Sessions > Session JSession J.Everyday Territorial Realities for Pupils and Academic Learning in and outside the ClassroomCo-chairs: Sylvain GENEVOIS (ICARE / Université de La Réunion) & Elsa FILÂTRE (GEODE – INSPE Toulouse)This session falls under the headings of “learning territories” and “digital territories”. It aims to bring together the perspectives of researchers from multiple laboratories and to harness concepts from several scientific fields that deal with the notions of territory and territoriality (mainly territorial sciences, educational sciences and geography). The concept of territory is widely used in the teaching of geography in the French-speaking world as well as in other countries around the globe. In general, the concept is used in connection with the study of society, but it does not directly incorporate findings from the territorial sciences per se. In Quebec, for example, this involves studying disciplines dealing with the social world as part of “a process of understanding the way in which a society is organised in relation to its territory”. In Belgium (Wallonia), “the fundamental aim of geography as a subject is to help young people understand the world so that they can be responsible citizens within their own territory”. In France, the concept of territory is taught in secondary school curricula via the theme of forms of living, which focuses on the practices and representations of a territory’s inhabitants (Di Méo, 1996; Stock, 2012). It is only recently that the “lived territories” inhabited by pupils have begun to be studied; and, where this is the case, the approaches used tend to be widely divergent (Thémines, 2011; Baron, 2012). The concept of “lived territories” is frequently confused with “local territories” and reduced to the study of “local space”. However, the lived territories inhabited by pupils provide an opportunity to draw on a variety of academic knowledge, be it geographical, historical or linked to the human and social sciences in general. The use of territory as a resource for exploration and experimentation in order to observe, describe, formulate theories, think and analyse is a focus of research in several countries, and in relation to a wide range of school subjects (Gonzales-Weil et al., 2013; Boix et al., 2015). The settings in which pupils live and the ways in which they interact with the territory “outside the classroom” produce complex and varied relationships with that territory. This involves learning from the local environment in both formal and informal situations. By redefining people's relationships with their territory, the use of digital tools (especially geovisualisation and geoexploration) is likely to lead to new forms of territoriality in line with the geo-digital world in which teachers and pupils operate (Genevois, 2020). This session aims to shed light on the way in which the concept of territory is approached in primary and secondary school geography curricula, which seem to alternate between several different meanings (territory of everyday life, local/lived territory, territory of belonging, of mobility, etc.). The principal aim is to grasp what territory and territoriality mean from the point of view of pupils. How do they perceive and represent their lived territory(ies)? What instructional design and teaching methods are needed to transform the concept into a genuine tool for learning? In what way are these methods innovative for teachers of geography in schools? Selected Bibliographical ReferencesBaron N., 2012, “Les tourments de la géographie scolaire face aux avancées des sciences du territoire”, in P. Beckouche, C. Grasland, F. Guérin-Pace and J.-Y. Moisseron (eds.), Fonder les sciences du territoire, Paris, Karthala, “Collection du CIST”, p. 229-239. |
