Higher education and teaching of Geography in Spain today

Abstract

The present work tries is a reflection about the teaching activity in the Spanish university from the author´s perspective provided from a long educational and research career. This dissertation focuses on the teaching tasks and knowledge transmission in relation to its applicability in territorial analyzes. This scope define the basic task of Geography at present. Somehow it is an introspective nature review though based on the experience that provides more than thirty years of teaching geography in the Spanish university. In order to do so, warning is made about the possible abandonment of teaching as the main task towards a better and more qualitatively considered activities such as scientific research. Accepted this fact, the author asks herself about the geographical teaching contens in the present technological age, and more specifically what can and should be the future role of geography as a transversal discipline in the universe of scientific knowledge. The conclusions indicate that it is necessary, first of all, to reform teachers’ thinking and then to enunciate a series of recommendations in order to re-qualify the teaching of geography in such a way that it can be place once again at the forefront of the general scientist panorama.

Keywords

• didáctica geográfica
• docencia universitaria
• innovación docente
• pensamiento geográfico
• universidad española