Congratulations

You belong to a group of teachers who want students to have a general overview of the world.

Teachers in this group especially like traditional regional geography, which includes topography in particular. You are happy when the pupils know where what is located, where the Krkonoše Mountains, the Pyrenees or the Alps are, or where the world’s granaries or iron ore deposits are located.

In addition, it is important for you that the pupils know basic geographical concepts. You know that without knowledge of geographical facts and concepts, it is impossible to answer more demanding geographical questions and to understand the essence and meaning of geographical thinking.

You often use textbooks, maps and atlases, and other aids and applications to help students consolidate knowledge and gain information about certain places or regions.

Example:

When information about a volcanic eruption appears in the media , you can immediately prepare a lesson about the processes that lead to the emergence of volcanic activity . Pupils deepen their knowledge about the types of volcanoes, work with a diagram of a volcano and find out where other active volcanoes are located.

Example:

When information about a volcanic eruption appears in the media, you can immediately prepare a lesson about the processes that lead to the emergence of volcanic activity. Pupils deepen their knowledge about the types of volcanoes, work with a diagram of a volcano and find out where other active volcanoes are located.

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Teachers focus on the description and distribution of phenomena and knowledge of the location

Get to know the conceptions in which you scored high and develop in the conceptions that are not quite close to you.

YOUR PREVALING CONCEPTION. Know more about your conception:

Placeist

Discover and get to know diverse places and the life of the people in them

Other preferred conceptions. Take a look at whar is still close to you:

Earthist

To understand what is happening on Earth, how the Earth works

Environmentalist

To warn against the environmental crisis and climate change, to look for possible solutions

Less represented conceptions. Here you will already discover new things:

Interactionist

To reveal the relationships between people and nature/environment

Globalist

To orientate in the world and have a general overview of it

Map-lover

Analyze, interpret and create maps

Completely marginal conceptions. Here is where you can really go wild exploring.

Synthesizer

Connect the curriculum of different subjects

Facilitator

Educate through geography, develop students’ personality and key competences

Localist

Get to know and discover the immediate surroundings

Your dominant conception of geography teaching is

Placeist

Discover and get to know diverse places and the life of the people in them

Supported questions

Why here? How do people live somewhere? How do people live in this place? Why do people live where they do? What is typical of the place? What caught your eye when visiting this place? What do you recommend to visit this place? What do people do for a living in this place?

Oriented to

different places on Earth describe their specificity, character, and genius loci. Places can be located at different levels of scale – from cities or villages in the Czech Republic (up to the level of the state), to places located in the peripheries or cores of different continents, in mountains or lowlands, on the equator or in polar regions.

Recommendation

Working with places requires a photo or video documentation that clearly describes a certain place. Orientation of teaching to a place requires a deeper insight into local conditions, relationships, people’s behaviour, architecture, genia loci, the life of the inhabitants, their customs, etc., which will enable the pupils to immerse themselves in the given place. It is not necessary to create insight only on the basis of personal experience, it is also possible to learn about places by studying travelogues, documentary films, mediated experience, etc. Geographical concepts include place, region, location and interaction.

Demonstration of specific learning objectives

The student will assess what makes Košice attractive from the point of view of tourism.

Using the example of Osaka, the student will explain what is characteristic of life in Japan.

The student discusses the reasons why he would like or not want to live in rural Cambodia.

Using photo documentation and information (own or from the Internet), the student expresses in his own words what a genius loci is.

Using specific examples, the student will explain the impact that development projects have on the lives of people in Africa.

The student will indicate whether any artefact, cultural element or endemic is typical for the given place.

Typical methods and tasks

These are a group or individual work, case studies of places, and SWOT analyses of places. Furthermore, getting to know certain places using texts, videos, and photos, discovering and getting to know certain places using information and data, teacher and student presentations describing the places they visited, with an emphasis on capturing the essence of the place, creating “documentary” photos, films, montages, blogs, etc.

Topics for students' work

analysis of newspaper texts, articles, pictures, photographs, presentations, videos, transferred experience, creation of comprehensive ideas about different places and the lives of people in them

Focusing on

development of imagination, experience and understanding of laws associated with the differences and similarities of certain places. It is considered desirable to compare the selected places, preferably with the place where the pupils live (city, region, Czechia)

Expectations from pupils

knowledge: a character of places (local scale) related to location and natural and social conditions: climate zones, biomes, relief, with cultural, political, religious, etc. aspects, knowledge can be a secondary product of the active activity of students with the curriculum

skills: imagination, analysis and synthesis of information, evaluation of places, assessment of the relevance of sources and information, drawing up a picture of a place

attitudes: perception of genia loci, empathizing with a given place, anticipating culture shock, moderate evaluative judgments from places that can be perceived as different

Theoretical background

Gapminder

Google Earth

Naked cities

National Geographic magazine

Assessment ?

We use case studies to verify student results, which require work with diverse material in various forms.

The evaluation is based on the following criteria:

geographical in content : correctness of the terms used, localization of the place, comparison (within the given parameters) of two places (most often with the Czech Republic), compilation of parameters for comparison, character of biomes, climatic zones, places according to the relief, creative expression of genia loci, variety of characteristics of places, relevance of resources and information
competence: choice of environment (media, digital, analogue) for presentation , creation of stories, authenticity

For formative feedback, we recommend asking questions based on the evaluation criteria for each of the topics:

What makes a place a place?

Is it really typical for the chosen location or for other locations as well?

What all the documents do you have and can you have for the description of the place?

What can you see in the photo, video, image?

Are you looking for something in the photo, or are you looking for a photo to express the character of the place?

Why do people in these places live like this? Do they have reasons for this?

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Teacher:

Emphasis on the lives of people in specific places
Travel concept of teaching
Case studies

Teachers with a dominant Placeist conception often connect the geography curriculum with everyday life. In their teaching, they focus on how people live in certain places (in specific locations – cities, villages, regions). People’s lives are often understood at the level of people’s relationship to the place in which they live. This conception also characterizes the so-called documentary or travel writing approach to geography. Teachers and students discuss interesting and remarkable places, possibly compare different places and ask students about solutions to typical geographical problems that people living in these places solve. A typical method is the case study. This is living geography. It is basically an application of more general geographical theories in a specific place. The placeist conception of geography can be implemented anywhere and at any time, with minimal costs and a minimal time allowance.

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Student:

Uses geography for own travel
Evaluates and compares people’s lives in different places
Solves specific geographic problems in specific locations

The benefit of the placeist conception of geography teaching for the student lies primarily in the fact that it takes into account the experiences of young people with the world, with travel, but also with extracurricular studies and works with what students think about different places and how they think about geographical problems connected with these places.

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Teacher :

The teaching is attractive, but the pupils do not know what to take away from the teaching
The need to relate the curriculum to the pupils’ place of residence or the local region
Risk of missing some important regions or places

A teacher favouring the conception of placeist places less emphasis on factual knowledge. Pupils enjoy this type of teaching a lot, but in the end, after the lesson, it may happen that the pupils do not take away any tangible knowledge from the lesson at the level of e.g. declarative knowledge. The entire teaching of geography cannot be based on the placeist conception, because there is a danger of so-called didactic formalisms: especially hidden knowledge. Related to this is the need to constantly emphasize to students that even in the placeist conception of teaching geography, learning takes place that is relevant for the student, even though the teaching takes place in India. The risk of missing connections and the emphasis on developing geographical thinking may be neglected here. The need to anchor the contents also to the place of residence and life of the pupils (the same problems are being solved in the suburbs of Sydney and in the suburbs of Prague). The need to emphasize and explore geography and geographical perspective. Risk of omission/omission of other locations/countries. There is a lack of a clear structure of the curriculum (but this can also be an advantage in a one-hour course).

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Student:

Can’t tease out what’s important
Perceives geography as an undemanding travelogue
Without learning tasks, the student’s attention can wane

Pupils are interested in the subject matter, but they are unable to identify what is important. There is a danger that geography will be seen as entertainment, but not as learning. Greater emphasis on description – e.g. of one’s own experiences from visiting different places – this description tends to be attractive to pupils and is easy to listen to. Descriptiveness can be bridged by case studies focused on solving problems typical of the places with which the teacher and students deal.

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Other conceptions in which you scored high