We are geography students at Oxford University and this article focuses on how our secondary school teachers encouraged our enjoyment of geography.
We should introduce ourselves – our names are Eleanor, Emily and Habiba and we joined the committee of the Oxford University Geography Society last year.
After discussing our experiences of getting to Oxford from state school backgrounds, we wanted to outline some of the things that helped us to thrive in the classroom and aspire to university.
We want to break-down stereotypes about geography and encourage more young people from low-income, diverse and state school backgrounds to read geography at elite institutions like Oxford.
Learning aides
We all recognised the importance of group activities and visual aids in understanding and retaining geography knowledge at GCSE.
For Emily, using mini-whiteboards to write bullet-point essay plans, alongside producing regular example answers as part of homework, was key to bridging the intellectual gap between GCSE and A level.
She also described how her A level teacher’s YouTube channel became a valuable revision resource. Social media channels remain a largely untapped resource for geography teachers in our experience.
Eleanor recalled scouring the internet for practice exam questions and useful “explainer” videos throughout key stages 4 and 5, finding little for more niche examinations (e.g. OCR B). To solve this, she wrote her own exam questions, sharing them with her class and teacher. While filling this void is vital to helping students achieve top grades, encouraging them to use their own agency in creating revision resources can perhaps lead to a better understanding of marking criteria.
As an undergraduate, Eleanor uses an app to record her speaking notes, which she plays back for revision. By utilising a diversity of strategies in the classroom, including peer marking and voice note feedback which we found particularly useful, teachers could accommodate multiple learning styles.
Talking points
Habiba’s sixth form regularly sends students to Oxbridge. She found the large mind-maps or models drawn on whiteboards a useful diversion from exam question-focused lessons. However, Habiba partially attributes her love of geography to her teachers regularly presenting the class with news items.
This encouraged lively discussions involving both teachers and students, with those who did not have a reservoir of geography knowledge still able to participate (using STEM perspectives, for instance). These debates also brought the class closer together.
Emily, meanwhile, found a team-building field trip to the nearby Peak District similarly vital in creating a supportive and ambitious classroom environment. By bringing students closer together, teachers don’t just encourage collaborative learning, but they allow students to apply concepts like urbanisation to local towns and cities, too.
Familiar territory
This idea of using familiar places for case study inspiration was reflected in a poll of both Geography Society members and our Twitter followers carried out for this article.
Many students wanted to see their lives reflected in their studies. Personal experiences (e.g., narrow boating and family holidays) were key sources of inspiration for our members, as well as engaging lessons, books and documentaries (thank you David Attenborough!) which helped attract them to geography. Overwhelmingly, individuals that most inspired members of the Geography Society, were passionate teachers as well as family and public figures.
Our own teachers certainly made a difference when it came to both our love for geography and applying to Oxford. Be it lending books, running after-school clubs, encouraging student-led presentations, or inviting external speakers. All of these elements can give students the tools to take their learning further.
Issues of interest
Among our Twitter followers, climate change proved to be the most relevant issue for Gen Z. However, many other topics were raised too: political ecology, social justice and digitisation, natural hazards, water, finance and policy.
Our society members, on the other hand, cited North Korea and Antarctica as key interests, emphasising how contested territories can spark an interest in geography.
Some of the debate on Twitter also highlighted how, as a discipline, we don’t talk enough about our history. The entanglement between colonial exploration and western knowledge production, while complex, shouldn’t be shied away from. Geography like any subject, is not perfect and we need to show Gen Z how this legacy is being challenged.
When we were first year undergraduates, we certainly enjoyed human geography a lot more than A level as we adopted more critical approaches to both familiar and unfamiliar concepts.
What puts students off?
We asked what put young people off geography. We were told:
- It’s just a “colouring-in degree”.
- You can only be a teacher with a geography degree.
- It’s an “easy” degree.
- All you study is rocks and rivers (as mainly human geographers, we find this one particularly frustrating).
Many simply do not understand what geography is, assuming that it occupies a middle ground between natural sciences and humanities – a “lesser” version of both.
Hence one respondent thought that it was important to convey how geography offers opportunities to specialise – you don’t have to remain a generalist. Equally, however, the broadness of the degree can provide a wide range of employable and transferable skills.
Furthermore, our Twitter followers believed more emphasis should be put on emerging opportunities for coding, statistics, and GIS (geographic information systems). This may help challenge misconceptions and illustrate the ways in which geography can be just as rigorous as STEM subjects.
Providing more information on potential careers to secondary students could also help to remove some barriers and showcase the potential of a geography degree.
Our tutor’s view
For a different perspective, we turned to our tutor and lecturer Dr Suriyah Bi. She believes the best way to get students engaged is by making geography personal to them. One way is by emphasising that geography is interdisciplinary and therefore can connect to other GCSE and A level subjects like biology, politics, history, maths and more. This can be introduced through discussions between students, as mentioned by Habiba.
Despite geography’s uniqueness, Dr Bi explained that academic categories are sometimes too rigid, identifying herself as a social anthropologist and activist as well as a cultural geographer. We believe that many students, like ourselves, value diversity of knowledge over strict academic boundaries.
Another way of making the subject more participatory and inclusive is through local fieldwork and case studies, as highlighted by Emily. This would encourage students to reflect critically on their lived experiences, which we do frequently in our degrees.
Trickling down the importance of subjective knowledge to GCSE and A level study would validate students’ experiences and show how their viewpoints could be valued at degree level.
However, it is still important to introduce a diverse range of case studies to help students discover different problems and perspectives. This is pertinent, as Dr Bi highlighted a lack of diversity in university geography cohorts – between 2019 and 2021, only 16.5% of UK students admitted to study geography at Oxford were from BAME backgrounds (University of Oxford Admissions Report, 2022).
BAME students remain more likely to pursue degrees in medicine and law, which promise defined career paths and academic status (Suen, 2019). It is therefore vital to provide some reassurance to students who might dismiss geography because of its lack of diversity.
Quick wins
We would like to end with some ideas that teachers can implement without hassle to improve student perceptions and experiences of geography.
For us, using the news as a vehicle for encouraging interest and informing lesson plans is the most important way any teacher can promote their subject beyond the classroom. In addition, consider:
- Making lessons more collaborative and participatory through discussions and group work.
- Encouraging students to view their personal experiences as case studies, emphasising how our discipline is always changing.
- Using visual and audio tools like TikTok, YouTube, voice note feedback and more.
- Highlighting key topics including climate change, natural hazards, GIS, policy, social justice, and current controversies (e.g., Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall).
- Describing the employability of geography and its interdisciplinary skills (e.g., coding, statistical analysis, ethnography, editing, report-writing, research).
- Trying to dispel negative myths surrounding degree-level geography, directing students to sources like the Oxford Geography Society.
- Encouraging diversity: talking about the history of the discipline, emphasising post-colonial thought and presenting a range of academics from diverse backgrounds as inspiration.
- Finally, you can find a graphic we created of “inspirational people every geographer should know” via the link below.
- Eleanor Luxton is access and outreach officer for the University of Oxford’s Geography Society, Habiba Khan is the events officer for the Geography Society, and Emily Suter is the president of the Geography Society. For details, visit www.oxgeogsoc.com and follow on @oxgeogsoc
Further information & resources
- Oxford University Geography Society: For further resources, including the graphic of “inspirational people every geographer should know”, visit www.oxgeogsoc.com/prospectus
References:
- University of Oxford: Annual admissions statistical report,2022.
- Suen: Medicine, dentistry and law sees highest proportion of BAME students, The Boar, 2019: http://bit.ly/3LmMKDU