DEVELOPMENT OF COMPETENCE GEOGRAPHIC EDUCATION

Abstract

The progress of events that stipulated the development of geographical education and its significance at present has been characterized in the article; actuality of the problem of introducing the competence building approach to Geography teaching in Ukraine and ambiguity in understanding of geographical competence as a category of didactics of Geography has been determined. Describing the principal world trends in development of geographic education at the turn of XX and XXI centuries the author analyses the contents of the Charters of geographic education adopted in 1992 and 2016. Particular attention has been paid to the new Charter, as it defines present day problems and trends of development of Geography teaching in the world. The author of the article reveals the contents of the constituent parts of Charter-2016, and outlines the principal trends of the International Program of activities directed at the development of the World geographic science, that was suggested in the Charter. Current problems in domestic geographic education that originated in the nineties of XX century have been described and the particularities of development of competence building approach to the education have been specified in the article. Great attention has been paid to the retrospective analysis of interpretation of basic notions of the competence building approach to Geography teaching – «competence» and «competency», as well as to the contribution made by John Raven and Jacques Delors to the resolution of this issue; main stages of forming the content of key competence/competency in European education have been defined. Furthermore, the normative legal basis for introducing the competence building approach to teaching in Ukraine has been characterized. The ambiguity in understanding the competence building approach in Geography teaching, caused by different interpretations of terms in normative documents for secondary and higher education in Ukraine, has been stated. The author believes that coordinated efforts of the developers of normative documents for higher educational and secondary schools can remove this contradiction.