Book Chapter


Bridging the divide between school and university geography: Mind the gap!

Abstract

This chapter discusses the known ‘gap’ between the curricular content of school and undergraduate geography courses, as well as considering the variation in expected student skills between the two. The text draws on global ‘reviews’ of the state of geography education – including issues of transition from school to university – to provide a comparative perspective across jurisdictions (see Butt and Lambert, 2014). The experiences of transition reported by geography students themselves are noted. Previously the ways in which students have negotiated the perceived gap has been largely overlooked, although some work has been completed on self-reflection (Bryson, 1997), on developing transferable skills (Haigh and Kilmartin. 1999), and on approaches to learning in geography (Maguire et al., 2001). Although attention is given to the impact of recent education policy shifts in England, which have required university academics to help revise the content of geography ‘A’ (advanced) levels, the approach taken here enables the reader to make comparisons with educational situations in other countries. A small case study is provided, highlighting the convergence and divergence of content and skills in schools and universities in England, noting the recent work of the A Level Content Advisory Board (ALCAB). The provision of a complete global overview of the gaps between school and university geography, and of their potential solutions, in different jurisdictions is impractical. Therefore, the English case study is designed to highlight common issues and to suggest how similar transition problems might be addressed in different national contexts. Implications for the effective transfer of students from school to university geography courses are discussed and perennial concerns about the range of geography content taught to pre-university students are considered.phy content taught to pre university students is considered.

Attached files

Authors

Butt, Graham

Oxford Brookes departments

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences\School of Education

Dates

Year of publication: 2019
Date of RADAR deposit: 2018-03-08



All rights reserved. This is a draft chapter. The final version is available in Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Geography / edited by Helen Walkington, Jennifer Hill and Sarah Dyer, published in 2019, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788116497. The material cannot be used for any other purpose without further permission of the publisher, and is for private use only.


Related resources

This RADAR resource is the Accepted Manuscript of Bridging the divide between school and university geography – ‘mind the gap!’
This RADAR resource is Part of Handbook for teaching and learning in geography [ISBN: 9781788116480] / edited by Helen Walkington, Jennifer Hill, and Sarah Dyer.

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