POWER: A new and essential lens for geography education: Workshop GA conference 2024

so the session today is called Power a new and essential lens for geography education and what I'm going to be doing during this session is advocating for a new foundational Concept in geography something which will hopefully introduce a more critical geography which is truer to some of the outcomes that we have positioned both in our national curriculums and also in the curriculums that we teach our classes so first off I'm Daryl I'm a teacher I'm a head of secondary at a small International Sc

hool in Northern Germany I've got like 10 years or so experience in the UK as well and I approach my work as looking for systemically Equitable outcomes that's the work I do so I do some work with exam boards and Publishers and so on but the target of everything is for systemically Equitable outcomes now this is very much an extension of this and over the last year and a half I've been incredibly privileged to work with Simon Oaks and n castri on developing this concept so hopefully maybe some o

f you are here because you may have seen this article in teaching geography last year this presentation is very much going to hopefully bring a lot of this to life and clarify it in various ways now I'm going to walk through exactly what we're going to do today going to start off of course I'm very very passionate about definitions so give you a clear definition of how we're positioning power for this look at the geographical context so how are we engaging with power or already within our work a

nd where is it perhaps absent or needing refinement from there I'll put a case forward to why we need a more explicit concept of power in our curriculums and towards the end we'll identify explicit teaching opportunities and what this would look like in your day-to-day classes so to start off with the clearest thing that we need to start with is our definition so for this presentation power is the capacity to direct or influence the behavior of people nonhumans or the course of events at one or

more spatial or temporal scales nothing fantastically groundbreaking there something everyone should be familiar with and easy to apply should feel quite familiar we very explicitly mention nonhumans here because one of the points I'm going to be raising will be looking at the natural environment as something with power something which is a able to influence the behavior of people and the course of events in a way which we haven't looked at before now with that definition there might be many peo

ple in the room thinking ah I already do this I'm going to waste 40 minutes here and I actually wanted to start off by throwing it out to you all and asking the question where are you already engaging with power in your teaching what types of things are you teaching or what language might you be using instead of power that you're engaging with how human behavior is influenced and how the courses of events are altered is anyone brave enough to share with me what's some of the ways we engage with

power um there two way we do the excellent themes we come across in like EXL so you've got the players in your attitude yes players and attitudes and Futures Futures I love that that's already identified as a expression of power anything else that people come across yeah and your your second question there I think is prompting this a little bit for me I'm thinking about climate change and the way that we talk to students about um the power that they have or how power exists at different levels a

nd how tricky that can be to Traverse yes and this is very much what I want to speak to we might recognize many of these words which exemplify how we actually engage with power in different ways but without having power as an explicit object of study we don't actually get into the richness of it or the complexity which is necessary for geography to be geography I would say there are many ways and I've put this in bold for a reason that some teachers are engaging with power but without it being i

dentified as an object of study it's not mandatory it's not comprehensive it's not particularly rich and it means that many teachers can actually go through a whole course never actually engaging with power rather just looking at factual knowledge and binary relationships this happens therefore this happens they have money they can buy that they have an army therefore they are a superpower and those relationships are not critical enough for the geography we're trying to deliver and the Citizens

We're trying to develop in our lessons so let's look at what's guiding us to this I'm going to look at the four different levels and I'm going to start with national curriculum I've got some exerpts here I don't need to read them but if we start off with the subject content and I've just got a little exerpt here from keystage 3 where it says students should understand how geographical processes interact to create distinctive human and physical landscapes that change over time and then if we go a

step further and we look at the aims of the national curriculum we see students should develop contextual knowledge of the location of globally significant places including defining physical and human characteristics and most importantly how these provide a geographical context for understanding the actions of processes so I would position the question at this point can this be achieved without explicitly positioning power as an object of study and as as you can likely guess my answer to that i

s no we can't nor can we if we want to go even a step deeper especially for some of the hotly contested things over the last few years and more but the British values in the National curriculum they speak to ideas of individual liberty democracy and the rule of law how are we achieving that in a geography classroom without positioning power as an object of study we're simply saying a law is passed that happens when we know it's much more nuanced than that so we need our students to have an under

standing critically of what power is next level down our exam boards the people who are turning this National curriculum into something which can be realized in our classrooms got a few examples here but just as was mentioned by the gentleman earlier currently and technically not currently only two exam boards have explicitly positioned power as either a concept or offered a definition of it that's the IB Who currently still has power as a core concept and Ed EXL from 2007 to 2016 did not have i

t as a core concept but positioned a definition for it which was admittedly limited to human interactions we do frequently see Power in all curriculums with regards to subjects like superpowers and trade but we're not seeing power studied or looked at critically and even more importantly I would say it's not present in our assessment objectives our ao1 to ao4 has no element of power we see scale we see place we see space but power is not there as a skill as something to know or something to unde

rstand or something to apply and therefore across all of our different curriculums and our teaching of geography it lacks a clear and consistent definition or application in assessment and without that value positioning there is no incentive for teachers to try to engage with it there is no incentive for students to try and engage with it because with our current geography through factual knowledge we can still get our top grades and everything so the next step is then our assessment within our

assessments I've got a collection here of questions that many of you may recognize they're from a selection of different exam boards from IB to WID to OCR to AQA they're also from GCS am from a level and we can easily identify here that power has a clear importance as a lens to address all of these questions and if we can use it to engage with common question types pardon me it allows us to have it in a way which can enrich the geography that we're teaching but Power continues to be absent from

these mark schemes and assessment objectives through my research which I do not claim to be completely comprehensive I have never come across power as a concept within our mark schemes but our examples are asking for evaluation they're asking for Justified or evidence judgments and decision making how can we do that without critically engaging with where power is happening to make these decisions and make these things happen so with that deep look at what the state of G of power is in geography

at the moment you may ask then where does power belong what what what are we trying to do here what do I want to change we have here if it comes up are Core Concepts in geography you'll recognize these they're present we'll recognize all of these these are our Core Concepts in almost every curriculum every textbook every representation of geography you'll see some variety of these work I can include all of them many of them have variations but it starts off with the very Universal the three that

you'll see everywhere are Place space and scale our Universal concepts for geography and if you combine those three things you get our most important thing are patterns the idea that everything takes place somewhere everything takes space in some sense everything operates on some kind of scale and if you look at that you end up with a pattern now if we think reflectively the majority of our geography teaching falls into this we're identifying patterns we're saying what does happen and what it l

ooks like and the problem here with these Universal Concepts which are very high level there is no vehicle to explore the outcomes there is no way for us to richly engage with these Progressive decolonial anti-racist environmental justice social justice pedagogies because we can't discuss causality within complex multifactor a phenomena now of course there's a second layer of our Concepts here our different concepts processes um networks interconnectedness these different processes here they add

another layer and this is where we begin to see things spit split into human and physical but of course what I'm positioning here is that power is missing from all of this and similar to place space and scale power nothing can take place without power everything has a source of power to make it realized all phenomena are powered we have power of place you need power to create place all of these concepts are embedded with power that currently we are not investigating or analyzing with these conn

ections we have to position power for us to have a critical geography education now what could this look like I'm going to use the basis of of the recommendations from the ga recently and some of their work to put together a new structure for the concepts within geography now some Progressive work was made here and some of us may point to the inclusion of diversity which had been temporarily taken out and thinking oh yeah that's a win we're being so Progressive but inclusion like that can still

feel tokenistic and with a identifying of patterns-based geography that can fall into the same traps of saying well if this happens you have diversity if migration laws change then that's the outcome when it is not as simple as that who is making that decision who's setting that law who's resisting that expression of power so we would position here having power included in these uh now five Core Concepts and I would say that geography is more than identifying predicting and describing patterns a

round the world it is a detailed investigation into the expression of power which leads to phenomena happening around the world and predicting how power will be expressed and responded to in the future without this inclusion of power at curriculum level I would suggest geography will continue to reproduce minimizing and descriptive binary relationships which curve critical thinking they minimize Progressive thinking and stifle the transformation of Consciousness that leads to change we need powe

r to have critical geographers to have citizen geographers now I'm not the only person who believes in this and I'm not the only person thinking this and I'm going to put forward some words that have been shared by Simon Oaks and N castri who couldn't be here in a presenting capacity for their support so bear with me as I read through these without power as a Cornerstone we allow for a curriculum that diligently Maps the world without always grasping the nettle of why things are as they are ulti

mately the geographies we live teach and learn about are an outcome of power relations because things might have turned out otherwise understanding of process doesn't fill our curriculum power vacuum Learners deserve to know why some processes flows and voices are allowed to operate or given permission to speak in systems and places While others are not in the absence of power Learners gain knowledge of how diversity in inequality interconnection systems and places manifest themselves without al

ways understanding why things are as they are in the absence of power critical GE geographical thought is potentially neutered a growing number of teachers perceive and are troubled by the power vacuum in curricula it's a common denominator in criticisms of school geography though not always named as such many teachers choose to fill the power vacuum as part of their own practice but it is not a regulatory requirement and I we believe it should be but there is little time left before the new cur

ricular criteria are written hence our advocacy nearly 30 years ago Simon's PhD supervisor the late Sally Eden impressed upon him her steadfast belief that power is geography's most important foundational concept Simon has not read or seen anything since to make him think that Sally was wrong the 21st century geographical challenges that our children need to understand and navigate are all issues of power geopolitics climate Justice Resource security Landscapes of the anthropos scene power runs

through them like writing in a stick of black pool rock or black pool stick of rock powerful words and from no cast power is woven through the fabric of the world's human and physical geography what's more new forms and degrees of Power are coming into Play Each decade let's consider artificial intelligence and escalating climate change for instance power suffuses Our Lives we need to help students understand why how and what the consequences are these are not the only two people who feel strong

ly about this and very hopeful that this idea can be pushed forward with many important conversations happening in the next 2 years regarding our geography curriculums now what I'm going to do from here is I'm going to share with you the key characteristics of power which we believe enable it to solve some of these challenges to present approaches which can enrich our geography education I'm not going to go through them word by word but at the end I will have a summary sheet and you will have ac

cess to these slides after this presentation so to start off with the key characteristics of power firstly power is relative we might refer to this as power too power is all about imbalance and it's that imbalance in power that leads to specific outcomes when we speak about power two we're thinking about what can and what could happen and this is a very clear distinction in geography we often look at what does happen or predict what will happen whereas opening it up to concepts of what can and c

ould we provide the opportunity for alter natives by considering the Alternatives we can engage with why do certain outcomes not happen and we can apply it to Concepts such as colonialism we can apply it to um natural events which are handled or not handled why did the 2012 T Hoku earthquake lead to such destruction it's a relationship of power the power of the planet versus the power of our flood walls which were about 10 ft to short we might look at the colonial reductive approaches where peop

le say oh human trafficking colonialism why didn't they say no our power relationships allow us to engage with those discussions with much more Nuance even contemporary issues like the me too Movement we might see people go well why didn't why didn't they just say no they're Superstars we can look at the power relationships because power means that you can make change but it doesn't mean that change will always be realized and it's it's important for our students to understand that secondly only

recognized forms of power lead to change we might refer to this as power through how is our power realized how do we use our power to change the reality around us over the last few years we've seen a proliferation of protests and in many different contexts we've seen protests lead to very quick change protests lead to a little bit of change and places where protests are quelled in not every context is protest a recognized form of power to lead to change hopefully through the nodding I can see w

e're already seeing how this can enrich how we're engaging with these topics I'm going through these quickly but you will get access sorry I see people taking pictures but I'm going to power power through so I don't linger too long three power introduces moral and ethical considerations and this is one very close to my heart I feel very much through my experience of 15 or so years teaching geography at schools moral and ethical considerations have very much been pushed to the Wayside many of us

here will look at pros and cons benefits and negatives and generally those fall down to lists that students memorize push and pull factors they're not learning them in a rich way they're memorizing them with power we can look at the idea of power over power is exerted on a subject or a person or a place and we can look at where power is very powerful and where it's inconsequential with this we can start to look Beyond pros and cons we can discuss things like the tension between me as an individu

al when we look at sustainability I can make changes I can recycle the plastic bottle I have but I have very little power over global climate change but then when we look at corporations when we look at governments they do CU when they recycle their plastic or or conserve their water we are able to see them save millions of tons prevent millions of tons of CO2 entering the atmosphere and we can get into moral and ethical considerations sometimes the actions we take are due to what we have power

over rather than just being we should do that and it basically boiling down to is there a business case for it so we can look at that in more nuance power over doesn't always have negative outcomes we can also get rid of taxonomies of good bad Push Pull sorry Push Pull proon benefit negative because with moral and ethical positioning and understanding of power over we can look at the world in much more nuanced ways how power over can include silencing and denying but it can also include supporti

ng we can also look at where power over is applied and has Equitable outcomes I'm sure all of you in this room as teachers or perhaps as parents can think of times when you've exerted power over a young person or a colleague and they've gone it's not fair but hopefully you've been able to communicate to them why that leads to a more Equitable outcome for them or perhaps a safer outcome power over is much richer and allows us to go into the Nuance of these situations next all power can be mitigat

ed we often think about the environment as something to be managed but the environment has power it has potential and actual flows though we may think of it as not conscious it very much responds to what we do as humans it can be stopped it can be mitigated it can be changed pumping CO2 into the atmosphere has changed how our climate engages with sunlight with heat but also aforestation projects have had impacts on local conservation similarly with human power humans can exert power in many diff

erent ways we often speak about hard and soft power and the composition how we change the composition of the physical world we think of human power as conscious and put it on a higher plane but in truth all human power can be mitigated managed and changed in the similar way and by teaching our students this this is where we enter the realm of citizenship a core understanding that all of the realized phenomena that we have in the world that we study in geography can be changed now use of human po

wer has unseen consequences the industrialization that took place at that point in time we weren't cognizant of the impacts that it would have in the future when we had covid we didn't know we would suddenly have people on little motorized bikes delivering our food all around the day we wouldn't know that every time something bad happens in the world that the first thing that's going to sell out is water and toilet paper but when we look at this it enables us to look at the Unseen consequences w

ith power two we can look at what may happen and these cons these considerations are what make geography Rich which take our models from being these very deterministic models which say well if your birth rate is high and your death rate is high then you're a poor country and you're not going to develop it moves away from that it enables us to look at well actually what are some of the other things which happen because of that context we can see how power exerted over one scale can lead to impact

s on others we can see how the murder of a man in the US called George Floyd led to a surge of protests a surge of changes in human rights and approaches to protest on a global scale that wasn't predicted that wasn't considered because we weren't considering the power of the people to try and enact change and finally this may be the more most core Point power is everywhere nothing takes place without power change cannot occur without power in any sense continuity cannot occur without power and a

re these not the two foundational points of what we are achieving in geography are we not teaching about change so I argue that these are the key characteristics of power which ensure that we can have a critical engagement with geography as I said here is my summary power is relative only recognized forms of power lead to change it introduces moral and ethical considerations all power can be mitigated it has unseen consequences and is crucial to change in continuity and I believe these considera

tions are what make Power a foundational concept within geography education which can take our geography to where it needs to be and support more Equitable outcomes for all our learners what I'm going to do from this point as we EK towards the end of the session I'm going to show you an example of what this can look like in class I'm going to show you an example which I've used in my lessons I have filled in this example it is not exhaustive and I believe many of you applying this in your lesson

s will actually have even richer outcomes but I've got this worksheet here I've lazily titled it the power worksheet this can be applied to any topic that you're learning though I will be honest with purely physical geography so if we're looking at the long profile of a river this is not going to be as applicable for our more procedural elements of geography the ones which are literally water flows you have these forms of erosion so these are mainly for our multiactor phenomena where there are d

ifferent powers at play not to say that there aren't different powers of play in physical geography so for migration the first thing that I would get my students to identify is who is involved and get let them explore who's actually affected by migration and we'll likely end up with a list something similar to this business owners governments the actual migrant the migrants family the different communities and there's actually many more that can be added here but one that we need to make sure we

have is the environment and then the next one which I find one of the richest parts of this especially with a class of younger students so maybe as young as grade n or even even below with guidance and support from the teacher you can get some really creative answers which aren't very helpful sometimes but you can also get some brilliant ones and we can begin to look at things such as there's a person who moves that typically happens in a migration but beyond that we might see illnesses of new

species moved around the world we might see their people who have they have left behind in a sense temporarily often but their family or their community that they have left to do the migration might get great benefits through remittances or they might suffer more because they've lost a key person in their Community or in their family unit but we can really begin to explore what are the potential outcomes opening the students Minds to well how could migration look different now as I said at the b

eginning I'm a firm believer in definition so to support the students in this we need to Define what these different words are we might explore especially for younger students using different phrasing so power to might be potential or it might be possible outcomes but I've positioned these generally as questions which the students can engage with they don't need to necessarily go through this lecture to be able to engage with this but when we get to power through this is where the students can b

egin to identify the ways that power is expressed so when we speak about migration we do need to think about things such as violence that might be violence of people that might be violence or physical action of the environment it might be natural processes persuasion family saying yeah you should really go to university here well there's so many opportunities that all coercion if you send your daughter with me I'll ensure she has a great life and we explore these case studies but where is the el

ement of power and this can begin to explore it I'm going to switch the slide I'll give a couple seconds for the photos um so the next point and this is the body of the so this is probably a 3-hour lesson or perhaps more we can look at each affected party or key player through the lens of power I've used the environment here because it's often one that we miss out what does the environment have power to do it will come back what does how does the environment express its power in what ways does t

he environment have unrecognized or unexercised power and this one can be an excellent question for the migrant themselves why is it that migrants who might be classified in a quite aggressive way as uh irregular or what might be used in a governmental sense illegal why aren't they voting why aren't they petitioning why are they unable to exercise that power why are they considered illegal why do we have certain countries with laws which say if you're from that country that's the end of it with

this exploration we can really get into all of the elements which include our traditional push and pull factors but through ways that the students can apply to their real lives and investigate in a deep way I've got a blank version here so again we could do this for the lead migrant you could do this for the business owners you could do this for the local community and when you get your group your classes to do this in groups it allows the opening up of a summary task where we can begin to ident

ify ultimately who has the most power who are they expressing that power over or exerting that power over who is subject to a lot of power who is being coerced and being forced to do things and finally we can get into our moral our citizenship based advocacy work how can we change the outcomes in this scenario looking through a lens of power whose power needs to be recognized what way of power or ways of expressing power do we need to recognize or further support one of my favorite quotes which

I I terribly have not been able to actually find the author of this quote I saw it very briefly in a news feed on some website but it said and I think this can be applied to almost all communities around the world all marginalized communities in various ways says women don't need empowerment they need their power to be recognized and I think it very much sums up many of the complex things we look at within geography and the concept of power allows us to engage with that so just to finish up I'm

very tight on time but what is my final case for power as a core Concept in geography I'm going to do a little bit more reading I believe that no critical discussion of Justice decision making or outcomes can be engaged in learning without a clear acknowledgement of power the vehicle of its expression the response to it and the reasons why specific affected parties power is or is not accepted this supports social environmental justice social and environmental justice while empowering students to

engage with skills required for moral and ethical considerations power challenges the presentation that we see in questions sometimes about places and generalization such as Africa as we saw in one of the questions earlier it provides avenues for the generalizations of questions of that form to be mitigated and for students to engage with the realities of power imbalances rather than reinforcing endemic negative assumptions or associations such as LC equals poor equals uneducated equals UNP pow

erful equals unable to make change power in geography can facilitate a movement away from geographies of management we speak too often about managing population managing the environment managing this and moves us towards a geography of collaboration where is the power and how can it be negotiated and explored so overall my case for power is that is to ensure that students learn in ways which supports understanding the world and being able to change it not accepting the world and reinforcing its

existing state and with all my prelati in complete I would like to say a big thank you for coming to this presentation and open up for questions now because there isn't a flurry of hands up I'm going to be double cheeky here and just say I'm a big proponent for feedback and improving things if you have the time or patience or you're willing to lend me your expertise any feedback about the these Concepts and about even the presentation of these Concepts will be gratefully received as we continue

to develop these ideas and if anybody wants to collect on LinkedIn feel free uh I will be reaching out to geography teachers in the future to explore these ideas and how it looks in people's classrooms um so please do connect and any feedback will be gratefully received so yeah questions firstly darl you know I'm a fan of this right I'll begin with my my reflection are more to help you preempt what might come when you push this further so the first one is I think from physical geography a challe

nge you might get is would the word energy do the job just as effectively to ask that now but it's one to PR be kind of and I don't think it's one that you have any issue addressing not particularly but it will come say energy instead because it's more it's cool yeah the didactics of language will need to be explored but I'm a firm believer of a rose by any other name would be just a suite it's the outcomes of this work which are perhaps more important than everyone saying power two so so and th

e second thing I would say is that I strongly encourage you to work with universities the geography subject Benchmark statement yes I don't think they have a problem adding power to the geography which is equivalent of our curriculum map and why that helps is that if you can then say but when they get to University they've got to learn about power it makes stronger case to say we've got to do it in school drph you right yeah so I'd encourage you if you can to yeah start there and then so you're

saying that's the way through which I should Express the power languages of power I'm sure many of us have Tau that in different ways but yes got to speak the languages of power to try and make some of these changes happen said just my um degree in Environmental Studies with University and power is one of those six things that we have absolutely have to have to talk about powers and values and we talk about Futures as well EXC higher education um how do you how do you suggest we get that tripled

down into stage four or is it something that we really should be leave until University oh no I firm I'm I'm very much a belief you know when we come across students in our classrooms especially are students who are some of the highest Achievers they're using high levels of language and we often speak to oh well parents took them to museums their parents have these jobs or their carers if you begin using complex language and topics from an early point it will be on boarded uh the idea that youn

g children can't handle complexity is rubbish um the earlier and the most more appropriately you introduce something the more it will develop towards the end um I firmly agree with what you're saying one of the the panels I was on earlier was about that interaction between school level geography and higher education level um in my role as a school leader I've been privileged to see the context of Germany which has a requirement for connection between schools and universities and I very much thin

k that is one of the Avenues agreeing with what both of you have said and thankfully having people like n castri explicitly involved hopefully we can gain some momentum for this thank you thank you that was absolutely amazing and um I thought another week and was used of holidays left so I'm going to be reviewing some schemes of learning next and just thinking what James said earlier about enabling people to use geography deliberately for the best into themselves in the world I teach in a school

in suers and a lot of uh working class kids and I'm really excited now because I was going to rewrite my Bristol SK learning next week and we do a lot about things like studentification and like how areas of Bristol you know like amazing areas like SE crop and stuff like that and now a huge pressure the places a massive cultural value to be demolished to make room for student blocks and stuff like that and I've written stuff about it in the past and I'm like oh my God I'm going to totally get t

his power stuff into it it's for year eight um and then I've just start honestly my brain's exploding then I start to think about my power progression because if I've got like you know year eight and looking at breasto I'm thinking well year seven when we do a bit of wearing world and they're think about their own context they think who's powerful in my context who shap in my community in your right we've got the breastal study we can start thinking about how breastal is changing and who has the

power over that um and then I'm just thinking right okay we we use Uganda as a country we focus on at gcsc and um I've written a roleplay about EOP um and trying to bring in the idea to my kids that you might think this is a really bad idea to exploit the oil and in many ways it is but also do we have the right to tell M what he should be doing in his country and so I'm like oh my God I could bring like a whole power Dimension into that as well so I think this is just so exciting to think how t

his can progress through the age you're currently my favorite person so yeah that sounds like excited on the TR well I'm going to show share those worksheets and I I believe with the wealth of wonderful geography teachers we have that's going to lead to absolutely amazing new ways of approaching certain lessons hands up yeah uh so no I was thinking I used to teach um when I talk he say three I used to teach um in year seven we did a section on Sports J be and obviously like um sport has loads of

power uh aspects in terms of the Olympics and things like that and I think you know I don't if anyone's like London based or even in Manchester you know we have Comer games Olympics things like that where we obviously are talking about Po and I mean yeah I just think there's loads of application in loads of places even like I say with Year s when just thinking about everything that goes into sports in terms of the Olympics um during Hitler and Jesse Owens and all that stuff that I teach like it

's just full of it's full of it so I just think it's so applicable we're already doing it or like without saying it yeah I do think so um oh please oh sorry did you have a question as well no no please go um I saw John tape from the Northern Lights learning trust speak a few weeks ago he was talking about the disadvantage gu he was talking about the engagement of most disadvantaged people's Advantage people is talking about the way that what they receive in the classroom they get they all get th

e same level of input the difference is when they leave the classroom and not that we change the doain the domain of geography to have specific outcomes but one of the really positive potential outcomes of what you talking about here is the potential for engagement for some so many students who might not feel engaged and who might not feel empowered or represented yes learning and that is no thank you CU there was there one of the questions on the board that in my momentum I kind of missed but a

very uh there was quite a lot of feedback about this question when it was um when it came out I know at least within the decolonizing geography groups it was very much um a topic of conversation but this question here oh my goodness I did not realize here we go uh suggest why most of Africa is in darkness Switched Off from development um I'm sure many of us can see the problems with that question or the challenges of that question many of us could speak to the potential harm that could cause an

d the birth of generalizations which can occur from addressing things in this way that needs to change to be very clear but having power as a concept Ena some of those students who may originally have been harmed by that question and may still be they can actually look at that question through a realm of power being like well actually the reason that happened is because of this power and that that power actually these countries have tried to do this but their power wasn't recognized on the inter

national stage actually so on and so forth and it enables us to as a first point because one of the big Kickbacks for all major changes we'd have to change all the textbooks we'd have to change this oh but I've created three years worth of schemes of work actually changing the lens through which we look at something can dramatically change the outcomes so I'm I'm very passionate about this in in many ways as is kind of obvious at this point um but yes fully agree with you so thank you for sharin

g that hi yeah that was brilliant really enjoyed it that was really really insightful I think you make the case really strongly for the idea of power as a core concept um and the value it can have for young people but I think actually what I'm more impressed by what what makes me think and reflect more about what you're saying is that um you're also talking about changing the conversations that we have as Educators and power as a core concept not just in the curriculum but also in our department

al meetings the kind of conversations about what geography is as a subject I mean you made that point about the geographical Association and the concepts and the lack of power analysis in there I absolutely agree there's much more work that we as an organization need to do to foreground that to take that seriously and to explore the implications of that I just wanted if you say a bit more about that idea of how not just as a concept for young people to engage with but for us as geography Educato

rs to take back to our schools our department our colleges have conversations with our colleagues around and and what sort of work that then does in terms of the work of teachers as ccul thank you for that um what I will say is a lot of the research which has gone into this over the years a lot of work I have to give a shout out to Margaret Roberts and the brilliant work that she's done uh looking at the work for powerful knowledge and the concept of powerful knowledge which has been quite stron

g within the world of geography even when you look at the original concepts of powerful knowledge you have phrases said such as the teacher in the classroom decides how that National curriculum and the curricula from the exam board is translated into learning for the students which in of itself is an act of power what is included what is not included and for what reasons if we look at it through that lens even the initial question from James we can see how we need to be looking through Power for

us to be able to make a change so as we go back to our schools we need to be talking to our heads of department and saying hey I'd like to enrich this part of the curriculum I'd like to include this in my scheme of work hey is there an exam board who includes that um I am not advocating for any specific exam board but as we put our pressure on different groups and we can Advocate through organizations such as the ga who will be invited to these conversations about changes to the curriculum this

is one of our vehicles of power and for me as I've said it's so important for me that the that is modeled to the students that they understand that because that's how change happens so as teachers we need to be using our power through the influence we have on our Learners through the influence we have on our colleagues so on and so forth to try and make this change happen because I can say from the work that I do with various organizations if there's not a business case it's unlikely to go forw

ard the decisions at the top are not being made on a moral basis we need to demonstrate that the learning that we want to engage with is complex and involves power conversations cuz if we do not demonstrate that in our teaching we're not going to be listened to there was another question oh God that's really really fascinating and I'm just thinking about the connections as well with children's geography kind of um writing and and the way in which um I'm sure many people will have experience both

as children and with Children of the way in which um children often have kind of very um nuanced lived experiences of power um not least in terms of like children and adults right um and I'm just curious as to whether um if you've had experiences of playing this in your own classrooms whether you find children kind of using this language um to kind of critique things that are happening like in the classroom or in the school just because I think uh I can see that being really kind of positive an

d exciting but it requires kind of teachers in a school context that are are kind of well how can I say emotionally mature enough yeah tole may not emal matur but like but who are not threatened by children who are being curious and asking questions and challenging things so this is where overlaps with pedagogy we do need to be have enough humility in our classrooms to allow those conversations to take place and to recognize where lived experiences can enrich the learning and lived experiences a

re things we are not experts in because it's their expertise so by being hum having enough humility to allow that into the classroom but I will also say from my experience which I know is not representative of everyone's but students are ready to engage I mean from even in primary so my school is all the way through sometimes I have to cover a grade four lesson but students can talk about fairness students can talk about well I wasn't allowed to do that I would have done it but my mom said and b

y guiding their discussions of these things through the lens of power again perhaps altering our language as we get down into the younger year groups we can get the students look at this I mean one of my favorite examples is a student I taught from Haiti while I was teaching in China um and he was adopted and he he didn't know much of his history I got into a very dangerous situation here he knew he was adopted but through the work we were doing on a Haitian case study he realized that he was ad

opted while the disaster had just taken place and he from that point was inspired and he was like I want to teach about this you know cuz I don't like what it says in the textbook about Haiti and when he was speaking about he spoke about the power he spoke about when he met his current parents I want to be clear there's no issue there it sounds very dark at this point in time but he was able to explore that and he was in grade eight or grade n at that time I I think students are ready for it and

we need to be ready for students to be ready for it yeah Simon I think you had your hand up one thing oh sorry I have my um as a practitioner um and as for big part of our subject I just interested to know ifot of this is kind of classroom base whether you actually had the chance to see how this extends into the field as well any examples um some of my best best favorite examples are to do with um those of you who are teaching in London and you may have done walks around Canary Warf and the Red

evelopment there a full exploration of power there um looking at which communities were able to influence what changes took place who was kicked out who was brought in whenever we're looking I believe the the work that was done on the first day of the conference looking at the northern quarter of Manchester you can immediately apply power to that even the area if we're looking at Urban geographies which we often do they're some of the easiest field trips to do we can look at Power through such a

nuanced lens through really looking at how did these changes take place why do some people feel like this place doesn't feel like it used to this doesn't belong to us anymore this isn't Britain anymore you know and we see where that path goes but we can have a look at who was able to make change and who wasn't who was allowed to speak and who was silenced um urban geography I think is one of the easiest places to put that straight in why in that area of London is that sign in a different langua

ge why in that area of Manchester is uh the restaurants they don't have any English signage on the front why is that and we can look at it through a lens of power sorry s's big the geography as well we've not is not claim that is super power this is a social sciences human thing parent history politics other subjects are doing it my son is in year 7 card if they're on the new curriculum and I went to a Governor's meeting it turns out power is the foundational concept for year seven history they

do power over time we might they're not time through time and that's the way they they're doing what the geography Department yeah so oh question for everybody as well as you actually do we therefore think that power should be one of the geographical Concepts [Music] as session awesome so we have a question at the back thank you for that kit not pring my own our um departmental stline is our jurul empowers and inspires students to become leing Global Citizens so just like conversation about the

word energy or them to be empowered by our subject yes and I'm I'm really hoping like yourself many people are are becoming aware that you're already doing a lot of this and I say this with all due respect and humility and hopefully the presentation has prefess prefaced what I'm about to say but we can do it better and we can do it in a more explicit and clearer way um at this point I'm going to end things there happy to have any further conversations but I'm going to have some water thank you t

hank [Music] you [Music]