Loading...

Write us

Congratulations

You belong to a group of teachers who want their students to be prepared for everyday life.

You like to use different teaching methods in teaching geography. Your teaching is thematically varied and your teaching often deviates from the content of the textbooks. Because you have your own supply of teaching materials and preparations that are better than what the textbook offers you.

Show more

Your teaching leads to the general development of students. What the pupils have learned in your lessons, they will also use in the teaching of other subjects and also in everyday life. Pupils express themselves correctly and intelligibly, work with resources, cooperate and argue, which they also use in teaching other subjects. You focus on developing geographical thinking, which enables pupils to apply geographical knowledge in different environments and situations. You are not afraid to work with the experiences, experiences, attitudes and opinions of your students.

You often solve current questions and problems with the pupils, you discuss with them, and you often think about how to demonstrate geographical phenomena using examples from the pupils’ everyday life, thereby developing so-called useful geography.

You work using the project method, the pupils are very involved in the teaching and the subjects covered are usually concluded with presentations by the pupils. Pupils rate your lessons as fun.

Example:

When information about a volcanic eruption appears in the media, you can immediately prepare a lesson about the effects of volcanic activity on people’s lives. Pupils in geography lessons work with photographs and video recordings capturing the stories of people living around volcanoes . Pupils discover in specific places how volcanic activity affects people’s everyday life and try to empathize with the problems that these people have to solve . By comparing different places, students discover what these places have in common and how places affected or threatened by volcanic activity differ from other places on Earth. Students present all their findings in front of the class. 

Show less
Teachers focused on the application of the curriculum in everyday life and the general development of students

Assessment ?

Remember that this concept is built on core competencies – content is their mediator. Focus primarily on formative descriptive feedback and correction of undesirable behavior. As with the Environmentalist, create a protected environment in which they can work and develop freely. 

Since it can also be medium-term or long-term projects, monitor the progress of the work, how the students progress, in other words, facilitate them.

Monitored evaluation criteria:

a) during the work progress, we focus on:

  • geographical knowledge and skills: the choice of sources, the use of information from sources, the search for key factors (from the natural and socio-economic spheres), the choice of illustrative examples (developments, changes) from other regions, the use of modern geographical technology, the methods of data collection used, etc.
  • competence: reflecting on one’s own procedure, systematicity, thinking about what is just and right, preparing for discussion, planning time options, etc.

b) at the final output:

  • geographical knowledge and skills: choice of resources, map skills (map requirements), choice of suitable regions and places (their description), knowledge of the realities of regions and places, factuality,
  • competence: preparedness, dress code, use of modern visualization applications, does not interrupt others, ethical and legal aspects of the issue (manifestation of solidarity vs. competitiveness)

Show more
For formative feedback, we recommend asking questions based on the evaluation criteria for each of the topics: How do you collect and record evidence? How do you turn evidence into arguments? How do you know that it is quality information? How does geography help you to answer the question that bothers you? What did you find on the map, and how can it help you?

How do you want to present your opinion?

How did you find out?

Show less

Teacher:

    • Develops competencies
    • Geographical knowledge is a means, not an end
    • It connects the curriculum with everyday life

Show more

A teacher with a dominant concept of a facilitator perfectly fulfills the requirement for developing pupils’ competences. This concept of teaching is sometimes perceived as the least demanding from the point of view of expertise, as it is not based on covering a larger amount of subject matter and developing an in-depth understanding of the field. Perhaps that is why teacher facilitators are perceived as popular from the students’ point of view. These teachers develop cross-curricular skills. In this concept, geographical contents are a means, not an end, of education. The teaching of teacher facilitators often includes solving real-life and professional situations. The concept of facilitators is characteristic of geography teachers who realize that their subject is not the most important, but is part of a varied palette of differently oriented teaching subjects covered by key competencies. Therefore, teachers often think

Show less

Student:

  • Geography is popular and fun
  • Thinks critically, discusses, and presents
  • Learns for life

Show more

The benefit of the concept of facilitator for the student lies primarily in the fact that it conveys geographical content that can be used in everyday life. Pupils in geography lessons often solve various projects and focus on developing critical thinking and other cross-disciplinary skills – e.g. presentation skills, using multiple sources of information, developing reading literacy, etc. Teaching in this concept comes across as very meaningful to the pupils, and the facilitator significantly contributes to the popularity of geography as a school subject.

Show less

Teacher:

  • Does not require deep knowledge and understanding of the curriculum
  • Downplays rote knowledge and topography
  • Factual correctness is not a priority; creativity and fun are important

Show more

The conception of the facilitator is the least oriented towards factual knowledge. This can lead to discussions among teachers about the aim of geography education. Different teachers can argue where is the limit of what a student should memorize. Teacher facilitators often downplay the usefulness of rote geographical knowledge and the need for a deeper understanding of the geography curriculum. Despite the relatively lower content requirement, the facilitator teaching concept is quite laborious in terms of preparation and inventing meaningful pedagogical situations containing elements of the geography curriculum. In this concept, teachers strive to apply geographical knowledge in everyday life, which is not always easy. Even in very successful geographical problems, pupils may not recognize the potential of geography for solving these problems. Teacher facilitators often also appreciate creative and original solutions that may not be content-correct or realistic. A typical manifestation can be teachers’ inclination to short-cut and first-plan solutions to selected problems, which is related to insufficient emphasis on factual correctness. When solving geographic issues, there is often no wrong or right solution. Factual accuracy is important for facilitator-dominant teachers but is not their main priority.

Show less

Student:

  • From the student’s point of view, he seemingly does nothing
  • The feeling that geography is not covered much
  • Unclear assessment

Show more

The teacher facilitator seemingly does nothing from the student’s point of view. The student may often feel that the subject matter is not covered in class. Project activities, problem-oriented learning tasks and sequences of student output presentations usually cannot be completed in one lesson. This makes it challenging to assess pupils – partly because pupils may be absent from some of the lessons and partly because of the requirement for transparency in the assessment. The teacher must have elaborate evaluation criteria that can be applied in each of the lessons in order to be able to document his evaluation to students, parents, or other stakeholders.

Show less

Benefits of registered users

Exclusive access to a database and community of engaged geography teachers.
Draw inspiration for other conceptions.
Conveniently browse topics and think about your own teaching.
Know the connections between conceptions.
Experience GEOWHEEL or have instructions on how to comprehensively grasp geography education.
Archiving test results to monitor the development of one's own teacher identity.
Invitations to events with members of the project team and special events.
Access to the archive of worksheets for pupils and other teaching materials.
Detailed results with commentary and practical recommendations.
... Well, the students will simply love you, because they will enjoy your teaching!