Examination of Main Trends in Geographical Education Research in Turkey

Abstract

The main purpose of the present study is to examine the main tendencies of the articles published in thefield of geography education between the years of 2008 and 2018 in Turkey. Within the scope of thispurpose, this study examined the subject fields, research methods, data collection tools, data analysistechniques and sampling methods used in the geography education studies in the journals scanned bythe SSCI, ESCI and ULAKBIM social sciences databases in Turkey. The study used the documentanalysis method, one of the qualitative research methods. The study evaluated 224 articles determinedaccording to the purposeful sampling method from the related databases by using the GeographyEducation Article Classification Form (GEACF) and then analyzed the obtained pieces of data byusing the content analysis method and finally made some interpretations. According to the findings ofthe study, in the last ten years in Turkey, the highest number of articles were published in 2010 (n33)and the lowest number of articles were published in 2017 (n13). It was also observed that, in the fieldof geography education, the highest number of articles were published in the Marmara GeographyJournal; however, in the journals scanned in SSCI, a total of (n17) articles were published in the lastten years. Moreover, the studies were also determined to show more interest in the subject areas ofteacher training and learning/teaching; questionnaires and scales were generally used as a datacollection tool; the frequency/percentage and content analysis methods were preferred in the analysisof data; quantitative and qualitative methods were generally used in studies on geography education;on the contrary, mixed methods were less frequently used.