When you select and create your own curriculum artefacts, many questions will arise. The following questions are provided to help you reflect on this Module.

Consider the following evaluative questions

The questions are based on the three pillars of curriculum making, reflecting the Nordic “didactic triangle” which stresses the different student and teacher perspectives towards the subject.

Subject

Which specific place(s) are studied?
Where is the contextual geographical knowledge (eg the locational context)?
Where is the powerful geographical knowledge (PDK)?
What are the ways in which geographical thinking deepens or extends understanding of the theme, issue or place?

Students

In what ways are the students’ prior experience/knowledge accessed and taken into account?
In what ways are the theme, issue or place made ‘accessible’ to the students?
In what ways are students challenged to think beyond their current (or ‘everyday’) understandings?
Is it possible to say how students’ learning progresses?
How does this theme, issue or place study contribute to the wider curriculum aims?

Teacher

What has the teacher done to generate a ‘need to know’, enthusiasm or motivation?
In what ways have the teacher supplied data for students to assimilate, process, transform and communicate?
How is the content sequenced – and how is this justified?
How does the teacher lead the learning (including exposition), and how is this balanced by more ‘pupil centred’ learning activity?

Evaluating the “Kilkelly” Case Study

To illustrate how the evaluative questions work, we provide a response to them in red and the downloadable pdf below. This relates to the Kilkelly case study from the previous section.

images Reflections on the Kilkelly curriculum artefact