A case study exploring how Year 7 pupils’ understanding of India can influence their conceptions of place
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Authors
Thorpe, Megan
Publication Date
2021-05-01Journal Title
Journal of Trainee Teacher Educational Research
ISSN
2043-8338
Publisher
Faculty of Education
Volume
12
Pages
115-146
Type
Article
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Thorpe, M. (2021). A case study exploring how Year 7 pupils’ understanding of India can influence their conceptions of place. Journal of Trainee Teacher Educational Research, 12 115-146. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.83621
Abstract
This research explores how Year 7 pupils’ understanding of India can influence their conceptions of place. Findings reveal that pupils expected to learn about distant place through comparison to their own experience, a customary technique in both primary and secondary geography education, which fosters a binary understanding of the world, reinforcing ideas of ‘us and them’. By explicitly discussing the complexities of representation, place, and everyday life – concepts not usually addressed until A-level – pupils were able to dispel the idea of ‘a single story’, and began to develop empathetic understanding of the diverse reality of everyday life in distant places. India served as a contextual backdrop for their learning, and as they were exposed to more and more contemporary images and facts about India, the more they moved towards a continuum, rather than binary approach (Picton, 2008), and began to think in more relational terms (Martin, 2013).
Keywords
PGCE Secondary Geograph, India, representation, place, year 7
Identifiers
This record's DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.83621
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/336200
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