Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

• A statistically significant difference between secondary and high school teachersin terms of their enjoyment in teaching geography. Both groups do not seem toenjoy teaching this subject (52,3% vs 35% respectively). The reasons they providefor their negative attitude towards teaching geography are: it is not their area ofexpertise (high school teachers 27,58%) or they are not properly trained (primaryteachers 13,50%), there is a lack of appropriate educational material (15,20% and23,50% respectively) and, of course, there are no appropriate books facilitatingthe teaching of geography (12.9% and 10% respectively). A considerable numberof educators state that they have a negative attitude towards geography becauseof their bad experience as students.• The majority of primary teachers (47,8%) state that they prefer teaching othersubjects such as history, grammar, arts, math and science. The same is true forthe high school teachers who regardless of their area of expertise state that theyprefer teaching other subjects.• In terms of high school teachers all specialties, regardless of sex, they preferteaching other subjects as a first or second preference; even geologists, for whomgeography is their primary assignment, rank geography 5 th or 6 th in their preferences,placing physics and chemistry at the top.• It is rather impressive that 65% of all high schools teachers place geography afterthe 5 th place in their order of preference.• Finally, the majority of educators, both primary and high school teachers (74,8%and 72,5% respectively), feel that they do not teach geography properly and thereasons they provide are: there is a lack of teaching materials, they do not havetime to prepare according to the new curricula requirements and they have notreceived further specialization or appropriate training.The fourth section refers to the relationship educators had as students with theparticular subject. The majority of primary and high school teachers (49,1% and70% respectively) stated that they did not like geography even when they werestudents, because their teachers demanded simple memorising and did not teachit properly. It is worth mentioning that the majority of all educators stated thatthey recall the following in terms of their geography teachers: they were puttingemphasis on remembering facts and drawing maps, they were taught the subjectby non-specialist teachers and geography was considered as a secondary subject.A significant percentage of them (17,4%) stated that “it feels as if I haven’t been taughtgeography at all”. As a result it was revealed that a strong correlation exists (one-wayANOVA) between the teachers stating they dislike geography and those who hada bad experience with geography as students. The same type of analysis (one-wayANOVA), however, identified statistically significant differences between primaryand high school teachers concerning their attitude towards their teaching preference.Primary teachers display a more positive attitude than high school teachers. Finally,the analysis showed that there are no statistically significant differences between menand women in terms of their attitude towards geography.154