Romanian Review of Geographical Education (Feb 2019)
VISUAL IMAGERY AND LEARNING ABOUT CULTURAL LANDSCAPES DURING GEOGRAPHY UNIVERSITY STUDIES
Abstract
One of the most complex topics in Geography is linked to cultural landscapes. Although this concept has aroused the interest of scholars from different nations and the bibliography is diverse, among students there are still uncertainties concerning the meaning of cultural landscapes. Thus, at the Faculty of Geography, Babeş-Bolyai University, in Cluj-Napoca, Regional Planning and Development M.Sc. programme, the students had in their first semester a discipline named Cultural Landscapes, which provided the theoretical background using international references. For assessment, students were asked to transfer their knowledge into practice by realising a postcard with cultural landscapes of Cluj-Napoca city. This paper analyses the process of learning during solving the task, presenting firstly dif ferent views about cultural landscapes in geographical literature. The methodology used comprises the analysis of the process of learning, starting from discussions on the theory and going to the presentation of the task, the evaluation and the actual process of making the postcards undertook by the students. There were eight postcards realised in pairs which were assessed using an especially designed grid. The whole activity carried out by the students was analysed from a didactic point of view. It is demonstrated that, being helped by theoretical discussions during the courses, the students managed to understand the cultural landscape and, moreover, to put into practice what they had learned. Thus, they managed to achieve a different perspective for some familiar landscapes from the city, in which they had lived for about three years. This learning activity actually put the theoretical frame into another light and so the students had become more aware of the meaning of cultural landscapes by experiencing them on their own.
Keywords
