Physical Geography Education: The Postgraduate Research Trends in Turkey

Abstract

The field of research in physical geography relates to subjects such as place shaping, climatic events, soil
formation, vegetation development, the water cycle, and the nature and use of natural resources
including underground mining processes. In order fo r humans to survive and facilitate their daily lives, they
must have sufficient knowledge about many physical events taking place on planet Earth. In physical
geographical education, various scientific research projects are carried out to bring rigour to t he subject
and the teaching of related concepts. Such projects include postgraduate thesis studies. In this research,
an examination of the status and general trends for postgraduate theses occur in relation to physical
geography education in Turkey. The c urrent study is a mixed methods design and an evaluation of the
theses occur through a document review. The theses are retrieved from the database of the National
Thesis Center of the Council of Higher Education Institution. A descriptive analysis and bibl iometric study
on the theses aims to reveal the progress in physical geography education. Results from the research
show the most common type of graduate thesis includes writing about the research subject, university,
year of admission, institute, writing language, sample, study group/sample size, method/research model,
data collection tool, data analysis technique/analysis method, research subject and the subject of
physical geography, and the level of instruction/target audience. In response to the less f requently
covered topics and methods, suggestions are made for future research and investigation to occur at the
level of postgraduate studies.