Su-Min SHEN, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan
The International Geography Olympiad (iGeo), under the auspices of International Geography Union (IGU), is a well-established annual competition for the best 16 to 19-year-old geography students around the world. IGeo provides often the first inter-cultural experience for young students and the achievement in the Olympiad is usually highly recognised in applying for the university admissions (Chalmers and Berg, 2014). Sixty countries (teams) around the world once participated and the number of participating teams has been steadily over 40 teams since 2015. The Olympiad Task Force has been regarded as an important IGU bodies focusing on education in the discipline (Meadow, 2020), apart from the Commission on Geographical Education. It is worth to examine how geography is represented in the iGeo tests in terms of the important education issues such as sustainable development and global citizenship.
As a competition, iGeo consists of three tests- Written Response Test (WRT), Fieldwork Exercise (FWE) and Multimedia Test (MMT). The guidelines, 12 topics and, more specifically, the past exam questions would be closely examined by all participants and even wider audience. For example, there will be a direct impact when some topics of iGeo tests are not covered by the national curriculum. Thus, this study intends to analyse the topics and past questions with special reference to WRT and focus on the literacy of sustainable development and global citizenship, and to discuss how the format of tests may have influenced the geography teaching beyond the iGeo candidates preparation. Pros and cons of English as the test language will also be included. The methods applied are mainly individual interviews with past WRT committee members and an on-line questionnaire to team leaders of selected participating teams.
Mots clés : International Geography Olympiad|Written Response Test|Global Citizenship|Sustainable Development Goals
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