Development of geographical thinking in teacher training: conceptualization, reflection and implications

Abstract

This article analyzes the knowledge possessed by future geography teachers at a university in the south of Chile about the development of geographic thinking based on the application of a structured questionnaire that focused on consulting on three key aspects of the latest pedagogical practice of the students; namely, these are: 1) Conceptualization of geographical thinking and second-order learning of this meta-concept assigned via lottery; 2) Difficulties evidenced to develop these concepts in the geography class; and 3) the suggestion of didactic proposals to impart the intended learning in an innovative way. Methodologically, content analysis was used to evaluate the responses of the applied instrument. It is concluded that the consulted concepts are defined from a descriptive geographic paradigm, that the main didactic problems enunciated are linked to the predominance of the traditional teaching of geography and that the different suggested didactic strategies are centered on a socio-constructivist model; however, there is no specific evidence to foresee defined methodologies that enable the development of geographic thought from the didactic and epistemic foundations of the geographic discipline.

Keywords: Didactics of geography. Geographical thinking. Teacher training.