The Covid-19 pandemic is an unanticipated event that has exposed human fragility in an interconnected and interdependent world. While impacts are of a global magnitude, they have been felt at the most local of levels. Across the world pupils’ daily lives and experiences have been directly impacted by government-imposed measures and restrictions taken to address the pandemic. Existing research on the teaching of primary geography in Ireland, although both dated and limited, indicates the prevalence of didactic, textbook-based methods involving rote-learning. This points to a policy-practice gap whereby teaching methods are not aligned with those advocated by the curriculum. Primary teachers and student primary teachers have been found to hold knowledge-based encyclopaedic images of geography, failing to recognise the subject’s relevance to the real-world lived experiences of pupils. This paper frames the Covid-19 as an authentic learning experience that can form the foundation for effective geography education. Pupils learn best and are more motivated to engage in a problem or issue that affects them or that they are connected to. By investigating Covid-19 through geography in the primary classroom, this paper argues that both pupils and teachers can recognise the relevance of geography to their lives and the wider world.

Covid-19 大流行是一个意料之外的事件，它暴露了人类在相互关联和相互依存的世界中的脆弱性。虽然影响是全球性的，但在最局部的层面上已经感受到了。世界各地学生的日常生活和经历都直接受到政府为应对这一流行病而采取的措施和限制的影响。爱尔兰初级地理教学的现有研究虽然过时且有限，但表明涉及死记硬背的教学法、基于教科书的方法盛行。这表明了政策与实践之间的差距，即教学方法与课程所倡导的方法不一致。已发现小学教师和学生小学教师持有以知识为基础的地理百科全书图像，未能认识到该主题与学生现实生活经历的相关性。本文将 Covid-19 定义为一种真实的学习体验，可以为有效的地理教育奠定基础。学生学习得最好，并且更有动力去解决影响他们或与他们有关的问题。通过在小学课堂上通过地理调查 Covid-19，本文认为学生和教师都可以认识到地理与他们的生活和更广阔的世界的相关性。