Four Decades of Change in Geographical Education in Finland

Abstract

Geography teaching has been under constant change over the last decades. Innovations from research in geography and higher education have diffused in school practices in various ways. International trends have been applied to national contexts in cooperation among academics, administrators and school teachers depending on policies and educational systems of the country, time and reform movements. Additionally, individual experts have played an important role in the implementation processes. In this article, major trends in geography teaching connected to national curriculum development are looked into mostly from the point of Finland. Changes from the 1960s to the end of the millennium in Finnish geographical education are compared with those in Great Britain and USA in order to highlight how changes in one country have been mirrored by changes in the others. Conclusions rest on the analysis of national curriculum documents, discussion among geography educators in conference proceedings and articles in scientific journals.

Young people's world-mindedness and the global dimension in their geography education: a comparative study of upper secondary school students’ ideas in Finland, Germany and the Netherlands

“…The national framework curriculum is renewed approximately every ten years, and it establishes the guidelines for individual municipalities and schools to add more specific detail to their curricula. The present version of the national framework curriculum was published in 2004, and it includes the goals and required content for geography education for nine years of basic education (Finnish National Board of Education, 2004; about the changes in the Finnish curricula, see Kaivola & Rikkinen, 2007;Tani, 2004). During the first four school years (ages 7-10), geography is part of an integrated subject known as 'environment and natural studies', with biology, chemistry, physics and health education all mixed together.…”

Sustainable Development: A Comparison between the Finnish and the Italian Education Systems

“…Greater stimuli were offered to support the development of students' personalities through the introduction of ethical, social, and aesthetic objectives [48]. In the 1980s, a process of change occurred within Finnish schools and in 1985 the second version of the framework curriculum was published-a framework that gave municipalities and schools decision-making power regarding the organization of lessons based on different local contexts, implementing the learning objectives and evaluation within the curriculum of each discipline [49]. For the first time, environmental education became one of the fundamental objectives of the education system, both for the development of its national identity and as a prerequisite for internationalization [50].…”

Türkiye Cumhuriyeti'nin 100. Yılında Coğrafya Eğitimi ile İlgili Türkçe Çalışmaların İçerik Analizi (1997-2022)

“…Benzer şekilde uluslararası alanyazında da coğrafya eğitimi alanında hazırlanmış çalışmaların çeşitli değişkenlere göre incelendiği araştırmalar mevcuttur. Bu çalışmalar; Journal of Geography dergisindeki 1988Geography dergisindeki -1997 yılları arasındaki coğrafya eğitimi alanındaki makaleleri (Bednarz, 2000), Latin Amerika'da 2000-2019 yılları arasındaki coğrafya araştırma yönelimleri (Cascante-Campos, 2022), Finlandiya'da coğrafya eğitiminin geçirdiği değişimleri (Kaivola ve Rikkinen, 2007), coğrafya eğitiminde değerlendirmeyi (Lane ve Bourke, 2019), Brezilya'da coğrafya eğitiminin geçirdiği değişimleri (Lastória ve Papadimitriou, 2012), Çekya'da coğrafya eğitiminin geçmişi, bugünü ve geleceğini (Rveznícvková, 2003) ve coğrafya eğiminde araştırma yöntemleri ile ilgili yönelimleri (Zadrozny, Mcclure, Lee ve Jo, 2016) konu edinmektedir. Bu bağlamda, bu içerik analizi çalışmasının amacı, coğrafya eğitimi alanında Ulusal Tez Merkezinde dizinlenen doktora tezleri ile TR Dizin veri tabanında dizinlenen ulusal dergilerdeki araştırma makalelerini çeşitli değişkenlere göre analiz ederek bu alandaki yönelimleri ortaya koymaktır.…”