Towards an educational case for social and political issues in the geography curriculum

Dados Bibliográficos

ID11951720
AutoresAlexander Standish (0000-0003-4170-0823, Institute of Education, University College London , 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL , United Kingdom, autor correspondente)
Ano2024
Volume58
Fascículo4
Páginas495-513
Data de publicação2024-01-30
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Philosophy of Education (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0309-8249 • E-ISSN: 1467-9752
EditoraOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/jopedu/qhae013
OpenAlexW4391344274
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas20

Whilst social and political issues have an important role in the geography curriculum, the long-term erosion of the value and insularity of disciplinary knowledge in society and the curriculum has blurred the distinction between educational aims and political advocacy in classrooms. Increasingly, teachers, policymakers, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) instrumentalize the curriculum with respect to their political objectives, including climate change and social injustice. In taking an advocacy approach to pedagogy, they potentially undermine liberal educational objectives, including the development of autonomy and subjectification. Drawing on recent work in philosophy of education (e.g. Biesta; Van Poeck, and Östman) as well as social realist approaches to knowledge, I make a case for teaching about social and political issues on liberal educational grounds. Geography plays a key role in the school curriculum by providing a space for exploring the human condition through the study of people in contrasting environments and cultural systems. Here, we examine how geography teachers can handle issues in a morally careful way and navigate a line between advocacy and educational aims. One key difference examined is the need to treat students as subjects in their own right and to help develop skills of moral enquiry. In practice this means encouraging an open-ended approach, exploring topics (and the values underpinning them) from a range of perspectives, developing sensitivity to difference, and showing tolerance for ideas of which one disapproves. For students to develop agency and moral independence, they must learn how to think about social and political issues rather than be told what to think

Curriculum · Curriculum development · Economic growth · Economics · Education theory · Epistemology · Higher education · Human geography · Pedagogy · Philosophy of education · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Geography Education and Pedagogy · Global Educational Policies and Reforms

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