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This is a conception that builds on expertise. Earthist teachers are excellent geographers, they are recruited from among professional geographers and approved teachers who were excellent, especially in the professional component of the study. They place emphasis on explaining the curriculum using deeper geographical knowledge. They get to the bottom of things, they tend to ask students problem-oriented learning tasks, and they often use the question “Why?” They require knowledge of rules, regularities, causes and effects. They don’t want to stick to just factual knowledge and have lessons based on completing stereotypical fact-based worksheets, crosswords and knowledge quizzes. They want a classroom full of students who understand what’s going on in the world and how things work on Earth – how a volcano forms, why we have variable weather today, and how the water cycle works in nature. It will explain why we need dams or industry, and why we need to solve the climate crisis or the migration crisis. The teacher often deals with more complex subjects, striving for a deeper understanding on the part of the pupils. The teacher uses geographic media – GIS, models, interesting posters, visualizes with sketches, and draws diagrams. Earthists are aware of their high expertise, show off their knowledge, and are proud of it. They tend to show videos with a focus on explanation rather than e.g. a tourism documentary on Iceland etc. They show how volcanoes work, why earthquakes occur etc. but often don’t show pupils the manifestations of volcanoes or earthquakes set in specific locations. For Earthist teachers, longer thematic blocks of the curriculum lasting, for example, three or more teaching hours, as well as longer-term geographical projects are typical.

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Teaching with an earthist approach can be quite attractive to students. Students are researchers – together with the teacher they search for answers to more complex geographical questions. Tasks and projects are often related to attractive topics and are also relevant to everyday life or to the interests of the Students. Students often work with geographical methods and geographical data in lessons and formulate hypotheses or verify or apply already existing theories.

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This conception of geography teaching is not for every teacher, as it requires deep geographical knowledge and developed thinking in context, especially within the topic being discussed. It can sometimes be challenging for teachers to admit that when they expect deeper understanding, there must be a group of students who will not meet the highest expectations. The danger also lies in overestimating the cognitive abilities of pupils. Geography in the Earthist conception goes beyond simple fractography, which for some teachers requires stepping out of their comfort zone because in geography they have to work at the level of theory. In this conception, the theory is understood in the scientific sense of the word – at the level of knowledge that contributes to the explanation of geographical phenomena and processes. Even for the teachers themselves, this concept of geography can be challenging to think about – there are always some questions that the teacher does not know the answer to, and must therefore immerse himself in his studies. Almost every academic geographer is an Earthist, and proud of it. Earthists often lack the teacher superstructure, they like to show students how educated they are smart, but they don’t care so much about the student’s ability to understand all phenomena as deeply as they do. Earthist teachers also often remain at the level of general regularities and rules without a specific connection to the places where geographical phenomena and processes take place. They can show you deserts, but they often don’t tell you where the deserts, volcanoes, etc. they show in the photo and how the people live around them. Earthists do not primarily deal with interactions and relationships between nature and people, nor how people transform nature and the environment. They are often too deeply immersed in geographical phenomena and processes. At the same time, it is very difficult for Earthists to keep a geographical perspective and the specificity of geography as a field at the centre of attention. With Earthists, there is often a danger that the teacher will cross the borders of geography and will also pay attention in detail to the curriculum belonging to other subjects.

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If a teacher sticks to this conception for a long time, it can create something like barriers between students and classes – some students may love geography, and others may hate it because they will not meet the expectations of the teacher. Earthly-conceived teaching can be demanding in terms of the student’s cognitive capacity. If you have geography last lesson on Friday or any last class of the week, after physical education, etc., students will not appreciate this concept because they are tired. The first hour on Monday can be the same – everyone is still asleep. In short, teaching geography in this sense is demanding.

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