What Is Geographical Enquiry?

What is Geographical Enquiry? What do you understand by the term enquiry in geography? How does enquiry support learning in geography?

What do you think are the characteristics of geographical enquiry?

• Use Margaret Roberts framework to explore your understanding of enquiry? Think activity. • Compare with your partner. Pair activity. • Discuss in a four. Share activity. • De brief: what are the possible influences on your thinking? • Why is a consideration of geographical enquiry important?

What makes enquiry ‘geographical’ • Enquiry is referred to in a number of NC subjects: Citizenship, DT, geography, history, ICT, maths and science. • What makes an enquiry specifically ‘geographical’ is what is being investigated and the kinds of questions asked. (Roberts, 2006) • Neighbour (1992) identifies five questions: What is the phenomenon? – Where is it located? – Why is it located there? – What impact does its’ location have? – What changes should be made? What ought to be done? • It is important to remember that what geographers study and the questions they ask change over time, Neighbours questions do not consider different geographies and perspectives such as how space and place is experienced and represented by different groups of people. (Roberts 2006)

Why is geographical enquiry important? • You can follow this up in the Secondary Geography Handbook pages 94 -96. You will find this extremely useful for assignment 1. • The question I want to ask is how much teachers control enquiry work? You may want to observe this on placement A in your serial weeks and on your observations. Barnes et al devised a framework which provides a useful analytical structure. What are the advantages and drawbacks of each approach?

'Effective questioning has greater potential than any other teaching method for stimulating student thinking…' (Kissock & Iyortsuun, 1982, p. ix) Kissock, C. & Iyortsuun, P. (1982) A Guide to Questioning, London: Macmillan Press.

'So, since the soul can never die, and has been born over and over again, and has already seen what there is in this world, and what there is in the world beyond – i.e. absolutely everything – there's nothing it hasn't already learned about. So it wouldn't be at all surprising if it managed to remember things, the things it used to know, either about being good or about anything else.' (Plato, 2005, p. 101-102)

How might we develop enquiry through questioning? Why do teachers use questioning? • To interest, engage and challenge • To check prior knowledge and understanding • To stimulate recall and mobilise existing knowledge and experience to create new understanding and meaning • To focus thinking on key concepts and ideas • To help extend pupils thinking from the concrete and factual to the analytical and evaluative • To lead pupils through a planned sequence which progressively establishes key understandings • To promote pupils thinking about what they have learned.

Research. •

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Tizard and Hughes (1984, old but interesting and relevant!) found that 4 year old children took part, on average, in 27 conversations per hour with their mothers, each having an average of 16 turns, with half the conversations being initiated by the children, asking an average of 26 questions per hour. As the children entered school conversations fell to 10 per hour and the vast majority were started and controlled by adults. Thus a fall in the amount of speaking, questioning and the number of requests for information, restricted language and less active reflection and planning. Students therefore quickly lose the ability to develop questioning and vocalise their ideas.

Common pitfalls • Not being clear about why you are asking the question. • Asking too many closed questions that need only a short answer. Establish a minimum length of response: ‘I don’t want an answer of less than 15 words’ • Asking too many questions at once. • Asking difficult questions without building up to them. • Asking superficial questions that do not get to the centre of the issue. • Asking a question and then answering it yourself! • Focus on a small number of pupils. • Deal ineffectively with poor answers. Try and provide prompts and scaffolds to help pupils correct their own mistakes or get other pupils to comment. • Not treating pupils answers seriously, ask why they have given that answer try and unpick the thinking.

So: • Be clear about why you are asking the questions. Make sure they will do what you want them to. • Plan a sequence of questions that make increasingly cognitive demands of pupils. • Give pupils time to answer and offer prompts if necessary. • Ask conscripts rather than volunteers or at least mix it up a bit!

Planning a question sequence • • • •

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5W’s and an H. Bloom’s taxonomy. The taxonomy classifies questions into groups according to their level of cognitive challenge. From knowledge to evaluation. Think of incorporating higher order thinking skills: would, could, should, might. So pupils need to: acquire knowledge before they can understand it. They need to understand it before they can apply it to different contexts. They need to be able to apply it before they can analyse, question or infer from that knowledge. Only when they have done all that can they create new knowledge and then they will be able to evaluate! Phew! Look at the charts I give you. They link Bloom’s taxonomy with the tasks pupils might be expected to do. Watch the video sequence and notice how she increases the demand in the question sequence. Starter 1. D:\VIDEO_TS The Development Compass Rose is another strategy to try in your questioning.