Changing Geographical Understandings of Europe amongst 10-year-old Greek-Cypriot Pupils: A Study of the Impact of a Primary School Curricular Intervention - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Changing Geographical Understandings of Europe amongst 10-year-old Greek-Cypriot Pupils: A Study of the Impact of a Primary School Curricular Intervention

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Title: Changing Geographical Understandings of Europe amongst 10-year-old Greek-Cypriot Pupils: A Study of the Impact of a Primary School Curricular Intervention


1
Changing 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

2
Europe 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

3
Questions
  • 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?

4
Childrens 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)

5
The 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.

6
Research 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

7
FindingsChildrens representations of Europe
EU
8
Representations 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

9
Configurational knowledge location of Europe in
world
10
Findings Configurational knowledge
11
Landmark knowledge countries of Europe
12
Landmark knowledge of EU
13
Cyprus 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

14
Degree of identification with European identity
15
Relative subjective importance of European
identity (1-12)
16
Europe 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

17
Discussion
  • 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

18
Discussion
  • 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?

19
Discussion
  • 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)
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