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.

Show less

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:

Facilitator

Educate through geography, develop students’ personality and key competences

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

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

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

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

Interactionist

To reveal the relationships between people and nature/environment

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

Synthesizer

Connect the curriculum of different subjects

Map-lover

Analyze, interpret and create maps

Globalist

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

Your dominant conception of geography teaching is

Facilitator

Educate through geography, develop students' personality and key competences

Supported questions

Why do we do this? What’s the point? What information do you need for this? How will you present it? How will you argue to get your point across? How will you respond to the arguments of others? What have you learned for life?

Oriented to

attractive geographical content, useful geography, application of geographical topics to everyday life: e.g. construction of a new railway station, school, supermarket or highway, deciding on the future of brownfields, location of an industrial zone, improvement of places, emotional maps.

Recommendation

Working with attractive topics and applying the content to everyday life requires focusing on key geographical concepts such as distribution, location, region, place, interaction and development, while key concepts can be combined in a certain geographical topic and look for more complex connections between them. The students will be helped by a glossary of geographical terms, which they discussed in their projects in a non-violent way. This will make the originally hidden geography visible and at the same time, the students will realize what subject matter they have actually covered.

Demonstration of specific learning objectives

The student defends his opinion in a discussion with his classmates (according to the rules).

The student considers and evaluates various geographical (and other) points of view for argumentation (from the point of view of a place, region, development, interactions, etc.).

The student shows active listening during the discussion.

The student justifies the ways in which he reached the verdict (result, opinion).

The student presents the results of his work in different ways (according to the rules).

Typical methods and tasks

Problem-oriented tasks, role-plays (holding a certain role in solving a problem), group work (one student must solve all activities according to the focus of his role), data collection in the field and analysis of secondary data, use of interactive web applications prevail.

Topics for students' work

setting up problematic situations in geographical topics, creation of conflicts of interests in territorial decision-making, assuming different roles in solving problems, analysis of information sources, search for arguments, collection of primary data (entry into the field), use of diverse data sources and sources, visualization of spatial data

Focusing on

development of pupils’ personalities, their geographical and critical thinking, decision-making based on arguments: knowledge of their own possibilities, understanding why they learn geography and what geographical knowledge can serve them in everyday life, use of various role-playing activities to mediate the opinions of different parties when solving a problem (e.g. the effects of spatial planning and decision-making on the lives of residents and the motives behind the opinions of individual actors)

Expectations from pupils

knowledge: knowledge is the background of solved problems and experiences (experience is a mediator of knowledge),

skills: working with resources, discussion, active listening, self-management and self-presentation, presenting and reflecting on one’s own work, considering between correct, moral and fair

attitudes: empathizing with different actors in different situations, creating and reflecting on one’s own experiences, developing a moral dimension

Theoretical background

Present with Canva

Geographical Association: Critical thinking in geography

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)

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

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

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

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

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

Other conceptions in which you scored high