today was the final day of the conference.
i attended a talk by Professor Simon Catling, describing research that was done to investigate the extent to which primary school teachers in Britain receive sufficient pre-service training in geography, as compared to subjects such as English, mathematics and science.
Grant Kleeman, who works in New South Wales, conducted a workshop offering a few ideas about the geography curriculum. echoing ideas from yesterday, he emphasised the role of choice in letting teachers decide which particular case studies to elaborate on, as well as the importance of learning more about the learners' own personal geographies.
finally, Dr Janet Speake at Liverpool Hope University introduced the interesting idea of 'sensational cities'. sadly, despite having reminded us at the start of her lecture that 'sensational' could have both positive and pejorative connotations, she then went on to cripple her talk by spelling out explicitly that the 'sensational' was associated with successful cities which people aspire to visit and live in. her talk featured photographs from cities entirely from the western hemisphere. the only non-western city she showed a photograph of was a streetscape in Hongkong, which she promptly dismissed as a generic photograph of a city which could have been taken anywhere.
what about Lagos, Mogadishu, Rio, Manila and Kolkota, i say.
the only vaguely thought-provoking point she made was that budget air travel "raises cities out of the mundane".
i guess the real highlight today was meeting Veronica.
Veronica is a geography teacher from Kenya.
Veronica was also the only black delegate whom i saw during my three days at the conference.
