Improving the methodology of teaching geography in secondary professional education: the case of the specialty "Tourism".

Creation of a competitive territorial tourism product in the Russian Federation makes important the issues of strengthening human resources. And this highlights the relevance of the need to form a system of geographical knowledge among specialists in tourism and hospitality in the field of secondary professional education. At the same time, the general educational discipline "Geography" has large material and complicated concepts. In addition, there is a low motivation of students to study it because they do not see the connection between the geographical knowledge they receive and their future profession. That is why today, the activity within New School project is focused on the updating approaches to teaching general education disciplines in secondary professional education. As a result, it is planned to develop a methodological system, reflecting approaches to the professionalization and the intensification of the educational process. This article presents the Geography Teaching Methodology in the context of training specialists in tourism, which was developed by the authors of the article as an element of the general education discipline methodological system. Geography Teaching Methodology is a strategic document that reflects the goals and objectives of updating the content of the discipline, the expected results and ways to achieve them. The article is aimed at identifying the problems of teaching geography in secondary professional education, characterizing the methods of teaching geography, demonstrating the areas of professionalization and intensification of training specialists in tourism and hospitality industry. The educational technologies and methods, means and tools, proposed by the authors, are directed to increasing the motivation of students, their understanding of the need to study geography, the place of the acquired knowledge in the future profession, the formation of competitive competencies and problem thinking. The work was prepared within the framework of the Federal project "New School" with the participation of the developers of the Geography Methodological System: Ph.D., Assoc. prof. Kosareva N.P., Gulyaeva S.P. and Bessolova L.N.