Teachers’ Interests in Geography Topics and Regions – How they Differ from Students’ Interests? Empirical Findings

Abstract

Teachers’ interest is a key influencing factor in geography class, development of curricula and writing
textbooks and only little is known about it. A cross-sectional study along the lines of interest theory
originating from educational psychology was carried out in Germany in the summer of 2015, in which 141
teachers at secondary schools completed a questionnaire about their interest in geography topics and
regions. At the same time, 3400 students (ages 10-17) were surveyed. Teachers show high interest in a
broad range of geography topics. They are very interested in natural disasters and topographic topics
whereas there is only little interest in several traditional topics from the field of human geography. The
significantly higher interests of teachers only partially correspond to those of students (e.g. natural
disasters). Teachers have a high interest in (in descending order) the greater regions of Germany, Europe
and outside Europe. Among students, regions outside Europe are placed first. Both groups show high
interest in Western countries and low interest in Eastern regions on all scale levels. Gender turned out to
be the most influential factor in interest, however not in the total amount of topics but rather in the
subscales and individual topics and regions.