The highlight of my last week has been the Geographical Association Annual Conference in Manchester. It is simply the best INSET a Geographer can do. Everyone who is everyone in the world of Geographical Education is there. This year's conference was no different -some 750 delegates from over 40 countries including a big contingent from Texas. The theme of the conference was ‘Geographies of Difference’.
Thursday 12th April – Day 1
The first part of the conference is the Association at Work - activists from committees and branches meet on Thursday lunchtime for a couple of hours when they are involved in discussions about the GA -this year we considered the new Geography Education Annual Monitoring Report - a first for the GA where the overall condition of School Geography is examined. We also looked at the GA's proposals for the National Curriculum Review. As a member of the Royal Geographical Society's National Curriculum Working Party, I observed this with interest as in essence the two organisations proposals weren't too far apart in their ideas.
The Annual Meeting of the Association then precedes a public lecture – this year it was the award winning author Marina Lewycka, whose novels such as A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Two Caravans, and We Are All Made of Glue deal with geographical issues such as migration and conflict. Despite the fact I am not a great reader of fiction, I found her lecture fascinating as she spoke of the difficulties of writing about cultural differences in fiction and have made a resolution to buy a couple of her books to read when the Morris Clan go on their annual pilgrimage to the sun after school finishes in July.
After the Public Lecture, the awards ceremony took place and I was pleased to see a couple of friends pick up awards for resources they had helped to write. In the evening I attended the drinks reception and conference dinner that gave me the opportunity to do some more networking.
Day 2 – Friday 13th April
The second day started early with sessions commencing at 8.45am and I attended a most informative session on Africa. I tend to go to the subject update lectures as they enable me to keep on top of the latest thinking in academic geography and this lecture by Prof. Tony Binns and Etienne Nel from the University of Otago certainly fit the bill. I am anxiously waiting for the PowerPoint to be published on the GA website so I incorporate it in to my teaching especially at A2 level.
This year’s president Fran Martin, in her presidential lecture, spoke about how important it is to be open to having our world views challenged. She used a variety of maps showing the same location in the world but sourced from a range of perspectives showing the same thing in many different ways. She also emphasised the perils of teaching from a ‘single story’ using a TED Talks film featuring Chimamanda Adichie, the award winning Nigerian author, called ‘The Dangers of a Single Story’. A link can be found here:
Fran’s lecture was really thought-provoking (as indeed most were) and had delegates talking all day even if she had admitted that she failed A level geography – TWICE!
Before lunch, I went to another subject update lecture from Professor Emeritus Michael Bradford (of Bradford and Kent fame for the older geographers reading this). His lecture on the regeneration of Manchester was outstanding and I have booked him to come to Shrewsbury to talk to our GA branch in 2012/13.Lunch involved a meeting with my colleagues on the GA Independent Schools Special Interest Group (ISSIG) and coffee with my co-author Dr. Janet Speake from Liverpool Hope University. To discuss our next collaboration –this time for the GA’s Geography publication.
After lunch, I attended another subject update lecture looking at Global Energy Dilemmas with Professor Michael Bradshaw. In the lecture, he examined recent trends and future predictions, defining terms including ‘energy security’, ‘globalisation of demand’, ‘embedded carbon’ and the ‘Kaya Identity’ – a measurement of the impact of energy.
Another topic I teach at A2 is Water Conflicts and the lecture on water security from Professor Tony Allen. Although much of the content was not new to me, having attended a similar lecture in Derby in 2010, it was a useful focus and introduced a few new terms such as ‘food water’, ‘virtual water, ‘embedded water’ and ‘water footprint’. Professor Allen spoke at length about water in the food chain and the important job farmers have in managing nearly all the green and much of the blue water in our environment.
After sometime looking around the exhibition, I went to a lecture to promote the Digital Earth project, presented by Alan Parkinson, John Lyon and Dr Michael Solem from the AAG. I have worked with Alan and John and Michael is a colleague of a good friend who works in Geography Education in Colorado. The term ‘geo media’ was introduced and the three speakers showcased different projects they had worked on.
By this time, I was feeling ‘lectured out’ and headed back to my hotel to freshen up ready for further more discussions with ISSIG firstly in the bar of the McDonald Hotel, then in the Mongolian BBQ in the Gay Village and then finally at the GA Beermeet in the magnificently-named Peveril of the Peak pub close to the Bridgewater Hall. Thanks to Richard Allaway (of Geography All the Way fame) for organising the event, and providing free goodie bags for all those who attended- the Blue Lagoon moisturiser is great by the way. It was also good to get the chance to meet the Priory School, Southsea Geography team who were as enthusiastic socialisers as they are Geographers!
Day 3 Saturday 14th April
After a poor night’s sleep, I concurred with Mike Bradford’s view of Manchester being a 24-hour city (drunken revellers at 3am and delivery lorries at 6am). As a result, I missed the first session of lectures and spent more time speaking with exhibitors. The exhibition seemed a little sparser this year as there seemed to be less stands compared to previous years, I came to the conclusion that as publishing houses merge and in turn take over exam boards, there will be inevitably less exhibitors.
Armed with enough mugs from Pearsons to provide my department with a new one each and enough freebie pens from ESRI to sink a battleship, I headed off to the keynote lecture from Prof. Gill Valentine on ‘Living with difference: making communities out of strangers’. I found the references to sociological theory interesting such as Allport’s ‘contact hypothesis’ where prejudice is reduced through increased contact between diverse groups as well as the opposing views of Puttnam, who suggested that as social diversity increases, trust declines. Again, this was a thought provoking lecture and over a coffee with Bob Jones, from the North Staffs GA Branch, we found ourselves discussing points that Professor Valentine had raised.
After an early lunch, I was running a fringe session on IGCSE Geography that had been omitted from the original programme due to a clerical error. Although, we had a small audience (who included Prof. David Lambert), we were able to attract at least one more school to our number. It was at the end of this session, my low-point of the conference occurred.
Having carefully collected a bagful of mugs, pens and other useful resources, someone picked up my delegates bag by mistake and left me with a bag of primary resources that were little use to me. My heart dropped though hopefully Jon Wolton of Edexcel is sending me some Pearson mugs to replace those that were taken by mistake. If the person who took my bag is reading this, I hope you enjoy your tea and coffee!
My last session of the conference was delivered by the admirable David Rogers from Priory School, who along with Simon Ross has written resources on the Eyjafjallajรถkull eruption for Discover the World, the company we went to Iceland with. Attracted by the inducements of wine and Icelandic delicacies (that turned out to be Sirius chocolate and liquorice but not the putrid shark meat and pickled ram’s testicles I was hoping for), I went along for a very informative and entertaining talk from a really enthusiastic geographer who was inspirational even though he was on the graveyard slot.
And so another GA Conference ended and I headed back to Shrewsbury for the start of term. Once again Lucy Oxley of the GA provided a first class programme and I would like to thank her on behalf of the Geography community for all of her hard work and also to her helpers from the GA.
Monday 16th April
Our first day back was spent doing INSET. After a brief staff meeting, we settled down to listen to Ed Smith. Ed was a former England cricketer who is now a writer and journalist, despite both grandfathers being headmasters and both parents being teachers. Ed was a voracious reader despite playing professional cricket and got a double first from Cambridge even though he devoted his time to playing cricket. His talk was interesting and although not directly relevant to education was fascinating to me as a one-time wannabe professional sportsman. He likened INSET to being like pre-season training for a sportsman; a view I can certainly empathise with.
Since retiring from cricket in 2008, he has written a number of books on sport and life and I have added these to my Amazon wish list and will buy a couple to read when Lanzarote beckons at the end of term. When I was getting ready for a Year 9 parents evening last night, I was listening to Radio 2 as I tend to do these days to find out he was Simon Mayo’s guest at 6pm last night talking about his latest book ‘Luck: What it Means and Why it Matters’. The Times described is as an 'An exceptional book: lucid, thought-provoking, informative and fair. Outstanding' I can’t wait to read it.
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