Geography Teaching Today

What is place profiling?
Place profiling uses a variety of fieldwork techniques to provide students with a composite picture of the social, economic and environmental facets of a place they are studying. It is intended to develop the way your learners see, hear and interact with the spaces they inhabit - to deepen their experience of place.

Why use place profiling?
In the past, geography fieldwork has encouraged students to engage in lengthy, quantitative analysis in the field - something that can obstruct a more holistic understanding of place. Place profiling aims to counter this by using a wide range of simple and complementary qualitative methods which should help your students build up an accurate ‘profile' of their place. Most of the activities included here are extremely short and simple and don't require any specialised equipment. Many are simple sensory learning experiences that can be used across the key stages.

In what contexts could these activities be used?
Most of the activities suggested here are broad enough to be adapted to any local place in the UK - though some inevitably have an urban bias. They have been trialled in Bow, Stratford and Barking, east London.