Self-Assessment of Students of Geography Education and Primary Social and Science Teaching towards the Use of Digital (Geo-) Media for Written and Oral Argumentation

Abstract

This article discusses possible challenges and potentials in the use of digital geomedia in the context of written and oral argumentation in higher education by examining the perspectives of students and lecturers, especially for the subjects of geography in general and primary school science. To this end, potentials and challenges, as well as competences that have to be promoted among pupils and students in dealing with digital geomedia in the context of written and oral argumentation are first discussed. In the following, we present the results of a mixed methods approach in which we surveyed student teachers with a questionnaire (n = 150) on the one hand and, on the other hand, reflected their view of the issue by analysing qualitative expert interviews (n = 17) with lecturers who teach at the same universities in the corresponding degree programmes. In this way we contextualise the student’s self-assessment in the respective location’s teacher training. Our results show that there is a high degree of commonality between lecturers and students with regard to the importance of argumentation with digital geomedia. At the same time, the assessment of the students’ abilities differs greatly; most students feel capable of dealing with these topics, while lecturers see deficits here.