Geography Of Britain Research Articles

Climate Change, Sustainability, and Education: Conceptions of Teachers of Geography in England

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.

Painting the Nation in its Native Colours: John Leland’s Antiquarian Projects in the Context of Imperial and National Building of England, 1530–1540

In this article, the author concentrates on the intellectual projects of John Leland (1503–1552), the first antiquarian of early modern England. The origins of a certain tradition of English antiquarian historiography are connected with the name of this poet and polemicist. Today, researchers see heuristic potential in studying the political and socio-cultural foundations that led to the emergence of antiquarian discourse in the first half of the sixteenth century. The aim of the article is to define the role of John Leland’s intellectual thought within two interrelated and most relevant processes for his time, namely the imperial and nation-building of England during Henry VIII’s reign. In order to achieve his research goal, the author, firstly, identifies the peculiarities of the genesis of the imperial idea in the Middle Ages and its transformation during the reign of Henry VIII; secondly, analyses Leland’s creative projects aimed at legitimising the Tudor dynastic rights to “recreate” the ancient composite monarchy of the British Isles; thirdly, drawing on the Swiss historian Caspar Hirschi’s theory of pre-modern nationalism, identifies the characteristics of the proto-national discourse and the signs of the participation of the English antiquarian in it. The article is based on an analysis of John Leland’s “New Year’s Gift”, a letter in which the sender informs the monarch of his plans to produce a series of works on the history and geography of Britain. The study shows that the envisaged projects were aimed not only at creating an image of the Tudor empire fulfilling dynastic political ambitions, but also at consistently glorifying the “British” collective subject.

The art of earth-building: Placing relief models in the culture of modern geography in Britain

This article explores the overlooked history and significance of physical relief models in the development of geographical knowledge and education. By examining their use in academic, educational and public settings, it argues for a broader appreciation of these models as integral to the discipline's material culture. Historical debates around their function and purpose are highlighted amidst developments in modelling techniques, materials, and instructional guides. A deeper investigation into the models, their creators, and their influence on geographical learning and public engagement is advocated for and illustrated through the production and impact of the 1951 book The Earth's Crust.

Local to National: Victorian Industrialist Art Collectors’ Geographies

After 1850, the middle and working classes sought cultural education, which John Ruskin, among others, identified as a signifier of civilization and national greatness. Working Men’s Colleges, three 1870 university Slade Professorships in art history, proliferating art publications, and emerging regional museums offered opportunities to become conversant with visual art were then equated with social mobility and Englishness. Amid this cultural nationalism, critic F. G. Stephens’s 100+ Athenaeum series, “The Private Collections of England” (1873–1887), transformed collectors into national heroes. Scholars have noted the rising profile of collectors in 19th-century Europe and the US, in which Stephens’s series participated. Stephens detailed these collections’ expanded geography in England’s industrial north, turning local art collecting into a national, unifying force, a transformation made possible by his periodical serialization itself. These collectors, industrialists, merchants and bankers exemplified a new middle-class social, cultural and political authority. Most of them intended to bequeath their collections philanthropically to museums, thus shaping public tastes and the canon. They were personally and socially networked with artists and with each other, often working in complementary industries. Stephens interspersed his detailed descriptions of artworks with exhibition histories across translocal and transnational spaces, using the power of the press to weave a network between collectors and the public and a shared cultural history that endorsed collectors’ new public identity. However, Stephens also raised tensions about the geography of collecting, emphasizing collectors’ local places while presenting them as shaping a national space in their homogeneous taste and support of the same living artists and even the same pictorial subjects. In this way, Stephens straddled and flattened differences between national and regional market forces when, ironically, England’s art market was be coming increasingly international. This geographical layering is explored here in the context of the rise of provincial art institutions, the period’s notion of national schools and in anticipating the features of the current geohistory of art. I will explore two devices associated with the periodical press: ekphrasis and serialization, both of which Stephens deploys. Stephens wrote long ekphrases on works in these collection and omitted illustrations, noting in several comments that the Athenaeum’s middle-class readers were already familiar with artists’ works. This presumption and his use of 19th-century serialization, used by novelists whose chapters appeared across multiple issues of periodicals, combing to create a powerful force binding readers to his elevation of collectors’ social, national and cultural roles.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cardiovascular disease prevention and corresponding geographical inequalities in England: interrupted time series analysis

BackgroundThere has been disruption to the detection and management of those with hypertension and atrial fibrillation (AF) during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is likely to vary geographically and could have implications for future mortality and morbidity. We aimed to estimate the change in diagnosed prevalence, treatment and prescription indicators for AF and hypertension and assess corresponding geographical inequalities.MethodsUsing the Quality and Outcomes Framework (2016/17 to 2021/22) and the English Prescribing Datasets (2018 to 2022), we described age standardised prevalence, treatment and prescription item rates for hypertension and AF by geography and over time. Using an interrupted time-series (ITS) analysis, we estimated the impact of the pandemic (from April 2020) on missed diagnoses and on the percentage change in medicines prescribed for these conditions. Finally, we described changes in treatment indicators against Public Health England 2029 cardiovascular risk targets.ResultsWe observed 143,822 fewer (-143,822, 95%CI:-226,144, -61,500, p = 0.001) diagnoses of hypertension, 60,330 fewer (-60,330, 95%CI: -83,216, -37,444, p = 0.001) diagnoses of AF and 1.79% fewer (-1.79%, 95%CI: -2.37%, -1.22%), p < 0.0001) prescriptions for these conditions over the COVID-19 impact period. There was substantial variation across geography in England in terms of the indirect impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the diagnosis, prescription, and treatment rates of hypertension and AF. 20% of Sub Integrated Care Boards account for approximately 62% of all missed diagnoses of hypertension. The percentage of individuals who had their hypertension controlled fell from 75.8% in 2019/20 to 64.1% in 2021/22 and the percentage of individuals with AF who were risk assessed fell from 97.2% to 90.7%.ConclusionsHypertension and AF detection and management were disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The disruption varied considerably across diseases and geography. This highlights the utility of administrative and geographically granular datasets to inform targeted efforts to mitigate the indirect impacts of the pandemic through applied secondary prevention measures.

Social Statistics Transformation: Understanding the population through the production of income by ethnicity statistics from administrative data

ObjectivesThe lack of an income question on the Census has meant the production of multivariate income by ethnicity statistics has not been possible in census outputs to date. Our ambition is to provide individual-level records for every member of the usually resident population of England and Wales using admin data.&#x0D; MethodExciting progress has been made in the development of admin-based characteristics measures, including the ongoing feasibility research to produce admin-based datasets on ethnic group and income. Demonstrated improved results include the coverage of the population steadily increasing and methods to create these datasets gradually improving.&#x0D; Access to these record-level administrative datasets has allowed us to combine admin-based income and ethnicity measures developed in previous research, linking individuals between the two. We review the coverage of the combined dataset and the feasibility of producing multivariate statistics at subnational levels in England and Wales for the first time.&#x0D; ResultsThis presentation will showcase our innovative progress so far. By combining admin-based income and admin-based ethnicity datasets, we established an income and a stated ethnicity for 77.1% of people in England and 82.1% of people in Wales aged 16 years and over in the admin-based Statistical Population Dataset (our population base).&#x0D; For the first time, we have produced income percentiles for ethnic groups at different levels of geography in England and Wales including national figures, regional figures and figures for local authorities and lower layer super output areas; although statistical disclosure control means that some of the figures have been suppressed.&#x0D; We will highlight some of the challenges in using administrative data sources to produce these statistics and in assessing their statistical quality.&#x0D; ConclusionOur research developing these statistics is truly novel and shows much promise. Future work will include research to improve the univariate admin-based measures that are used, to continue to explore the limitations of the combined dataset, to explore the data by occupied address, and explore methods to adjust for missingness.

The Medieval Geography of Roger Bacon

During the Middle Ages, the Geography in England was based on descriptive studies with locations from the advances of astrology and mathematics. This Medieval Geography was presented by Roger Bacon, a Franciscan Friar who developed the study of optics and the astrological observations during the 13th Century. The proposal of Roger Bacon is influenced by Aristotelian philosophy, the geocentric Ptolemaic system and Scholastic, but already shows the search for a scientific study by the instruments to ensure the usefulness of knowledge. Roger Bacon contributed in Cartography with better precision by the use of coordinates with instruments such as the astrolabe, later widely used in the Great Navigations. The chapter Geographia of Opus Majus is an important document on the known world in the 13th century, featuring descriptions of all Europe, Mongol Empire, India and China. The science of Bacon relates the explanations of the phenomena of nature with the influences of the stars and cartographic details that have contributed to the consolidation of Modern Geography.

Michael Drayton’s Topographies: Ideas Mirrour (1594) and Poly-Olbion (1612–1622)

ABSTRACT Michael Drayton’s interest in the history and geography of England and Wales marks the evolution of his poetic career before the publication of his major work, Poly-Olbion (1612–1622). This article analyses the relation between Drayton’s chorography and his first sonnet sequence, Ideas Mirrour (1594). In his 1590 poems, Drayton links the portrait of his beloved to that of his native landscape. The topographical sonnets that place Idea in the river Anker forestall the descriptions of counties and rivers found in Poly-Olbion. The connections between these two works must be seen in reciprocal terms: while Ideas Mirrour prefigures the chorographic mode in the lyric style, Poly-Olbion looks back into the sonnets’ lyric perspective by eroticizing its rivers-nymphs and by placing Idea near the shores of the Anker, as Drayton had done in his earliest texts.

Confronting the deafening silence on race in geography education in England: learning from anti-racist, decolonial and Black geographies

School geography in England has been largely silent on issues around race, which stands in contrast to important strands of thought in the discipline. In this intervention, we explore two influential approaches in education – cultural literacy and powerful knowledge – to argue that we urgently need to address the silence on race by making substantive anti-racist changes in the curriculum. Within cultural literacy, we argue that anti-racist geographies provide powerful frameworks to address white supremacy and institutionalised racisms. Working within powerful knowledge, Black and decolonial geographies bring attention to knowledge creation and the great potential that exists to learn from anti-racist conversations and internal debates within academic geography. Our argument is for a more holistic and sustained anti- racist school geography education that empowers young people to understand the complex and shifting politics of space, place and knowledge and contribute to meaningful anti-racist futures.

Slidescapes: three Royal Geographical Society lantern lectures by Vaughan Cornish

ABSTRACTAn assessment of the visual output of the eugenicist geographer and landscape heritage activist Vaughan Cornish (1862-1948) constitutes a void in scholarly studies by geographers and historians. This is striking as the 1890s, the period in which Cornish established himself as an authoritative lecturer, saw significant developments in photographic technologies, as well as the popularisation of geographically themed entertainments and the expansion of academic geography in Britain. Amalgamating scholarship in histories of the lantern and photography, and in geography, on visuality and materiality this article investigates Cornish’s knowledge- and image-making practices and the institutional and personal networks which shaped his work and his career. By drawing on an assemblage of Royal Geographical Society (RGS) archives and publications the study explores the medium of lantern slides and the slidescapes of Cornish’s lectures at the RGS. It traces how multiple institutional and commercial ‘mindful hands’ shaped the look, content and methods of a diversifying and geographically dispersed community of geographers in the final decades of the nineteenth century as the popularity of both the RGS and the medium of the magic lantern peaked.

Sentinels of geography: legacy, public policy and contemporary relevance

ABSTRACTMany geographers, past and present, have addressed public policy issues facing nations and peoples and in the process offered solutions to highly complex problems. Three ‘sentinels’ of the discipline, Halford Mackinder, Carl Sauer and Thomas Griffith Taylor, served as protectors of geography speaking up for the science in a way often confronting public officials, politicians and others. They contributed significantly to the development of geography in Britain, the USA, Australia and Canada, while engaging in public policy debates on topics such as geopolitics, geographical constraints on land use and natural resource management. All three were advocates for the unity of geography, stressing how an understanding of the interconnectedness of natural and human phenomena can assist in decision making. They were often frustrated by what they saw as ill-informed policies which did not respect geographic realities. Given their varied contributions, it is difficult to fully assess their impact both during their long and productive lifetimes, and subsequently, especially given the interdisciplinary and contested nature of their research. Today, academic geographers are faced with having to increasingly ‘prove the impact’ of their research, something beyond the comprehension of previous generations. Lessons from an analysis of the work of these ‘sentinels’, as well as my own experience, show how difficult a task this will be.

Exploring ethnic minority students' stories through their representations

ABSTRACTStudents who identify as being from an ethnic minority are under-represented within school geography in England at key stages 4 and 5.1 At these key stages geography is an optional subject, and how students view geographical knowledge may influence their GCSE and A level subject choices. This article describes recent doctoral research undertaken with year 12 and 13 students in a girls' grammar school. It employs an intersectional lens to explore how students of different ethnicities represent geographical knowledge through collages, critical incident charts and interviews. The article does not attempt to develop a typology of students of different ethnicities and their particular representations. Such an approach would strip out the detail inherent in the students' descriptions, compartmentalise their view of geographical knowledge in a singular context and encourage the reader to generalise regarding individual ethnicities and particular representations. Instead, while the under-representation of ethnic minority students at GCSE and A level provided the starting point, this research was designed to move beyond a single ethnic stereotype to capture the richness of all the students' stories. The main findings suggest geographical knowledge was represented in different ways given different methods and that it was diverse, individual and difficult to categorise along ethnic lines. Instead, the students' representations reflected the characteristics and concepts from their recent formal geography lessons and, to a lesser extent, their informal experiences, although the latter were not always explicit or straightforwardly definable. Drawing on these findings, the article suggests a model that reflects the complexity of students' representations and offers a language for discussing them.

Teaching children the geography of England and Wales: an analysis of selected Georgian and Victorian textbooks and educational pastimes

Children in Georgian and Victorian times were expected to be familiar with the geography of England and Wales. This study analyses some of the resources then available which taught children this information. John Aikin’s England Delineated is evaluated as a geographical text and then compared with less formal games and puzzles, then on the market, which were also designed to teach the geography of these countries. Three further textbooks, which adopted contrasting approaches to teaching children the geography of England and Wales, are then also analysed and compared with Aikin’s approach. The study found that different resources associated towns and cities with different features, some by their notable products, others by their historic buildings, or their connection to historic events. Where places were defined by product, however, there was a high degree of consistency between product and place across the resources. Some resources describe places objectively, others subjectively. Of the resources analysed, England Delineated was considered the most geographical in content and in approach to that content. Games and puzzles were found to be valuable in complementing the Aikin text. Suggestions for future research are made in the conclusions.

The making of geographical ignorance?

ABSTRACTThis article offers reflections on the concept of ‘geographical ignorance’, prompted by recent discussions about the need for a ‘knowledge turn’ in school geography. The article draws upon work within ‘agnotology’. It discusses surveys that purportedly reveal levels of geographical illiteracy among the general public, then examines what is at stake in these surveys and suggests the need to critically assess such claims. Ideas associated with the study of ‘ignorance’ are introduced, and work by the US geographer Martin Lewis is discussed, concluding that a certain level of ‘geographical ignorance’ is perhaps inevitable. The final section examines the question of whether modern versions of school geography in England and Wales serve to promote a form of ignorance. The conclusion suggests that there are, presently, two main approaches emanating from moves to ‘bring geographical knowledge back in’.

This Way, That Way, Forward and Back Way

J ohn B rannigan's A rchipelagic M odernism begins with disaster. Richard Jefferies's After London (1885) is its starting point – a book which, as Brannigan puts it, ‘imagined a future in which the geography of England has been dramatically altered by environmental catastrophe’ (p. 1). An unspecified event has turned London to swampland and forced power to the provinces. The margins have become not only the centre, but the only ground available; Irish, Scots, and Welsh renegades commit ‘dreadful acts of piracy’ (p. 1). The ‘sympathetic explanation’ given by Jefferies for these acts is, for Brannigan, a suggestion that they might be ‘seen as a kind of moral retribution for the injuries inflicted by England on other peoples’ (p. 2). This is a portrait of a radically redistributed, no-longer-‘British’ Isles catalysed by nature itself, and as such it is a fitting opening for Brannigan's book, for Archipelagic Modernism traces a literary tradition committed to a ‘plural and connected’ (p. 6) view of the North Atlantic archipelago, stripped of either utopian idealism or Anglocentric, or perhaps more accurately London-centric, myopia.

Teachers' perspectives on curriculum making in Primary Geography in England

The phrase ‘curriculum making’ has recently been used to describe medium‐term planning and teachers’ enactment of such planning in the classroom. This narrows the term%s initial use from that in the first half of the twentieth century when it was employed inclusively from national programmes to lesson planning. While considering related studies about curriculum making, this paper focuses on the interpretation described and used by the Geographical Association (GA) to encourage more open approaches to medium‐term curriculum planning in England by teachers. It reports the outcomes of a small‐scale study of primary teachers’ perspectives on their experiences of curriculum making during one GA project, ‘The Young Geographers Project’. It identifies a number of ‘curriculum dynamics’, including teachers’ feelings of liberation, children%s agency in curriculum making, the importance of subject knowledge, engaging with children%s everyday experiences and interests, and purposefulness for curriculum topics while retaining flexibility and openness. Reflecting on these findings, 10 features pertinent to curriculum making are noted.

Changing times in England: the influence on geography teachers’ professional practice

School geography in England has been characterised as a pendulum swinging between policies that emphasise curriculum and pedagogy alternately. In this paper, I illustrate the influence of these shifts on geography teacher's professional practice, by drawing on three “moments” from my experience as a student, teacher and teacher educator. Barnett's description of teacher professionalism as a continuous project of “being” illuminates how geography teachers can adapt to competing influences. It reflects teacher professionalism as an unfinished project, which is responsive, but not beholden, to shifting trends, and is informed by how teachers frame and enact policies. I argue that recognising these contextual factors is key to supporting geography teachers in “being” geography education professionals. As education becomes increasingly competitive on a global scale, individual governments are looking internationally for “solutions” to improve educational rankings. In this climate, the future of geography education will rest on how teachers react locally to international trends. Geography teacher educators can support this process by continuing to inform the field through meaningful geography education research, in particular in making the contextual factors of their research explicit. This can be supported through continued successful international collaboration in geography education research.

Monitoring access to nationally commissioned services in England

BackgroundFor over 20 years, the National Health Service in England has run a system of national planning for highly specialised healthcare services. The aim is to ensure that very rare diseases are treated, and very complex procedures performed, in only a few centres, each of which maintains a volume high enough to maintain excellent outcomes. The commissioning strategy for the provision of these national services in England is strongly centralising. Centralising does however create a duty to ensure that patients distant from the treatment centres are not thereby disadvantaged. The commissioning process ensures sufficient capacity to treat the entire national caseload of clinically eligible patients. The aim of this paper is to apply the Systematic Component of Variation (SCV) to study access to services commissioned by the National Specialised Commissioning Team (NSCT) in England. The discussion focuses on the potential explanations for a high level of systematic variation between areas and on the use of the SCV to support the monitoring and development of these nationally commissioned services.MethodData from nationally commissioned services for the year ending 2011 were received from treating hospital. Mid year age and sex appropriate population estimates were then obtained to provide denominator data. Data were analysed at the geographic level of strategic health authority.Results30 services met all requirements for analysis. There is no apparent relationship between SCV and number of locations from which the service is provided. On inspection high SCV is more common among recently commissioned services.DiscussionThe importance of the SCV lies in its ability to support the development of highly specialised services. Once the random variation has been accounted for, the reasons for a systematic component can be explored. While no absolute cut- off exists, the SCV can be used to gauge and explore services that are potentially not covering the national caseload. The reason for a high SCV may not be immediately apparent; thus the SCV can aid those responsible for commissioning the service to seek potential explanations and identify improvements.ConclusionWe have reviewed spatial variation in access to a set of highly specialised services in England. On inspecting our results, we believe that they suggest that equity of access can usually be achieved at about five years after establishing a service, and this is not dependent, within the geography of England, on the number of centres designated.

The future of geography in English universities

Geography in England is one of many university subjects that will be significantly restructured – with almost immediate effect – because of powerful external drivers altering research and teaching. In this commentary I want to speculate on the likely changes ahead, and to consider how university-based geographers in England might respond to them. Given the considerable international influence that geographers in England exert within the wider subject, this commentary ought to interest those working in other countries. Notwithstanding the perils of futurology, I consider some possible scenarios in the midst of a formative moment for higher education in the UK’s largest country.

Driving spaces: a cultural‐historical geography of England's M1 motorway ‐ by Peter Merriman

<b>Driving spaces: a cultural‐historical geography of England's M1 motorway</b> ‐ by Peter Merriman