Reform in Teacher Education Programs

The large-scale expansion of the teaching profession after World War II to the present day revealed the ineffectiveness of in-service training programs to respond to the growing demand for qualified teachers, thus driving educational authorities to introduce changes in the overall teacher education framework. As a result, teacher education provision moved into the tertiary education ecosystem, a movement that affected geography teachers’ education and weakened the importance given to professional training. The quality of geography education is affected by a complex set of constraints, namely, the fact that geography teachers must often study and teach more than one subject, or that geography education is biased by syllabi in which the clustering of different subject matter causes distinct understandings of geography itself. Geography teaching is also harmed by nonspecialist teachers whose classroom practices might be unable to reveal the value of geographical knowledge. This chapter’s purpose is to reflect on longstanding concerns in the domain of teachers’ education. Consequently, three topics critical for the reform of geography teacher education are addressed: (i) the concept of competence and the design of a reference framework of competences; (ii) the interrelations between competences frameworks and geography subject didactics; and (iii) the relations between theory and practice within initial teacher education (ITE) programs.