Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

cally and problematically. If geographical studies aim to deal with the situationin Slovenia and Europe then teachers and teacher trainers should try to answer thefollowing questions:1. What kind of identity, regarding European citizenship, will pupils and studentsdevelop as the result of our education?2. What will be the effect of a division of Europe into smaller, stereotypicallydescribed geographical units or regions?3. Does a regional approach with a division of Europe into smaller units develop anotion of European dimension in geography teaching?The answer to these is all but simple when teaching about Europe. The understandingof a space is a basis for the understanding of the world. And place cannotbe understood separately from the world. Therefore the understanding of relationsand processes inside a particular region and between regions on local and global levelis more important than individual characteristics of geographical units of Europeor countries. Learning about the physical and human geographical characteristicsof a geographical unit or a county soon leads to encyclopeadical gathering of dataand facts (Popit, 2001).Instead of a small-unit-division the reformers ought to include the processes, whichform and change places. The new paradigm of (regional) geography should thus bebased on the concept of a place, while its object of conception is not a chosen regionbut a functional structure of a place or space.We are convinced that the experts of individual fields, writers of syllabi and didacticiansshould make an arrangement about the methodology. A proposed modernisationof syllabi and educational aims also demands a modernization of textbooksand other teaching aids. Geography teaching has to make the contents interestingand offer new knowledge, experience and methods with real and applicable value.This, according to Petauer (2001), is the right way to develop intellectual curiosityand self-confidence among young people.Geographical Education in SloveniaGeographical education cannot sit back and relax as the world progresses. Those peoplewho profess to be geographical educators must recognise that their future is not guaranteed.Reflection on past developments in curriculum will offer clarification of the rootsof the field of learning. These are important, but they should be tempered by carefulcontemporary analyses of state of geographical education. As a result, close monitoringof other societal and educational policy developments should be considered in theformulation of insightful futuristic statements that offer directions for geographicaleducation to follow in the coming years. (Gerber and Lidstone, 1996).During the reform of geography curriculum in Slovenia different competingtensions, which had been already mentioned by Naish (1996), included:• the call for an emphasis on basic skills, vocationalism and instrumentalism, versusthe view of education as humanitarian, liberal and progressive, of intrinsic valuein its own right rather than to be seen as preparation for the future,• academic versus child centred education,191