Critical Reflections on Skill Development in Geography at School Stage

Abstract

Geography learning helps to understand the people, places, and environment and their interrelationships. Geography learning helps to understand the people and spatial aspects associated with them. The focus of geography learning at school stage is the development of knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, etc. The practical nature of geography learning across school stages helps to acquire skills. Skills in geography help individuals to resolve complex situations such as social and environmental issues, conflict between religion and ethnicity, competition for natural resources, environmental degradation and so on. Skills in geography help learners to inquire the process that commence with geographical questions progress through the data collection, evaluation, interpretation and analysis of the information to develop the conclusion and proposal for action. Though skill development in geography is very much important but, it is marginalized across the school stages and school boards of India. Focusing on these contexts, need to understand the place of skills development in geography at school stage, causes of marginalization of skills development in geography and relevant pedagogies for developing skills in geography. In India, at elementary and secondary levels skill development in social sciences not up to the mark and at higher secondary level skills development in geography is often neglected. Skill development in geography is marginalized because teachers use traditional teaching methods, teaching-learning process emphasis on rote memorization, geography is treated as a theoretical subject and so on. To mitigate the marginalization and give proper weightage to developing skills in geography, effective use of relevant pedagogies is required. Skill development in geography requires effective, activity based and learner centered pedagogies like laboratory based activity, fieldwork, project method, problem-based learning, etc.