The School Geography Department: Cultural, Historical and Social Practices in Student Teacher Education

Abstract

The Geography department along with the departments of History and Religious Studies was part of the Humanities faculty. These departments were situated together on both school sites. There were four members of staff working in the Geography department with the student teachers during the research year with one student teacher in the first teaching practice and two student teachers in the second. Geography was taught as a compulsory subject in the lower school (11–13 year old pupils) and as an optional examination subject in the upper school (14–16 year old pupils) and taught as an option at Advanced level with the Post 16 students. (For a discussion of the teaching and studying of Geography, see Bonnett (2008), Gersmehl (2008) and Lambert and Balderstone (2012)).