Problems of Education in the 21st Century

5-8

Authors: Sonia Maria Vanzella Castellar, Núbia Moreno, Agnaldo Arroio

I am greatly honored to present some of the principal contributions from researchers who participated in the Rede de Investigação em Didática da Geografia (Investigation Network into the Didactic of Geography), at an event that took place at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, entitled Colóquio Internacional de Investigadores em Didática da Geografia (International Colloquy of Investigators into the Didactic of Geography) in the month of June 2010. The history that precedes this event and its realization is justified by the need to consolidate ongoing research projects and which take place as a result of partnerships among some Latin American Universities, as well as strengthening a research network on Geographic Education and the Didactic of Geography in Brazil.

20-29

Authors: Lana de Souza Cavalcanti

The text introduces an argument about teachers’ development and practice in Geography, trying to summarize some already reached advancements and highlighting some problems that should be better analyzed in order to improve the quality of this development. Taking the current legislation about teachers’ development courses in Brazil and their theoretical fundaments for granted, the article brings up principles of professional development to serve practice demands, such as the theoretical and practice integration in education projects, the research as an important education component and the school Geography problematization. Based in surveys that took place in post graduations in the country and to comprehend the practice challenges better, the text analyses approaches to the most indicated geographic content about Geography teaching and searches to apprehend daily difficulties faced by Geography teachers. Based in such argument, the text presents, yet, a set of topics to be considered in the graduation projects.

39-47

Authors: Helena Copetti Callai

This paper discusses the geographic education and, in this context approaches the geography didactics. Those two themes are inserted in the discussion over the school in modern times, considering that the 21st century presents remarkable differences from the 20th century and, the main one maybe is the speed of the information. It constitutes, then a new spatiality as a consequence of the globalization processes that demarcate the places where people live and lead them to incorporate a new kind of demand. The students (children and teenagers) arrive at school at this time presenting expectations that the school is not always able to fulfill. Those questions are discussed and, from the referential supports are presented extracts from a research conducted with docents and undergraduate students from licentiate program, in which emerge the tensions between the academic and docent interest, between the university and the school, among many others.

67-74

Authors: Alberto León Gutiérrez Tamayo

In Latin America, during the last 20 years, the political democratic project has become an achievable and desirable possibility to accomplish general wellbeing and hope for the population life quality improvement; to implement, constitute and strength such project towards this goal, the effective link of all the actors and their governmental, private, academic nongovernmental, social, civic, community and citizen life forces, is required within the territory where democracy is going to be implemented. Hence, for this democracy to be possible, it is indispensable to have individually and collectively thoughtful citizens, willing to exercise their citizenship, to build a democratic project and to possibly transform their reality. These citizens are not born, they are made and educated, rooted to the territory they inhabit, odify, and use and in which they set their social practices. The executed study suggests that in order to reach the citizen category, it is necessary, among other things, to appeal for the conscious processes theory, through the educational system, so that people, from early age, are allowed to know, understand, comprehend and put into practice citizen education potential as a pedagogical strategy to reach citizen status, exercise and promote citizenship and, strengthen a democratic political project. Emerging as so, the citizenship, territory and citizen education triad, pillar of the territorial citizen conception, essence of democratic consolidation.

82-93

Authors: Jerusa Vilhena de Moraes

For some years there have been theoretical debates concerning the role of school Geography. In Brazil, these questions came to prominence during the decade of the 80’s in the last century. In Europe, whilst the discussions had started previously, given that the development of Geography as a science starte in Germany in the 19th. century, questioning on the role of Geography in schools, its methods and specificities etc. in certain ways served to amplify our references and to question which Geography we want and which we are promoting. We consider that it is essential to encourage reflection as to what the purposes of an education in Geography are and the role of the teacher in this process so as to think not only about the direction we are giving to this process, but to verify if we are contributing to students being able to construct General and specific scientific reasoning in this area. The purpose of this article is to present that which, in terms of sciences in general, has been proposed, so that students can construct specific science concepts and to which geographic education can contribute, so that students and teachers can have a significant understanding of the concepts involved in this science.

100-111

Authors: Ana Claudia Ramos Sacramento, Gislaine Batista Munhoz

The proposition of this article is to analyze Geographical Education from the perspective of the use of the new Information and Communication Technologies, the ICTs, in the context of Learning Objects (LO). Also, how this use is being or may be used in a more effective manner, since in the teaching-learning of this discipline, a daily and effective use of practices that contemplate this is not perceived. The proof of this is that, in recent bibliographical research on this theme from the principal Geographical periodicals and even theses and dissertations (2005-2009), the number of articles about Geographical Education is still small, and even smaller in relation to the teaching-learning of this and the use of the New Technologies. Therefore, we discuss the question of Geography teaching, the importance of qualification and the construction of knowledge by the teacher from the Web 2.0 perspective, as well as presenting the concept of Learning Objects and how these multimedia interactive educational resources can contribute in an advantageous manner to Geographical Education. Such resources can contribute in a qualitative form, in the sense that they make possible the creation of an innovative environment, in which teachers and students simulate events, create problem situations, making these more positive and closer to reality, concepts often abstract and distant from the students’ reality.