One of the important roles of HE institutions is to train graduates who will smoothly enter the labour market. The literature review demonstrates that one effective method to facilitate this transition is to ensure students acquire professional experience. The aim was to establish the scale and characteristics of employers’ demand for work experience expressed in job adverts. The data sample consisted of 17 397 adverts posted over a period of 18 months and addressed to geography, earth and environmental sciences specialists across six European countries. Quantitative analyses demonstrated that over one third of job postings required work experience. Text mining methods of content analysis revealed differences in the structure of high-importance words in adverts addressed to graduates with no, some or short work experience and those addressed to candidates with more extensive professional experience. A hierarchical cluster analysis helped us identify strong relationships between the word ‘experience’ and other words in specific subsets of adverts. The analysis led us to determine the characteristics of employers’ demand for work experience. The results help outline the directions of education policy for HE institutions regarding market-oriented measures aimed at ensuring work integrated learning which can clearly improve graduates’ chances on the labour market.

The article contains a comparative analysis of climate change education in geography education in Czechia and Poland. The topic of climate and its changes is one of the most current challenges for school education at the beginning of the 21st century. The aim of the research was to establish the similarities and differences in the content of teaching climate change in the core curricula and selected textbooks for teaching geography in both countries. Using the method of text analysis, the study covered the core curricula of geography and 22 geography textbooks for primary and secondary school students, including 11 Czech and 11 Polish. The quantitative analysis of the content (the term “climate” and its derivatives, and “climate change”) and the qualitative analysis of the content of curriculum documents and school textbooks led to the basic conclusion that Czech and Polish students using textbooks for learning geography have the opportunity to learn content on: 1/ factors influencing climate change, 2/ causes of climate change, 3/ global warming, 4/ deforestation, 5/ desertification, 6/ melting of glaciers, 7/ consequences of climate change, and 8/ methods of counteracting climate change. By implementing the assumptions of the geography core curricula relating to climate change education and using textbooks during geography lessons, teachers can influence the pro-ecological attitudes of school children.

Economic, social and cultural changes generate new challenges on the labour market for teachers in every country. Poland has recently witnessed significant changes in factors that were identified in literature as crucial to the situation of teachers on the labour market, such as systemic reforms, demographic trends, the overall situation on the labour market and occupational prestige. The scale and impact of some of these factors can be precisely measured and statistically accounted for, yet there are others that remain somehow hidden. The objective of the article is to present and analyse the current situation of geography teachers in Poland, taking into account the impact of both overt and covert factors. The paper is based on an analysis of primary and secondary data. Primary data were collected during our own research on online job advertisements and revolved around information on the real demand for geography teachers. Secondary data were official reports and statistics related to the social and professional standing of teachers in Poland. The analysis proves that in the last ten years the population of teachers has aged and experienced a drop in real wages. There has also been an increase in staff turnover and patchwork careers. Moreover, we have observed that it is highly unlikely to secure a full-time position as a geography teacher and that there have been huge fluctuations in the prestige of geography as a school subject. The identified changes can result in a shortage of qualified geography teachers in the short term, particularly in cities

The spread of COVID-19 all over the world triggered major changes in the organization of the education in many countries. Governments have adopted various solutions to reduce the disruption caused to education. This article, which is based on survey research (N=246) conducted among teachers in various types of schools in Poland, provides an analysis of the solutions in the field of distance learning and the organization of learning process during lockdown. The results show that teachers encountered a number of difficulties in distance learning. They concerned, among others: lack of access among certain students to computers, insufficient competences of teachers to teach remotely, work organization, and the fact that students were bored with this learning form. The advantages included, among others: increasing digital competences and developing new forms of assessing students’ knowledge.

The article presents the results of a survey conducted among Polish geography teachers. The purpose of the research was to examine use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in geographical education, carried out remotely after the end of the Lockdown. The collected opinions show that the vast majority of teachers now use information obtained from the Internet and free applications in lessons much more often than before the Covid-19 pandemic. The forced abandonment of traditional classroom learning and its replacement with distance learning has contributed to the development of new skills among teachers and students. Despite the initial reluctance caused by the lack of preparation for the use of new information technologies, geography teachers see many advantages to remote teaching using ICT. In the opinion of those surveyed, the acquired practical digital and communication skills have a positive impact on the teaching of geography. Respondents emphasized that distance learning should only be a supplement to traditional education and used in exceptional situations.

In the Silesian Upland in southern Poland there are many objects related to previous economic activities, mainly from the mining of minerals occurring in a geological basis. In Mikołów Mokre there is the largest group of closed lime kilns in Poland. They constitute a material trace of the quicklime production industry for the construction industry, which operated in this area for almost 200 years. These closed and decaying post-industrial objects are closely related to the presence of limestone and dolomite in the substrate rocks that were obtained from nearby quarries. The aim of the article was to present the current state of these lime kilns and to assess the possibility of using them for tourism purposes. Currently, only two lime kilns are components of the educational trail of the Silesian Botanical Garden established in 2003. Using the example of the Mikołów lime kilns, the opportunities and possibilities for changing the industrial function of these objects to a tourist function are outlined.