Aims Additional Materials

Can the capabilities approach be applied to all subjects?

images Richard Bustin tried to find out in a workshop at his school.

The video begins with some school students (Matthew, Oliver and Tom) talking about what ‘education’ means to them, and why they think subjects matter.

Richard then introduces the workshop.

The video ends with a comment from the Headteacher who was impressed with the depth of reflection and how this benefited the teaching staff at the beginning of a new academic year.

Case-study 4

imgres-1 The video: exploring ‘powerful disciplinary knowledge’ with teachers

The workshop took place over three hours. It was introduced with a keynote.

images-1 Workshop KeyNote DL

There was time for teachers their specialist groups to explore their subjects as ‘powerful knowledge’. The results are summarised here. This is a very interesting document.

pdf graphic GeoCapabilities teacher workshop

Using the document. With mixed groups of specialist teachers (or trainee teachers) this document may help support a productive discussion exploring these questions:

1. In what ways may your specialist subject be ‘powerful’ knowledge?

2. Is the idea of ‘powerful disciplinary knowledge’ (and a Future 3 curriculum) useful? In what ways?

Doctoral Wordle

Richard Bustin obtained his Doctorate from UCL Institute of Education during the period of the GeoCapabilities project. This Wordle is based on his entire thesis. The thesis itself is obtainable here.