From shore to horizon : a guidebook for Maltese secondary school Geography option coastal fieldwork

Abstract

The practice of watching and gathering information about people, cultures and the environment is known as fieldwork. Students and researchers are able to study how scientific ideas interact with reality through fieldwork, giving importance and value to both social – people, culture and society, and natural sciences – biology and chemistry (National Geographic, 2022). To ease the fieldwork process, a guidebook would be the ideal resource in which information will be gathered. A guidebook is defined as a book that provides useful knowledge on a certain location (Cambridge Dictionary, 2023). This is done by providing an agenda, guide and even aide-mémoire for the documentation of the themes being researched (Burgess, 1984). Taking into consideration such benefits, creating a guidebook aimed at coastal fieldwork as part of the secondary school Geography option curriculum, serves as a good resource to be taken onto the field, especially since such topic covers both social and natural sciences, included in both human and physical geography. Such guidebook is a creative and innovative idea to include on site as it will include concise, relative and effective information which will be easily accessible on the field. Additionally, to make it more student friendly and hands-on, exercises to be completed on site by the pupils themselves will also be included to enhance experiential learning – the active involvement of learners in situations or activities that result in the acquisition of information or skills (Yount, 2001). The provision of useful information and relevant exercises all combined into one resource is what makes such guidebook a resourceful guide that helps enhance the experiential learning activity that fieldwork provides. The guidebook will be produced by taking into consideration the latest updated Learning Objectives of the topic ‘Rocks, Karst Landscapes and Coastal Processes’ – LO3, specifically Coastal Processes, and also the Fieldwork Learning objective – LO10 (Matsec, 2025). Therefore, such guidebook will be produced in preparation for the Geography Matsec syllabus, aiding Geography option students in Years 9, 10 and 11 with an age-appropriate resource for an amplified experience of learning on the field and that will eventually be useful for recall as well.