Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Natural disasters are only one of the many topics that should be dealt with in the
geography and history subjects of school curriculums (e.g. globalization, sustain-
able development, environmental protection). They are relatively new, and they
find their place in the changing school curriculums. Cartographers try to respond by
including such themes in their new cartographical products, which are used as
illustrations in the geography and history lessons. The problem is that these
cartographical products need to be updated more often than until now.
17.2 Changes in Geography and History Contents
The Ministry of Education in Bulgaria is responsible for the creation and approval
of school curriculum for all subjects in Elementary, Secondary and Higher Educa-
tion. Here I will describe the situation in Geography and History subjects. The
changes are happening every 5 to 10 years. This situation is not typical of Bulgaria
only. (Zhang and Foskett 2003 ) declare that the changes are in the subject matter in
15 sets of British geographical textbooks in the UK from 1907 to 1993. Some of the
changes are caused by the shift from general to regional aspects, just like the
concept of “regions” in elementary and secondary schools in the USA (Stoltman
1992 ). These changes led to new aspects, details and topics in teaching. Every new
curriculum is made to improve education and give children new aspects of a
modern society. In many countries, this is done to provoke independent and active
learning (Paris and Byrne 1989 ).
A new law about Elementary, Secondary and Higher Education in Bulgaria has
been in preparation. This will bring changes in the geographical and historical
curriculums. Many changes were introduced also in last few decades. The biggest
ones were in the general context of the mentioned subjects. The school subject of
Geography changed its name to “Geography and economics”, and History to
“History and civilizations”. These new scopes developed many topics that enlarged
'Geography' and 'History' to become broader subjects including the sustainable
development of the society. The content in geography was enriched with some new
topics like risk management, environmental protection and ecology. New topics
have also arisen in History. For instance, we could present a visualization of the
Trojan War and the brigade distributions in the socialistic time.
17.3 Cartographical Response to the New Aspects in Geography
and History Subjects
To help geographical and historical education, cartographers propose various types
of cartographical products: wall maps, atlases, electronic atlases, contour blind
maps, globes, virtual cartographic representations, etc.
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