The question what the focus of climate change education should be has been debated by academics and policy makers. However, this debate is informed to only a limited extent by empirical research on the position of teachers. Based on interviews with nineteen experienced secondary geography teachers in the Netherlands, nine orientations were…

This paper investigates how the teaching and learning about "wicked" environmental problems may be fostered through an educational approach premised on futuring -- the active imagination of the future. The growing academic interest in possible and desirable futures provides a promising starting point for restructuring education as…

Tasks are crucial for gaining access to powerful knowledge in geography and for fostering higher-order thinking in lessons; therefore, they are key to subject-specific pedagogy. After analysing tasks in geography textbooks for upper secondary education, it was revealed that higher-order thinking barely occurs in textbooks in the Netherlands and is…

Bernstein describes a curriculum context as a system context that is regulated by strong and weak framing, which refers to the "degree of control teachers and pupils possess over the selection, organisation, pacing and timing of the knowledge transmitted and received in the pedagogical relationship" (1975, p. 89). In this article, we…

GeoCapabilities offers an approach for unlocking powerful disciplinary knowledge (PDK) for children. In phase three of the project, we are exploring how far GeoCapabilities 'works' for teachers serving communities in challenging socio-economic circumstances. We connect GeoCapabilities to social justice in education, theoretically. Then, using the…

Relational thinking is a necessary skill for building students' individual capabilities and a core concept in geography education. Geographical relational thinking refers to being able to give interrelated, causal explanations for geographical phenomena such as regional change. The aim of this study was to gain more insight into differences in…

The development of geographical reasoning is essential in geographical education. Strategies developed by the English "Thinking Through Geography" group (TTG) offer a promising approach to promote geographical reasoning. In the last decade, the TTG approach has become a regular element in geographical education in several countries.…

Geography is one of the most important school subjects for the development of global awareness and international understanding. Curricular concepts and pedagogical strategies for developing global awareness through geography abound. What is largely unknown, however, is how young people make sense of the world in which they are growing up and if…

Concerns about the decreasing quality of geography education within primary schools can be linked to a decrease of time spent on geography education and, for example, to low achievement on national or school-specific tests. Learning outcomes for geography stay behind in relation to what experts believe that pupils should perform. Results indicate…

To start a teacher professional development programme on the relationship between classroom summative assessment and learning, the current practices and dispositions of geography teachers towards internal school-based examinations in pre-vocational education in the Netherlands were investigated. A questionnaire provided data on how teachers…

Until now various quantitative studies have shown that adults and students in the Netherlands have low flood risk perceptions. In this study we interviewed fifty 15-year-old students in two different flood prone areas. In order to find out how they think and reason about the risk of flooding, the mental model approach was used. Flood risk turned…

The impact of scholarly research in education on the educational practice in secondary school is low. Academics examine problems that teachers in school perceive as irrelevant, want to publish in peer-reviewed journals instead of disseminate their work, and aim at generalizing insights rather than improving school practice. Teacher research might…

This paper describes the result of a design study in which a geography course was developed and tested aiming to develop the Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) of first-year primary student teachers. This resulted in a course called "Consciously Teaching Geography" with characteristics as (1) starting from students' preconceptions and…

Given its active and enquiry-driven character, fieldwork is seen as an important way to develop geographical understanding of the world, during which cognitive and affective learning reinforce each other. The present study aims to give insight into whether and how secondary school geography teachers in the Netherlands succeed in using fieldwork as…

Students training to become primary school teachers appear to have little awareness of the core concepts of geography (teaching). To ensure that future primary school teachers are able to develop their pupils' geographical awareness, a six weeks programme was developed. The characteristics of this programme -- named Consciously Teaching Geography…