Czech secondary pre-service teachers’ conceptions of geography

ABSTRACT

The status of geography as a separate school subject in Czechia is being increasingly questioned as pupils’ interest in it is declining. Pre-service teachers (i.e. teacher trainees at universities) are key players in recontextualizing geography education in the future. Therefore, understanding pre-service teachers’ conceptions of geography and its teaching are crucial. This article reports on the results of a survey of Czech secondary pre-service teachers’ conceptions regarding geography and its teaching. Our contribution to the literature extends existing knowledge by using a latent class analysis providing deep insight into the conceptions of geography and its teaching. The survey was conducted among a group of 114 secondary pre-service geography teachers studying at five universities in Czechia. A classification of conceptions of geography and its teaching developed by Simon Catling served as an analytical framework. The findings indicate that a majority of Czech pre-service geography teachers had a descriptive, information-oriented, and non-relational conception of geography and its teaching. The research results showed two homogenous groups of pre-service geography teachers: knowledge-oriented essentialists and learner-centred progressivists. This paper concludes by suggesting implications for pre-service geography teacher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Geography education
• subject conceptions
• pre-service teachers
• teacher education

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Czech Scientific Foundation by the Grant Teachers’ Perceptions of Geography and Geography Teaching (GA18-08315S). We are grateful to Petr Soukup for supervision of the statistical analyses and to Eva Ellederova for language adjustments of the article. A data set associated with the paper supporting the results or analyses presented in the paper is available on request by the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Czech Scientific Foundation [GA18-08315S].