Vol. 17 No. 2 (2026)
Special Issue: SI_TGEO

Scientific Data Awareness among Future Geography Educators

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Elena Robakiewicz
Institut für Geographiedidaktik, Universität zu Köln, Gronewaldstr. 2, 50931 Köln
Bio
Verena Foerster
Institut für Geographiedidaktik, Universität zu Köln, Gronewaldstr. 2, 50931 Köln
Bio
Katrin Geiger
Institut für Geographiedidaktik, Universität zu Köln, Gronewaldstr. 2, 50931 Köln
Bio
Frank Schäbitz
Institut für Geographiedidaktik, Universität zu Köln, Gronewaldstr. 2, 50931 Köln
Bio
Alexandra Budke
Institut für Geographiedidaktik, Universität zu Köln, Gronewaldstr. 2, 50931 Köln
Bio
Percent of the responses to the question “what is the difference between scientific data and non-scientific data?” in the legend with the percentage of students with at least one mention of the subcategories of each category (“scientific standards”, “accuracy descriptors”, and “no response/unclear”) and as a bar plot for the subcategories (own representation).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.48088/ejg.e.rob.17.2.150.168
Categories

Published 2026-04-24

Keywords

  • Data Literacy,
  • Information Literacy,
  • Preservice Teachers,
  • Online Survey,
  • Geography Education

How to Cite

Robakiewicz, Elena, Verena Foerster, Katrin Geiger, Frank Schäbitz, and Alexandra Budke. 2026. “Scientific Data Awareness Among Future Geography Educators”. European Journal of Geography 17 (2):S.150-S.168. https://doi.org/10.48088/ejg.e.rob.17.2.150.168.

Copyright (c) 2026 Elena Robakiewicz, Verena Foerster, Katrin Geiger, Frank Schäbitz, Alexandra Budke

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Received 2025-12-31
Accepted 2026-04-18
Published 2026-04-24

Abstract

In an era of increasing dis- and misinformation, particularly in relation to social and natural crises like climate change, it is vital that geography students can decipher legitimate, high-quality scientific data from falsehoods to solve relevant problems. In students’ education, geography teachers have a central role. We conducted an empirical study on German university geography education Bachelor students to better understand their scientific data awareness – their general understanding of what scientific data are, where they come from, and how to discern data quality – to determine how best we can support them in gaining (and ultimately teaching) skills to critically evaluate data. In their responses to an online survey, participants recognized their data usage within scientific and academic settings, but their perception of scientific geographic data in their daily lives was limited. Many respondents also displayed an inability to clearly articulate exactly how they would evaluate and verify data presented to them. Some individuals also indicated a strong inherent trust in scientific data – associating scientific data with “truth” and “fact”. We provide recommendations on how to teach geography students to use scientific data and enhance scientific data awareness, but ultimately demonstrate a need for further studies. This work can benefit the creation of new educational modules that can teach students 1) that scientific geographical data are everywhere in our daily lives and 2) how they can critically determine data quality and analyze data found online and through generative artificial intelligence.

Highlights:

  • Scientific data awareness is the ability to recognize what data are and where they come from.
  • Pre-service geography teachers may be missing important scientific data awareness skills.
  • Pre-service geography teachers are not critical when selecting scientific data.
  • Pre-service geography teachers struggle to compare and evaluate scientific data.
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