A case study on the efficiency of activity-based Geography teaching and learning

Geography education has faced numerous problems in Hungary lately: students’ diminishing interest in Geography, lack of creative and engaging textbooks and educational materials, decreasing weekly lessons, and conservative teaching practices. The MTA-SZTE Research Group on Geography Teaching and Learning set out to change the current circumstances. Our research group aims at laying the foundations for the methodological renewal of Geography education by developing activity-based and problem-oriented educational tools and IT innovations.

One of our central goals is to develop and prepare worksheets for students which concentrate on the geographical characteristics, processes, and problems of some typical Hungarian landscape units as well as cities, and villages. The worksheets, which will be accompanied by a handbook for teachers, are intended to be used from Grade 8 to Grade 13 both in primary and secondary schools. Each worksheet focuses on individual study areas (typical landscapes or regions) and settlements. They all have the same size (4 pages per worksheet) and follow the same structural principles: a short and informative text on the study area, which is followed by activity-based exercises and projects, all of which make use of various challenging and creative exercises comprising of maps, charts, pictures, newspaper articles, blogs, games, and QR codes linking to additional interactive websites.

Our research group also developed the items and the interface of an online survey with which we measured the efficiency and the applicability of the worksheets with the help of volunteering students and teachers who agreed to test them in class. The worksheets were tested in the primary and secondary schools that are affiliated with the research group. The 114 students and 5 teachers who tested the worksheets had to fill in an online survey, and evaluate the worksheets on a 5-point agreement scale, where 1 was the worst and 5 was the best score.

Preliminary results show that the content suitability of the worksheets, with respect to the target age groups’ cognitive abilities, scored low (2.85 average points). The clarity of the subject requirements for the students has the lowest average score (2.75 points). These results can be explained with the main characteristic of the worksheets, i.e. problem-solving thinking. Activities based on problem-solving are very new methods for Hungarian Geography teachers, therefore the teaching goals of this worksheets are is not clear for them.

However, according to the teachers’ responses, the concept of student worksheets is very innovative and adaptable to the needs of the present education (4.65 points), and frees from racial, gender, ethnic, religious prejudice (4.9 points). The teachers also have very positive (4.65 points) opinion about the diversity of the illustrations (pictures, diagrams, graphs, schemas, maps, etc.).

According to the students, the worksheets are very useful for group- and pair-work (4.04 points). The types of questions and exercises are very diverse (4.16 point). Most of the students (57%) visited almost every additional websites of the worksheets with the QR codes.