Geographical Fieldwork
How is Geographical Fieldwork different?
Fieldwork…
is not only an important component of the NSW Geography Syllabus but it also encourages our students to engage with the Inquiry process and learn by doing. It connects knowledge gained in the classroom to real world experience and every day examples, flowing onto industry connections and future careers.
What makes Fieldwork Geographical?
Geographical Fieldwork has been developed to incorporate 7 elements, based on the GEOGStandards, literature and recent research as well as an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the implementation of the NSW Syllabus (K-10 and Stage 6).
The theory behind Geographical Fieldwork came from ‘What makes a Geography assessment Geographical? (Caldis 2019) which incorporates not only content, but also fostering geographical inquiry, tools, skills and fieldwork. It also includes geographical thinking and concepts as well as communicating with appropriate terminology. Additionally, it is vital that Geographical Fieldwork is accessible to students and teachers as well as holding relevance and meaning to the learners.
An in-depth explanation of Geographical Fieldwork is presented in ‘Fieldwork Simplified’, a Professional Development Workshop for Teachers of Geography.
What does it look like?
Fieldwork should be simple, accessible and meaningful. From my experience many classroom teachers find the idea of fieldwork a little bit daunting and they are unlikely to attempt to incorporate it into their lessons.
Geographical Fieldwork provides simple ideas for teachers and student to make connections, using accessible tools within school grounds. Students gain meaning and relevance from their Place to better understand basic biophysical interactions and how humans cause change in an urban environment. This flows through to build a deeper respect for the natural world around them and their impacts upon it. Ultimately, helping to building well informed global citizens.