A Proposal for Geography Competence Assessment in Geography Fieldtrips for Sustainable Education

Alfonso García De La Vega

doi:10.3390/su14031429

Abstract

The geography fieldtrip is a well-consolidated learning mode, but may become a procedural teaching strategy in geography. In geographical education, fieldtrips foster students’ overall knowledge-building processes to become world citizens, and thus to be fully committed to the Earth’s sustainability. Fieldtrips prepare students for applying and connecting knowledge in a real context. However, the geography fieldtrip may lack robust proposals on challenges and achievements that are clearly identified as assessable geographical geoabilities for competences. This paper offers a geography competence-oriented fieldtrip assessment framework. Project-based learning is chosen as the didactic approach, in which the fieldtrip project is built upon a real-world acute question of the students’ interest and choice, and solutions are reached following the enquiry learning method. The proposal brings cognitive domain (geographical thinking) and process (geospatial thinking) into alignment with geography and cross-cutting competences, corresponding geoabilities and geoskills, and learning outcomes in geography fieldtrips. The framework provides an assessment procedure (learning outcomes, tasks, and evidence) and tools (rubrics of evidence for learning outcomes) for fieldtrip geoskill assessment.

Highlights

IntroductionThe present fieldtrip-applied assessment framework is concerned with student assessment, a term pointing to the actual assessment of students’ learning achievement, as opposed to curriculum evaluation, a term relating to the evaluation carried out in all didactic interventions, that is, the implementation of any teaching approach, according to the distinction made by McCormick and James [52]
Background to a Geography CompetenceOriented Fieldtrip Assessment Framework2.1
This paper aims to provide a teaching framework for assessing geography competence in the context of geography fieldtrips for sustainable education

Summary

Introduction

The present fieldtrip-applied assessment framework is concerned with student assessment, a term pointing to the actual assessment of students’ learning achievement, as opposed to curriculum evaluation, a term relating to the evaluation carried out in all didactic interventions, that is, the implementation of any teaching approach, according to the distinction made by McCormick and James [52]. Fieldtrip assessment is aimed at reviewing the student’s learning outcomes, and at identifying strengths and weaknesses of the student’s learning. In this respect, the method is formative assessment, according to Kent, Gilbertson and Hunt’s ideal sort of fieldtrip assessment and considering the fact that “the assessment method should always complement the teaching and learning strategy and be considered at the initial planning phase” [15] A few decades ago, assessment was a challenge in the teaching of geography [55,56,57,58,59,60]

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion