Geography didactics

Young Germany (school room during geography class) , painting by Carl Hertel , 1874, National Gallery Berlin

The Geographiedidaktik is a subject didactics , specifically with the teaching and learning, the technical contents and methods of mediation geographical busy and geoscientific knowledge. As a bracket, it is located between specialist science and the teaching practice of school geography. Your theoretical contributions and theoretical discussions show which technical knowledge is and will be relevant to teaching.

The numerous teaching suggestions, which are checked by our own teaching-learning research , provide assistance with the (teaching) methods .

Overall, geography didactics contribute to the didactic reduction and transformation, i.e. to the selection and preparation of the specialist knowledge for learning and teaching purposes.

Chairs and associations

Geography didactics is represented with its own chairs at some German, Austrian and Swiss universities that provide teacher training .

The Association of German School Geographers (VDS) (ggr. 1912) (approx. 5000 members), organized according to federal states and subject groups (types of schools), dominated by high school teachers, sees itself as a subject-specific interest group, e.g. B. vis-à-vis the cultural bureaucracy, serves as a communication forum for geography teachers and conducts applied (practical school) research. Until the 30th "German Geographers' Day" in Bremen in 2006, the association organized the "German Geographers' Day" every two years at various locations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and was part of the "German Geographers' Day" congress, which also meets every two years, with its own specialist meetings represented. Since the "German Geographers' Day" in Bayreuth (2007), the VDS has been organizing these congresses in cooperation with other geographic trade associations, but also continues to offer country-specific school geographic days of its regional associations. The change in the content of geography didactics and school geography can be clearly seen in the example of the German Geographers' Day 2013 in Passau . When the VDS was founded in the Wilhelmine Empire, patriotic geography and regional studies were still the focus of interests, but the school geographers are now organizing three separate key theme sessions on the subjects of "Education for Sustainable Development", "Intercultural Learning" and "Media in Geography Classes" and beyond 18 specialist sessions on subject didactics and school geography.

In 2015 the "German Congress for Geography" took place in Berlin. A "School Geography Day" also took place there.

In 1971 the University Association for Geography and its Didactics (HGD) was founded (approx. 130 members). He conducts university geography- didactic research and publishes two series of its own: aperiodic geography- didactic research and the quarterly geography and its didactics . The German Society for Geography (DGfG) published the national educational standards for the subject of geography and has been updating them continuously since 2006 (these are available in both German and English).

In Austria the school subject is called geography and economics (for subject didactics in Austria, see more under this keyword). Since 1978 an association for geography and economic education has published the representative specialist didactics journal GW- Lehr. Articles related to school geography can also be found irregularly in the communications of the Austrian Geographical Society . There you will also find a bibliographical compilation of Austria-related specialist didactic literature from the last three decades.

Current discussion

The national educational standards for geography were published by the German Society for Geography (DGfG) and have been continuously updated since 2006.

An overview of the curricula in Germany can be found on the German education server or the curriculum database of the Conference of Ministers of Education.

The discussion about the didactic concepts can be understood in the reactions to curriculum developments, or one sees different front positions in them: For example, currently based on the curriculum drafts for Berlin-Brandenburg and the lines of argument in ongoing petitions from subject teachers.

literature

Arnold Schultze (Ed.): 40 texts on the didactics of geography . Klett-Perthes, 1996.

Hartwig Haubrich (Ed.): Learning to teach geography. The new didactics of geography in concrete terms. 2nd Edition. Oldenbourg-Verlag, Munich / Düsseldorf / Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3-637-00345-3 .

Jander, Schramke, Wenzel (Hrsg.): Metzler manual for geography lessons . Metzlerverlag, Stuttgart 1982.

Johann-Bernhard Haversath: Geography Didactics: Theory - Topics - Research . Westermann-Verlag, Braunschweig 2012.

Detlef Kanwischer (Hrsg.): Geography didactics: A workbook for the organization of geography lessons . Borntraeger Verlag, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-44307-149-3 .

Reinfried S., H. Haubrich (Hrsg.): Learning to teach geography - The didactics of geography. Revised edition, Cornelsen, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-06-065212-9

Gisbert Rinschede: Geography Didactics . 3. Edition. Schöningh-UTB-Verlag. Paderborn / Munich / Vienna / Zurich 2007.

Manfred Rolfes and Anke Uhlenwinkel (eds.): Metzler Handbuch 2.0 Geographieunterricht . Westermann, Braunschweig 2013. In addition online supplementary volume methods . [1]

Wulf D. Schmidt-Wulffen , Wolfgang Schramke (ed.): For Sustainable geography lesson . Klett-Perthes, 1999.

Wolfgang Sitte , Helmut Wohlschlägl (Hrsg.): Contributions to the didactics of " Geography and Economics " lessons. Vol. 16 of the materials for the didactics of geography and economics, 2001. - Also as an online manual for the Institute for Geography of the University of Vienna.

Herbert Wagner : Deployment of teachers, representation of interests and didactic innovations: aspects of educational economics and sociology of science on the geography of schools. FISB-Verlag, Bad Bentheim 1991.

Herbert Wagner: Early Geographic Education. Didactic aspects, methods and examples of early childhood educational work in kindergarten . Geography and Kindergarten Vols. 1–3. FISB-Verlag, Bad Bentheim 2013, ISBN 978-3-88683-179-1 .

David Balderstone (Ed.): Secondary Geography Handbook . Geographical Association Sheffield. 2006. ISBN 978-1-84377-165-4 .

Margaret Roberts: Geography Through Inquiry. Approaches to teaching and learning in the secondary school . Geographical Association Sheffield. 2013.