The pedagogical content knowledge of Danish geography teachers in a changing schooling context

This study examines the self-reported, topic-specific professional knowledge (TSPK) of Danish geography teachers seen as an aspect of their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) when teaching weather formation and climate change. This topic is considered representative of geography teaching in Denmark. In the last ten years Danish primary and lower-secondary schooling has undergone several significant changes, including the introduction of a final multiple-choice exam in geography in 2007, and a fundamental reconstruction of the curriculum in 2014. These changes are expected to influence the TSPK of geography teachers in ways that potentially have an impact on their classroom practice. Teachers´ responses to specific questions relating to their choice of learning goals and the content and organisation of their lessons show that geography teachers take into account not only the knowledge aspects which point to the final multiple-choice exam, but also the ‘bildung’ perspectives of the subject equipping students to develop their own opinions when dealing with socio-scientific issues (SSI).

Why Physical Geography? An analysis of justifications in teacher magazines in Germany

School geography is often quite different from academic geography and there are good reasons for that, as school is preparing young people to be able to lead the life they value instead of just training them to learn specific subject contents. In some countries school geography is understood as being mainly a social science. Nonetheless physical geography often plays an important part in textbooks and in everyday teaching in these countries. This presentation will examine how physical geography topics are justified in specialist teacher magazines in Germany. Are they justified by simply pointing at the value of the academic knowledge itself? Are they justified by claiming students’ special interest in these topics? Or are they justified by showing the value of physical geography in promoting social aims such as sustainable development, freedom or equality?

How textbook design may influence learning with geography textbooks

This paper investigates how textbook design may influence students’ visual attention to graphics, photos and text in current geography textbooks. Eye tracking, a visual method of data collection and analysis, was utilised to precisely monitor students’ eye movements while observing geography textbook spreads. In an exploratory study utilising random sampling, the eye movements of 20 students (secondary school students 15–17 years of age and university students 20–24 years of age) were recorded. The research entities were double-page spreads of current German geography textbooks covering an identical topic, taken from five separate textbooks. A two-stage test was developed. Each participant was given the task of first looking at the entire textbook spread to determine what was being explained on the pages. In the second stage, participants solved one of the tasks from the exercise section. Overall, each participant studied five different textbook spreads and completed five set tasks. After the eye tracking study, each participant completed a questionnaire. The results may verify textbook design as one crucial factor for successful knowledge acquisition from textbooks. Based on the eye tracking documentation, learning-related challenges posed by images and complex image-text structures in textbooks are elucidated and related to educational psychology insights and findings from visual communication and textbook analysis.

Education for Sustainable Development in Norwegian Geography curricula

In Norway, environmental education (EE) has been part of schools’ curricula since the 1970s. The concept of education for sustainable development (ESD) was introduced after Agenda 21 was introduced at the UN conference on environment and development held in Rio in 1992. The article shows there has been little change in the geography curricula since the concept ESD was introduced, and no important differences are found between curricula for mandatory schooling (classes 1–10) and curricula for upper secondary schools. ESD is mentioned in the geography curricula but without explanation and implementation. Core goals in the general national core curricula may indicate a change to ESD, but they have not been followed in the development of geography curricula in Norway.