Centre Members Receive 2023 Award for Excellence in Leading Geography

Joe Usher and Lesley Burnett received the 2023 Award for Excellence in Leading Geography by the Geography Association in the UK for their article titled: 'Critical multi-cultural geography: moving beyond the “Four Fs” of fairs, festivals, food and folktales‘ -published in Geography Association's Primary Geography Journal.

Some geography teaching resources and online sources can demonstrate capacity in fostering multiple perspectives, appreciation for diversity, development of critical thinking and enquiry, and making connections. However, many resources present stereotypical, oversimplified accounts of issues, peoples and places, which can result in feelings of superiority among dominant groups and more

entrenched feelings of ‘Otherness’ amongst minority groups. In this article Usher and Burnett (2022) draw attention to ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ approaches to teaching geography, and the need for teachers to be more critical of resources and methods they use in the classroom. The Framework for Critical Multicultural Geography Education (CMCGE) is presented as a means of ascertaining the extent to which some resources and teaching approaches facilitate, or indeed repress, hard multicultural education in geography. The article also includes practical learning activities and exemplars for teachers.