Department of Geography, Tokyo Metropolitan University
Abstract
In the late 1950s, a "New Geography" emerged among geography academics that marked not only a change in how geography was studied at universities, but also had a major impact on how geography was taught in schools. In England, geography education was fundamentally changed to adopt the New Geography approach. Its origins are widely recognized as having been the first Madingley Conference, held in 1963. This paper aims to reveal how that conference led to the changes that occurred in the 1960s, with a particular focus on schoolteachers. The conference papers were published as Frontiers in Geographical Teaching: The Madingley Lectures for 1963, in 1965. Some young teachers were keen to build on the innovative ideas in these lectures, and in 1966 they formed a voluntary research group focused on practical applications. This group was remarkably active; some of its results were published as a series of New Geography educational books. These activities led to another type of seminar, the Charney Manor Conference, in 1970, and the outcomes of this conference were published as New Directions in Geography Teaching: Papers from the 1970 Charney Manor Conference, in 1973. This book is quite different from Frontiers in Geographical Teaching. This means that while they were adopting the New Geography paradigm, schoolteachers transfonned its educational content through various activities, and this content ultimately became the New Geography Education