The International Charter on Geographical Education: A reflection on published research articles on assessment

Abstract

The paper examines the 1992 and 2016 versions of the International Charter on Geographical Education with a view to provide a commentary on the extent that research on assessment issues in geographical and environmental education respond to the directions set out in the two documents. The authors started on a concern with an apparent lack of discourse on assessment issues in geographical education and endeavours to provide a reflection of issues within the geography education community by an exploratory inquiry based on an analysis of article titles published in 4 prominent geographical journals: Environmental Education Research; International Research in Geographical Environmental Education; Journal of Environmental Education and; Journal of Geography from 2010 to 2017. The authors believe that the number of journal articles and issues related to assessment and evaluations in Geographical Education provide an indication of the general direction that were previously proclaimed, have to varying degrees been reflected and enacted upon by geography educators and scholars. The findings show that while the published research articles contribute to achieving some of the action plan items on the International Charter on Geographical Education, areas of improvement include research on professional development and international exchange of ideas about geography assessment. Moreover, the authors believe that geography educators are key facilitators of knowledge-making for Geography Education in the 21st century classrooms. As a consequence, geography educators should be empowered to do research on issues that are “relevant” to them, be guided and mentored, be given the appropriate channels to “feed-back” and “feed-forward” inputs, and if needed, to (re) shape action plans to adhere to the spirit or intention of these declarations.