Children and young people's access and entitlement to climate change and sustainability education within school is dependent on teachers, and the ways in which teachers' work is shaped by the wider education system. Drawing upon a climate change and sustainability education survey of teachers in England, we focus on a sub-set who reported that they were teaching geography in primary and/or secondary schools. Through this survey, we examine the teachers' participation in professional development and how they incorporate climate change and sustainability in their teaching of geography. Within the data, teachers of geography show that they are embedding some aspects of climate change and sustainability education in geography curricula, though the teacher development this rests upon is often reported as a 'self-taught' approach rather than through formal initial or continuing professional development. The paper finishes by considering enablers and constraints for geography curriculum-making for climate change and sustainability education, and identifying priorities for professional development agendas for teachers of geography.

This article discusses the geography curriculum in response to the current epoch. Epoch-typical issues include economic and environmental justice associated with climate change. The circumstances we describe are exacerbated, we suggest, by the broader social, cultural and political contexts and divisions stoked by post-truth politics and social media. We argue that this age of crisis calls for a positive, coherent and principled educational response such as that exemplified by the capabilities approach to school geography. In recent years, conceptual and practical work emerging from GeoCapabilities has strengthened our conviction that 'Future 3' curriculum making has the potential to empower students through its engagement with geography. Teachers should be supported to acquire agency in the knowledge work necessary to achieve the full educational value of geography in education.

This article explores the knowledge needed for teachers who advise, guide and support (or 'mentor') student (novice) teachers. The research reports on geography mentoring in secondary schools in London, England, but the findings are helpful for understanding other subjects and places. Interview data from school mentors are analysed to construct five themes of: educative mentoring; skills; knowledge; values; and tensions. Subject knowledge is found to be accompanied by the affective domain. Mentors describe the knowledge they need alongside relationships and feelings. Knowledge for mentoring is highly situated and localised, varying from one mentor to the next. Some mentors portray a tension between knowledge needed for an idealised future and for the immediate reality of school. Acknowledging the interweaving of cognitive and affective elements in mentors' portrayal of their professional knowledge, could change the way that 'subject knowledge' is conceived in the mentor's role and potentially more widely in teacher development.

Drawing upon a survey of teachers in England conducted by the UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education (CCCSE), this paper reports on teachers of geography’s conceptions of climate change, sustainability, climate change education, and sustainability education. We address how teachers of geography across the primary and secondary phase appear to distinguish the concept (climate change or sustainability) from the concept within education (climate change education or sustainability education) given that research to date has not engaged with both these framings together in empirical research with teachers. Across both climate change education and sustainability education, there was recognition for (i) the importance of these concepts for young people, (ii) the ways in which education can support young people to make informed choices or take action, and (iii) the importance of addressing these concepts across subject curricula. Teachers’ descriptions indicate (i) disconnections between policy rhetoric and teaching, (ii) a lack of attention to social and environmental justice, and (iii) an over-focus on individual action.

ABSTRACT This article puts geography teachers’ professional development for teaching about climate change in the spotlight by explaining the ideas behind a free, online short course: ‘Teaching for Sustainable Futures’ (UCL-CCCSE, 2023a). The course – a result of collaboration between teachers, educators and academics – is designed to show the potential of geography to learn about climate change and for sustainable futures. The article first outlines the course, then explains the research on which it has been informed, and, finally, considers the next steps for teacher development and research.

This article makes the case for repositioning values and ethics as central to understanding how curriculum knowledge can be educationally powerful. Disciplinary knowledge can help individuals make sense of the present, explore alternative futures and participate in society, making ethical choices about how to live. This, however, depends on particular relationships between curriculum, disciplinary knowledge, values and ethical perspectives. We argue that the recent research agenda exploring disciplinary knowledge underplays the values dimension in how curriculum knowledge is constructed and used. First, we give an overview of the recent thrust of curriculum debates in subject education communities, placing this in some historical context. Here, we recognise the need to make a robust case for school subjects and their important relationship with disciplines. We go on to examine some arguments around the role of knowledge in curriculum. Taking the concept of the Anthropocene (the human epoch of the planet) and from our perspectives as geography and religious education educators, we propose a focus on ethical disposition and interdisciplinarity to make the values dimensions of curriculum knowledge more visible.

The GeoCapabilities project asks how powerful geographical knowledge can be brought into a curriculum to enhance students' capabilities to be free to make choices for a life they value. This paper reports on the GeoCapabilities phase 3 project which explored the social justice dimension of GeoCapabilities by working with teachers and students in challenging schools. The capabilities lens, made practical through tools for curriculum making and evaluation, shows how geographical knowledge (of migration in this case) can enhance a person's capabilities to make real choices about how to live. It also shows that the affective dimension is strongly connected to geographical knowledge including feelings, moral standpoints and values. The inequalities, injustices, fears and hopes raised when students engage with migration geography, open a space for thinking about problems, causes and alternative futures, inviting a critical lens to how political economy shapes the world. The literature and the project of GeoCapabilities have focussed on powerful disciplinary knowledge. Whilst geographical knowledge is a crucial component, I argue that an exclusive attention to disciplinary knowledge may be misleading and the concept of geographical capabilities should broaden to attend to how knowledge across disciplines, feelings, attitudes and values operate together for futures-oriented capabilities.

GeoCapabilities is a distinctive approach to teacher professional development which foregrounds the educational potential of geographical knowledge. This paper examines the effect of GeoCapabilities on geography teachers' expertise. First, the paper explores a problem of teacher training which privileges technique for classroom effectiveness over geographical thinking. We then introduce the GeoCapabilities 3 project, presenting and discussing findings through teachers' reflections. We argue that GeoCapabilities 3 offers a model of teacher development, which supports teachers as leaders of curriculum change in an 'activist profession'. This is needed if geography education is to equip young people with knowledge capabilities for their future.

I train geography teachers, so in reviewing this book I find myself asking, ‘should my trainees read this?’ The answer is a resounding yes. This may seem like preaching to the converted. But why ge...

This expository paper critically examines the value of school geography in social debates that have a direct significance for the lives of young people. Migration is chosen as a focus, both because it is a defining feature of everyday life and the world we live in, and an area of research and debate in the discipline of geography. We draw on two national contexts, those of Australia and England, and illustrative examples from the authors? research, to discuss how social change through migration is explored, expressed and represented in geography education by the national curriculum of each country. This occurs through two particular lenses, geocapabilities and transculturalism, which are presented as potential transformative strategies for ensuring that geographical teaching of such issues remains pertinent to the lives and futures of the young people in the classroom. In doing so, the paper seeks to critically consider the omnipresent socio-political agendas and landscapes of compulsory schooling in each nation that influence the construction of geography education, using the context of migration as a defining social dimension of contemporary global society. The paper concludes by arguing that geography teachers and educators should actively consider the use of a geocapabilities and/or transcultural lens when exploring complex social geographies such as migration. In doing so, it is contended that these dual concepts can support and empower young people in their academic and social navigation of the complexities of current society.

(2017). ‘Curriculum making’, teacher and learner identities in changing times. Geography: Vol. 102, No. 2, pp. 99-103.

This article discusses how subject knowledge development should be conceptualised in the preparation of new secondary school teachers. It is written at a moment of national curriculum revision in England and a 'knowledge turn' in education, bringing questions of subject knowledge development to the fore. The authors argue that the educational purpose of 'subject knowledge' has been oversimplified and separated from teachers' concerns with pedagogy, performance and the child's experience. A new disciplinarity is needed in which the subject discipline becomes an overarching structure informing the teacher's curriculum thinking. However, the current, well-established model of the 'good teacher' as skilled (and accountable) classroom technician fails to support such curriculum work. The authors propose that teacher preparation courses should develop a notion of the 'good teacher' as engaged with the discipline as an educational resource. This article is conceptual, but draws from the authors' substantial experience of teacher preparation courses in secondary schools in England.

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