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Geographical relational thinking is an important part of geographical thinking. This descriptive research was conducted to seek evidence on students' ability to establish geographical relationships which could help teachers to foster their geographical relational thinking. Sixty-nine small student groups from six secondary schools in the Netherlands were observed when solving a mystery. All relationships students established were analysed and the SOLO-taxonomy was used to analyse how coherent their solutions were. The results revealed that students had difficulties with complex, abstract and physical geographical relationships. A large proportion of the groups also had difficulties understanding the interdependence of the relationships. These findings underpin the usefulness of activities like mysteries which offer opportunities to practise, assess and teach geographical relational thinking in geography lessons.

Enhancing meaningful learning is an important aim in geography education. Also, assessment should reflect this aim. Both formative and summative assessments contribute to meaningful learning when more complex knowledge and cognitive processes are assessed. The internal school-based geography examinations of the final exam in pre-vocational secondary education in the Netherlands are an important test case to reveal the extent to which geography teachers construct examinations containing complex knowledge and cognitive processes. In this study, internal school-based examinations were analyzed based on a taxonomy table derived from a revision of Bloom's taxonomy and discussed with teachers and experts. The results of the content analysis showed that more than half of the test items in the internal school-based examinations are based on remembering knowledge, especially factual and conceptual geographical knowledge.

Until now various quantitative studies have shown that adults and students in the Netherlands have low flood risk perceptions. In this study we interviewed fifty 15-year-old students in two different flood prone areas. In order to find out how they think and reason about the risk of flooding, the mental model approach was used. Flood risk turned out to be not very salient and the mental models had a piecemeal character with fundamental misconceptions. Furthermore, the mental models consisted largely of descriptive concepts instead of concepts about underlying processes with respect to explaining and predicting flooding. Concepts with respect to hazard adjustments and disaster response were lacking most. Conclusions about how to use the results of this study in geography education were discussed.

This paper presents the findings of a study conducted among primary geography teacher educators. The research examines the perceptions of educators of primary teacher students' desired and achieved levels of substantial knowledge, syntactic knowledge, and beliefs about the subject of geography. The findings indicate that primary teacher educators do not view their students as having significant knowledge about geography. They believe their students have better syntactic knowledge and beliefs about the subject of geography, however. Teacher educators believe that more hours of teaching and more attention to subject knowledge could raise the quality of primary teacher training in geography.

The development of geographical reasoning is essential in geographical education. Strategies developed by the English "Thinking Through Geography" group (TTG) offer a promising approach to promote geographical reasoning. In the last decade, the TTG approach has become a regular element in geographical education in several countries. Research suggests that teachers acquainted with TTG do not always take full advantage of the possibilities of these strategies. The adoption of the TTG approach is explored ten years after its introduction in the Netherlands. Findings are presented of a survey conducted among Dutch geography teachers (N = 307) about the significance they assign to geographical reasoning and their use of TTG assignments. The results suggest that teachers use TTG selectively and adapt TTG assignments to fit them into existing practices and beliefs about students and teaching geography.

Given its active and enquiry-driven character, fieldwork is seen as an important way to develop geographical understanding of the world, during which cognitive and affective learning reinforce each other. The present study aims to give insight into whether and how secondary school geography teachers in the Netherlands succeed in using fieldwork as a rich and powerful teaching strategy. Do they perform fieldwork that is enquiry driven, structurally integrated in the curriculum and stimulates both cognitive and affective development? The results of a questionnaire show that although 71% of the geography teachers do fieldwork, they generally do not succeed in meeting the conditions mentioned above. (Contains 2 figures, 5 tables and 1 note.)

Although there is a widespread interest in testing in geography, very few empirical studies exist of internationally validated testing models. Arguably the best international geography test in secondary education is found in the International Geography Olympiad, and this test is the focus of this paper. Apart from a written response test and fieldwork assignments, the International Geography Olympiad includes a multimedia test. This paper analyzes the results of the multimedia test of the 2008 International Geography Olympiad. Although the validity of the test is good, the performance of students on individual questions is open to a variety of interpretations. Tests such as the multimedia test can be used to assess the geographical literacy of students in the upper levels of secondary education, and this point is extended in the final section of the paper that promotes international benchmarking and improvements to the testing protocol. (Contains 3 tables and 3 figures.)

An important question for geography teachers all over the world is how to define, stimulate and test geographic literacy. Although modern technology is no guarantee of quality, it offers new possibilities for teaching and testing, as can be seen in contemporary geography learning/teaching units using digital maps and interactive tests. Tests such as the International Geography Olympiad and the Dutch GEA test for geographic literacy are starting points for an international discussion about the quality of geography teaching and for the development of a new international geography test. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

Geographic information systems (GIS) offer many possibilities for supporting student research projects. This paper deals with the results of the first phase of a design study on student research projects that combine (quantitative) data collection in the field with data visualisation, manipulation and analysis in GIS. In this study, we try to identify the characteristics of a successful design. In the first phase of the study, four student research projects that combine fieldwork with GIS were designed and tested. The design and test rounds were primarily focused at identifying the characteristics of feasible and potentially rich student research projects. On the basis of the design and test rounds, we identified five features of feasible student research projects that combine fieldwork with GIS. (Contains 5 figures.)

In our increasingly complex world, independent information collection is very important and with the help of modern technology this is becoming easier each day. However, it is very difficult if knowledge and training about how to structure information in a domain specific geographical way is missing. By "domain specific," we mean the coherence between declarative and procedural knowledge which is specific to the way of thinking in geography. This paper presents the results of a study in which Dutch geography teachers reflect on students' research papers in the upper divisions of secondary education. The present study shows that teachers have different opinions about the necessity of a more explicit way of coaching students in geographical thinking in order to improve the geographical structure of research papers. Nevertheless, it seems worthwhile to investigate the possibility of designing a framework for geographical thinking on the quality of geography research papers. (Contains 5 tables and 6 figures.)

Expressing the desire that geography should be a more challenging subject that helps pupils to become better learners, a group of academic geographers and geography teachers from northeast England developed teaching strategies to stimulate pupils to think through geography. Teachers in England and the Netherlands report that these strategies are very successful because they make pupils think and generate motivation. This contribution focuses on an experiment in three Dutch lower secondary school classes. Thinking Through Geography strategies were tested in a pre-test and post-test control group design. All the students worked enthusiastically with the strategies, but there were big differences in the results between the schools. One of the key factors seems to be the role of the teacher. Although Thinking Through Geography strategies may be challenging for teachers and students, much greater attention needs to be given to the type of support that is required to make the change lasting and deep rather than superficial. (Contains 2 figures and 4 tables.)