Michael Bradford

Experimenting with Active Learning in Geography: Dispelling the Myths That Perpetuate Resistance.

While some geographers have embraced active learning as a means to engage students in a course, many others stick to conventional teaching methods. They are often deterred by suggestions that it can be difficult to implement active learning where students have no prior knowledge of a subject, that active learning requires too much work of lecturers and students, and that there are significant institutional constraints to implementing active learning. In this article the authors draw on their experiences of utilizing active learning in five different countries before dispelling myths which continue to constrain the uptake of active learning methods. Finally, they provide simple guidelines for successful integration of active learning in geography courses.

Measuring Neighbourhood Deprivation: A Critique of the Index of Multiple Deprivation

There is now a sustained interest in measuring geographical variation in social and economic circumstances in order to guide urban policy resource allocation decisions. The most recent attempt to measure local area deprivation in England has come through the governments Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD). The authors aim to consider the degree to which the IMD provides a reliable mechanism for doing so and to suggest the ways in which its successors might best be refined. They argue that although the IMD, in many respects, represents a commendable advance in terms of the development of techniques to quantify deprivation, there remain significant limitations that future approaches could profitably address.

Constructing an urban deprivation index: a way of meeting the need for flexibility

Key issues in constructing an urban deprivation index are discussed, with special reference to the need for flexibility. Governments use such an index for many purposes and for policies targeted at different spatial scales. The technical decisions and the criteria for the selection of indicators are discussed. A single index is rejected in favour of a matrix of results which captures the complex geography of deprivation. The matrix of districts includes measures of the degree of deprivation, its spatial extent, its intensity, and the spatial distribution of deprivation at the enumeration district scale. The profiles of various districts are discussed to illustrate the use of the matrix.

School-Performance Indicators, the Local Residential Environment, and Parental Choice

The results of unadjusted national tests are to be used as school-performance indicators to monitor school effectiveness and to form part of the basis on which parental choice will operate. In this paper, it is argued that educationists, in their desire to show that schools matter, have reinforced the arguments of the political Right, often unintentionally, and have neglected the effects of the social geography of catchments. On the basis of past and present research findings, it is argued that any adjustments to the indicators need to consider the effects of the local environment and perhaps parental choice itself, as well as prior attainment and social class. The impracticality of making such adjustments, the difficulty of establishing a standardised effect of local environments across the country, and the problems of disentangling school effects from those of social geography, cast great doubt on the use even of adjusted indicators as a meaningful basis for parental choice. These indicators, as one of the major mechanisms in the newly constructed education system by which schools will compete for pupils and resources, are thus seriously flawed.

Influences on educational attainment: the importance of the local residential environment

The local residential environment is shown to be a major factor affecting the educational attainment of thirteen-year-old and fifteen-year-old schoolchildren. Its strength and effect relative to other variables, like intelligence and social class, are demonstrated via path analysis. It has a greater influence on the educational attainment of girls than of boys. Possible processes leading to both the differential and the general effect are discussed. The scale of analysis suggests that exactly where within a catchment area people live affects their childrens educational attainment.

Collaborative discipline-based curriculum change: applying Change Academy processes at department level

Bringing about change in teaching and learning in higher education is a core aspect of the work of academic developers. This paper is novel in analysing the experience of a year-long initiative to support curriculum changes in departments in related disciplines in different universities. It applies some of the processes developed by Change Academy – an initiative sponsored by the UK Higher Education Academy and the Leadership Foundation – to the design of a three-day programme. Underpinned by consideration of models of institutional and curriculum change, the research draws on interviews to identify the features of the programme that appear to have been effective at supporting departmental teams to clarify, design and plan significant curriculum-related initiatives. Emphasis is placed on designing and supporting collaborative curriculum change. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for academic developers wanting to support department-based curriculum changes in their countries.

Diversification and Division in the English Education System: Towards a Post-Fordist Model?

After placing the education reforms in England in their international context, in this paper I analyse the basis of the reforms in terms of New Right thought and responses to the global economy. I identify an innovation which best typifies the particular combination of New Right thought underlying the reform, the introduction of grant-maintained (GM) schools. These form a major component of the recent diversification of educational provision. It is argued that the spatial unevenness of this diversification, represented by differential GM adoption, has replaced differences in local education authority policies and practices in forming the basis of spatial differentiation in the education service across England. It is argued that GM schools have produced political, educational, and social divisions. These have augmented the tendency for the diversification to lead to social stratification. Having analysed the restructured education system, I critically consider the degree to which it reflects a post-Fordist welfare state.

Beyond the boundaries: vacancy chains and the evaluation of urban development corporations

Recent years have seen the establishment of numerous spatially bounded regeneration agencies in the United Kingdom, prominent amongst which have been urban development corporations (UDCs). Attempts to evaluate such agencies have so far focused almost exclusively upon the impacts within formally delimited areas and have neglected to consider the effects on surrounding nondesignated areas. In this paper, an attempt is made to address this by devising a technique for assessing the wider effects of spatially bounded regeneration agencies and programmes. Drawing from a government-commissioned evaluation of UDCs at Leeds, Bristol, and Central Manchester, we explore the extent to which government intervention in delimited areas has generated a net beneficial impact on the wider local economies of the three cities. By use of data on the nature of vacancy chains for commercial properties in the three UDCs and in their respective surrounding areas, an attempt is made to measure the degree of displacement or additionality engendered by UDC activities.

The Uses of Space by Advertising Agencies within the United Kingdom

This paper contributes to an understanding of the geography of advertising by examining the practices of advertising agencies, their conceptions and uses of space. Most of their conceptualisation of targeted markets is said to be aspatial. Regions become important at the next stage when examining the distribution of the targeted market. Only the compositional effects of regional demand are considered. Contextual effects are largely ignored. The spatial practices of the agencies are dominated by regional weightings of advertising expenditure. Qualitative differences in advertising, such as regional tailoring, are much less common. Most regional weighting of advertising follows areas of existing high demand, thus reinforcing present consumption patterns. Such a process leads. in many cases, to the effective subsidising of existing areas of high demand because the differential costs of advertising are not passed on in proportionally differentiated prices of goods or services. Advertising is therefore spatially conservative and often regressive, because areas of high demand are frequently the most affluent. A discussion of the relationship between the location of advertising and its practices indicates a greater importance of space than agencies admit. The concentration of agencies in London and the South East suggests that they are more sensitive to developments in market segmentation in that region. The markets targeted by agencies in the nation as a whole may then reflect the degree and type of segmentation within the South East. Such spatial transfers of market segmentation may have a non-conservative, complex effect on patterns of demand.

Professional development in teaching and learning for early career academic geographers: Contexts, practices and tensions

This paper provides a review of the practices and tensions informing approaches to professional development for early career academic geographers who are teaching in higher education. We offer examples from Britain, Canada, Nigeria and the USA. The tensions include: institutional and departmental cultures; models that offer generic and discipline-specific approaches; the credibility of alternative settings for professional development in teaching and learning; the valuing of professional development and of teaching in academic systems of reward and recognition; and the challenges of balancing professional and personal life. We summarize concepts of good practice and suggest opportunities for future research.