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At A level, the emphasis is on the student being able to independently select an appropriate technique for their geographical enquiry. It is therefore important for them to recognise when it is appropriate, as well as when it is not.
The Non-Examined Assessment offers unique opportunities for students to adapt and modify previously practiced techniques to fit their enquiry question.
Introductory techniques
During skills days prior to planning their own NEA, students can be introduced to various techniques to understand place character and the factors that impact and define it. Allowing students time to explore the area using urban drifting, which can allow a qualitative impression to be made that can later define the quantifiable EQA categories.
During an exploratory urban drift activity students could use methods such as smellscapes, whereby they categorise smells in the area using a smell wheel, or use sound in the same way such as a sound map or sound transect to build up a picture of its characteristics.
A second introductory technique is to compare historic photos with current day scenes. This can be a precursor to forming an EQA or indeed can be used along with an EQA to show change over time in environmental conditions.
Finding historical photos is relatively easy online especially in areas that have previously been busy towns or industrial areas. These can then be compared to current views of the same area and annotated to explain changes in social, economic or environmental factors.
The Environmental Quality Assessment
During the skills days, the devising of a suitable EQA must be collaborative with students to include their own critical justification of the validity of the categories. Give small groups of students a blank EQA template to consider suitable categories for a particular area of study or enquiry question.
There should be debate and reasoned discussion about both the categories and the scoring system.
Questions:
- Which categories are most useful to find out X? Are they suitable and effective in answering X question?
- How do we ensure reliability and accuracy of the data? Are our opinions the right ones? Are other people’s opinions more accurate, if so who and why?
- How can we modify and improve this method to gather more useful information?
- Why would it be useful to have this data located as it is collected?
Once a set of categories has been identified then students can work together in their groups to create an ArcGIS Survey. A student example can be seen here, where the students and members of the public quantify the below categories (student devised) in a GIS located survey.
| Negative category | Positive Category | |||||
| Environment is largely man-made with little to no green space or plants | Green space and plants are visible and accessible in the environment | |||||
| Lack of access to street furniture (such as benches, lighting, bins, safety barriers) | Accessible street furniture (e.g. benches, lighting, bins and safety barriers) | |||||
| Poor building maintenance (such as paint peeling, broken windows and missing roof tiles) | Well maintained buildings (e.g. newly painted, windows, roof tiles and brickwork intact) | |||||
| Multiple tags and incidents of graffiti, having detrimental effect on environment | No graffiti, any visible street art is inspirational, well designed and enhances the environment | |||||
| Road crossings are limited, parked cars and paving makes road crossing and access difficult for anyone. | Off road parking, pavement width and design promote ease of access for all users regardless of mobility | |||||
| Column totals | Overall total= / |
Considerations:
- In order to get a representative sample, especially if collecting data from members of the public, a variety of sample sites and people should be surveyed.
- When you take the survey, to get a cross section of the population to complete the EQA, consider when you visit a place and for how long.
- If members of the public cannot be surveyed, role-playing could allow students to put themselves in the right mind frame to give judgement from other viewpoints.
Data Presentation
At A level we want students to be autonomous in their decisions around data presentation but also have access to high level options, especially using GIS. Some options are:
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Coloured proportional circles can be used to show a dispersal of characteristics throughout an area. This allows us to compare two sets of data together to analyse a correlation between two variables, in this example, emotional feeling and the quality of the environment. Within this example we have added secondary data, allowing us to compare our environmental data with deprivation data (IMD) using the ArcGIS online data base.
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Geolocated pie charts can be a useful way to compare individual assessment criteria over an area. This example shows an Environmental Quality Assessment for Plymouth, where data has been collected with a focus on the decay of the built environment. Here we can see the how the sites vary against each criteria measured, as opposed to the above example showing the overall score in a proportional circle.
The Geographical Association (GA) has worked closely with the Field Studies Council (FSC) to develop these resources.
