Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

Figure 1. Changes in the structure of final competitionOlympiad and all the participants of the International Olympiads have a right toenter Tartu University without any examination. Several participants of GeographyOlympiads have become well-known geographers.Olympians – who they are and what are their expectationsA questionnaire completed by the students at the end of the last final competition (in2005) enables us to make some analysis on school geography and Geography Olympiadsfrom the pupils’ point of view. Among 95 respondents there were 60 males and35 females (with no clear trend in relation to age) from 42 different schools. There isan apparent tendency in Olympiads of all subjects that the geography of top studentsis narrowing and more gifted students are concentrated in a limited number of eliteschools located in the capital city and some bigger towns. Many students considerthe students’ success in different competitions as one of the most important indicatorsof study progress and school quality.Almost half (47%) of finalists have taken part (in addition to geography) also inlocal rounds of other Olympiads and 24% have been in other finals. On average,each finalist in geography participated (during the last two years) in 3.5 local roundsand 2.5 finals. Dominating subjects were biology and mathematics but a hypothesisthat participants in mathematics and in biology belong into two different groups ofstudents is not statistically reliable.Students’ interest in geography stems mainly from their school experience, theschool and teacher were said to be “quite important” or “extremely important” for83% of students, whereby the students indicating the importance of their home (50%),were as a rule considering the school as being equally important.Geography teachers whose students compete in the Final round were mostly famousand acknowledged specialists. They spend lots of time working with the candidates ofOlympiad. At some schools there are even additional geography lessons for talentedstudents. For those teachers the Final round of the Geography Olympiad has changedmeaning in some respects to become a competition among the best teachers.Students evaluated the complexity of different types of questions in the writtentest using five ratings in the scale 1 = ”a stumbling-block for me” … 5 = “my hobbyhorse”. Since self-appraisals (average ratings of all types of questions) of differentgrades were different, it is more informative to compare the deviations from thegrade’s average ratings (Table 1).81