Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

Approach, scope and course structure: a worthwhile diversityIt is difficult to generalise about the treatment of the Geography of Europe. Theplurality of definitions for the concept of “Europe” itself clearly reflects the uncertainty,ambiguity and conventionality of which countries actually make up thisterritory.The title by which the course is known appears to be particularly significant.“Geography of Europe”, “Physical Geography of Europe”, “Human Geography ofEurope”, “Regional Geography of Europe”, Geography of the European Union”,“Human Geography of the European Union”, The European Union”, “Geographyof the European Community”, Geography of the European Communities”, and“General Geography of Europe” are the titles given to this subject.When researching the scope (what is included within the term Europe), in mostcases we observed that Europe is not simply limited to the countries of the EuropeanUnion, although it is hard to tell from the syllabi exactly where the continentends. Course-content descriptions provide an ambiguous answer to the question ofboundaries when describing “Europe”. In some cases, the syllabus makes it veryclear that it is dealing with the “European Union”, while in others there is a clearsequence of thematic blocks or themes that include countries that are part of theformer “Eastern Europe” and Russia. But, actually, this way of considering Europeat least as far as the Urals and the Caucasus in all the themes is fairly exceptional.The attempts appear when dealing with a wider Europe for certain themes (physicalenvironment, population or geopolitics, for example) and with a more limited Europe(EU or “Eastern Europe”) to speak about economics or differences in regional development.In some cases, the solution has been to provide a thematic focus to half ormore of the syllabus, while the remainder covers it with a review of different Eastern“regions” (“Russia”, “Russia and Eastern Europe”).The predominant focus of the syllabi analysed is on classical themes followedat quite a distance by regional geography, and in only two cases we can speak ofa holistic focus based on a problem-oriented perspective, in accordance with Lévy(1997). This distribution is no surprise, given that teaching of the Geography ofEurope in most countries of the European Union has developed from the classicalregional focus of French regional geography to a thematic, transversal focus onthe territory. In fact, the discrediting of classical regional geography within thegeographical community, the appearance of new scientific paradigms (quantitativeor critical geography) and the political, economic and social development ofthe continent have all strengthened this focus. Indeed, integration in the EuropeanUnion, common policies and the main problems of the countries (in-migration,environmental problems, transport congestion, unemployment, etc.) has favouredthe thematic treatment of the subject.Post-modernism and cultural changes have incorporated new themes and conceptssuch as multi-cultural, linguistic and religious diversity, nationalism, cultural landscapes,welfare…, and some of these can be observed in the syllabi studied. However,we have not identified a single syllabus with a clear post-modernist orientation.231