Primary and Secondary Educators’ Attitudes on School
schools is the result of the role educators are assuming in teaching geography as well as the attitudes they adapt towards the subject matter of their teaching. This of course should not be surprising, since the overwhelming majority of educators, both in primary and secondary schools, have acquired their knowledge of geography mainly from relevant courses they had taken themselves as students during their high school education. More specifically, it was found that 92,9% of primary school geography teachers and 95% of high school geography teachers during their college education were not taught any Geography courses or they were inadequately exposed to Geography (subject matter, materials and teaching methods).
Based on these facts it was deemed particularly important as well as extremely interesting to examine the attitudes and points of view of educators teaching geog-raphy towards their subject both in primary and secondary schools. This research attempts to identify the issues that affect the educators’ attitude towards the subject of geography. To this end, 155 geography teachers of primary schools and 80 geography high school teachers, from the greater Athens area, were provided with question-naires containing “open-ended” type questions. The characteristics of the chosen sample (their composition in terms of sex, age, experience, specialty etc) closely resembled the national average, creating a statistically credible sample to work with. As for the questionnaires they contained both positive and negative questions (e.g. “I like teaching geography because…” and “I do not like teaching geography because…” or “The subject of geography is essential to students because…” etc), as well as other more general questions (e.g. “When you say that an educator teaches geography “properly”, you mean that…” or “When you say that an educator has a good command of geography, you mean that…” etc) etc. The processing of these answers led to the formation of a “map” of answers reflecting the attitudes and points of view of educators regarding geography teaching as well as the image projected by the educators themselves.
In addition, the questionnaire results were analysed using the “SPSS 10” statistical package for Windows, in order to investigate whether factors such as sex and years of service have an effect upon the attitude and points of view of educators regarding teaching of geography. Finally, one-way ANOVA was utilized in order to discover any differentiations among various groups of educators. For this purpose, the following two major groups were established: primary and high school geography teachers.
Results
The results were categorized into four sections and are presented separately. The first section is related to the teachers’ point of view regarding the subject matter of geography and their attitudes.
The results show that the overwhelming majority of both the primary and high school teachers believe that the subject of geography repels students (83,9% and 98,75% respectively) because of four common reasons (the required memorising of facts, the difficulty of the subject matter, the inadequate or incorrect teaching and inappropriate educational materials).
The interesting thing, however, regarding these results is that whereas there is not a statistically significant difference in the view that geography repels students, primary and high school teachers differ significantly in their justifications of the reasons that lead to this result. More specifically, the primary school teachers believe that the main reason is that memorising is required, an opinion that indicates that they have not put the effort to familiarize themselves with the spirit and rationale of the new curricula and the changes that they have been brought to the teaching of Geography (method of teaching, aims, etc); on the other hand, the high school teachers believe that the lack of educational materials is the main reason, thus shifting responsibility to the Ministry of Education for not providing schools with the appropriate resources.
These responses should not be surprising given that educators from both the primary and secondary schools believe that an educator has a good command of geography when he has knowledge of the countries and continents (49,1% and 60%
respectively), knows how to “read” and use maps (24,5% and 12,5%) and, of course, employs the appropriate teaching methodology and educational materials (16,1%
and 18,75%).
It should be noted, however, that although both groups reckon that knowledge plays the most significant role in the subject of geography, there is a statistically significant difference between primary and high school teachers in terms of the role of teaching methodology. That is, primary teachers are more sensitised towards this issue as compared to the high school teachers who claim that if you know the subject’s material, you can actually teach it well.
The second section of the questionnaire has been concerned with the subject of geography at school. The two questions concerned with the answers of the educators’
points of view and their justification as to whether the subject of geography is essential to students and, therefore, should be taught at schools showed the following:
There is absolute agreement between the two groups of teachers, since almost 90%
of them believe that geography must be taught at schools. However, in terms of the reasons for which they believe that geography must be taught as well as what exactly it is that students should learn, there is a difference of opinion. That is, primary school teachers believe that geography should be taught so that children will learn about the world as well as their country, whereas secondary teachers believe that students should learn simply how to use maps.
There was a statistically significant difference between primary and high school teachers in the following question: “What do you mean when you say that an educator teaches geography properly”. The majority of the primary teachers posed four main prerequisites: first, to trigger the students’ interest (23.2%), second, to know the subject-matter (21.3%), third, to use maps and other educational materials (20,6%) and, finally, to be able to communicate knowledge effectively (15,5%). On the contrary, high school teachers believe that the first and foremost factor in order to claim that somebody teaches geography properly is to use maps and other educational materials (46,5%) and, of course, to know the subject-matter (27,5%).
The third section was concerned with the actual teaching of the subject of geog-raphy. The answers to the questions of this section show:
• A statistically significant difference between secondary and high school teachers in terms of their enjoyment in teaching geography. Both groups do not seem to enjoy teaching this subject (52,3% vs 35% respectively). The reasons they provide for their negative attitude towards teaching geography are: it is not their area of expertise (high school teachers 27,58%) or they are not properly trained (primary teachers 13,50%), there is a lack of appropriate educational material (15,20% and 23,50% respectively) and, of course, there are no appropriate books facilitating the teaching of geography (12.9% and 10% respectively). A considerable number of educators state that they have a negative attitude towards geography because of their bad experience as students.
• The majority of primary teachers (47,8%) state that they prefer teaching other subjects such as history, grammar, arts, math and science. The same is true for the high school teachers who regardless of their area of expertise state that they prefer teaching other subjects.
• In terms of high school teachers all specialties, regardless of sex, they prefer teaching other subjects as a first or second preference; even geologists, for whom geography is their primary assignment, rank geography 5th or 6th in their prefer-ences, placing physics and chemistry at the top.
• It is rather impressive that 65% of all high schools teachers place geography after the 5th place in their order of preference.
• Finally, the majority of educators, both primary and high school teachers (,%
and 72,5% respectively), feel that they do not teach geography properly and the reasons they provide are: there is a lack of teaching materials, they do not have time to prepare according to the new curricula requirements and they have not received further specialization or appropriate training.
The fourth section refers to the relationship educators had as students with the particular subject. The majority of primary and high school teachers (49,1% and 70% respectively) stated that they did not like geography even when they were students, because their teachers demanded simple memorising and did not teach it properly. It is worth mentioning that the majority of all educators stated that they recall the following in terms of their geography teachers: they were putting emphasis on remembering facts and drawing maps, they were taught the subject by non-specialist teachers and geography was considered as a secondary subject.
A significant percentage of them (17,4%) stated that “it feels as if I haven’t been taught geography at all”. As a result it was revealed that a strong correlation exists (one-way ANOVA) between the teachers stating they dislike geography and those who had a bad experience with geography as students. The same type of analysis (one-way ANOVA), however, identified statistically significant differences between primary and high school teachers concerning their attitude towards their teaching preference.
Primary teachers display a more positive attitude than high school teachers. Finally, the analysis showed that there are no statistically significant differences between men and women in terms of their attitude towards geography.
Proposals
From the results reported here and those that were omitted due to lack of space the following proposals can be made regarding the teaching of Geography in Greece:
• Curriculum changes and introduction of new textbooks and materials should follow the appropriate training of educators.
• Geography should be taught in all pedagogical departments as a cognitive subject including geography teaching techniques and methods.
• There is a need to redefine the position and significance of Geography within the Greek educational system.
References
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Geography Textbook th grade, Athens, Organisation for the Publication of Educational Books, (in Greek).
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Geography Textbook th grade, Athens, Organisation for the Publication of Educational Books (in Greek).
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