A presentation from Martin Hanus and David Mitchell given at the IGU-CGE 2021 Conference from the GeoCapabilities 3 project which looks at academic geography and the importance of teachers connecting with disciplinary knowledge and teaching about challenging geography topics in schools, framed by a social justice context. This presentation evaluates the approach and the outcomes with associate teachers working on the project.

1. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This Web site reflects the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
http://www.geocapabilities.org
GeoCapabilities 3
http://www.geocapabilities.org
Evaluating the GeoCapabilities
approach to teaching about migration
David Mitchell, Martin Hanus
with Tine Béneker, Mary Biddulph,Caroline Leininger, Luc Zwartjes
and Karl Donert

2. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This Web site reflects the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
http://www.geocapabilities.org
GeoCapabilities 3
GeoCapabilies 3 project
To develop a series of learning opportunities with innovative teaching ideas
to trial the suitability of the Geocapability approach at schools in challenging
circmumstances.
• 6 academic institutions + 13 associate lower and upper
secondary schools
• Challenging circumstances:
• location of the region (periphery)
• economy (higher levels of population poverty; structural changes – e.g.,
decline of industrial (textile, mining) areas etc.)
• society and demography (changing demographics; migrant population; socio-
economic deprivation etc.)
• mostly the combination of more challenges

3. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This Web site reflects the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
http://www.geocapabilities.org
GeoCapabilities 3
Design
Social justice
Teaching migration
Teaching migration
to social justice
Curriculum artefact
deliberation
Vignette writing
Lesson plan
Teaching
Evaluation
Students‘ progression
Students‘ feedback
Teachers‘ self-evaluation
Scientific
definitions
Teachers‘
perceptions
PDK about
migration
PDK
typology

4. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This Web site reflects the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
http://www.geocapabilities.org
GeoCapabilities 3
Planning
Are there tools which help teachers to start thinking innovatively about their
teaching?
• Creation of vignettes
• Deliberating on the curriculum artefacts
• Key concepts of the GeoCapability approach
• Meetings, discussions, sharing possibilites and collaborative work with
academic geographers, geography educators and other teachers
(nationally and internationally)
Preconditions:
• Time allocated to innovation
• Teachers’ open-mindedness to new teaching and learning approaches,
and their will to think critically of their current teaching

5. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This Web site reflects the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
http://www.geocapabilities.org
GeoCapabilities 3
Planning
Are there tools which help teachers to strat thinking innovatively about their
teaching?
• Creation of vignettes
• helped teachers to better understand the Geocapability approach
• boosted teachers’ innovative thinking
• supported the structured lesson planning and teachers:
• to think innovatively
• to sum up what do (and what do not) they know about migration in a clear and
structured way
• to better understand the topic-related educational issues
• to reflect on the lesson structure
• to identify possible bottlenecks and to identify opportunities to scaffold learning

6. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This Web site reflects the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
http://www.geocapabilities.org
GeoCapabilities 3
Planning
Are there tools which help teachers to strat thinking innovatively about their
teaching?
• Creation of vignettes
• Deliberating on the curriculum artefacts
• to identify the special meaning (the additional educational value) of the curriculum
artefacts
• to set specific aims of the lesson/educational activity
• Key concepts of the GeoCapability approach
• Powerful Disciplinary Knowledge; Capability; Maude’s typology (2016); Curriculum
making
• to reflect on their own knowledge and thinking about geographies of migration
• to think about PDK and to select the relevant PDK to be taught
• to select strategies to develop PDK in lessons
• to access a range of different knowledge

7. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This Web site reflects the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
http://www.geocapabilities.org
GeoCapabilities 3
Planning
Are there tools which help teachers to strat thinking innovatively about their
teaching?
• Creating of vignettes
• Deliberating oncurriculum artefacts
• Key concepts of the GeoCapability approach
• Meetings, discussions sharing possibilites and collaborative work with
academic geographers, geography educators and other teachers (nationally
and internationally)
• to boost teachers‘ innovative thinking
• to better understand (and to responsibly select and better teach) key concepts of migration
• to use new language (concepts) in dialogues
• to start thinking critically of their teaching
• to practice the vignette writing
• to be inspired, to share experience, discuss lesson plans, joint evaluate lesson and discuss
teaching and learning bottlenecks

8. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This Web site reflects the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
http://www.geocapabilities.org
GeoCapabilities 3
Teaching
• Teachers used a mix of pedagogical principles, some of them migration-specific
but mostly universal and applicable to all (not only) geographical PDK
• lessons grounded in the students’ prior knowledge and experience –
preconceptions/misconceptions (e.g., concept mapping technique)
• student-centred lessons stressing the need for higher levels of students’ engagement
(individual or group teaching) – the critical pedagogical principle for the successful teaching
(and learning) of migration and developing the social justice dimension
• bridging relevant theories and real life in their lessons by focussing on the life stories of real
migrants (e.g., storytelling, role-playing, drama-use or decision making exercises leading
students to feel like a migrant in a given situation) – to develop empathy in students
• students’ use of and access to reliable sources and data and critical thinking about the
introduced information – to challenge students’ negative views, and perspectives of migrants
and migration
• Most of the principles and techniques used were perceived (by teachers) as
innovative or innovatively used in the given context
• The process led teachers to think critically, plan the lessons innovatively and
forced them not to stick to the book; as such, it supported their professional
development

9. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This Web site reflects the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
http://www.geocapabilities.org
GeoCapabilities 3
Evaluation
• Teachers used a rich repertoire of an evaluation tool to control the efficiency
of teaching and learning – including tools for pre-lesson evaluation, control
mechanisms during teaching and post-lesson evaluation tools
• pre- and post-lesson protocol, concept mapping, students free writing, semi-structured
questioning, semi-structured peer interviews etc.
Teachers‘ evaluation
• Mostly formative evaluation to support development of students’ PDK
• New ways of evaluation – student evaluation (the self-evaluation and the
evaluation of the teaching) and peer evaluation (evaluative discussions with
other teachers or geography educators)
• Most lessons were perceived effective as they positively affected students’
PDK and engaged students in learning process
• Bottlenecks: need of more scaffolding; time management – more time for
debriefing and thinking X less time to keep students attention

10. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This Web site reflects the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
http://www.geocapabilities.org
GeoCapabilities 3
Evaluation
Students‘ evaluation
• Very positive responses
• Students appreciated that teachers engaged them by:
• discussions,
• inquiry
• rich and engaging real-world data and visualization
• attractive questions/problems to be addressed
• practical consequences of migration processes for their everyday life
• personal stories of migrants
• think of their own migration background and formulation of their own personal
geography
• In contrast, concepts in the textbooks were peceived too
general and hard to follow

11. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This Web site reflects the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
http://www.geocapabilities.org
GeoCapabilities 3
Evaluation
What limited students access to PDK?
Limitations related to:
• Students
• motivation and overall engagement in the learning (geography)
• perceived attractiveness and meaningfulness of the lesson topic
• Teachers
• lack of time to develop lessons in a powerful way
• professional expertise – disciplinary knowledge, ability to recontextualize the
academic knowledge and perception of students‘ abilities
• School and curriculum system
• time and space dedicated to geography lessons
• the strictness of curricula – no space for own curriculum making; exams pressure
(and the lack of time in teaching programmes)
• content of the textbooks – often containing only one type of knowledge
• specific circumstance of each school (e.g., teachers must avoid sensitive topics)
• Out of school environment
• families, media, internet and social networks – influence students’ attitudes; possible
prejudice
• can restrict students’ open thinking to social (in)justice

12. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This Web site reflects the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
http://www.geocapabilities.org
GeoCapabilities 3
Teachers‘ enhancement
How did the project enhance teachers’expertise?
• Developed their migration-related curriculum
• New/developed lesson plans
• specifying the lesson content (specifically the PDK) better
• implementing innovative ways of teaching and evaluation
• improving time management
• Conceptual and practical tools
• Boosted teachers‘ professional development in subject-specific knowledge,
skills and pedagogy
• updated and deepened knowledge in the field
• started to think critically of their actual teaching and considered to teach innovatively
• received support to think reflectively of what they do and why
• Possibility to share the experience regionally, nationally and internationally
• opened their eyes (and minds)
• gave them support for innovative ways of teaching
• positively influenced their self-confidence
• springboard to teacher’s further engagement in the collaborative geography teacher
community

13. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This Web site reflects the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
http://www.geocapabilities.org
GeoCapabilities 3
Conclusion / summary
GeoCapabilties can have an impact (for social justice)
by:
1. reaching areas and schools areas labelled as
‘deprived’ and ‘failing’;
2. maintaining the teacher’s iterative relationship
between classroom teaching and engagement with the
discipline;
3. practical tools to evaluate how teachers and children
have accessed powerful disciplinary knowledge
(PDK)

14. 1. Reaching areas and schools areas labelled as
‘deprived’ and ‘failing’.
We found:
i. Teachers in ‘challenging’ schools were able to develop their curriculum and
pedagogies through adopting the GeoCapabilities approach - but challenges
remain including: exam performance/ accountability and lack of curriculum
focus; varied support from school leadership; strongly entrenched views
(brought from home); student literacy levels; time.
ii. ‘Challenged’ areas (of industrial decline and social problems) provided local
contexts to make migration geography meaningful and significant.
iii. An analytical framework for social justice in education can be developed.
Agency, distributive justice, relational justice and mutuality/misrecognition
(after Walker, 2006) were helpful concepts to do so.

15. We found:
i. Teachers relished the opportunity to re-engage with the discipline as a form
of professional development (subject and curriculum focused) which has
been marginalised.
ii. Some academic geographers are very interested to work with teachers – the
collaboration of university geographers and teachers is productive.
iii. Vignettes are a very effective tool to help teachers think deeply and critically
about geography.
iv. Teachers working together on curriculum focus (e.g. migration) is welcomed
and is very productive.
v. Teachers reflected that they taught with more nuanced concepts, these could
be seen in their students’ talk and writing. For example in concepts such as:
• ‘home’
• ‘migrant’
• a more global sense of place
• Seeing more complexity in people’s movements and processes of
migration
2. Maintaining the teacher’s iterative relationship between
classroom teaching and engagement with the discipline

16. We found:
i. Tools to evaluate access to PDK are possible. Particularly helpful for
teachers were: Maude’s typology; Klafki’s ‘significance’; a ‘before and after’
planning/ evaluation framework (based on Beneker’s 4 fold model of PK);
concept mapping.
ii. PDK in curriculum and ‘powerful pedagogies’ go hand in hand.
iii. Knowledge (cognitive) was mixed with values, attitudes and emotions
(affective) when a controversial topic (like migration) is concerned.
iv. Evaluating GeoCapabilities development of the student was beyond the
project scope – only a longitudinal study could evidence this (and still
would be problematic).
v. Teachers’ curriculum making ‘stories’ was a helpful way to evaluate access
to PDK.
3. Practical tools to evaluate how teachers and children
have accessed powerful disciplinary knowledge (PDK)

17. 1.
Vignette
Current Geography (powerful
disciplinary knowledge – PDK)
2. Planning
3. Teach lessons
4. Evaluation
Social Justice
The GeoCapabilities 3 Toolkit in steps
Throughout the process hold the concept of social justice in mind

19. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This Web site reflects the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
http://www.geocapabilities.org
GeoCapabilities 3
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION –
PANEL DISCUSSION OF ‘POWERFUL
GEOGRAPHY’ NEXT SESSION
David Mitchell, david.mitchell.14@ucl.ac.uk
Martin Hanus, martin.hanus@natur.cuni.cz