The Views of Undergraduate Geography Students Regarding Experimental Material Practices in Geography Teaching

This study aims to reveal the views of undergraduate geography students regarding experimental material practices, which are one of the modern teaching methods, before and after design development experiences and their opinions about the improvement of experimental material practices in undergraduate geography education. The study group, which was determined through purposeful sampling, consisted of 45 pre-service teachers studying at Marmara University Ataturk Faculty of Education Department of Geography Teaching in the 2013-2014 academic year. Within the framework of experimental material works taking six months, the participants reviewed the subjects included in the Secondary Education Geography Curriculum separately and prepared and employed experimental materials on many subjects included in it. Two semi-structured questionnaire forms were administered to the participants at the beginning and end of the study. Frequency analyses and tables created by categorizing the given responses were used for analysing the obtained data. The undergraduate geography students did not believe at the beginning of the study that they could conduct an experiment on any geography subject, but their views regarding the feasibility of experiments in the field of geography had mostly changed by the end of the study. In addition, an improvement occurred in their skills on this subject. Also, it was observed that the participants had a chance to notice their deficiencies in terms of teaching competencies and skills and to realize how to eliminate them. The present study indicated that universities providing geography education need a geography project and experiment room where experimental materials can be prepared, employed, and exhibited, and that practical courses should be provided every semester. The study also put forward some suggestions to train undergraduate geography students better and to make them use geography teaching methods more productively.