Faculty of Education - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 1 of 1
-
ItemExamining Teacher Knowledge, Beliefs and Practice of Geography Inquiry in Australian Secondary Schools( 2022)Despite an international turn towards using inquiry as a core approach for teaching and learning in school geography, there is limited understanding of how jurisdictions represent knowledge and pedagogy in the intended geography curricula, and what teachers what teachers in these jurisdictions know and believe about geography inquiry and how they actually enact it. This study set out to address these research gaps on teaching geography through inquiry and to explore the intersections between inquiry and subject knowledge in the intended and enacted geography curricula. Taking Victoria one of the most populous states of Australia as a case, the central research question was “What are the knowledge, beliefs and practice of geography inquiry amongst secondary teachers in Victoria?” Employing mixed methods research, the study comprised three phases of investigation. The first phase made use of document analysis to compare secondary geography curriculum documents from six international jurisdictions including Australia. This global context provided the backdrop for understanding the secondary geography curriculum documents from Victoria. The second phase surveyed the state’s secondary teachers about their beliefs, knowledge and practice of teaching geography through inquiry. The third phase employed case studies research exploring in-depth the practice of three teachers in three different school settings in metropolitan Melbourne. An extensive literature review led to the development of an original analytical framework which guided the analyses of the data. In the final discussion, the analyses from all three phases are considered together with the goal of refining and extending existing theory. Overall, this study’s findings suggest that the knowledge for teaching geography through inquiry is a dynamic collection of rich and situated knowledge constructed through experiences and social interactions in and with practice. At the same time, teachers’ beliefs are deeply intertwined in these experiences and interactions. Powerful professional knowledge for teaching geography through inquiry therefore is generated in and through teachers’ curriculum-making of high epistemic-quality geography inquiry lessons. As a contribution to the powerful knowledge debate, this study argues that the nature of knowledge in geography is such that geography inquiry is key to experiencing and developing powerful knowledge in geography. Additionally this study argues that everyday knowledge contributes to the construction of new specialised knowledge in geography. Powerful geography inquiry teaching practices that enable students to make epistemic gains during inquiry learning therefore include maintaining a stance that values and builds on students’ everyday knowledge, providing opportunities for all students for epistemic access, activating students’ commitment towards and effort in assuming epistemic agency, and enabling students to make epistemic ascent through purposeful use of dialogue and questions. This study concludes by proposing a model for ‘enacting powerful teaching of geography through inquiry’ which both augments concepts of pedagogical content knowledge and incorporates concepts of powerful knowledge and knowing.