Geography Education’s Potential and the Capability Approach: Geocapabilities and Schools

This book explores the pivotal role that geography as a school subject plays in helping every young person achieve their educational potential. Expressed as ‘GeoCapabilities’, this concept draws on the the capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum applied to curriculum thinking in schools. While traditional subjects have often been deemed irrelevant and outdated in an overcrowded secondary school curriculum, subjects like geography have often been lost or combined with others to fulfil a broad skills agenda. More recent talk of a ‘knowledge led’ curriculum can often lead to the recitation of facts at the expense of developing deeper understanding. This book argues the concept of powerful geographical knowledge, based on the work of Michael Young and David Lambert, invests the subject of geography with its educational potential: this forms the basis of GeoCapabilities. GeoCapabilities focuses on both what is being taught and why, and as such provides a framework of curriculum thinking which will be of interest and value to geography teachers, school leaders with curriculum development responsibilities and all those interested in the capability approach and the moral imperative of education. Richard Bustin is Head of Geography at Lancing College, UK. He is also on the editorial board of the journal Teaching Geography and works with trainee geography teachers across the UK. Chapter 1. What is the purpose of schools?. Chapter 2. Mapping a curriculum ‘crisis’. Chapter 3. Bringing the ‘geography’ back in. Chapter 4. The ‘capabilities approach’ to geography education. Chapter 5. Developing geocapabilities: The role of research. Chapter 6. The potential of a future 3 ‘capabilities’ curriculum. Chapter 7. Conclusions.