How students are learning geography from popular culture and what to do about it.
If you ask Australian geography students about climate and weather, they’re more likely to offer up something they’ve learnt from watching The Simpsons than what they’ve heard in class – regardless of its accuracy.
This was the overwhelming message Dr Rod Lane received when he studied over 500 Year 9 and 10 geography students at 20 different schools to uncover what pre-conceptions they were bringing to class that might be getting in the way of them understanding the big ideas in the curriculum.
“Popular culture wins out over classroom instruction every time -- that’s what teachers are competing with,” Dr Lane said. He found, for example, that shows like The Simpsons, movies like Twister, The Day After Tomorrow and Wizard of Oz and, even computer games, are influential sources of students’ understanding -- or misunderstanding – of weather events, such as tropical cyclones.
Known as ‘alternative conceptions’ by education academics, these pre-conceived ideas are not the same as simple mistakes or errors but are concepts that have been built over time based on students’ everyday experiences. This means they can be resistant to change.
“We found problems with both the accuracy and depth of student knowledge – some students, for example, think global warming is due to more sun coming in through the hole in the ozone layer, conflating two unrelated concepts.”
Rather than bemoaning the results, Dr Lane and colleagues are working on a solution that promises to improve both geography teaching and student understanding.
By surveying students to ‘pre-diagnose’ their conceptions of topics to be covered before teaching begins, lessons can be adapted to steer students towards a deeper understanding of the key scientific processes that underpin geography as well as core geography concepts.
Turning this knowledge into better student outcomes, however, is not straightforward. Dr Lane’s research has also shown many teachers currently have little idea of students’ misconceptions, how entrenched these might be or how to recognise and overcome them.
His current work in rural Orange with Year 11 and 12 students is seeking to bridge this gap in a fieldwork unit about rivers. Working to first discover what student’s ‘know’, Dr Lane is then designing and implementing professional development programs to help teachers respond to misconceptions, such as the belief rivers flow inland from the ocean.
“It is a light bulb moment when teachers realise how important students’ idea are – and recognise they need to flip their pedagogy to build student accuracy and depth of understanding. This challenges the commonly held assumption that students’ minds are blank slates,” he said.
Dr Rod Lane is a former high school geography teacher and now Deputy Head (Learning and Teaching) in the Department of Educational Studies at Macquarie University. His passion is teacher professional development, particularly the promise of ‘diagnosing’ students’ pre-conceived ideas to establish a baseline for better teaching. While this approach has been widely used to improve learning in Science and Maths, Dr Lane is pioneering efforts to expand its benefits to geography teaching and beyond.