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 for 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 the 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 current 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 bibliometric 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 frequently covered topics and methods, suggestions are made for future research and investigation to occur at the level of postgraduate studies.