This paper investigates the role of teacher agency for those who were trained in using an innovative Geographic Information Systems (GIS) approach and incorporated GIS into their teaching. While national curricula increasingly emphasise STEM and sustainability approaches, there has been limited analysis of how teachers can bring new software, including GIS, and new approaches into the classroom. Through an evaluation of a teaching initiative “5*S: Space, Surveyors and Students – STEM and the Sustainable Development Goals” designed to bring GIS technology, satellite data, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into classrooms as activities and resources for teachers and students in Ireland, we examine how teachers can introduce new teaching strategies and platforms into their classrooms. In interviews and a focus group, teachers expressed eagerness for GIS teaching resources for the classroom and identified effective ways they were able to draw on their own teaching philosophy in introducing new concepts around sustainability and STEM education in the classroom. We argue that teacher agency and autonomy play an important role in the ability and development of teachers, departments, and schools to bring new approaches and GIS into the classroom, and we identify key learnings from teachers who were able to utilise the 5*S resources.

The outbreak of Covid-19 has posed serious challenges to schools and teachers as it forced schools to close and traditional face-to-face teaching was suspended. How did Hong Kong geography teachers respond to these challenges in the first nine months of the outbreak? How did they adapt to the social distancing measures such as school closure? Why did they adapt in the way they did? The researchers interviewed 18 teachers with different lengths of teaching experiences and teaching students of different academic abilities to answer these questions. It was found that even though there were few specific suggestions from the Government and their schools, the teachers interviewed, as a whole, have taken self-initiated steps to adapt teaching strategies and proactively try various means to help their students continue to learn under the constraints of the Pandemic.

Environmental degradation and global disaster encourage the education sector to devise adaptation and mitigation strategies. The scientific approach, from intradisciplinary to interdisciplinary, has urged education into a different array. These narratives provide a context for how disaster risk education must incorporate ecological understanding simultaneously. A semi-systematic literature review identified 29 international journal articles published between 2000 and 2020 that integrated disaster with ecological concepts and their implementation in school programs. These publications, retrieved online from the Universitas Gadjah Mada Library database, created a foundation for comparing the frameworks on which the respective authors had built their research. This study primarily sought to find the gap in theoretical debates and develop a new theoretical framework that systematically addressed it. According to the review’s findings, education in climate change adaptation and sustainable development became the primary focus of the discourse. However, it was not implemented holistically but rather separately through disaster risk education or environmental education programs. Accordingly, this study has developed a theoretical framework of school ecosystem-based disaster risk education by adopting the Bronfenbrenner and Pentahelix Synergy models to depict the concepts implemented in the school community.

Fieldwork is an important part of geography education in many countries. However, little fieldwork-related activities are being observed in Indonesia, specifically at the senior secondary level. In an effort to address this issue, investigators have developed a fieldwork-based blended learning model to be used in the country. This study involved 187 students from three high schools who followed the developed learning model. To measure the effectiveness of the developed model, a correlational analysis that examined the effect of location and session allocation on the test scores of students was used. Questionnaires were distributed to gain insight into the responses of students toward the learning system and qualitative methods were used to capture the learning experiences of these students while using the model. The obtained results show that the grades of the students were significantly affected by location rather than study sessions. Furthermore, students responded positively to the fieldwork-based blended learning model, although traditional classroom learning remained the most preferred option. Interestingly, it was found that students in Indonesia preferred to study with large groups of classmates over smaller groups. These findings confirmed the hypothesis that cultural and religious factors, specifically the concepts of “gotong royong” and “jama’ah” in Islam, respectively, influenced the perceptions of students and group preferences when studying.

In a case study among Austrian school students, we checked the school students’ knowledge and awareness of climate change on different levels of complexity. We aimed to find out whether school students are able to understand more complex, reciprocal relations between human activities and consequences for the climate. Furthermore, we tested whether a more active and longer engagement with the topic achieved a better understanding and raised climate-friendly behavior more effectively than a short learning phase. Our online survey results revealed that the students had high fact knowledge of climate change (effects) but lacked deeper understanding of more intricate relationships and long-term interactions of climate change effects on people and ecosystems. The vast majority of students believed that every single person can contribute significantly to tackle climate change, however, personal and deliberate climate-friendly actions were limited. The differences between the two levels of engagement were small. We suggest that modern educational concepts should foster system-understanding and support young people’s positive attitude towards climate protection by pointing out concrete, climate-friendly ways of behavior to bridge the gap between knowledge and action.

To tackle the growing challenges facing our societies, such as climate change, we need to understand scientific knowledge and methods. Developing scientific literacy in schools is therefore necessary. To do so, we need to be able to assess competencies associated with scientific literacy. Secondly, educators need meaningful tools which can be implemented in geography classes. One important competency students learn in geography is comparison. Although students perform comparisons in geography classes regularly, we do not know their level of comparison competency. Research is also needed on potential tools to teach the comparison method efficiently in geography classes. Therefore, in this study, we assessed the comparison competency of 83 French and German secondary students and tested a tool to enhance comparison competency in an intervention study using a pre- and post-test control group design. Results indicate that students initially possessed low levels of comparison competency. Our intervention allowed students from the experimental group to improve their comparison skills significantly. The improvement in their post-test scores was positively correlated with the use of the comparison method during the intervention. This shows that teachers should include explicit instructions on the comparison method to help students develop their scientific literacy.

This paper examined the level of Environmental Civic Actions (ECA) using a modified version of the Environmental Action Scale (EAS) and Place Attachment Theory (PAT). The Environmental Action Scale measured the level of participation that would have a collective impact on environmental issues. The data was obtained via online questionnaire from 230 young and middle-aged citizens living in Nigeria. 152(66%) males and 75(33%) females indicated their gender, and most participants identified as under­graduate students (n = 179). SPSS statistical software package was used for factor analysis to ascertain if measure items were suitable for the study context using principal component analysis (extraction method) and Kaiser Normalization rotation method. Some findings revealed that the majority of participants have a high level of pro-environmental intention and low levels of actual environmental civic behav­iors. In addition, most participants never participated, organized a protest, or boycotted a company engaging in negative environ­mental behaviors. Furthermore, place attachment, and fear of punishment in form of fines, and levies influenced the intention to engage in positive environmental behavior. The study contrib­utes to the dearth of knowledge on environmental civic actions in a developing country and provides specific insights that are beneficial to policymakers, researchers, and stakeholders.

Teachers in Namibian government schools have to cope with a lack of textbooks and must teach content-rich subjects, specifically geography, with limited resources. The literature makes it clear that fieldwork and outdoor learning play essential roles in understanding and conceptualising geography. The challenge is that such beneficial and planned fieldwork opportunities are neither accessible to all learners nor equally distributed within Namibian schools. Most Namibian learners do, however, have many lived experiences outside school and they are exposed to a wide range of different everyday contexts and environments to varying degrees. Unfortunately, everyday lived experiences are not always recognised as potential and relevant geographical resources for teaching and learning. The research involved 28 learners from five Namibian secondary schools. Open-ended, in-depth, semi-structured individual interviews were conducted and participants were asked to make a drawing illustrating how they experience geography in their daily lives. Based on the themes which were identified from the interpretative phenomenological analysis, we critically discuss how lived experiences can influence geographical consciousness. To conclude, we propose a model of the relationship between lived experiences and geographical consciousness, as well as the barriers and enablers at play.