Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Studies in a broad sense. This includes geography taught as part of Social Studies
in elementary and junior high schools, as well as geography taught within the
Geography and History subject in senior high schools. Finally, a discussion of the
future role and ideal state of geography education is presented.
18.2
Teachers' and Students' Attitudes Towards Geography
18.2.1
Social Studies in Elementary and Junior High School
According to a survey targeting elementary-school teachers (Benesse Educational
Research & Development Institute
2010
), the proportion of those who expressed
“confi dence” in their teaching (i.e., those who rated themselves as “confi dent” or
“somewhat confi dent”) was highest in mathematics, whereas the percentage in
Social Studies was very low. The proportion of those who answered “unconfi dent or
somewhat unconfi dent” for Social Studies was almost half. Even if the number of
teaching years is taken into account, the proportion of teachers who had confi dence
in their teaching of Social Studies never rose above 50.0 % (Table
18.1
). These data
suggest that the quality of Social Studies classes is dependent upon the teacher.
Unlike elementary schools where teachers are responsible for instruction in all
subjects, junior high school teachers instruct specifi c subjects. Social Studies teach-
ers have varying backgrounds in the arts and humanities, including literature, law,
and economics.
A similar survey as above was conducted for junior high school teachers through-
out Japan (Iwamoto et al.
2010
). The national survey revealed that, of the three
subjects of Social Studies, namely, Geography, History, and Civics, teachers had the
most confi dence teaching History (43.2 %), followed by Civics (29.3 %). Only
14.9 % of teachers had confi dence teaching Geography, however, it received the
highest proportion of “lack confi dence” (30.1 %).
The data makes sense when compared against respondents' university major.
The largest proportion of respondents had majored in History (25.1 %); only 11.8 %
had studied Geography. Teachers did not lack confi dence in their teaching of
History, irrespective of their major, but they questioned their ability in Geography.
Together, these surveys suggest that teachers' lack of confi dence in teaching certain
Table 18.1
Results of
survey—percentage of
“confi dent” in teacher
responses
Years in teaching Mathematics Japanese Social Studies
Less than 5 years 60.7
32.3 29.0
6-10 years 77.3
34.4 43.1
11-20 years 82.9
48.5 43.6
21-30 years 87.8 62.6 46.9
More than 31 years 92.5 76.7 44.8
Source
: Benesse Educational Research & Development Institute
(
2010
)
