Initial Teacher Education and the Festival of Social Sciences
Published: 13 April 2026
Commentary
The Festival of Social Sciences supported Initial Teacher Education by bringing together schools, universities, and partners to deliver hands-on GIS learning, helping pupils develop map skills, a sense of place, and real-world awareness while giving student teachers valuable practical experience.
Rooted in collaborative practices, the UK wide Festival of Social Sciences provides a framework for cross-sector engagement with a spectrum of contemporary social studies teachable issues. Having successfully secured funding from the festival for two consecutive years, Social Studies within initial teacher education (ITE) has used the funds to introduce primary and secondary pupils to the workings and relevance of geographical information systems (GIS) to their everyday lives. As a teacher educator the festival has provided a pathway for cross-institutional collaboration and third-party community engagement to enhance learning and teaching, which are at the heart of the core university values. Both years, post graduate geography teaching students (PGDE) were able to meet with pupils and gain some pre-placement school experience; shaking off some prospective practitioner nerves. The student teachers were also able to observe in-service teachers support pupils on a trip with aspects of learning which go beyond the parameters of the school gates.
The inclusive nature of the festival provided scope for pre-planning, professional dialogue with all partners and most importantly preparing age/stage differentiated learning materials. GIS map-based education was delivered to the whole cohort of Newark Primary School primary 7 pupils, Port Glasgow (2024) and S3 National Geography at Trinity High School, Renfrew (2025).
Newark Primary School
‘To extend my mental map and sense of place....’ is a Level 2 Experience (soc 2-14a) within the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Social Studies subject area of People, place and the environment’ (p11).
This experience when delivered in a national, international and global context has the outcome of supporting pupils to value ‘place’ and ‘identity’. Pedagogically, Newark primary 7 had been exploring cultural identity within the CfE curricular setting and had won the General Teaching Council for Scotland’s Saroj Lal Award for Pioneering Spirits in Equality and Diversity, however they required more subject specific knowledge on the value of ‘place’. The GIS mapping activity was built on conversations with pupils surrounding ‘sense of place’ bringing together the transdisciplinary approach of location, past and present-day identity. Pupils participated in two school sessions which focussed on baseline map skills such as scale and direction and introduced the global locational concept of What3words. The main ‘festival’ session took place on campus and seen the 64 pupils work with GIS educational providers Digimaps and Esri/ArGiS to locate ice cream makers and volcanoes in Scotland. While the pupils learned a new skill had a positive collaborative educational experience, the visit was more than that: it was a socio-cultural look at a wider world. For most of the pupils, the narrative of the journey to get to Glasgow was the qualitative measurable impact. Almost all the pupils had never been to the university campus, with a significant proportion never having been through the Clyde tunnel. Being together as a full primary 7 cohort gave them a shared experience and a significant memory of learning together out with the school grounds. This memory enabled them to discuss physical location and the importance of sense of place.
Trinity High School
‘I can use specialised maps and geographical information systems to identify patterns of human activity and physical processes’ is a Level 4 benchmark within the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence Social Studies subject area of ‘People, place and the environment’ (soc4-14a, p11).
This series of sessions was delivered in a career-oriented and skills-focussed manner and had the outcome of supporting students to engage with and apply different mapping software, including GIS. Pupils participated in one school-based session and one on-campus session at the University of Glasgow, delivered by subject specialist Princewill Odum. The school session focussed on contextualising map use and exploring the application of GIS across careers/sectors. This collaborative activity was facilitated through the inclusion of guest speakers, whose careers included everyday use of GIS: Riverclyde Homes (the use of GIS to monitor housing stock); Joint Civil Contingencies Service (East Ren/Renfrewshire/ Inverclyde), University of Glasgow lecturers, and online GIS initiatives.
The on-campus session was designed to enhance pupil understanding of maps, through practical and place-based exploration and was delivered as a joint effort between colleagues at the School of Education and the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences. The session began with a short online mapping quiz, followed by a place-based scavenger hunt using ‘Mergin Maps’ software – pupils used this to navigate campus, drawing on understanding of direction and skills of map-reading. Focussing then on place-based learning, pupils were provided with an introduction to QGIS and Google Earth Pro which using their local area and High School as a way to situate and learn more about their environment. The session facilitated a hands-on experience of working with different mapping software, through a place-based learning focus.
Within geographic education, map skills are recognised as essential tools for developing student’s spatial analysis and critical interpretation skills; digital software tools, such as GIS, have been positioned as integral for enhancing learner engagement (Ababneh and Tawalbeh, 2026; Rod, et.al., 2010). The Festival of Social Sciences has provided stepping stones for young people to view the world in different lenses through facilitated networking and access to higher educational settings to develop skills such as those aligned with GIS, and those with an emerging meta skills focus. The GIS mapping sessions allowed pupils to become explorers both metaphorically and practically.
References:
- Ababneh, M., and Tawalbeh, H, M., 2026. The Effect of Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in Teaching Geography on Developing Students’ Map Reading and Interpretation Skills. Educational Process: International Journal, 20: e2026013
- Curriculum for Excellence: Social Studies: Experiences and Outcomes social-studies-eo.pdf
- Rod, J.K., Larsen, W., and Nilsen, E., 2010. Learning geography with GIS: Integrating GIS into upper secondary school geography curricula. Norwegian Journal of Geography, 64(1): 21-35.
First published: 13 April 2026