AQA A Level Geography Independent Investigation 4 Day Fieldwork Programme

Day 1

Day 2

El Raval Fieldwork: Changing Urban Identity

A contrasting place (Poblenou) may be studied on Day 4, or students could contrast El Raval with their home town.

El Raval reflected in the window of the FilmoTeca flagship

AS objectives and A-level orientation activities:

• Explore the place identity of the inner city district of El Raval and ways it has been represented.
• Find evidence of differing views about El Raval’s place identity and representations.
• Look for clues as to who is responsible for shaping El Raval’s place identity.
• Consider how the identity of El Raval is part of a bigger picture of changing Barcelona.

Evening Classroom Session

Students who have arrived in Barcelona fully prepared will independently finalise the draft titles of their human investigation and develop their justification and contextualisation of how their enquiry will help them answer their title. For students less prepared, the El Raval fieldwork will help them to develop geographical questions, design sampling strategies and build research proposals. In the evening session of a Taught-Course programme, students will be introduced to a wide range of potential secondary data sources and information and explore how secondary research can be used to justify a research aim, question or hypothesis. A range of possible statistical techniques and data presentation methods will also be introduced and demonstrated.

Day 3

Sitges fieldwork: Coastal Systems and Landscapes

Students measuring beach profiles in Sitges

AS objectives and A-level orientation activities:

• Explore how the coastal landscape can be viewed as a system of inputs, processes and outputs.
• Examine how the coastal processes have created distinctive landforms, including cliffs, caves, and beaches of different materials, widths and profiles.
• Find evidence of how human activity has caused change within the system.
• Investigate how the coastal landscape is being managed, the management strategies being implemented, the reason for their implementation, and the intentional impacts on processes and flows of material and/or energy through the system.
• Examine the effect of these impacts in changing beach profiles.
• Assess the intended and unintended consequences of these changes on the landscape.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the different approaches to coastal management.
• Consider how the Sitges coast is part of a bigger picture of a Mediterranean coastline under threat.

Evening Classroom Session

In this second evening session of a Taught-Course programme, students will independently finalise the draft titles of their investigation (either human or physical) and develop their justification and contextualisation of how their enquiry will help them answer their title. Students will also independently design sampling strategies and build research proposals.

Day 4

Students return to their chosen study location to collect data for their individual investigation - either Barcelona (with the option of Poblenou as a contrasting inner city district) or the Sitges coast.

Media Park development in the 22@ district of Poblenou

Poblenou Fieldwork: Changing Urban Identity

Poblenou 22@ Inner City New Technologies district fieldwork. A contrasting place to El Raval.

AS objectives and A-level orientation activities:

• Explore the place identity of Poblenou and ways it has been represented.
• Find evidence of differing views about Poblenou’s place identity and representations.
• Look for clues as to who is responsible for shaping Poblenou’s place identity.
• Consider how the identity of Poblenou is part of a bigger picture of changing Barcelona.

Evening Classroom Session

In this final evening session of a Taught-Course programme, students will need to receive guidance in order to gain the most from their fieldwork experience. Collaborative working is recommended so that individual groups or students contribute to each step in the geographical route to enquiry.

Day 5