How and why national curriculum frameworks are failing geography

Abstract

Morgan (2017) suggests that our failure to identify a core of geographical knowledge that should be taught in schools is leading to ‘the making of geographical ignorance’. At a time of centralised curriculum direction, it is teachers who are being called on by the subject community to remake and recontextualise the curriculum. However, I draw on curriculum development thinking, and particularly the recognition of levels of curriculum development, to show that a first step in addressing the problem should be to recognise the inadequacy of national curriculum frameworks since 1988. Recent changes to the English and Welsh curricula are examined to demonstrate how and why curriculum frameworks are failing and to explain why teachers' work, however well supported, cannot fully compensate for poor national curriculum design. Consideration is given to ways in which the geography community might be able to influence national curriculum changes.