Identifying and ranking effective teaching methods in geography education

Teachers’ teaching refers to the educational activities that happen with the teacher’s presence in the classroom. Teaching is done by the teacher in order to create favorable learning conditions for learners. In teaching geography, there are various useful methods to convey concepts to the audience. The purpose of this research is to identify and prioritize the best effective teaching methods in geography education. In the first step, this research was done in an exploratory way and based on interviews with professors and experts in order to identify the most effective methods of teaching geography, and in the second step, based on extractive criteria (effective teaching methods) and options (junior and senior high school), a pairwise questionnaire comparison was designed. Then, data was collected by referring to the student teachers of geography education in Amirkabir campus who are studying in the academic year 1401-1402, using systematic sampling method. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics for pairwise comparisons, each of the criteria (effective teaching methods) and then options (junior and senior high school) were compared two by two. The final results based on the hierarchical analysis of the importance of each of the effective teaching methods in geography education indicated the priority of teaching tourism with 51%, technology-based teaching with 26%, discovery method with 16% and lecture with 7%. The order of priority of teaching methods in geography education has been almost the same based on the first and second secondary level, such that in the junior and senior high school, field visit and tourism is considered the best strategy for learning geography education.