Upper Secondary School Teacher Training in Geography and Cartography

The upper-secondary teacher-training follow-up Master's study programme of Physics, double-subject is a follow-up of the Bachelor's study programme of Geography. Graduates will become fully qualified teachers of geography at secondary schools. The goal of the study is to deepen their knowledge of specific geographical disciplines. Each student chooses courses according to their interests and relevant to the topic of their Master's thesis. Specific courses of pedagogy and didactics of geography together with several practical training courses at secondary schools prepare students for their career as geography teachers at upper secondary schools.

After successfully completing his/her studies the graduate is able to:

• make the education attractive and engaging
• deal with unusual situations in the classroom
• motivate students, support democratical principles in the classroom
• understand school politics and education trends
• know and use diagnostic and evaluation tools to identify the specifics of students
• make the education individual
• evaluate students and himself/herself
• understand basic geographical elements
• do geographical analysis and synthesis of local units
• mediate the knowledge to the sudents
• process and apply geographical knowledge

The graduates of this study programme will be qualified to teach geography and cartography at secondary schools, in particular at grammar schools.

Practical training 1 – three weeks of teaching. The training should take place in September, before the beginning of the first semester. Practical training 2 - teaching under supervision of an experienced pedagogue with 10 lessons of observations, 10 lessons of teaching and 10 lessons of assistant work for the host school.

The Master's degree includes the preparation of a thesis in geography or in another field of study, whereby the student demonstrates the ability to independently solve a professional problem, including work with literature, mastery of basic research, field, statistical and geoinformation methods, processing and interpretation of results and their presentation. The topic of the thesis must be geographical or cartographic (or from another discipline), aimed at use in education. The thesis topics are announced by the Department of Geography on the proposal of teachers and published in the Information System. The student chooses the topic freely from the current offer. The student asks the teacher who proposed the topic to assign the thesis on the chosen topic. The student may propose or agree on the topic of his/her thesis to any teacher of the Department of Geography. In this case, the teacher writes out the topic of the thesis already for a particular student. By assigning the thesis, the teacher who wrote the topic becomes the thesis supervisor for the student who chose it. The Department of Geography registers and archives the written assignments. The usual length of the thesis is 60 to 80 pages of text, including diagrams, charts, tables, maps, photo documentation and the obligatory didactic section. The thesis also includes bound or loose appendices (e.g. maps, plans, photo documentation, etc.), as appropriate.

After a successful completion of the Master's study programme (and satisfying the admission requirements), graduates can continue their studies in the doctoral programme.