Investigating secondary data: KS5

Secondary data sources are vital at Post-16 geography in all forms of enquiry, secondary sources of information allow students to formulate ideas around what to study, how to investigate it and how useful their findings are in the wider context of geography.

It is important that students can also be confident in choosing suitable secondary sources, those which are rigorous and up to date with modern geographical thinking.

All teachers, and many students, know that Bradshaw is the model to explain river characteristics; but is it any good? Is it relevant now, in the place they are studying, to the things they want to find out.

Start by asking students to list any urban models that they know of. This will almost certainly be limited to urban land use models such as Burgess’ concentric zone model, Hoyt’s Sector model and possibly even Harris and Ullman’s Multiple Nuclei Model.

The task can be either as homework or in class research to conduct a basic literature review of these three models, stating the relevance and validity to use in the now and here. The outcomes of this activity should show case to students that models are simplified versions of reality in the cases of these models, vastly outdated ones.

Hoyt’s Sector Model. Source: Knights, 2008.

Using secondary sources to underpin fieldwork

Introduce the students to some more innovative, relevant and above all rigorously researched models for urban planning and design.

The 3:30:300 rule for greener cities – based on some of the most up-to-date research on the links between urban forests and health, wellbeing, and climate change, and the work of influential global organisations like the World Health Organization, this guiding rule describes what good access to green space looks like: 3-30-300-Rule.pdf
Healthy Streets guidance is a human-centred framework for embedding public health in transport, public realm and planning. The 10 Healthy Streets Indicators focus on the human experience needed on all streets, everywhere, for everyone. https://www.healthystreets.com/

Using these two models’ students can suggest ways of investigating how their local space fits or stands up to these ideas of good urban planning and crucially what impact that might have on the people living and visiting the area.

As simple examples of how this might look, we have shared some handout extracts used with A level geography students at Field Studies Council courses to prompt your own ideas.

Access to Green Space:

Healthy Street photo montage:

On your route try to collect qualitative evidence through an annotated photo montage, add your annotations on the diagram below in the categories which describe health streets.