Congratulations

You belong to a group of teachers who want students to know the answers to more challenging geography questions (“Why?” questions).

You enjoy solving geographical problems that pupils have to deal with. In your classes, students often work as real geographers. You create opportunities to work with text and other information sources, students independently collect data and then analyze it and draw conclusions.

Your teaching often leads students to recognize and discover the interactions between people and the environment, or you deal with the causes and effects of geographical phenomena.

In addition to doing geographical research with your pupils, you are also interested in studying more general geographical topics, including in the teaching of regional geography. You and the pupils also spend more time studying selected places or regions in more detail, even at the cost of not having time to discuss other 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. In geography lessons, pupils deepen their knowledge of how volcanoes are formed and, above all, what are the consequences of volcanic activity for people’s lives and the surrounding environment . Using examples of specific places affected by volcanic activity, students demonstrate the relationships between the natural and social components of the landscape . In addition, students explain the pros and cons of living in places affected or threatened by volcanic activity. Pupils have the opportunity to think about it, why people live in the immediate vicinity of volcanoes, why, for example, there are fertile soils around volcanoes, how volcanoes can be used in terms of tourism and how people deal with the various consequences of volcanic activity on a local and global level.

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Teachers focus on scientific reasoning and making connections

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:

Environmentalist

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

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

Interactionist

To reveal the relationships between people and nature/environment

Synthesizer

Connect the curriculum of different subjects

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

Facilitator

Educate through geography, develop students’ personality and key competences

Placeist

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

Localist

Get to know and discover the immediate surroundings

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

Map-lover

Analyze, interpret and create maps

Globalist

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

Earthist

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

Your dominant conception of geography teaching is

Environmentalist

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

Supported questions

The teacher works with questions: Why do you think that? What resources did you find and use? What will that solve? What is the cause of global warming, climate change, depletion of the ozone layer, drought (how to identify, name, and clarify the cause)? What are the environmental impacts? How to eliminate these impacts? How will you present it so that people will listen to you? How to achieve change? What action is desirable?

Oriented to

Environmental impacts and effects of human activity on nature, threats and challenges resulting from the connection and relationships between people and the environment, and environmental protection.

Recommendation

Working with impacts and effects requires a focus on geographical concepts such as development, place and spatial distribution (patterns) enabling the analysis of the environment, ecosystem change and human use of areas.

Demonstration of specific learning objectives

The student will justify the causes of global warming and its consequences on the lives of people in Australia, Indonesia, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.

The student will explain how a local natural disaster can affect the surrounding area (regions, states, regions…).

The student suggests how he could contribute to the protection of the environment or the landscape.

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Typical methods and tasks

problem-oriented tasks with environmental themes in the form of worksheets, diagrams of the impact of human activity on the environment, medium-term or long-term projects, group work (a division of activities and roles in the group)

Topics for students' work

analysis of texts, videos, maps, photos or information related to the topic, accompanied by finding and presenting variants of problem-solving, environmentally oriented educational programs and projects

Focusing on

development of skills, behaviour and attitudes towards nature: identifying problems, analyzing the relevance of information, finding possible scenarios, proposing different measures, finding desirable ways of people’s behaviour reducing the effects of the environmental crisis, and finding ways to sustainable development (17 UN goals)

Expectations from pupils

knowledge: we start by evocating the problem, knowledge is and can be a secondary product of solving the problem (students can use dictionaries), required vocabulary: “causes and consequences of risks, influences, environment, sustainability, changes, regions”

skills: working with resources, locating in maps, creating the development of the problem in maps, reasoned argumentation (what is serious and what is less with regard to causes and effects)

attitudes: expresses his convictions, (wants to behave) behaves proactively, shows justified concern, shows compassion or other emotions in his statements

Theoretical background

European Environment Agency

Environmental interactive maps

Assessment ?

In order to verify knowledge, skills and, above all, attitudes, we use project formats in which we can also observe pupils’ behavior and experiences.

An environmentalist focuses on the development of attitudes and values, so we must carefully consider how we translate what we expect from students into an observable or measurable form. It is important for him that pupils experience a protected environment when expressing their opinions. It is better to conduct feedback interviews with pupils than to lean towards direct classification.

For this reason, we use rather analytical descriptive feedback based on the following criteria:

geographical in content : the correctness of the terms used; richness of concepts; the number of geographical points of view on the topic considered; analysis and synthesis of sources; etc.
competent: expressing a strong point in the topic that influenced his opinion, position or argument; support for arguments; justifying one’s position; etc.

when presenting and arguing (fulfilling KK), we use evaluation criteria such as accuracy, clarity, structuring of ideas so that expression is understandable, accurate presentation of the problem, etc.

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

Teacher:

- Develops environmental literacy
- Connects the teaching of geography with environmental education
- Focuses on values and attitudes

This conception aims to develop students’ environmental literacy and connect geography teaching with environmental education. Environmentalist teachers are mainly concerned with how to protect nature and the environment from the unwanted effects of human action. Teaching is mainly framed by the ideas of sustainability, environmental protection, ecological stability and responsibility. Teachers are happy that students appreciate nature and environmental protection as values, and they don’t worry too much that their students don’t know, for example, where Iowa is. The teachers strongly perceive the environmental perspective and values and experience it in their hearts. The way of geographical thinking that is behind the environmentalist concept is very close to many geographers, and it should be respected. The teaching of geography is mainly oriented towards the development of environmental values and attitudes of pupils. Pro-environmental teachers often argue that people should change their behavior, especially because they damage the environment through their activities and daily actions. Furthermore, they also tend to explain the effects of negative human impact on the environment and the landscape in almost all topics covered in the teaching of geography. An environmentalist has a deep relationship with nature and the planet, is interested in alternative energy sources, the ecological or carbon footprint and its minimization, or designing effective environmentally friendly solutions. The essence of the environmentalist concept can be successfully conveyed on the topic of soil: while teachers favoring other concepts will deal with the properties of soils and their division.

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Student:

Experiences project-based and interdisciplinary teaching
Is dedicated to ecological topics and sustainability
Solves dilemmas, defends his opinions, and discusses

The student gets the opportunity to think, discuss, solve dilemmas, defend their opinions, and participate in interesting projects or environmentally oriented educational programs about rivers, urban planning, sustainability goals, feminism, poverty and natural disasters. Pupils appreciate these topics, which are not well represented in school education because teachers who are not environmentally oriented do not know much about them or do not consider them relevant. Environmental and ecological topics are mostly fun for pupils, so they can motivate some pupils to later study geography, environmental studies or other related fields.

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Teacher:

- Lower emphasis on content accuracy
- Absence of more demanding learning tasks
- The danger of being accused of promoting “green ideology”

The environmentalist conception does not suit every teacher. Teachers with this dominant view do not care much about students’ geographical knowledge. Environmentalists also have to reckon with complaints that “pupils will not learn anything” – mainly due to a lower emphasis on pupils’ factual knowledge, or the absence of more demanding analysis and interpretation of more complex geographical phenomena and processes. Building pro-environmental attitudes require a considerable amount of time and effort. From other teachers, parents, and sometimes even students, teachers favouring the conception of environmentalist may be criticized for promoting a “green ideology” in their teaching.

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Student:

- May not always realize that they are learning
- Does not recognize the geographical dimension of the curriculum
- May consider geography as a recreational subject

In the environmentalist conception, there is a risk of so-called hidden learning. In some cases, the student may not realize what he is actually learning, and especially why. In the event that students of projects with environmental themes or environmentally focused teaching programs, it may happen that in this way of teaching, the students will not perceive the “geographical dimension” of the subject matter discussed.

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Other conceptions in which you scored high