The article investigates the status of geography education in the Finnish national curricula from the 1970s until today. Conceptions of teaching, learning and change in society are traced through curriculum texts; in addition, the ways in which these are applied in the subject-specified aims and content of the geography curriculum are explored.…

Australia is in the process of implementing a national geography curriculum to replace the separate state and territory curriculums. The paper describes the process of curriculum development, and identifies the different groups that were involved. These included the board and staff of the national curriculum authority, geography teachers across…

This article addresses the questions of what the current state of environmental education (EE) is in China's College English context and how it can be improved. It does this by examining the perceptions of the College English teachers concerning the practice of linking language and environment learning. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 45…

There have been remarkable changes in the Omani educational system since the implementation of the Basic Education Reform in 1998. The current study was an attempt to offer insights into the state of geography in the current reform. Particularly, the study examined teachers' preferred reasons for teaching geography, teachers' views on important…

A number of studies suggest that integrating Geographical Information Systems (GIS) into Geography teaching in schools has been and is challenging, and it seems that much of the early promise for the technology supporting learning in Geography has not been realised. This paper examines the progress made in Northern Ireland in implementing GIS in…

Solutions to the pressing environmental problems of our time include a shift towards more sustainable ways of living, and in this, education is recognised as having an important role. It is expected that if sustainability is addressed in teacher education, its prevalence in schools will also increase. However little has been reported regarding how…

"A little sultan" is a colloquial term used to describe a child who is a "spoilt brat" living in a Middle Eastern country such as Turkey. Little sultans are often boys in one-child families and with a greater sense of self-entitlement, as they would consider the world as owing them everything. This paper discusses how an uncritical curriculum may…

While the application of geoinformation (GI) in German schools is becoming increasingly important, a systematic integration in school curricula, arranged in a cumulative and competence-oriented manner, is still lacking. Here the authors discuss existing approaches to the problem and propose a learning strategy based on the stepwise gain of GI…

This study aims at introducing, explaining and evaluating the revised secondary school (high school) geography lesson curriculum in Turkey. Preliminary studies on the new curriculum started in 2002, and it was implemented in 2005. In this context, the article will focus on the programme development process and approaches, principle components of…

Geography, as with all subjects, has a set of organising principles and concepts. One of the central concepts which underpins the subject is that of place. However, it is very much the case that this is an evolving concept, which has taken on a number of guises over time. This paper reviews some of the major changes in perspectives on place as a…

This paper reports the findings of a survey conducted to investigate students' knowledge of geography, such as an accurate understanding of the basic vocabulary and essential concepts associated with the representative geographic locations, described here as "spatial landmarks". The factors that influence their learning, and how their perceived…

This paper considers the objectives for geographical fieldwork within senior high schools in Taiwan, and the constraints on the implementation and development of fieldwork. It introduces briefly the position of fieldwork in geography education in Taiwan, then uses a model adapted from the work of Boardman in 1974 and Smith in 1996 in England to…

The paper focuses on the constraints encountered in developing and introducing a geography discipline programme, with a distinctive regional focus, within a university of technology. Through a case study approach, the analysis relates the development of geography at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) to changes in geographical education in…

This paper reports a case study of how junior secondary geography teachers in Changchun, China, planned and delivered their lessons. From the observation and interview data, it was found that teachers in the China mainland were strongly influenced by a compliance culture and uncertainty avoidance stance. It is argued that these cultural traits…

This paper reports on empirical research in four countries on the growing interest in the perceived "gap" between school and university human geography. Focusing on urban geography, we investigated the views of teachers and academic geographers about key elements of the field and those that were important for geography education. These views were…