Secondary school students’ development of arguments for complex geographical conflicts using the internet

Abstract

In secondary school geography lessons, students are encouraged to form argumentatively founded opinions on complex geographical conflicts. For these conflicts, there is no one right solution and the content quality of the argumentation lies especially in the multi-perspective approach to the conflict and the integration of spatial information. The Internet offers a wealth of multi-perspective and spatial information on a great number of geographical conflicts worldwide. However, the digital information is neither checked nor filtered nor didactically prepared. This study examined the ability of 20 German secondary school students in developing arguments on a complex geographical conflict after searching the Internet for information. The students’ information search and their concurrent verbalisations were taped using screen and audio capture technology. The developed arguments have been assessed using defined criteria for argumentations on geographical conflicts. The analysis of the arguments showed that the students included a range of perspectives, which suggests that they were able to use the Internet as a source for obtaining multi-perspective information on the conflict. However, whilst effective digital information retrieval was the pre-condition in understanding the geographical conflict, it has not shown to guarantee the development of a high-quality argumentation.