GeoCapabilities is an EU funded programme.

 

It is a 3 year project under Comenius (539079-LLP-1-2013-1-UK-COMENIUS-CMP) that started in December 2013 and will finish in November 2016.

 

The key objective is to create teacher training materials to develop teachers as curriculum leaders … through a 'capabilities' approach.

 

The project embraces diversity in culture and language and in how geography is understood and expressed in national school standards. The project believes that a capabilities approach helps geography educators in all jurisdictions articulate the relevance and power of learning how to think geographically.

 

The key output is “to develop and pilot an online professional development communications platform for teacher preparation in geography.” This aims to include:

•  Resources (teaching materials and communications tools)

•  Trans-European collaborations

•  Online teacher exchanges

 

The Geocapabilities2  Work Programme

 

1. Teacher questionnaire: (“what is school geography for?”)

a. Aims of geography teaching

b. Main themes of the subject

 

2. Assembling, collating and analyzing information on existing models of teacher training in partner countries (and beyond) and identification of good practice.

 

3. Analysis of ‘cases’ of best practice in geography teacher education (in depth interviews with teachers, teacher trainers and mentors).

 

4. Communication of examples of best practice, including: teacher educators, school leaders, school teachers.

 

5. Development of an online teacher training platform. This will be designed for sharing and communicating ideas, information and good practices.

Four ‘modules’ are being devised and  produced. These could be thought of as  online  ‘toolkits' in understanding  the geocapability approach, how  this links to curriculum making in practice and develops into curriculum leadership.

 

6. Project Reports (delivered at the end of each phase of the project).

 

7. In addition, published articles will be produced on: the theoretical basis of the geo-capabilities approach; the results of preliminary survey(s); the case studies; the on-line platform and its implementation and take up.

 

Working Papers and Materials

The project is assembling relevant materials of various kinds.  Some examples are in the column to the right and further materials are in the Research page of this website.

These materials  help conceptualise the main theoretical ideas of the GeoCapabilities project.

These ideas, which are the theoretical resources of the project, are:

 •  capabilities

 •  capabilities approach

 •  curriculum

 •  curriculum making

 •  curriculum futures

 •  powerful (disciplinary) knowledge

 •  powerful pedagogies

 

Partners, Associate Partners and others  contribute and disseminate the work and outcomes of the project at conferences, meetings, seminars  and workshops.

 

Partners

 

P1  UCL Institute of Education, London, England: David Lambert

P2  University of Helsinki, Finland: Sirpa Tani

P3  Eurogeo, Brussels, Belgium: Karl Donert

P5  Geographical Association, Sheffield, England: Duncan Hawley

P6  Viikki Teacher Training School of Helsinki University (school partner), Helsinki, Finland: Elina Särkelä

P7  Doukas (school partner), Athens, Greece: Panos Papoutsis

P8  City of London Freemens School (school partner), London, England: Richard Bustin

P9  Twycross House School (school partner), Coventry, England: Kelly Kerrigan

P10 AAG (external partner), Washington DC, U.S.A.: Michael Solem

 

Associate Partners

Since its inception GeoCapabilities has excited a lot of interest internationally. Several individuals have declared an active interest, contributing to research, translating the definition and other key papers etc. These colleagues have become Associate Partners, with access to the project workspace (Moodle).

The project is unable to fund Associate Partners, but the plan is for Associates to help the project further by evaluating teacher training materials as and when these are published and organising training sessions/workshops to teachers or teacher educators within their respective countries. 

If you are interested in becoming an Associate Partner please contact the Project Coordinator.

 

Current Associate Partners are:

Tine Béneker, Utrecht University  (Netherlands); Gabriel Bladh, University of Karlstad (Sweden); Chew Hung Chang, Nanyang Technological University  (Singapore); Felisbela Martins, Universidade do Porto (Portugal);                           Anke Uhlenwinkel, Humboldt Universität-zu-Berlin (Germany); Tijana Ilic, University of Novi Sad (Serbia), University of Masarik (Czech Republic),  Eyup Artvinli, Eskisehir Osmangazi University (Turkey), Phil Klein, University of Colorodo (USA);   Indra Persaud (Seychelles), University of Seychelles; Kirsty Holden, Fortismere School (UK); José Jesús Delgado Peña, Universidad de Málaga (Spain).

 

 

Programme Coordinator: Professor David Lambert, UCL Institute of Education, London.     David.Lambert@ioe.ac.uk