Geography Teachers and Making the School Geography Curriculum

The content of geography lessons has become a pressing issue in geography education. Recent criticisms of the quality of geography education in schools have focused attention on what geography we should be teaching young people, and on how teachers construct the geography curriculum. Morgan and Lambert (2005) emphasise that lesson planning should be an intellectual task that begins with fundamental questions about the nature of school geography. This article critically analyses the geographical knowledge presented in three geography lessons observed as part of the external examination of a PGCE course. The article questions what students have learnt about geography from these lessons and challenges initial teacher education to address issues of ill-conceived school geography.