Abstract

There is limited research pertaining to primary teachers’ practices in geography education in the Republic of Ireland (RoI). Geography is one of only primary curriculum subjects which has never been reviewed since its enactment in 1999. This study addresses this research gap, establishing clarity on current teaching practices by presenting a large-scale nationwide survey of Irish primary teachers’ teaching methods for geography and their confidence in teaching the subject. This survey (with 1,013 respondents, a confidence level of 99% and a 5% margin for error) found Irish primary teachers’ use of child-centred experiential learning methods in their teaching of geography to be limited and inconsistent. Moreover, while teachers recognised the importance of the local area to the Irish curriculum, they were found to devote a small number of lessons to it, thus not reflecting the emphasis placed on it within the curriculum. The main reasons given for this included a lack of content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and resources pertaining to the local area. Furthermore, while the respondents self-reported as being between somewhat confident and fairly confident in their teaching of geography, results pertaining to use of fieldwork indicate that many have limited perceptions of geography.

摘要

关于爱尔兰共和国 (RoI) 小学教师地理教育实践的研究有限。地理是自 1999 年颁布以来从未审查过的仅有的小学课程科目之一。本研究解决了这一研究空白，通过对爱尔兰小学教师地理和地理教学方法进行大规模全国调查，明确当前的教学实践。他们对教授这门学科的信心。这项调查（有 1,013 名受访者，置信度为 99%，误差率为 5%）发现爱尔兰小学教师在地理教学中使用以儿童为中心的体验式学习方法是有限且不一致的。此外，虽然教师认识到当地对爱尔兰课程的重要性，他们被发现只用了少量的课程来学习它，因此没有反映出课程中对它的重视。造成这种情况的主要原因包括缺乏与当地有关的内容知识、教学知识和资源。此外，虽然受访者自我报告说他们对自己的地理教学有点自信和相当自信，但与实地考察使用相关的结果表明，许多人对地理的认识有限。