Vol. 16 No. 2 (2025): (Regular Issue in Progress)
Research Article

Bridging Geopolitics and Environmental Issues in Geography Education: Exploratory Teachers’ Insights from France and Israel

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Tal Yaar-Waisel
Oranim College of Education, Kiryat Tiv’on, Israel
Caroline Leininger-Frézal
Université Paris Cité, Paris, France
Bio
An overview of teachers' perspectives
DOI: https://doi.org/10.48088/ejg.t.yaa.16.2.184.196
Categories

Published 2025-05-19

Keywords

  • Geography Education,
  • Environmental Studies,
  • Geopolitics,
  • Teacher Training,
  • Teaching and Learning (T&L)

How to Cite

Yaar-Waisel, Tal, and Caroline Leininger-Frézal. 2025. “Bridging Geopolitics and Environmental Issues in Geography Education: Exploratory Teachers’ Insights from France and Israel”. European Journal of Geography 16 (2):184-96. https://doi.org/10.48088/ejg.t.yaa.16.2.184.196.

Copyright (c) 2025 Tal Yaar-Waisel, Caroline Leininger-Frézal

Creative Commons License

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

Received 2024-11-13
Accepted 2025-05-19
Published 2025-05-19

Abstract

The relationship between environmental issues and politics is underrepresented in geography curricula. This study explores the challenges associated with integrating environmental issues within a political framework in geography education and puts forward a case for their inclusion in teacher development. The present study is predicated on an analysis of the intended and the achieved curricula. A comparative analysis of the curricula, complemented by interviews with a total of 20 teachers, in France and Israel, led to the identification of common barriers. The analysis revealed that both countries' curricula incorporated environmental geopolitics and that the teachers recognised the link between environmental and political decisions. However, they mentioned few local political aspects, and most of them were unfamiliar with this connection from their prior studies. Despite the limited time allocated to the subject, teachers incorporated these topics out of a sense of mission. The paper proposes a model to facilitate the integration of environmental geopolitics into teaching practice.

Highlights:

  • Teachers interviewed in France and Israel recognised links between the environment and politics.
  • There is no consensus on how to include these topics in the curriculum.
  • Israeli teachers discussed global politics more openly than French teachers.
  • French teachers focused on local issues, avoiding political aspects.
  • All the teachers required better training in geopolitics for effective teaching.
  • A theoretical model that would enable teachers to teach environmental geopolitics is proposed.
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