Beyond generic professional development: geography teachers reflecting on multiple geographies through Geo4Tea

Despite growing interest in teacher professional development (TPD), geography education still lacks subject-specific frameworks connecting professional learning with the disciplinary dimensions of geography teaching quality. This study examines how geography teachers perceive meaningful professional learning and how they reflect on geography teaching quality through the Geo4Tea tool grounded in different conceptions of geography teaching. Eighteen Czech geography teachers participated in semi-structured interviews following engagement with the Geo4Tea self-diagnostic framework. Thematic analysis showed that teachers value professional learning that is relevant, practice-based, and reflective, but rarely articulate geography teaching through explicit disciplinary or epistemological language. Geo4Tea became meaningful primarily because it made different conceptions of geography teaching visible and discussable. The study suggests that geography teaching quality may depend less on using one “correct” teaching approach and more on teachers’ ability to combine different ways of thinking geographically according to the topic, aims, and classroom context. In this respect, the study proposes a subject-specific dimension of geography teaching quality that complements generic instructional quality models by emphasising the conceptual and epistemological plurality of geography as a discipline.