• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.219-231
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• 1996

The aim here is to analyse the system of description of GIS in all of the high school textbooks passed with the official approval, to find the degree to which teachers understand about GIS, and to consider the present condition of GIS instruction. Most of the authors of textbooks generally underestimate importance of GIS, and there is difference among their awareness. In the system of description of GIS, there are only a few kinds of textbooks in which explanation of GIS is made coherently from the purpose of instruction aim through the chapter summary and to overall test in both of the Korean Geography and the World Geography. This trend is due to the degree of distribution of the GIS specialists in writing a textbook while the other texts books shows just a brief introduction of GIS concept. Although there is the limit for teachers to study how to teach GIS due to its very technological aspect as well as few previous training and teacher's guide. Thus it is evident that about a half of teachers who responded taught high school students without a knowledge on GIS, and a few of them even never referred to that concept. These facts may negatively affect the status of a geography in the society of information. For the solution of these issues, it is considered how to repair the description system and its contents. Besides, the variation among textbooks is reduced at the further revision of the 7th curriculum. And the printed matters of GIS are sufficiently provided for the teachers to use as their teaching aids. It is desirable that the GIS instruction models should be further developed for college education, and the programs for the on-the-job teachers training should be arranged. Besides, the previous training for the on-the-job teachers should be achieved more practically with enough time before the revision of curriculum.