As I posted yesterday, the Northern Ireland TransformED draft curriculum went out for consultation at an event.
The Geography curriculum document had input from geography teachers, including Alistair Hamill and support from Grace Healy.
Downloadable as a PDF from this link.
Alistair was present at the launch event and made a short speech about the geography content.
He has turned this into a Substack post - his first one.
He talks through the new structure of the curriculum and the place for knowledge. Unsurprisingly there is a detailed section on plate tectonics... and GIS is also strongly featured:
"We have sought to make sure the geography curriculum reflects the best of the modern developments in the subject. Geography’s fieldwork and enquiry are increasingly conducted today using digital mapping technologies, or Geographic Information Systems (GIS). GIS is now central to how geographers - and, indeed, all of us - interact with spatial data. If you navigated here today using Google Maps; if you track your runs on Strava - or track your own children on Life 360 - you use GIS."And on the long-term impact of the proposed curriculum he says:
"If the ambition of this knowledge rich geography curriculum is fully realised, then the children and young people of Northern Ireland will be enabled to see the geography that surrounds them everyday, and will be informed, equipped and enabled to use their geographical knowledge to engage meaningfully in discussions and debates about geographical issues affecting our country, and beyond.
As the vision Statement for Geography finishes off by saying: “Geography equips young people to understand our rapidly changing and interconnected world as it is, and to imagine it as it could be in the future.”
Geography is back - and what a future it promises."
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