Sofia, Bulgaria

Methodology of Teaching Geography

Table of contents

⇑Methodology of Teaching Geography at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski"

Language: English Studies in English
Subject area: teacher training and education science
University website: www.uni-sofia.bg/
Type: PhD/Doctoral programme
Academic degree: Doctor (доктор)
Duration: 3 years

⇑Definitions and quotes

Geography
Geography (from Greek γεωγραφία, geographia, literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, the features, the inhabitants, and the phenomena of Earth. The first person to use the word "γεωγραφία" was Eratosthenes (276–194 BC). Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of the Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but how they have changed and come to be.
Methodology
Methodology is the systematic, theoretical analysis of the methods applied to a field of study. It comprises the theoretical analysis of the body of methods and principles associated with a branch of knowledge. Typically, it encompasses concepts such as paradigm, theoretical model, phases and quantitative or qualitative techniques.
Geography
I wanna hang a map of the world in my house. Then I'm gonna put pins into all the locations that I've traveled to. But first, I'm gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won't fall down.
Mitch Hedberg, — quoted in John Krygier, Denis Wood (2011). Making Maps, Second Edition. The Guilford Press. p. 58. ISBN 1609181670. 
Methodology
By the term architectonic I mean the art of constructing a system. Without systematic unity, our knowledge cannot become science; it will be an aggregate, and not a system. Thus architectonic is the doctrine of the scientific in cognition, and therefore necessarily forms part of our methodology.
Reason cannot permit our knowledge to remain in an unconnected and rhapsodistic state, but requires that the sum of our cognitions should constitute a system. It is thus alone that they can advance the ends of reason. By a system I mean the unity of various cognitions under one idea. This idea is the conception--given by reason--of the form of a whole, in so far as the conception determines a priori not only the limits of its content, but the place which each of its parts is to occupy. The scientific idea contains, therefore, the end and the form of the whole which is in accordance with that end. The unity of the end, to which all the parts of the system relate, and through which all have a relation to each other, communicates unity to the whole system, so that the absence of any part can be immediately detected from our knowledge of the rest; and it determines a priori the limits of the system, thus excluding all contingent or arbitrary additions. The whole is thus an organism (articulatio), and not an aggregate (coacervatio); it may grow from within (per intussusceptionem), but it cannot increase by external additions (per appositionem). It is, thus, like an animal body, the growth of which does not add any limb, but, without changing their proportions, makes each in its sphere stronger and more active.
We require, for the execution of the idea of a system, a schema, that is, a content and an arrangement of parts determined a priori by the principle which the aim of the system prescribes.
Immanuel Kant (1787). The Critique of Pure Reason.
Geography
History is philosophy teaching by example, and also warning; its two eyes are geography and chronology.
James A. Garfield, as quoted in Freedom IS...: A Book/Journal with a Twist (2008) by Kathleen Wensel, p. 141.
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