Covid-19: teaching primary geography in an authentic context related to the lived experiences of learners

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic is an unanticipated event that has exposed human fragility in an interconnected and interdependent world. While impacts are of a global magnitude, they have been felt at the most local of levels. Across the world pupils’ daily lives and experiences have been directly impacted by government-imposed measures and restrictions taken to address the pandemic. Existing research on the teaching of primary geography in Ireland, although both dated and limited, indicates the prevalence of didactic, textbook-based methods involving rote-learning. This points to a policy-practice gap whereby teaching methods are not aligned with those advocated by the curriculum. Primary teachers and student primary teachers have been found to hold knowledge-based encyclopaedic images of geography, failing to recognise the subject’s relevance to the real-world lived experiences of pupils. This paper frames the Covid-19 as an authentic learning experience that can form the foundation for effective geography education. Pupils learn best and are more motivated to engage in a problem or issue that affects them or that they are connected to. By investigating Covid-19 through geography in the primary classroom, this paper argues that both pupils and teachers can recognise the relevance of geography to their lives and the wider world.