities approach repositions the contribution of the discipline (geography) to the education of young people within a capabilities framework. It has been derived from the original work of Amatya Sen and Martha Nussbaum on welfare economics and is an attempt to take capability principles and locate them within a geography education context. The focus so far has been on geography teachers, their role as curriculum leaders and their understanding of and engagement with ‘powerful disciplinary knowledge’ (PDK). The outcome being the geocapabilities website as a vehicle for teachers’ professional development. The objective of Geocapabilities 3 is to develop and extend the work completed in phase two. Whilst the focus is still teacher development, here we are viewing Geocapabilities as a conceptual tool for social justice and seek to examine the practical application of a geocapabilities approach in classrooms, in particular in in schools situated in areas of socio-economic deprivation. It is often in such schools that teachers are constrained in their ability to enact a ‘powerful’ geography curriculum (see Mitchell, 2015) and so we are seeking to establish a set of pedagogical principles that underpin the practical application of PDK in teaching and learning geography. The associate teachers will be asked to focus their work on one key theme, either migration or climate change, which are substantial geographical concepts. These themes will aid comparisons of participants’ experiences during the project. They will also act as conceptual lenses through which to develop the pedagogical principles mentioned above. The partners working on Geocapabilities 3 comprise 5 higher education institutions from across Europe (the UK, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and France), plus one school partner based in Belgium and one NGO, Eurogeo. Collectively this unique partnership provides the essential skills and qualities necessary to meet the aims of the project. All have prior knowledge and understanding of geocapabilities as an educational concept and all are actively engaged scholarly work in their own professional contexts. Each participates in a range of different teacher networks, including initial teacher education, professional development networks and professional associations. This diversity will ensure the reach of the project in the longer term is broad and wide ranging. Methodologically the project comprises a series of stages, the design of which is to ensure the exploration and development of the four proposed intellectual outputs. The project adopts a teacher education approach where partners will work, for the life of the project, with practicing geography teacher working in more challenging schools. The project has a comprehensive action plan that details a range of activities designed to support the project aims and ensure a high level of team building between project participants. Milestone evaluation points review project progress with an inbuilt evaluation/teacher reflection mechanism. A range of practical activities are planned. Project partners will work with two local schools, the intention being to support teacher development through the use of the Geocap 2 vignettes approach in order to examine what we mean by ‘powerful knowledge’ in geography. Participating teachers will use their vignettes to devise and trial teaching materials as a means of ‘pedagogising’ powerful knowledge for their students. A story-maps approach will be used as a tool for teacher reflection throughout the development process (from inception to conclusion) and as a mean of both sharing experiences across jurisdictions as well as sharing teaching materials and teachers’ evaluation of those materials. We anticipate that these processes would occur concurrently and so allow a ‘story’ of how teachers’ thinking and doing change as a consequence of their engagement with Geocapabilities. The outcomes of the project, namely a set of pedagogical principles appropriate to teaching PDK in school geography, will be publically available on the geocapabilties website. We also establish a Europe-wide network of geography teachers and geography teacher educators who understand and can use these pedagogies and who can take forward these practices into their own institutions, their own communities of practice and share them with wider European networks. In the longer-term, the benefits to teachers will be access to and use of a set of pedagogical principles that have practical application in classrooms in a wide range of different types of schools. For school students, the longer-term benefits will be to experience pedagogies that develop their capacity to think geographically and in so doing extend their personal capabilities and associated freedoms as articulated by Sen and Nussbaum namely to think in ways that enable them to ‘discern, to select and to make informed and defensible choices’ (Lambert, 2014: 8).
A capabilities approach repositions the contribution of the discipline (geography) to the education of young people within a human capabilities framework (see Sen and Nussbaum). Earlier phases of the project developed GeoCapabilities as a vehicle for teachers’ professional development. GeoCapabilities 3 seeks to develop and extend the work completed in phase two. Whilst the focus is still teacher development, here we were testing the GeoCapabilities concept in challenging classrooms, as a tool for social justice. Our objectives were to (in a social justice context): 1. support teachers to use geographical knowledge to enhance young people's capabilities 2. develop a set of pedagogical principles and strategies 3. build a GeoCapabilities 'toolkit' including teachers’ case studies, and to disseminate it The partners were 5 higher education institutions from across Europe (the UK, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, France), plus one school partner based in Belgium and one NGO, Eurogeo. Collectively this unique partnership provided the essential skills and qualities necessary to meet the aims of the project. 13 associate schools contributed to the project. After recruiting 13 suitable teachers (working in schools serving under-privileged communities) we conducted interviews and focus groups with teachers and analysed data using a framework we developed through literature on social justice, of four areas - agency, distributive justice, mutuality and relational justice. This allowed us to further develop a set of pedagogical strategies through collaborative action research with the associate teachers. The ‘problem’ we collectively explored could be summarised as how to teach about migration in ways that can enhance a young person’s capabilities. Together we developed tools to evaluate access to powerful knowledge. The associate teachers enacted a GeoCapabilities ‘process’ by: engaging with the powerful geography of migration by ‘vignette’ writing; curriculum making (developing rich ‘curriculum artefacts’); teaching; and evaluating powerful knowledge. Pupils’ classwork, focus groups, interviews and concept mapping provided data. The teachers and partners co-analysed these data to produce case studies using ESRI storymaps. Partners then co-constructed a GeoCapabilties toolkit for teachers sitting on a broader, revised GeoCapabilities website and a print publication (translated it into 4 languages). We held 9 multiplier events (both online and F2F) to extend the project’s impact, as well as dissemination through articles, social media and conference events. GeoCapabilities has become an international symbol for innovative teacher education in secondary school Geography. The project has established a truly international impact with activities and research published in several European countries and in the USA and Japan. An extended bibliography reflecting the impact of GeoCapabilities in schools, teacher training and even in higher education can be found at https://www.geocapabilities.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GeoCap3-bibliography.pdf The website is central to the project’s impact https://www.geocapabilities.org . It is an accessible training material for teachers and teacher educators and in 2020 there were 104,628 visitors to the site (source AWstats). It will have ongoing impact as it remains hosted by Eurogeo until at least Dec 2024. The project achieved theoretical and practical success through: developing a structure for how GeoCapabilities connects to social justice (IO2); developing strategies (curricular and pedagogical) for teaching powerful geographical knowledge with social justice in the foreground (IO3); and building an associated toolkit for teachers’ and a print publication (translated into four languages) and a richly resourced website. 9 Multiplier events were attended by 210 teachers and teacher educators. Dissemination took place through a number of articles, social media and international conference events, such as through the International Geographical Union. The GeoCapabilities 3 project has become, to some extent, self-sustaining as school teachers and teacher educators continue to drawing from the materials to enhance their teaching courses and their own professional development. Teachers on the project spoke of feeling energised by the opportunity to connect with academic geography and other teachers, including through the website. There are a number of planned publications and conference presentations adding to those already complete. These will fuel new directions for the capabilities approach, and further collaborations. One such (for seed funding) is already funded and another is in process.