TEACHING GEOGRAPHY IN PORTUGAL: GOING BACK TO THE FUTURE

The teaching of Geography in Portugal is going through a period of crisis. The educational authorities recently joined together initial Geography teacher education and initial History teacher education which means that the two subjects are likely to be integrated. The programmes being followed today reveal several contradictions among themselves, mainly because they have overlapping texts produced at different dates and with various approaches and rely on school textbooks that fail to reflect the development of the competences defended by the educational authorities. The Geography Teachers Association launched a manifesto in 2010 in defence of Geography education. In renewing Geography education in Portugal and restoring the projection it enjoyed during the 19th century when it clearly adopted some of the targets deemed important by the society of the time, demands were made for more thorough-going didactic research and for closer dialogue with the institutions and their school actors. On the other hand, it is also necessary to call upon geographical information technologies that are central to a subject which deals with mapping out the country. Last but not least, it is urgent to promote an active sense of territorial citizenship thereby responding to a growing appeal for the population to participate in community decision-making in the sphere of governance.