Title: Changing Geographical Understandings of Europe amongst 10-year-old Greek-Cypriot Pupils: A Study of the Impact of a Primary School Curricular Intervention
1Changing Geographical Understandings of Europe
amongst 10-year-old Greek-Cypriot Pupils A
Study of the Impact of a Primary School
Curricular Intervention
- Stavroula Philippou
- Assistant Professor (Curriculum Studies)
- Department of Education Sciences
- Cyprus College
- stavroula_at_cycollege.ac.cy
2Europe and education the political context
- European enlargement, integration, constitution
discussion and debate - Europe invites complexity, as it has been
defined from various perspectives (geographical,
political, cultural, religious, economic etc) at
different historical periods - EUs and Council of Europes educational policy
aim constructing a European identity and
citizenship amongst young people though
education key role for Geography, History and
Languages
3Questions
- How are these concepts understood by children and
what kind of geographical understandings does or
could education contribute towards? - More importantly, how do geographical
understandings of Europe relate to childrens
adherence to a European identity, an identity
which the EU and the Council of Europe have
increasingly sought to develop through their
educational policy?
4Childrens development of geographical
understandings
- Scarcity of research into geography as a
subject-area (Biddulph Adey, 2003) or into
childrens geographical understandings of other
countries (Barrett Farroni, 1996 Barrett,
2005) - Early research (Piaget Weil, 1951) and critique
(Jahoda, 1964) - Descriptive and a-theoretical research until
1970s focusing on attitudes rather than knowledge - Resurgence after 1990s as geographical knowledge
of own, other countries Europe are included in
definitions of national and European identities
(Barrett, 2005) - Exploration of relation between geographical
knowledge and adherence to national and European
identities (Barrett, 1996 Barrett Whennell,
1998 Barrett, 2005)
5The curricular intervention in Geography
- Europe as content in 5th Grade (10-year-olds)
Geography at Greek-Cypriot primary school
national curriculum - Single-textbook policy critiqued as
factual-based (Kadis, 1999) encyclopedic
utilitarian approach to Europe (Philippou, 2004
2007) - Intervention critical and constructivist
approach to Europe (Philippou, 2005) - Europe and EU as changing, multiple and diverse
through exploration of geomorphology, frontiers,
ecology, economy, culture, colonisation and
stereotypes - Europe as a resource rather than a fortress, as
a tool to reflect on identity - Interdependency with rest of the world
- Pedagogy critical study of multiple sources and
maps, the construction of concepts and
collaborative work.
6Research Design
- Research strategies
- Case-study and Curriculum development
- Action-research and Quasi-experiment
(December-June 2000-2001) - Sampling
- 4 schools (2 semi-urban, 2 rural) and 8 teachers
(opportunistic) - 140 pupils Greek-Cypriot 10-year-old pupils (63
exp. 77 control) - Research instruments
- Pre and post (tests, individual and focus group
interviews of pupils) - Items investigating self-categorisation, degree
of importance and relative subjective importance
of national and European identities - Items investigating geographical understandings
of Europe - Representations of Europe and the EU
- Configurational knowledge (of the spatial
relationships which exist between different
landmarks in terms of the direction and distance
between them) of Europe (map of world and Europe) - Landmark knowledge (that specific
spatio-geographic locations exist) of Europe and
EU - Geographical understandings of Cyprus in relation
to Europe/EU - Geographical understandings of Europe in relation
to world - Data analysis
- Atlas.ti
- SPSS.10
7FindingsChildrens representations of Europe
EU
8Representations of Europe EU
- Pre
- EuropeEU emphasis on economic aspects
- Misconceptions Europe as a city, country, state,
continent (difficulties with spatial inclusion) - Cyprus in Europe cultural affinities-Greek
- Cyprus not European because not in EU yet
- Turkey not in Europe Asia
- Post
- Distinction between Europe EU continent vs 15
countries - Europe neighbours but not united like EU
- EU peace, cooperation, help, economy (euro),
criteria of entrance, democracy, human rights - Cyprus European but more so when in EU
(economy-political problem) - Turkey only one part European geographically-BUT
can change
9Configurational knowledge location of Europe in
world
10Findings Configurational knowledge
11Landmark knowledge countries of Europe
12Landmark knowledge of EU
13Cyprus and Europe
- Pre
- European identity as a threat to national
- Non-European because of geography (proximity to
Asia) - Postponed to future (EU)
- Rarely accepted and only due to Greekness
- Post
- Cyprus European due to geography Mediterranean,
not Greece - Political and economic advantages
- greater adherence to a European identity in
self-categorisation item - BUT
14Degree of identification with European identity
15Relative subjective importance of European
identity (1-12)
16Europe and the world
- Test European countries treated the colonies in
a nice way - Europe as one of the most developed
continentsexample for imitation - Vs
- Being critical of role of Europe, colonisation
and economic progress-link with EU-Third World
countries
17Discussion
- Curriculum implications
- Possibility of constructing Europes frontiers as
arbitrary, constructed, changing and multiple - Suitability of the primary school context despite
single-textbook and national curriculum policies - Space for action research-role of teachers
18Discussion
- Pupil identities and education
- Social constructivist argument to support role of
school and teacher (Axia et al., 1998
Harrington, 1998) - Conceptual changes in understandings of Europe as
an indicator of impact of intervention
enriched with EU discourse and geography - Two opposite constructions of Europe/EU
- Link to European identity further adherence but
no link to geogr. knowledge is it a matter of
what kind of knowledge-representations?
19Discussion
- Limitations
- short period of implementation-difficulties of
research (11.42 of total school hours) - Europe as a small part of intervention/evaluation
- Use of standard-syllabus for intervention
- non-generalisable to GC pupils insights
- Future research
- Temporal dimension which changes in
understandings of Europe at different ages and
periods? - Spatial dimension comparisons with TC pupils and
other European pupils(Barrett Farroni, 1996
Axia et al., 1998)