Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

students in mathematics and sciences from all over Estonia guidance in their pursuitfor self-realization and to organize additional schooling” (http://www.ttkool.ut.ee/english.html). This Centre is becoming integrated more and more with the Estonian e-University (http://www.e-uni.ee) using methods of e learning and giving challengingopportunities for any interested pupils (Roosaare and Liiber, 2004).We will return to the questions of the future of Geography Olympiads in the last sectionof current paper. The next section provides an overview on structure of national GeographyOlympiads in their historical development. The third section deals with currentquestions on the basis of an inquiry conducted amongst finalists of the last Olympiad.Changing structure and altered accents in the National Geography OlympiadsThe Geography Olympiad competition consists of two rounds, at county-level anda final (national) round. At the beginning the competition was oriented mainly tostudents with a deep interest in geography. The student’s own investigation was aprecondition to take part in the Olympiad. Authors of the best research works wereinvited to attend the final competition. Since 1994 the county-level round (writtenwork testing geographical knowledge and skills mainly according the schoolprogramme) has been organized to identify the best students in geography of everycounty so that they can take part of the Final (national) round. Every year morethan two thousand students (ten times more than authors of research work in formertimes) participate in the county-level round and one hundred students of differentage-groups altogether are invited to the Final (national) round. Over time, qualificationto the Final round has become more serious and now students are invited tothe final competition only on the basis of general ranking. Originally students weregraded only at two levels: 6 th to 8 th form (aged 13–15) and 9 th to 11 th form (aged 16–18).Now, there are 4 age-groups: 7 th (up to age 13; grade D), 8 th (14; C), 9 th (15; B) andgymnasium (16–18; A).Many years ago, the final round took place in midsummer in the countryside as acamping event during a week with a strong emphasis on socialising the participantsand familiarising them with local rural places. Now it takes place in springtime over aweekend (two days) in small settlements and are based on the local school facilities.The final competition has consisted of different types of activity (Figure 1).Nowadays it consists of a written test (composed of different tasks), fieldwork and aquiz (about the knowledge acquired during an excursion). In 2005 for the first timecomputer-based exercises were also included in addition to the written test tasks.Orienteering was included in the programme of Olympiad because originally theorganizers considered that physical fitness was needed to be a good geographer.Today, orienteering is very popular sport in the Northern and Baltic countries andas is almost considered as the professional sport of geographers, so it continues tobe in the programme of final round, but its results are calculated separately and notcounted for Olympiad’s ranking list.The winners of the gymnasium level Olympiad have the possibility to take partin the Baltic Olympiad and in the International Geography Olympiad. Nowadaysan important point for gymnasium level students is that the winners of the National80