BLENDING OF OLD AND NEW APPROACHES IN GEOGRAPHICAL EDUCATION: A CASE STUDY

Abstract

Field work often takes place in the countryside and the city environment is neglected, although we usually move there more often. Natural science education should, however, include not only the evaluation of the rural landscape, but also the city, because we can find there an explanation for a number of physical-geographical but also socioeconomic phenomena and their spatio-temporal evolution. Therefore, the authors focused on the goal to use urban landscape as a "geography textbook". Urban landscape serves in this case as a didactic image. A study about significant viewpoints in Brno and its surroundings served as a basis for the experiment in which pupils and students had to sketch a view from these viewpoints and authors evaluated how they are able to perceive the urban landscape, locate the significant elements in an urban structure, identify their functions and relations among them. This concept can be understood as a use of nonverbal elements in teaching. The results of this experiment and namely the comparison of sketches produced by pupils and university students are described in the paper which also describes the blending of old and new approaches in geographical education. Key words: didactic image, geographical education, panoramic sketch, urban landscape.