Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

academic science. I do believe that Geography can exist as a profession for thelabour market, as well. Besides this, training for related professions known on thelabour market could be better considered, which are taught in several institutions ofhigher education anyhow nowadays (such as tourist, region development manageror specialist of geoinformatics), and they can provide other training for accreditedprofessions other than that for geographer assistant or technician. As for students’graduation, as a practical output all post secondary training could be considered.According to the regulations, teacher qualification will only be acquired as a resultof Masters-level education. This means a uniform teacher training system, thus theexistent system, in which teacher training is divided into university and collegeeducation, will be discontinued. Graduate teachers shall be eligible to teach pupilsaged between 10 and 18. It means a real loss of position for Geography and similarlyto other subjects such as natural science,), as the teachers of primary education will beentitled to teach a smaller part of the specific subject to pupils aged between 10−12.The uniform teacher training approach may seem to be unusual to some peopleinvolved, but this should not induce insecurity. However, it is certain that if despiteall the curriculum framework and regulation of the pupil competences, if Geographyas a subject wants to make advances, then something different should be taught ina slightly different way in a slightly different structure too.The regulation of the two-cycle system concerns “at least one and a halfprogrammes”, as far as teacher training is concerned the half programme is used toconstrain the integrated programmes into a system which is similar to the Germansystem of majors and minors. Theoretically, this is dual education, that is to say thestudy of one major plus one minor is supported. It is not easy to fit this to the abovedemonstratedsystem, but it can be solved if the programmes of arts, that of skills(such as drawing, singing-music) and that of natural sciences can be combined ad-lib.As for the solution, it should be taken into consideration that there is no separate inputfor teacher training, students shall base their higher studies on a professional input.It is the teaching profession which is stressed by external and internal interests andreal professional problems at the same time.As for Geography (like the majority of the liberal arts and natural sciences) thekey point of the solution is included in the undergraduate programme, Geographystudents acquire the majority of knowledge here (e.g. two thirds thereof, three quartersthereof), which is sufficient to acquire further knowledge in a research stream oreven in a practical stream in the future. The students who want to be teachers couldgather credits in “another major” such as Biology or Art in the remaining period (inone third or one quarter of the 180 ECTS), in order to establish the basis thereof. Thestudent can also begin their studies related to the teaching profession (at least to thevalue of 10 ECTS). Therefore, in the teaching stream of undergraduate educationthere is a kind of one-sided teaching, more “majors” and fewer “minors”. This systemenables the students to alter their studies flexibly, and if they realize that they cannotmeet a certain challenge, they can transfer to another stream with relatively fewdifficulties. The training can be adjusted at Masters level, where students have fewercourses in their main major subject and more in their “second major” area, therefore164