Institute of Geography, University of Tartu, 46 Vanemuise St., 51014 Tartu, Estonia
e-mail: juri.roosaare@ut.ee; ulle.liiber@ut.ee
Abstract
Geography Olympiads have been held in Estonia since 1965. Students from the University of Tartu have been taking part in the Baltic Geography Olympiad and in 2004 they participated first time in the International Geography Competition. In this paper we review and analyse the experiences of previous national competitions, results of a questionnaire on opinions among participants of the last Olympiad and consider possible means for the further devel-opment of such competitions.
Key words: School geography, Geography Olympiad, gifted pupils
The Gifted and Talented Development Centre and Olympiads in Estonia If we recognize that some children are more gifted than the others, special atten-tion should be paid to enable them to maximise the realizaatten-tion of their talents. The ordinary school system may be insufficient for this purpose and – as in arts and sports – also in pure and applied sciences (mathematics, physics, chemistry; natural sciences: biology, geology, physical geography; social sciences: sociology, economy, human geography; human sciences: philology, psychology etc.) different activities for gifted students have been started long ago. In Estonia, the first school students’
competition in solving scientific tasks took place at the University of Tartu in 1950.
In the academic year 1953/54 Olympiads in sciences started. According to recent research, gifted pupils consider the Olympiads as the main incitement to penetrate deeper into science (Sepp, 2002).
Similar ideas and activities had been developed in the 1960’s among geographers in Estonia and this resulted in 1965 in the establishment of national Geography Olympiads. Since then, 31 National Geography Olympiads have taken place and more than 1,500 students have had experienced the final competitions. The outcomes and substance of the competitions have been analysed in two small books (Raik and Benno, 1981; Mardiste, 1988). Since 1996 seven Baltic Geography Olympiads have taken place and in 2004 Estonian students for the first time participated in the 5th International Geography Competition in Poland.
The Olympiads’ movement in Estonia has widened during last decade and today there are 21 different fields of competition for gifted students in the homepage of national Olympiads (http://www.ttkool.ut.ee/olympiaadid). Since several subjects have at their top level output to an international competition, or else are looking for such possibilities, another aspect, the system of preparation to Olympiads has been developed. For that purpose The Gifted and Talented Development Centre was founded more than 30 years ago at University of Tartu aiming to “give talented
students in mathematics and sciences from all over Estonia guidance in their pursuit for 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 challenging opportunities for any interested pupils (Roosaare and Liiber, 2004).
We will return to the questions of the future of Geography Olympiads in the last section of current paper. The next section provides an overview on structure of national Geog-raphy Olympiads in their historical development. The third section deals with current questions on the basis of an inquiry conducted amongst finalists of the last Olympiad.
Changing structure and altered accents in the National Geography Olympiads The Geography Olympiad competition consists of two rounds, at county-level and a final (national) round. At the beginning the competition was oriented mainly to students with a deep interest in geography. The student’s own investigation was a precondition to take part in the Olympiad. Authors of the best research works were invited to attend the final competition. Since 1994 the county-level round (written work testing geographical knowledge and skills mainly according the school programme) has been organized to identify the best students in geography of every county so that they can take part of the Final (national) round. Every year more than two thousand students (ten times more than authors of research work in former times) participate in the county-level round and one hundred students of different age-groups altogether are invited to the Final (national) round. Over time, qualifica-tion to the Final round has become more serious and now students are invited to the final competition only on the basis of general ranking. Originally students were graded only at two levels: 6th to th form (aged 13–15) and 9th to th form (aged 16–18).
Now, there are age-groups: th (up to age 13; grade D), 8th (14; C), 9th (15; B) and gymnasium (16–18; A).
Many years ago, the final round took place in midsummer in the countryside as a camping event during a week with a strong emphasis on socialising the participants and familiarising them with local rural places. Now it takes place in springtime over a weekend (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 a quiz (about the knowledge acquired during an excursion). In 2005 for the first time computer-based exercises were also included in addition to the written test tasks.
Orienteering was included in the programme of Olympiad because originally the organizers considered that physical fitness was needed to be a good geographer.
Today, orienteering is very popular sport in the Northern and Baltic countries and as is almost considered as the professional sport of geographers, so it continues to be in the programme of final round, but its results are calculated separately and not counted for Olympiad’s ranking list.
The winners of the gymnasium level Olympiad have the possibility to take part in the Baltic Olympiad and in the International Geography Olympiad. Nowadays an important point for gymnasium level students is that the winners of the National
Olympiad and all the participants of the International Olympiads have a right to enter Tartu University without any examination. Several participants of Geography Olympiads have become well-known geographers.
Olympians – who they are and what are their expectations
A questionnaire completed by the students at the end of the last final competition (in 2005) enables us to make some analysis on school geography and Geography Olym-piads from the pupils’ point of view. Among 95 respondents there were 60 males and 35 females (with no clear trend in relation to age) from 42 different schools. There is an apparent tendency in Olympiads of all subjects that the geography of top students is narrowing and more gifted students are concentrated in a limited number of elite schools located in the capital city and some bigger towns. Many students consider the students’ success in different competitions as one of the most important indica-tors of study progress and school quality.
Almost half (47%) of finalists have taken part (in addition to geography) also in local 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 rounds and 2.5 finals. Dominating subjects were biology and mathematics but a hypothesis that participants in mathematics and in biology belong into two different groups of students is not statistically reliable.
Students’ interest in geography stems mainly from their school experience, the school and teacher were said to be “quite important” or “extremely important” for 83% 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 famous and acknowledged specialists. They spend lots of time working with the candidates of Olympiad. At some schools there are even additional geography lessons for talented students. For those teachers the Final round of the Geography Olympiad has changed meaning in some respects to become a competition among the best teachers.
Students evaluated the complexity of different types of questions in the written test using five ratings in the scale 1 = ”a stumbling-block for me” … 5 = “my hobby horse”. Since self-appraisals (average ratings of all types of questions) of different grades were different, it is more informative to compare the deviations from the grade’s average ratings (Table 1).
Figure 1. Changes in the structure of final competition
Table 1. Differences in estimation of questions’ difficulty amongst different grades
Type of questions \ Grade A B C D
Tasks that are testing the geographical facts -0.36 -0.14 -0.01 -0.22 Tasks that are demanding the analysis of situation 0.41 0.04 0.14 -0.22 Tasks that are demanding the generalization 0.39 0.18 -0.22 -0.33
Map questions -0.04 0.00 -0.12 0.57
Identifying the pictures -0.37 -0.10 0.20 0.20
Ratings’ average for a given grade: 2.90 3.05 3.33 3.01 Regarding the fieldwork, the students had to indicate which exercise was the easiest and which one was the most difficult. Practically all exercises were mentioned, the deter-mination of bearings was most numerous amongst the “easy” tasks and compilation of landscape profile amongst the most difficult tasks. We were also interested in participants’
opinions on the proportion of events in final. To obtain more reliable quantitative estimates we used Saaty’s method of Analytical Hierarchy Process by means of Idrisi software tools (Eastman, 2003). In total, 28% of respondents showed consistent assessments and the figures presented in “Desirable” section of Table 2 were based on these answers only.
The real structure is shown according to an average sum of points.
Almost all (95%) students were using computers at home, 84% of these computers were connected to Internet. Therefore we might presume that their computer literacy is relatively high. However, the questions about computer use show that their knowl-edge is narrow, especially from the point of view of geographical applications.
Although 83% of students have used the Internet to find geographical illustrations (and 72% to find any map), only 16% of them were doing it continuously. Several interesting and useful native (Estonian) electronic textbooks and web sites offering interactive computer maps were used only by one quarter of the students. It is probable that students are not sufficiently informed about such possibilities. Also, a serious fact for organizers to consider is that students were in surprisingly undivided opinion that computer-based exercises in the written test were a rather undesirable experience.
Table 2. Events’ structure (per cent) of final competition
Grade Written test Fieldwork Orienteering Quiz
Desirable Gymnasium 47.4 34.4 9.3 9.1
9th Form 51.6 32.4 6.4 9.4
th Form 45.9 33.7 9.3 11.1
th Form 42.8 31.2 10.0 16.0
Desirable Average 47.0 33.0 9.0 11.0
min 15.0 4.0 3.0 4.0
max 69.0 63.0 39.0 28.0
Real Gymnasium 57.0 33.0 – 10.0
9th Form 60.0 29.0 – 11.0
th Form 65.0 25.0 – 10.0
th Form 64.0 26.0 – 11.0
Challenges for the future
Nowadays there are lots of web-based activities or projects for self-assertion on different fields and levels. The Globe programme and similar activities are examples which are oriented to students with research interests. A new challenge emerging at school level is that of e-learning giving students with a deep interest in a specific subject area an opportunity to study additional aspects to the school programme.
In some cases – this is an alternative to being fixed to his/her teacher of a special subject. In fact, a learning network of pupils is already spontaneously working, both on a national level (writing and changing essays, for example) and an international level (finding privies of their hobbies). These initiatives have to be routed towards positive outputs (Roosaare and Liiber, 2004).
The role of The Gifted and Talented Development Centre, which consists today in preparing the students for national and international competitions, may be widened in future. In addition to adding a course of geography in the next academic year, we are looking for new possibilities and outputs. GIS as a common tool in geography should find its place also at school level. Taking into account the relative expense of GIS software and the desire to make learning more exciting, we foresee the possibility of competitions that use geoinformatics as an inter-school co-operation of student groups working on small projects. Maybe in the future such a thematic national network of school GIS projects will also internationalise and launch some kind of new competition, too.
References
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2. MARDISTE H. 1988. Üldhariduskoolide geograafiaolümpiaadid aastail 1977-1987.
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1965–1975. ENSV Haridusministeerium. Tallinn [in Estonian: From the first to tenth Geography Olympiads: 1965–1975].
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5. SEPP V. 2002. Aineolümpiaad andeka opilase motiveerijana. Magistritöö. Tartu Ülikool [in Estonian: The Olympiad – a motivator for the gifted student].