Integrate geographic skills with active learning in geography: a case of Turkey

Abstract

This paper has two dimensions: Active learning and geographic skills in school geography. It is essential to integrate active learning with geographic skills in a framework of a geography curriculum in order to reach a better geography education in schools. After the renovation of the geography curriculum of high schools in Turkey in 2005, there has been a new viewpoint of learning and teaching geography in schools. One of the most important points of this approach is based on educating students according to eight special geographic skills in the context of active learning. The geography curriculum brought these skills together to cater for students at all levels of high schools. These skills include understanding students, the subject matter of geography, the strategies that may be adopted in the classroom, and ultimately, the ways in which these are combined to create effective geography criteria. Skills in geographical education may also be taken to refer to those skills that students may be expected to develop as a result of their experiences in their geography classrooms. The skills based Turkish geography curriculum includes these geographic skills: Map skill; Observation skill; Fieldwork skill; Geographic inquiry skill; The Skill of Preparing and Explaining Tables, Graphics and Diagrams; Chronology Skill, Skill of Using Evidence; Skill of Perception about Change and Continuity. In this study, I try to investigate the change in the way of learning geography in Turkish high schools according to skills based education. The result of this study shows that the Turkish geography curriculum has a good skills-based structure but the geographic skills are not sufficiently connected to active learning methodologies within the content of the curriculum.