Initial Teacher Education offers fascinating, complex and vital opportunities to think across academic disciplines, school subjects and pedagogy. Over a decade ago, reflecting on her experiences of externally examining geography Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) courses, Margaret Roberts asked: ‘Where’s the geography?’ (Roberts, 2010, p. 112).
As student teachers spend more time in schools, they engage with the complexities of making decisions about what to teach, how and why. These decisions may be influenced by factors including, but not limited to: their own philosophies, school cultures and communities; research they have engaged with; educational policies and priorities; and the resources they are able to access. The question posed by Margaret Roberts suggests that in navigating these complex decisions, student teachers did not consistently engage with geographical knowledge, ideas, methods, concepts and debates in the lessons that she observed them teach. While the concerns that Roberts raised have primarily been used to support a conceptual push for a focus on disciplinary thought and subjects (such as geography) framing teaching in schools, as three educators with research interests in, and across, geography and education, her question also resonates with us in a different way.
