This article discusses the geography curriculum in response to the current epoch. Epoch-typical issues include economic and environmental justice associated with climate change. The circumstances we describe are exacerbated, we suggest, by the broader social, cultural and political contexts and divisions stoked by post-truth politics and social media. We argue that this age of crisis calls for a positive, coherent and principled educational response such as that exemplified by the capabilities approach to school geography. In recent years, conceptual and practical work emerging from GeoCapabilities has strengthened our conviction that 'Future 3' curriculum making has the potential to empower students through its engagement with geography. Teachers should be supported to acquire agency in the knowledge work necessary to achieve the full educational value of geography in education.

Drawing on sociological perspectives on literacy in which reading is viewed upon as a social and cultural practice, situated in the specifics of time and place (Barton & Hamilton, 2012) this symposium will address the significance of volitional reading in peoples’ lives across life stages and diverse national contexts. It attends to an expanded definition of the concept of reading which acknowledges the social, affective and relational dimensions of reading alongside cognitive dimensions (Cremin & Scholes, 2024). The first paper, Informally Talking about Books and Reading (Teresa Cremin & Helen Hendry), will share insights from two studies of UK classrooms that explored children’s book conversations and the social connections among  communities of engaged readers. The second paper, Lived Experiences of Young and Working Adults’ Print and Digital Recreational Reading (Chin Ee Loh), examines Singapore adults’ reading preferences to understand when, why and how they read for leisure, and the platforms through which reading is done. The third paper, Practical performative reading practices in rural woodlands (Stig-Börje Asplund, Birgitta Ljung Egeland, Gabriel Bladh & Martin Stolare) will present results from a three-generational study on rural working-class males in Sweden and their local, place-based reading practices. The symposium constitutes a theoretical, methodological and empirical contribution to contemporary reading research by facilitating nuanced and in depth descriptions of peoples’ volitional reading practices in relation to local and global changes in schools and society.

This paper explores the significance of reading in the lives of three generations of working-class males in four families living in the Swedish rural woodlands. By adopting a life history approach and taking an ecological perspective on reading that links narratives of reading experiences to places, times, and historical changes, the paper addresses how rural males’ reading practices intersect with ways of living in Swedish rural woodlands, and in what ways they have been maintained and changed across generations. Findings show that the males engage in practical performative reading practices where reading is transformed into embodied activities in which knowledge practices and embodied skills, entangled with socio-material and historical cultures, are constructed and reconstructed through intergenerational repetitions. In this way, reading emerges as an essential, community-building, and situated social practice through which the males, across generations, construct and reconstruct place-based knowledge practices vital for creating a sustainable lifestyle in the Swedish rural woodlands. The paper contributes insights into the role of reading in the construction of rural places, in formations of rural masculinities, and for the practices of staying, as well as how reading is influenced by the specific socio-cultural, historical, and material spaces available. 

National curriculum statements found within the Official Recontextualising Field (ORF) provide an insight into how geography as a school subject is conceptualized in a country's education system. National curricula can shape teachers' agency in curriculum making and what, how and where children and young people study and learn geography. This paper engages with the lower secondary national geography curriculum for England, Finland and Sweden. We examine the structure and nature of the national geography curricula in each country, before drawing on the threefold arrangement of geographical knowledge as a tool for the analysis of the curricula. Our analysis found that deep and descriptive world knowledge forms the largest proportion of all three national curricula documents, and we argue that this can lead to a potentially limited conceptualization of geographical knowledge and representation of geography. We also suggest that the threefold arrangement could more actively engage with political dimensions when considering futures, and that there should be greater attention paid to the histories and geographies of the discipline (geography) in school geography.

The aim of this study was to investigate students’ conceptions of causes, processes and consequences of earthquakes and to examine their geographical understanding of such hazards in terms of spatial and societal-nature relations. Data consists of 134 responses from 12 to 13-year-old students who had completed an assignment in the Swedish national test in geography (2013). The responses were analysed using content and thematic analyses. Data was complemented with interviews. Results show that many students hold alternative conceptions of processes causing earthquakes at different plate boundaries, and why poor societies are more severely affected by earthquakes than rich societies. Furthermore, results show that students have a limited understanding of the extent and location of earthquakes in the world. We conclude that instruction aiming to develop students’ understanding of earthquakes as a geographical phenomenon and hazard may integrate map-reasoning skills with examples that support contextual thinking. We also suggest that in order to develop students’ relational thinking on society and nature, instruction can utilise the concept of “capital”. Furthermore, teaching needs to take in to account and design instruction to meet students’ alternative conceptions that societal consequences of earthquakes are solely predetermined by natural factors such as climate or heat. 

This paper has its origins in the EU Comenius funded GeoCapabilities project. From its outset, the project developed and researched the notion of powerful disciplinary knowledge (PDK) as an underlying principle of curriculum making in the context of secondary school geography teaching. The work, led from the UCL Institute of Education and involving school teachers, teacher educators and other stakeholders across eight mainly European jurisdictions, was framed by Young and Muller's 'three educational scenarios' (Young & Muller, European Journal of Education, 45, 2010 and 11). The three futures heuristic is discussed as a means to distinguish qualities of curriculum thought. Future 3 scenarios, which posit teachers as curriculum makers with responsibility to engage in essential 'knowledge work', provide a principled platform on which to develop ambitious educational classroom encounters. Knowledge working with PDK and (as we go on to argue) other powerful ways of knowing the world, is seen as a bridge between social realist epistemological principles and practical classroom content selections. This opens the possibility of responding to Deng's (Journal of Curriculum Studies, 54, 2022) call for developing practical theories of content with teachers. Although the authors are geographers in education drawing on different international perspectives and traditions, the paper addresses matters of interest applicable to a variety of specialist subject domains across the secondary school curriculum.

Under 2022 genomfördes en studie bland geografilärare i år 4-9 i svensk grundskola. Studien genomfördes av forskare i geografi vid Karlstads universitet. Syftet med studien är att öka kunskapen om hur geografiundervisning genomförs i svenska skola och lärares syn på ämnet.

I föreliggande rapport redovisas resultatet av denna studie dels utifrån ett samlat perspektiv för samtliga lärare i ämnet, men också utifrån olika mönster i svar mellan lärare i olika ålder, av olika kön och undervisande på olika stadier.

I studien behandlas lärarnas personliga relation till geografiämnet, syn på sin utbildning i ämnet och ämnets förhållande till andra skolämnen. Även lärares uppfattning om geografiämnets uppgift som skolämne och syn på hur undervisning i ämnet bäst genomförs har studerats. I det senare fallet såväl utifrån lärares uppfattning om hur undervisning och lärande i geografi bäst bör utformas liksom vilka förmågor som är viktiga att elever utvecklar i ämnet. Studien behandlar också hur lärare organiserar sin undervisning i geografiämnet, vilka arbetssätt och metoder som är vanligast i ämnet och vad som styr deras undervisning. Även vilka lärresurser som lärare använder i sin geografiundervisning, däribland digitala sådana ingår i studien.