Pre-service geography teachers’ voices on the choice of spatial examples. Results from the first year of an educational design research study

Abstract

In contrast to many of the former curricula, the new Curriculum 21 in Switzerland offers teachers considerable freedom in choosing spatial examples. As part of an educational design research project, this study investigates the reasoning behind pre-service teachers’ choices of spatial examples for their own teaching and coursework as well as their interests and wishes for how spatial examples should be chosen for initial teacher training courses. Students in one institution in Switzerland completed an online questionnaire at the end of the autumn term 2015 as well as the spring term 2016. The results indicate that several factors such as e.g. the students’ and pupils’ interest or being the location of current events are judged as more important than the curriculum both for the students’ own choices and for what they wanted the course spatial examples to focus on, although there are some differences between the two areas. Besides helping to understand pre-service teachers’ reasoning, the project’s results will also add new evidence that can help build a design process for initial teacher training courses in geography.