Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

The assessment must form the basis of the guidance of the individual pupil with aview to further planning of the teaching.” (Danish Ministry of Education, 1996a, p.12). This should indicate an already existing use of assessment in Danish schools,but the reality is that assessment and evaluation are treated in various and oftenrandom ways by the teachers.Geographers dealing with school geography from an outstanding point of view agreethis is a great problem for geography as a subject as well for the students in developingtheir geographical competencies. The problem seems to be connected to the content inthe education of teachers where this theme is not properly dealt with.It’s difficult to get a clear picture of Danish school geography as it is practiced. It isalso complicated to get an overview on the way teachers are handling evaluation andassessment in this subject. That’s the reason I decided to conduct a survey focusingon this theme (Moller, 2004). Results from this will be given below.GeoGlimt: a survey on evaluation and assessment in Danish school geography‘GeoView’ is the translation of the title of the survey ‘GeoGlimt’ into English,meaning a modest glimpse on geography. It turned out that only sixteen teachersreturned the questionnaires so it has been unrealistic to make statistically satisfyingconclusions about the situation for school geography in Denmark in general. Thereforeonly qualitative statements from the participating teachers are summed up inorder to illustrate some of the circumstances geography is dealing with.The intention of this survey was to get an overview of different aspects in relationto evaluation and assessment used in geography education in primary and lowersecondary schools in Denmark. The outcome was to be able to return recommendationsto the teachers. The aspects selected to be focused on were (1) how evaluationand assessment is practiced in school geography, (2) the methods used for evaluationand assessment, (3) the view on evaluation and assessment, and (4) an identificationof problems, difficulties and possibilities related to the work with evaluation andassessment.Before looking at the results of the answers given in relation to the first focusit’s necessary to understand the teaching concept used in this survey. Teaching isunderstood as a four step process in relation to any lesson or project: (a) workingout aims based on the curriculum as well as the students qualifications, (b) planningthe way the teaching has to be carried out in order to reach the aims (selection ofbooks and other educational materials, organisation of the way the students have towork, agreements with colleagues about cooperation, information to parents, etc.),(c) the education (the students’ work), (d) evaluation of the three former steps. Thestudents’ work is thus described as part of a learning process or simply learning, andthe purpose is to acquire knowledge, skills and competences.Although teachers generally should work out education aims not all of them do itand not many of them do it before each lesson or project, and the national curriculumis only used now and then.The teachers surveyed seem to evaluate the education formative in some extent,and when it takes place it is often carried out unsystematically. When summative170