Principle 4 – High expectations

The first of the Teachers’ Standards and the opening section of the DfE frameworks for both ITT trainees and early career teachers is about high expectations. What does this really mean and how is this translated into the geography context?

Three statements from this first standard in the DfE frameworks are of prime importance for achieving high expectations and we consider here what these mean for geography teachers.

• Teachers are key role models who can influence the attitudes, values and behaviours of their pupils.
• Teacher expectations can affect pupil outcomes; setting goals that challenge and stretch pupils is essential.
• A culture of mutual trust and respect supports effective relationships.

Teachers are key role models. They set the ‘tone’ for learning in their classroom and can influence students’ attitudes and motivation. Be a role model to illustrate how to ‘think like a geographer’. Look at The promise of geography in education for an excellent model of what a geographer can ‘see’ in a photograph. This could be used with older students before asking them to interpret other images in this way. Inspire students by letting them see you moved by ‘awe and wonder’ when looking at a view or landscape.

As a teacher you should model high expectations. You can model a skill such as annotating a sketch map or writing an essay by creating your model live in front of the class. Think aloud as you do this, explaining your thought processes so that students can see what lies behind what you are doing and why you are doing it. You can also be a role model in aspects such as caring for the environment and sustainability by your actions as well as your words. Do you reduce waste, save energy and recycle in your geography classroom?

Teacher expectations can affect pupil outcomes

It is important for teachers to set goals that challenge and stretch students. Teachers do students a disservice if they do not strive to ensure that all achieve the highest level they are capable of reaching.

Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) conducted research which showed that the higher the expectations you have of students, the better they perform. This became known as the Pygmalion Effect, i.e. that reality can be positively or negatively influenced by other people’s expectations. The opposite is the Golem Effect, i.e. if we expect our students to perform badly, the chances are that they will.

Questioning is a powerful pedagogy in the geography classroom. Challenging questions generate a learning environment that has high expectations for all students, regardless of their ability. Probing for more detail, challenging incorrect or partially formed answers, using wait time so students shape their responses and cold calling are all strategies that challenge students (see Questions in the geography classroom).

Teachers who have high expectations always ‘stretch’ their students. In other words, a sequence of questions does not end with a right answer, but there are follow-up questions that extend knowledge or search for alternative ideas.

Good geography teachers set high expectation of their students for their geographical knowledge and understanding, the quality of their work and their behaviour. You should insist that students have high expectations of themselves and set aspirational goals.

Encourage students to believe that they can get better at geography if they work hard and challenge them to do so. Expect them to be resilient and not give up easily when they face difficulties. Encourage them to support each other to succeed and to value feedback and advice about their work and use it to help them improve.

This means that you must be aware of the standards that you should be expecting in geography. This comes with experience, of course, and in your early days of teaching it is not a weakness to admit you do not know at what level you should ‘pitch’ the work and the goals you should be looking for students to achieve.

Ask your mentor or head of department’s advice to find out about the standards you should be setting. Look at some previous student work and discuss expectations in the light of this. Ask your mentor about the students you are teaching. There may be barriers to learning that might not be obvious to you, but need to be considered.

A good geography teacher is aware of their students’ own aspirations and ensures that they are not underestimating what they are capable of achieving. Positive teaching and appropriate support can have a long-term effect on a student’s life chances and help them to achieve their academic potential in geography.

Biddulph et al (2021) clearly set out their position:

‘In our work as teacher educators, we rightly ban the use of the phrase “you can’t do that with the pupils in this school”. This is not to deny the influence of particular contexts on how we teach or the autonomy of teachers to decide what happens in their classrooms. Rather it is a recognition that using such a phrase conveys low expectations of what these pupils can achieve and, as such, is likely to reinforce a climate of underachievement.’

Michael Young’s motives for promoting powerful knowledge (see Powerful geography knowledge) were to take students beyond their own experiences. If you focus on teaching powerful geography you will not just be increasing students’ knowledge of a range of topics, but will ensure that they know them in enough depth and in a range of scales – local, regional, national and international – and can reach sophisticated conclusions. To do this students need to be equipped with a well-developed toolbox of geographical skills and apply themselves to deep geographical learning.

To achieve high expectations of students, you need good pedagogical content knowledge. Do you understand the ways students think about geography? Can you anticipate possible misconceptions? Do you know how to build students’ knowledge and conceptual development?

How to create that sense of challenge

• Read Woolliscroft (2016), Rawding (2013) and Enser’s (2019) chapter on Challenge.

A culture of mutual trust and respect is the third aspect we are considering here. Set the tone in your classroom with a very careful selection of the content of the geography you teach and the exemplars you use, particularly with respect to racism, equality and social deprivation.

Good teachers continually give positive feedback to students to highlight their successes and encourage them to persevere and make an effort when they are faced with problems. Encourage students to learn from mistakes and not see this negatively. Give all students a chance to succeed in your lessons. But at the same time, make clear to students that getting it wrong is OK.

If you pose a question and a student gives a half-formed or inaccurate answer, leave that student for a moment and question others. Treating the student sensitively and allowing them time to reflect, rethink and listen to other students might be all they need. If not, expect students to give each other mutual support and pool ideas for answers.

Geography ‘Inside the Black Box’

Weeden and Lambert (2006) identified four good principles for geography teachers to follow if they wanted students to engage with geographical ideas and concepts and achieve high expectations. These broadly are:

1. Start from where the student is. Give learners opportunities to connect their personal experiences of the world around them with their geographical schemata and thus reconstruct and develop their understanding.
2. Students take an active part in learning. Students need opportunities to make sense of geographical information, relate new ideas to existing knowledge and reflect on and clarify any inconsistencies they identify in doing so. Teachers should identify learning activities that do this, require students to think hard about the information and apply the new knowledge or skill in another context.
3. Students know what they are trying to achieve. Students cannot learn in a vacuum. They need to have goals, be aware of the expectations being asked of them and know what to do to achieve this. Only if students know the criteria on which success is based can they take responsibility for their own learning.
4. Students talk about geographical ideas. Language is very important for exploring ideas and developing understanding and good teachers encourage all students to participate in dialogue and discussion. The teachers’ language is also important to consistently promote challenge and aspiration.

Prioritise these four aspects of good teaching. You will recognise that they encompass the key features of the powerful geography described by Biddulph et al (2021) – they involve activity, enquiry and talk.

Setting out expectations for students

In every activity your students engage in, be clear about and share your expectations with them. Explicitly discuss what a very good response looks like and you will secure much better work. If you have examples of excellence that you can share with students, it will help to set the standards you expect.

Modelling, or providing exemplars, can prove very helpful. Students needs to see what success looks like, if they are to achieve it. Use classroom displays or keep a digital portfolio of work to show students e.g. student projects, annotated sketch maps. It is helpful to unpick the good features of the ‘model’ piece with students in a whole-class, interactive discussion to draw attention to what makes it good geography.

Make explicit to students the details of what you expect, e.g. in terms of content and quantity, in advance of the start of a task, Make clear things such as:

• How much you expect them to write and in what form
• How you want it to be presented
• How many questions they should complete from a worksheet
• What vocabulary you want them to include
• What common errors they should avoid.

So, if you are to have high expectations, what characteristics should you aspire to in the early stages of your career? What should you know about and do? Use this checklist to evaluate if you have high expectations. Add to it as you gain more experience and raise your game.