Powerful disciplinary knowledge and the status of geography in Finnish upper secondary schools: Teachers’ views on recent changes
Abstract
The article examines the status of geography education within Finnish upper secondary schools. During thepast few years, there have been many reforms which have affected how much geography ought to be taughtand the teaching methods for doing so. In this article, the general aims of the upper secondary geographyand content of the compulsory geography course are analysed from the perspective of powerful disciplinaryknowledge. The empirical data set was collected through an online survey, which was filled out by 63 Finnishgeography teachers in September 2017. The results show that even though the compulsory course in geographywas regarded as being important and student-oriented, teachers felt that there were too many geographicalphenomena to teach and too many time-consuming digital methods to be used. Teachers highlightedthe importance of critical reflection and geographical thinking in the aims of geography curriculum,and they had a positive attitude towards emphasis on current issues in the compulsory course. Many respondentsexpressed their concern about the fragmented character and the illogical structure of the course.The compulsory course has its focus on global risks and therefore, students have to study the consequencesbefore the causes. The required information on physical and human geography is studied later in optionalspecialisation courses, which the respondents saw as a major problem. Overall, even when the aims of thecurriculum support the ideas of powerful geographical knowledge relatively well, limited time for studiesin geography threatens students’ access to powerful knowledge in geography education.References
Ananiadou K. and Claro M., “21st Centu-ry Skills and competences for New Mil-lennium learners in OECD countries”, OECD Education Working Papers, 41, 2008.
Bednarz S.W., Heffron S. and Huynh N.T., (Eds.), A Road Map for 21st Centu-ry Geo-graphy Education: Geography Education Research, Report from the Ge-ography Education Research Committee of the Road Map for 21st Century Geog-raphy Education Project, Washington, DC, Association of American Geogra-phers, 2013.
Béneker T. and Palings H., “Student teachers’ ideas on (powerful) knowledge in geography education”, Geography, 102, 2, 2017, pp. 79-85.
Brooks C., Butt G. and Fargher M. (Eds.), The power of geographical thinking, Cham, Springer, 2017.
Brooks C., Gong Q. and Salinas-Silva V., “What next for Geography Education? A perspective from the International Geo-graphical Union – Commission for Geo-graphy Education”, Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 6, 1, 2017, pp. 5-15.
Butt G., “Debating the place of knowledge within geography education: reinstatement, reclamation or recovery?”, in Brooks C., Butt G. and Fargher M. (Eds.), The power of geographical think-ing, Cham, Springer, 2017, pp. 13-26.
Finnish National Agency for Education, “Subject teaching in Finnish schools is not being abolished”, 2016, http://www.oph.fi/english/current_issues/101/0/subject_teaching_in_finnish_schools_is_not_being_abolished.
Finnish National Board of Education, Na-tional core curriculum for general upper secondary schools 2003, Helsinki, Finn-ish National Board of Education.
Finnish National Board of Education, Na-tional core curriculum for basic educa-tion 2004, Helsinki, Finnish National Board of Education.
Finnish National Board of Education, Na-tional core curriculum for basic educa-tion 2014, Helsinki, Finnish National Board of Education.
Finnish National Board of Education, Na-tional core curriculum for general upper secondary schools 2015, Helsinki, Finn-ish National Board of Education.
Lambert D., “A response to Graves and Slater”, International Research in Geo-graphical and Environmental Education, 25, 3, 2016, pp. 192-193.
Lambert D., Solem M. and Tani S., “Achieving human potential through ge-ography education: a capabilities ap-proach to curriculum making in schools”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105, 4, 2015, pp. 723-735.
Matriculation Examination Board, “Digital matriculation examination”, 2018, https://www.ylioppilastutkinto.fi/en/matriculation-examination/digital-matriculation-examination.
Maude A., “What is powerful knowledge and can it be found in the Australian ge-ography curriculum?”, Geographical Ed-ucation, 28, 2015, pp. 18-26.
Maude A., “What might powerful geo-graphical knowledge look like?”, Geog-raphy, 101, 2016, pp. 70-76.
Maude A., “Geography and powerful knowledge: a contribution to the debate”, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 2017.
Ministry of Education and Culture, “Re-form of general upper secondary educa-tion”, 2018, http://minedu.fi/en/reform-of-general-upper-secondary-education.
Nordgren K., “Powerful knowledge, in-tercultural learning and history educa-tion”, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 49, 5, 2017, pp. 663-682.
Roberts M., “Powerful knowledge and geographical education”, The Curriculum Journal, 25, 2, 2014, pp. 187-209.
Sahlberg P., FinnishED leadership: four big, unexpensive ideas to transform edu-cation, Thousand Oaks, CA, Corwing, 2017.
Slater F. and Graves N., “Geography and powerful knowledge”, International Re-search in Geographical and Environmen-tal Education, 25, 3, 2016, pp. 189-192.
Stoltman J., Lidstone J. and Kidman G., “Powerful knowledge in geography: IR-GEE editors interview professor David Lambert, London Institute of Education, October 2014”, International Research in Geo-graphical and Environmental Edu-cation, 24, 1, 2015, pp. 1-5.
van der Schee J., “Looking for an interna-tional strategy for geography education”, Journal of Research and Didactics in Ge-ography (J-READING), 3, 1, 2014, pp. 9-13.
Young M., “From constructivism to real-ism in the sociology of the curriculum”, Review of Research in Education, 32, 1, 2008, pp. 1-32.
Young M., Lambert D., Roberts C. and Roberts M., Knowledge and the future school: curriculum and social justice, London, Bloomsbury, 2014.
Young M. and Muller J., “Three educa-tional scenarios for the future: lessons from the sociology of knowledge”, Euro-pean Journal of Education, 45, 1, 2010, pp. 11-27.
Young M. and Muller J., Curriculum and the specialization of knowledge: studies in the sociology of education, London, Routledge, 2015.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
The Author assigns to the Nuova Cultura and to Italian Association of Geography Teachers all rights under copyright that can exist in and to the submitted paper. The Author warrants that the paper and images (photos, maps, graphs etc.) are original and that he/she is the Author of the submitted contribution and its parts; in the case of images taken by other publications, the Author must provide a specific authorization and must pay in advance any copyright.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
