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After so many other school subjects, Geography is today the matter of a scientific questioning as far as teaching methods by teachers are concerned together with student's learning and appropriating knowledge. Research into didactics has existed for a long time mainly among Anglo-Saxon geographers. In France this research is still in its basic stage and is facing difficulties. This new field of scientific investigation (i.e. didactic research applied to our subject) might only be possible and credible in the future through our looking deep to the subject. Our purpose is how to start a strategy to promote a French research into didactics of geography.

Geography means discovery and opening to the World. Its development relied on five kinds of intellectual operations : 1) to locate places on the earth ; 2) to describe the physiognomy of the Earth ; 3) to explore the relations between groups and their environment ; 4) to precise the role of land and the impact of distance on the life of societies ; 5) to understand the way man perceives space and the significance he gives to places. As a result, geography appears as a scientific and humanistic discipline : hence its value in education.

As long as relationships between different sorts of Knowledge (scientific Knowledge, classroom acquisition and a social acquaintance with space) have not been dealt with, can geography at school be anything else but the ordering process of geographic experience around a few academic concepts and conclusions ? In order to analyse the process of learning and teaching, the relationships with (within the general frame of the educational social project) are at work between pupil, subject matter, teacher and institution can be considered as constituting a didactic system. The normal functioning of scientific work in didactic of geography, can be disturbed by hindrances coming from pedagogic and geographic empirism. These hindrances are due to the characteristics of the subject matter, or to the twofold opposition between transposition and transmission on the one hand, and between culture and behaviour on the other.

The aim of this article is to explicit the contribution of Geography teaching. To this end, the three dimensions of the matter are analysed : knowledge, skills and values. One reorientation of Geography towards his concepts and fundemental learnings (geographical space, geographical thinking and conceptualisation of space) is also proposed.

The school geography can be deeply changed by the use of spatial perceptions and spatial representations. They question the subject of this matter : the space. They offer also many possibilities of didactical works in the classroms particulary about social or individual mental pictures.

The article reports the first results of an inquiry among pupils from CM 2 and after 6e about Geography's representations. This inquiry has been part of an INRP research wich is proposing to put in relation, the didactic contracts, operating in CM 2 and in 6e and the pupils' competencies evolution.

This research tries to understand how do pupils of the 6st form perceive geography, how do they build their geographic knowledge, with what marks, with what methodological tools. These pupils are interrested by the concrete, utilitarian, descriptive aspects of Geography, and they throw back the study of the great economical and social problems of present world... problems which interest mostly the pupils of 4th and 3rd forms.

The conservatism which prevails in the teaching of geography at secondary-school level in the outcome of traditional practices now being questioned. The processes of change linked to a determination to modernize teaching methods are bound to shatter the relationship between master and pupil. In order to avoid proceeding by trial and error genuine didactics of geography should be developed, which would lead to a strategy of progress.

Analysing the introduction of simulation games in the teaching of Geography leads to the two following conclusions : 1) this technique offers a relevant support towards helping the learning and transmision of geographical knowledge ; 2) Geography teachers however are, in many ways, reluctant to use it. These obstactes emphasize how difficult it may be to initiate a new strategy however efficient it may prove.

Thanks to the implementation of objectives and the concept of a terminal integration objective, which are associated with the notion of inter-structuration, a geography lesson on the desertification of the Sahel can be prepared for a class of 10th graders. A didactic hypothesis is thus proposed as a way to build up a senior high school student's knowledge in geography. Pedagogic research and classroom reality must not be kept separate, but closely linked together.