Volume: 13  Number: 2  Page: 143–150

Finnish Comprehensive School Students Contemplate the Forest Fires of Indonesia 1997 from Internet and Newspaper Reports

Toini Wallin-Oittinen Doctor of Education, Department of Geography, University of Helsinki, PO Box 64 Fin-00014, Finland

The topic of the assignment for eighth-grade students was reporting on the forest fires in Indonesia in chronological order, from 26 August to 27 September 1997. The final stage of the assignment was composing a report in essay format. The goal of this presentation was to examine the historical interpretation of the events and to simultaneously study the students’ work as an empirical experiment on how the students were able to make conclusions on the phenomena. My presentation is part of more extensive research in which I qualitatively study geography teaching in the junior high school. Here I describe a case study where the students were able to experience the events through demonstrations, facts from the Internet and written materials. My research questions were the following. How precisely could the students read the news and understand it in chronological order and comprehend the actual destruction? What did the students perceive of the chain of events and its effects? What is the potential significance of this type of assignment? A total of 63 students participated, of whom 57 were able to produce a report. Of these, four showed ability to correctly process the information and present it in essay format.

Keywords: forest fire, television news, Indonesia, social geography, education

© 2004 T. Wallin-Oittinen

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