Working with School Curriculum and Teaching Geography in Secondary Schools (Lower Secondary Education)

The year 2007 marked the transition to a two-level system of educational documents for Czech education, which many described as a revolution. To this day, however, it is evident that for many schools and teachers this change took place only on paper, which also negatively affects the teaching of geography. This work provides an insight into the topics of working with school curriculum and teaching geography from the point of view of lower secondary education geography teachers. The theoretical part is devoted to the history and current system of Czech educational documents. The theory of geography teaching is also outlined. In the practical part, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 geography teachers, which made it possible to deepen the understanding of teaching geography and working with school curriculum. Due to the small number of interviewed teachers, the results cannot be considered representative, despite this, the work confirmed the formality of school curricula to a certain level. In many cases, the work of teachers and schools with school curriculum remains very shallow. The character of geography teaching contains significant differences among the teachers, the Czech educational system is highly differentiated. The research also pointed out the weak positions of human geography and fieldwork in the geography education at lower secondary education. The semi-structured interviews contained a total of 18 segments, 9 on working with school curriculum and 9 on selected aspects of geography teaching.