Geography: Past, Present and Future

A series of three KS2 workshops in geography and environmental science
inspired by the research of Northumbria University’s cold and palaeo-environment research group.

Geography: Past, Present and Future is a series of three workshops (The Palaeontologist, The Environmental Modeller, The Environmental Planner) and an encounters assembly exploring climate change and environmental science with primary school children. The workshop series was co-designed and co-delivered by academic staff from Northumbria University’s cold and palaeo-environment (CAPE) research group and NUSTEM.

In the workshops, relevant academics visit the classroom and support children to act as researchers to consider how environmental science can be used to see what the environment was like in the past, measure what’s happening now and predict what it will be like in the future.

The aims of Geography: Past, Present and Future were:

children have a deeper understanding of environmental science topics
children feel more empowered towards climate activism
children have a greater understanding of careers within environmental science
children enjoy the environmental science workshops.

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The Workshops

Environmental Modeller

26 February, 2019

Children take on the role of an environmental modeller, learning what a scientific model is, and how data can be used to predict the future.

The Palaeontologist

26 February, 2019

Children take on the role of a palaeontologist and use fossils to find out about the past. The class discover how and why palaeontologists use the past to predict the future.

Environmental Planner

8 February, 2019

Children take on the role of an environmental planner, examining old maps, discovering how land has been used in the past, and learning how this can be used to predict the future.

Leanne Wake

Senior Lecturer

Leanne models the elastic, viscous and gravitational response of the Earth to redistribution of ice and water on the Earth’s surface and predicting the variation in sea-level change in the past.

Matthew Pound

Senior Lecturer

Matt is interested in how climates and environments have changed through geological time. Creating large datasets of fossil information he produces global maps of vegetation, climate, soil and lake distributions.

Nick Rutter

Associate Professor

Nick is interested in the hydrology of cold environments and how the frozen land surface interacts with the atmosphere.

Kate Winter

Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow

Kate uses ice penetrating radar and remotely sensed imagery to comprehend and characterise the subglacial environment and flow dynamics of ice streams in Antarctica.

Sebastian Rosier

Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow

Sebastian’s research focuses on understanding the processes controlling ice flow in Antarctica, with the goal of improving computer model predictions of the continent’s contribution to future sea level rise.

Summary of impact

The workshop series was delivered to children in Year 6 during Nov 2019 – Jan 2020 in North East schools. The workshops series was evaluated to determine whether it delivered the intended outcomes for children.

Read the full Geography Past, Present and Future Impact Report.

“The most noticeable thing for me as science lead was how inspired the teachers were by the project. They came out of each session buzzing at the science/geography that was being taught and the exciting hooks that were being used. They were particularly inspired by the way pollen analysis was used to predict what temperatures had been in the past. Teachers were definitely motivated to continue using environmental change as a stimulus for learning.”
School Science Coordinator

Poster gallery

Increased Knowledge

Children’s understanding of environmental science topics improved, particularly among girls:

Children’s reported knowledge of climate change increased by 9% (I know what climate change is) post-intervention compared to the baseline.
Children’s reported knowledge of environmental science increased by 14% (I know what environmental science is) post intervention compared to the baseline. This was statistically significant at p=.006.
Increased knowledge in climate change was greatest among girls (+27%) in comparison to boys (-4%), whereas increased knowledge of environmental science was greatest among boys (+17%) in comparison to girls (+8%).
Girls reported knowledge of (Science can help us predict the future) increased by 16% in comparison to 2% among boys.
Girls reported knowledge of (Science can help us understand the past) increased by 33%, in comparison to -5% among boys.

Increased knowledge of environmental science related careers

Children demonstrated understanding of the nature of all three environmental science careers, and could name relevant attributes and characteristics of environmental scientists.

67% of children reported to know some different jobs in environmental science post-intervention, an increase of 45% from baseline. This was a statistically significant difference (p=.006). There was a 49% increase of girls reporting positive responses from pre to post survey, and an increase of 41% among boys.

Improved acceptability of environmental science careers

Children’s responses moved from largely negative and neutral pre-intervention, to more neutral and positive post intervention.

There was an 9% increase in children who could consider a science job post-intervention, with 56% of children reported neutral or positive responses to (I would like a science job when I grow up) post-intervention, in comparison to 47% in the baseline. This breakdowns by gender into 14% increase among girls and -3% decline among boys.

Increased environmentally friendly intentions

Children report their increased desire to learn about climate change, to act in an environmentally friendly way following the intervention. Examples include:

“The world is changing so we need to start and look after our world more. The workshop has made us look at what we are doing by killing the world.”
“The workshops have made me take much better care of the environment and to encourage people to stop using fossils fuels. I have started to use a bike more often instead of using a car.”

Enjoyment

Children reported to enjoy all three the workshops, but the intervention was not shown to improve interest in science more generally.