Students’ Perspective on Geography Materials and Learning: A Study on the Primary School Teacher Education

Geography be one way the creation of 21st century skills, where geography can help students develop global awareness and allows them to be creative and innovative. Seeing these benefits, presumably prospective teachers can master the material and learning geography in order to guide students toward global awareness. This case study was carried out to the students of primary school teacher candidates with questionnaires and interview techniques. The results showed that the students' perspective on the material of geography is a branch of social science that studies the environment and its relationship with humans. While the student perspective on learning geography is the interaction between students and teachers in order to understand the material geography.


Introduction
In Indonesia, geography materials are taught in Social Science subjects. Focus on human, place and environment discussion. One of its aims is to recognize concepts related to the life of society and its environment.
In Japan, Social Studies was considered the most important subject, known as a core subject, because of the significant role it played in creating a democratic society in Japan [1].
In Singapore, Geography has been a subject taught in Singapore schools even before she gained independence. Today, geography does not exist as a separate subject in primary school. Rather, it is taught within the subject of Social Studies at primary schools in Singapore. At the secondary school level, geography is a compulsory subject for lower secondary but is an elective subject at upper secondary level [2].
Geography be one way the creation of 21st century skills, where geography can help students develop global awareness and allows them to be creative and innovative [3]. Therefore, elementary school teachers are required to understand geography and learning. So also with the education of teacher's candidates in schools of education (LPTK), teacher's candidates are expected to prepare the ability of geography and learning materials. Many LPTKs do not study geography and learning separately, but in integrated courses, such as the Basic Concepts of Social Science and Teaching of Social Studies in Primary School.
This article focuses on: (1) how is the perspective of primary school teacher's candidates related to geography material?; (2) how is the perspective of primary school teacher's candidates related to geography learning?

Methods
The data in this study is the perception of prospective elementary school teachers. Perspective is a viewpoint student who used to observe the fact to determine the knowledge acquired. This research was conducted for six months from January to June 2016. It was conducted in one of the primary school teacher education programs in one of Teacher Education Institution (LPTK) in Java Island, Indonesia. Participants in this study were 74 students of primary school teacher education who consisted of 14 men and 60 women. The background of the student is quite diverse. They come from high school (SMA), religion high school (MA) and vocational high school (SMK). Participant data are presented in the following table 1: The research method used case study. Case studies are studies that describe specific situations, programs or activities individually as well as groups [4]. Based on data from table 1, the participants in this study is a student of primary school teacher candidates of 74 people, consisting of 14 men and 60 women. Data collection techniques used questionnaires and interviews. Data analysis using data reduction, data presentation and data deduction [5].

Results and discussion
This section will describe the two focuses of research are student perspective on geography materials and geography learning.

Perspective students about geography material
Digging student perspective on geographic material, the researcher asks several questions in the questionnaire table 2 and verifies through interviews to some students. From the table 2 it can be says that activities obtained the following results: Most of the students filled in questionnaires and answered interviews that "geography is one of the subjects of social science that studies the physical and human phenomena on the surface of the earth". Most students responded that "the scope of matter includes the appearance of nature, natural events, natural and artificial environments". Others responded that "the scope of geographic material is the spreading of flora, fauna and climate". Based on the data that geography is a branch of social science that studies the environment and its relationship with humans in line with the concept of physical geography and human geography [6]. While the answer is the subject of geography that studies the earth is more likely on the understanding of geography based on a large dictionary of Indonesian language.
Other findings that the scope of geography material covering the appearance of nature, natural events, natural and artificial environment in line with the curriculum documents of social studies subjects published of ministry of education.

Perspective students about geography learning
Digging student perspective on geographic learning, the researcher asks several questions in the questionnaire in table 3 and verifies through interviews to some students. From the table 3 it can be says that activities obtained the following results: Most of the students filled in questionnaires and answered interviews that "geography learning is a process of interaction between teachers and students in order to study physical and human phenomena". While others replied, "geography learning is a process of learning geography". Most students responded, "Geography learning model is Group Investigation, Inquiry and Expository". While others answered that learning geography is a Contextual Learning and Cooperative Learning ".
Student perspectives that answer the model of learning geography is Group Investigation and Inquiry influenced the understanding of social family model [7]. While the perspective of students who answered that the model of learning geography is contextual and inquiry is influenced by natural environment-based learning [8] and focus on social skills [9].

Conclusions
Conclusion the study is: (1) the students' perspective on the material of geography is a branch of social science that studies the environment and its relationship with humans; and (2) the student perspective on learning geography is the interaction between students and teachers in order to understand the material geography. It is hoped that there will be further research with a focus on other perspectives and more in-depth research.