The role of a geography textbook in developing key competences – a comparative study

Abstract

A textbook plays an important role in modernization of the teaching process and in the achievement of set teaching objectives. From a didactic perspective, very important is the structure of contents that activates a school student via e.g. a set of didactic tasks. It seems important in the context of developing self-study and long-life learning skills of school students. Self-study becomes a necessity in the modern society due to technological advancement and constantly growing requirements of the labour market. The purpose of the research was to determine the degree to which the contents and didactic tasks contained in contemporary geography textbooks facilitate the development of subject-specific skills and key competences. The degree of overcoming deeply-rooted traditional methods of teaching geography to school students and the extent to which the proposed teaching solutions serve as a source of educational innovation for teachers. The research covered 7 out of 11 geography textbooks approved by the Ministry of National Education (MEN) for the first class of lower secondary schools.