Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
11.4.2
Issues in Geography Education
Even if disaster education is taught across subjects, there are issues remaining.
This section focuses on challenges within geography education. The Research on
the Curriculum report (Sect.
11.3.3
) indicated the need for improvement of basic
instruction in geography education, similar to warning bells sounded by other
experts. Niibori (
2006
) discussed the crisis in senior high school geography,
pointing out the importance of making geography classes easy to understand so
that teachers of other subjects can teach them. Similarly, Takizawa (
2009
) was
concerned about the problem of training teachers and the vicious cycle in education.
One of the issues in geography education is teacher training, Takizawa states this is
especially the case when college students who have no actual experience in fi eld
surveys and other geographic activities that require geographic skills, when students
who are not instilled with a geographical way of looking at and thinking about
things, then go on to graduate and become teachers of Social Studies and Geography.
In such cases it is diffi cult for them to teach geographic skills, and one can imagine
that it is hard for them to communicate to their students the fascination of studying
the local area, and hard for their classes to generate interest in and concern for the
local area. Moreover, Ida et al. (
2012
) identifi ed existing problems throughout
elementary, junior high school and senior high school geography education, which
are the needs to set out learning content that includes value judgments, deliberate
decision-making, and social participation in the learning process, and to build up a
continuity with the use of maps and other skills.
Thus, there are many issues in geography education, but to make disaster educa-
tion effective, the question is, what can we do to help students think of disasters as
their own problems? Along with teaching about the characteristics of disasters and
the behaviors for avoiding them, as specifi ed in the National Curriculum Standards,
geography education is asked to provide classes in which students explore their own
local area through activities such as fi eld surveys of the immediate surroundings. It is
necessary to train and support geography teachers who can stimulate students' interest
in the subject. In order to do that, it is necessary to strengthen learning opportunities
so that Social Studies and Geography teachers in the classroom can more easily
carry out fi eld surveys and other projects.
11.5
Conclusion
This chapter considers strategies to improve disaster prevention in elementary and
secondary education, as well as issues in geography education. Japan is situated
along the Pacifi c Rim's Ring of Fire, and the country is frequently threatened by
natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The Great East Japan
Earthquake and the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, dramatically demonstrated
the importance of disaster education.
