Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

Primary and Secondary Educators’ Attitudes on SchoolGeographyAikaterini Klonari 1 , Kostis C. Koutsopoulos 21Department of Geography University of the Aegean, University Hill, 81100,Mytilene, Lesvos, Greecee-mail: aklonari@geo-aegean.gr2National Technical University of Athens, Department of Geography andRegional Planning, Zographou Campus, 15780, Athens, Greecee-mail: koutsop@survey.ntua.grAbstractThis research is an attempt in investigating the attitudes of primary and secondaryteachers on teaching geography at primary and secondary schools. A written questionnairewas filled by 155 primary and 80 secondary teachers who were participatingin a continuing education program at the University of Athens. The analysis of thequestionnaires has shown that although all the educators accept that Geographyis a useful subject and that it should be taught at schools, nevertheless 48% of theprimary school teachers and 65% of the secondary report that they don’t like thesubject of geography; they don’t want to teach it and they would prefer to teach othersubjects instead. The teachers stated that negative attitudes towards the subject aredue to: a) their insufficient knowledge (they haven’t been taught at all or they havebeen taught the subject insufficiently at the University), b) their bad experience asstudents themselves (memorization, irrelevant educators etc.), c) the lack of suitableteaching material which could make the subject attractive and d) the lack of time forthe preparation of the subject according to the demands of the “new Curricula”.Key words: Geography, Primary and Secondary Education, Teachers’ AttitudesIntroductionIn recent years in Greece, significant attempts have been made towards the improvementand modernization of the geographical knowledge provided at schools, bymeans of new geography curricula (Government Gazette Issue [GGI]: 241/1996,335/2000, 1375/2001, 364/2003), new school textbooks (Galani et al., 2002; Karambatsaet al., 1997; Karambatsa et al., 1998), creation of new supporting material(Anagnostopoulos et al.,2001) educational software and, finally, training seminarsfor geography teachers. Despite all these efforts, however, the improvement of Geography’simage as well as changes in teaching this subject at schools has barely takenplace, if at all (Klonari and Karanikas, 2004).The literature in general (Lumpe et al., 2000) as well as experience in Greece(Chalkia, 1999) has shown that the present state of teaching Geography in Greek151