Current Topics in Czech and Central European Geography Education

This book discusses current challenges related to teaching geography, mainly at the secondary school and higher education level. Focusing on a range of current topics, different methods, techniques, materials, applications, and approaches to geography education with a regional Central European perspective, the book makes an original contribution to the field. Most of the chapters aims at the practical development of the themes such as geography curriculum (Part I), global education, inquiry-based education, project-based learning, case studies, powerful teaching (Part II), using of information and communication technologies (Part III) in geography teaching. The final part (Part IV) covers some geopolitical, and socio-geographical aspects of the aforementioned Central European former communist countries from the point of view how to teach them with various methods. Therefore, the book can appeal to many geography or science students, researchers and educators studying geography education around the world.

Petra KARVANKOVÁ, Mgr. PhD., University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, Czech Republic She has been working at the Department of Geography, Faculty of Education, University of South Bohemia as Assistant Professor since 2007. As part of her educational activities she is focused mainly on the teaching of geography and physical geography. Over the last 5 years, she is involved in 8 projects focus on teaching of geography or environmental studies. She is the the guarantor of education for the primary school at Department of Geography. Within the Faculty of Education, University of South Bohemia she is a member of the Council of didactics for the first and 2nd level of primary school. Since 2012, P. Karvanková is a member of the Central Commission of Geographic Olympiad in the Czech Republic. She has been working as an external lecturer at the seminar of geography at the secondary school too.

Dagmar POPJAKOVÁ, doc. RNDr. PhD., University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, Czech Republic Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, Faculty of Education, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice. Her research is focused around the teaching of geography, study of population and industrial structures of the southern regions of the Czech Republic. Her research activity involves 70 publishing units, including 1 monograph, 46 scientific works, 4 textbooks etc., which register more than a hundred citations. She has been a co-researcher on 7 research projects. D. Popjaková worked in the academic positions in Slovakia before (Presov University 1992-2001 and Comenius University in Bratislava 2005-2007). She is an academic teacher with experience in the areas of didactics of geography.

Michal Vančura, Mgr. PhD., University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, Czech Republic  

After his studies at Faculty of Natural Sciences of Masaryk University in Brno, he works at the Department of Geography, Faculty of Education, University of the South Bohemia in České Budějovice from 1997. Since 2010 he has been the Dean of the Faculty. He is director of the Association of Deans of the Faculties of Education in Czech Republic, member of several expert committees and editorial boards. He educated and greatly influenced generations of teachers. He is the author of dozens of scientific studies, textbooks, researcher of the scientific projects, the last one „Geographical research and its implementation in inquiry based learning of geography“

Jozef MLÁDEK, Prof. RNDr. DrSc., University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, Czech Republic

He belongs to the important personalities of contemporary Slovak and Czech geography. He has been working as a professor at the Department of Geography Faculty of Education in České Budějovice since 2013. He graduated at Comenius University in Bratislava in the field of economic geography and teaching mathematic and geography and started worked there. Since 1979, he has been an associate professor in the Department of Economic Geography where he got the scientific degree “DrSc.” in 1988. In 1997 he was inaugurated. The science-research orientation of the prof. Mládek was focused on the issue of rural settlements at the beginning. Later, he has spent long time focusing on issues of localization and development of industry in various regions of Slovakia. The rest of his research is devoted to the population geography and demography. He has applied many of his research results in the extensive collective work Atlas of the Slovak Population and Demo-geographical Analysis of Slovakia. His research portfolio includes more than 200 publications and many textbooks. Moreover, he was a researcher of the 12 scientific projects. He is dedicated to the teaching activity focusing on human geography, especially on demo-geography recently.