GIS Integrated Teaching on Secondary School Underachieving Students' Geography Learning Goals

Book excerpt: Recent studies show that the number of students who select to study Geography in Malaysian secondary schools, and their level of achievement in the subject, has decreased. The main factor is lack of motivation. Over multiple decades, a large and growing body of literature has indicated that ICT enhances students’ motivation to learn and their learning outcome. The studies demonstrate that the use of ICT in teaching activities provides more fun in an authentic learning environment, and increases learning autonomy, interaction, and collaboration. It is, therefore, a rich opportunity for motivating students to study. In addition, despite an increased interest among scholars to investigate the impact of ICT integrated Geography teaching on students’ motivation and achievement, none have investigated the effects of GIS as a new technological teaching tool on students’ Geography learning goals and their learning outcomes. The idea for this book originated from the author’s PhD study to examine the effects of GIS-based instruction on secondary school student Geography learning goals and their learning outcomes. This book is highly beneficial for Geography teachers to use multiple teaching methods and pedagogies in a GIS integrated teaching environment to cultivate underachieving students’ mastery goal, performance-approach goal and learning, and to decrease avoidance behaviour in learning the subject. Although GIS is widely used in Malaysia, it has not been embraced by the Malaysian education system and is absent from the Geography curriculums in the primary and secondary school contexts. Hence, writing of this book will also help the Curriculum Development Centre and Ministry of Education Malaysia develop a GIS-based teaching module to enhance the learning motivation of Geography and improve the student level of achievement.