Fieldwork experience for new teachers

‘Fieldwork is an essential component of geography education. It enables students to better understand the “messiness” of “geographical reality”, develop subject knowledge, and gain a range of skills that are difficult to develop in the classroom alone.’

Geographical Association

Topics on this page:

How good is your subject knowledge for fieldwork? | Improving your subject knowledge for geographical fieldwork | Self-evaluation checklist | What practical fieldwork should I seek to experience? | More opportunities to gain experience | How to make the most of the experience | Planning your own fieldwork | Questions to consider as you plan fieldwork

How good is your subject knowledge for fieldwork?

One of the ways in which you must be fully prepared for fieldwork teaching is by making sure you have good subject knowledge of the content you are teaching and the fieldwork techniques.

The latter includes statistics and the presentation techniques that students are expected to use for both GCSE and A level examinations. In addition, you must know about the fieldwork location and background information about the place you are visiting for the fieldwork.

Improving your subject knowledge for geographical fieldwork

There are many resources you can access to help you develop your fieldwork subject knowledge, both pedagogical knowledge and subject content knowledge of fieldwork methods and techniques.

See Fieldwork subject knowledge which suggests some resources to help you to develop your subject knowledge.
The GA have worked with the Field Studies Council, to produce a series of short fieldwork webinars, specifically aimed at ECTs. All of the webinars are explicitly linked to the Teacher Standards so that you can be confident that you can evidence your knowledge and skills in different areas.

GA and Field Studies Council Fieldwork Boosters

The GA has a series of KnowHow publications that are designed to help key stage 3 teachers with their background knowledge of fieldwork enquiries, data collection and data presentation and analysis. There are written by Chloe Searl (2023) and cover:
- Introducing fieldwork enquiries
- Fieldwork equipment and data collection techniques: human geography
- Fieldwork equipment and data collection techniques: physical geography
- Fieldwork data presentation and analysis.
The GA also publishes a series of three publications for GCSE/A level on methods of collecting, analysing and presenting fieldwork data.

See the Fieldwork Knowledge Booster videos from Time for Geography.

It is essential you know about the contexts and locations where you are planning fieldwork.

Texts such as the GA’s Landform Guides and A Guide to Fieldwork in… series are a good source of background information. Fieldwork is concerned with first-hand, real world experiences for students and you need to be confident and competent in a range of fieldwork skills and techniques and how they can be applied in the field.

Do not only think about the knowledge you are lacking. Think about your fieldwork knowledge strengths too. Reflect on what you could contribute to a school curriculum that builds on these strengths.

Follow up: Building a fieldwork toolkit for new geography teachers. This is a video of a live broadcast for new teachers to develop the skills needed for designing and delivering geographical fieldwork. It focusses on practical tips, and key principles to build a fieldwork toolkit. There are also very useful support materials you can download.

Self-evaluation checklist

Use Kitchen (2025) Figure 17: Statements of personal confidence in carrying out particular fieldwork-related tasks to identify areas that you need to develop.
Discuss with your mentor ways in which you can develop these.

What practical fieldwork should I seek to experience?

In order to understand the learning power that fieldwork offers for students in the way that is described above, you need to experience it first-hand. Fieldwork is an essential ingredient of the training to be a geography teacher and your ITE provider should ensure that you get some practical experience with students during your training year.

The best experience is to do some fieldwork with a class that you are teaching. In this way, you will have the experience of pre-fieldwork preparation, the visit itself and the follow up – so you can see the complete learning experience for the students.

However, logistics prevail and things do not always happen as neatly as this. You may need to discuss with your geography mentor or ITE trainer some ways to gain experience with other teacher’s groups, or participating in fieldwork with another school or at a field studies centre.

Try to arrange to participate in as many of these fieldwork experiences as you can during your training year (one visit may cover several of these).

A one-day visit, including the preparation and follow up activities.
A residential trip, so you can see first-hand how this is organised and carried out.
Fieldwork using a variety of different approaches – Fieldwork experiences and field teaching.
Fieldwork at both key stages 3 and 4, as well as Post-16 if you are training for that age range.
Undertaking a risk assessment.

The above can be used as a checklist by an ECT to identify where their fieldwork experience may have significant gaps, so that opportunities can be taken to cover these during induction.

More opportunities to gain experience

Fieldwork is any learning or research undertaken outside the classroom and is not exclusive to geography. Try to join fieldwork activities in another subject if it is unavailable to you in geography for this will give you experience of learning outside of the classroom.
The school grounds are very useful for investigating geographical topics like mapping, microclimates and physical processes at work. This can be organised within a lesson and take much less administration than going beyond the school gates.
Ask if you could accompany a geography department from another school on a field visit. Trainees are often welcomed as additional support. You could prepare and lead an activity, supported by other geography teachers.
The Field Studies Council runs low cost courses from time to time for trainee teachers. These courses would give you a valuable experience of learning about planning fieldwork and different techniques and activities. It also provides an opportunity to meet other geography trainee teachers. Contact the Field Studies Council directly to find out if it is possible for you to join one of these.

How to make the most of the experience

When joining other teachers’ fieldwork, see it as an excellent observation opportunity to:

discuss with the teacher their prior planning for the visit both in terms of organisation (risk assessment, parental permissions, transport arrangements) and teaching preparation
watch and take careful note of how the teacher manages groups outside of the classroom
see how a teacher responds to any ‘external’ problems during the visit e.g. weather
think about how resources are organised ‘in the field’ and how students record their findings
observe how fieldwork activities are managed. How does the teacher ensure that all students are engaged and involved?
join in, or observe, the follow-up activities in the classroom after the fieldwork
meet the teacher afterwards to discuss the fieldwork. This will give you an opportunity to ask questions about what you observed.

Planning your own fieldwork

You should have the opportunity to plan some fieldwork that you carry out yourself during your ITE training. If you do not, set this as a priority for your first year as an ECT when you can gain experience with a mentor at hand to guide you as a critical friend.

Try to observe fieldwork in action with a geography teacher experienced in fieldwork, so that you have a good understanding of the detailed planning that is required before you plan fieldwork yourself. If you get the opportunity to co-plan some fieldwork – take it! In particular go through the risk assessment requirements with an experienced geographer, or the person in your school who coordinates off site visits.

Look at this PowerPoint presentation from the 2017 GA Conference on Inclusive fieldwork: letting students take the lead. This case study from a Norfolk school gives good insights into how they plan fieldwork.

Seek your mentor’s expert advice as you select a fieldwork strategy to use and plan activities for the learning to be achieved in the context of the fieldwork. Check with them on the manageability of your plans and any aspects that you need to watch out for with regard to management and safety.

Think carefully about the lessons leading up to the fieldwork, in which the foundations for the geographical learning are laid. What concepts and skills need to be taught to prepare students for the fieldwork?

Look at this Simple On-Site KS3 Fieldwork by Kate Stockings. This is a simple infiltration investigation on the school site. The blog sets out the logistics and the place of the investigation in the curriculum. It provides detailed resources which will provide you with a good model of what you need to do to plan a simple fieldwork exercise.

Kate Stockings also shares this example of a booklet to use with GCSE students following the Edexcel B GCSE course. She hopes this will help those tasked with creating fieldwork resources and having no idea where to start! Example of GCSE Fieldwork booklet.

See Fieldwork in the National Curriculum and GCSE and A level examination specifications.
Look at these examples of a Fieldtrip preparation lesson and an Example risk assessment. Both of these should form an important part of your fieldwork planning.
See Adaptive fieldwork for planning for SEND students.

The GA offers a wide range of fieldwork resources to support learning, including student resources to help with collecting, analysing and presenting fieldwork data.

Publications: Fieldwork through Enquiry; Methods of Analysing Fieldwork Data; Fieldwork at A level; Creative Fieldwork.
Guidance for undertaking fieldwork: KnowHow (KS3) series.
Exploring urban settings: A Guide to Fieldwork in… series.
Posters and fieldwork equipment including compasses, measuring tape, clinometers etc.

Fieldwork planning needs to be detailed and thorough. You cannot ‘wing it’ or leave things to chance. You need to have a contingency plan in place to maintain the key learning intentions, if for any reason (e.g. inclement weather) you cannot complete the plan as you had hoped to.

Questions to consider as you plan fieldwork:

What learning outcomes are you hoping to achieve? For example, are you developing understanding of: specific fieldwork techniques or data collection skills; appreciating how people influence the environment; understanding processes?
What fieldwork approach will you use: enquiry; hypothesis-testing; field teaching or other strategy? Is this likely to be the most effective way to achieve your learning objectives?
What fieldwork ‘experience’ do you expect students to gain e.g. understanding of how to carry out their own individual studies; teamwork and cooperation; ‘wow’ factor?
What specific activities will students undertake ‘in the field’?
What data will be collected? Sampling? Recording?
Will you give the students the opportunity to participate in any of these planning decisions? Will they contribute ideas for a key enquiry question, or suggest techniques to use, or what data to collect? How will you ensure they fully understand what they are going to do and why?
What pre-fieldwork lessons and tasks will be needed to ensure students have the necessary prior knowledge for the field activity? What contextual information do they need about the fieldwork location?
What resources will you need – e.g. maps, recording sheets, equipment?
How will you organise the activity in the field: groups; sharing tasks; recording and collating data etc.
Will you need to adapt the activity to cater for all students in the group?
How will you check understanding ‘in the field’? What will you need to look out for?
How will the students collate/analyse/present the data they have collected? How will this operate?
What follow-up/conclusion will there be? Are you expecting a written outcome? Will it be assessed?
What happens next?

These presentations provide good advice and ideas for new teachers planning fieldwork for the first time.

Searl, C. (2023) ‘Fieldwork for the first time‘, GA Conference presentation, April.
Hawke, R., Sheriff, F. and Robinson, H. (2024) Fieldwork for everyone: how to plan more inclusively, GA Conference presentation, April
Refer to Briscoe (2023) ‘Teaching year 12 students how to code interviews’, Teaching Geography, Summer to find out how a teacher prepared her students to use fieldwork interviews.

When you are planning fieldwork, consider the environmental impact the visit might have.