Geography didactic faces new challenges related to demand for quality and efficiency of geography training. Contemporary "modern" didactic focuses attention on the development of cognitive abilities of pupils by solving problems and problematic cases; students' stimulation to acquire independently knowledge, skills and competencies; widespread application of problematic and research approach. The topicality of these issues is closely interrelated with the variety of methods applied in geography education. And if we want geography training to be in sync with up-to-date changes in the society and to meet pupils' needs than the role of the research project as a method used in geography training is substantial. The art of conducting and presenting project has its own specifics and offers a lot of opportunities to master the training process and achieve different educational goals. The main aims of the current paper are: to explore and describe in brief the project as geography training method; to present its essence and distinctive features; to define the position of the project in geography training with a view to improve its quality and effectiveness.

The education system in Albania, after 1990, has undergone some reforms both in the pre-university and university systems, reforms that were necessary due to the important socio-economic and cultural changes during the transition from the dictatorship to the democratic system. These reforms have affected and changed the role and position of Geography subject in the pre-University as well in the University curricula. These changes have been evident in the changing of numbers of weekly hours, content, perspectives of future development and in some specific topics. This paper aims to analyze the quantity and quality of these changes and to identify their direct impact in the geographic knowledge of the new generation of pupils and students of geography. Frequent changes have also occurred in the recruitment scheme of students at the university, bringing uncertainty and fluctuation of different levels from one year to the next. The involvement and implementation of Bologna system in the Albanian Universities brought many changes in the education curricula, teaching methodology, collaboration with foreign universities, diplomas, etc. From this point of view, considering the main issues faced by our University education system such as: the large number of students in the auditorium; the lack of laboratories; modern libraries; etc., it is important to analyze the importance and the role of the University in the professional formation of new teachers of Geography.

The association of pedagogical activity with the gardening is not a new one. Usually this metaphor presents the teacher as gardener who actively influences the process of natural growth of the plants in the garden (pupils in school). In our paper we present the contemporary geographical education as garden in which the "geographical literacy" is growing as product of mutual efforts of gardener and plants (teacher and pupils). The plants we grow are alive and vital, they possess their own dynamics and this makes it hard to determine and accelerate the process of their growth by the mere will of the gardener and in the way he alone envisions their development.The "geographical garden" and its plants are separated from the environment (other educational subjects) by a fence. As our garden continuously interacts with that environment, the fence is playing a crucial rolefirst to protect the plants from the pests (reduced geography lessons in secondary school curriculum, obsolete school facilities) and second -to provide transparency for innovative approaches and good practices (new information technologies, improvement of organizational culture and behavior). The gardener's goal is to preserve the vitality of the plants (the motivation of the pupils) and to achieve high yields (geographical literacy) by using a number of contemporary tools and instruments (new educational methods and techniques). This paper and the metaphor used aims at providing an improved model of geographical literacy setup and development based on the traditional Bulgarian model.

Different and various interpretations of the individual approach concept are tackled in the field of didactic and pedagogical research. It is labeled with different names and respectively with distinct content and meaning. Apart from this, the individual approach has a non-questionable impact on the effectiveness of geography training process. It is due to the individual and unique qualities each student possesses and what distinguishes him from others. It is very important that the knowledge acquisition, cultivating the competency and creating a behavior model is a unique individual process which is related to the framework of common interrelations of its functioning. The essence of individual approach is to study and comply with the individual peculiarities of pupils in educational process, to find the positive and overcome the negative individual features, to develop student's personal and creative skills. And although the listed actions are difficult to achieve in their entity in practice, it is worth investigating the particular mechanisms and methods for applying the internal differentiation in learning and teaching process. In current paper is explored the essence and key elements of the internal differentiation as well as its strengths and weaknesses. In addition, it is analyzed the differentiation of geography curriculum and the student's activities in the real training process.

Not long ago the communication process was related mainly to foreign and bilingual language education but recently it gains more and more importance for geography training. And this is logical consequence of the fact that through communication the pupils develop their geography competency in geography training process. As an act of connection and using language to express themselves, the communication is the needed prerequisite for accomplishment of other competences, e.g. related to geographic knowledge and obtaining it, interpretation of geography problems and taking the proper actions, to cultivate value orientation and overall model for behavior in geography space. The discussion stimulates students not only to acquire geography knowledge but it has a special importance for communication in relation with the individual perception of geographical content and explaining the relationship between the cause and effect. Using communication, we add individual value to geographic knowledge. So consequently, the search for creativity and innovations in geography training process is meaningful only when the students possess communication competence. The current research explores the cultivation of student's communication competence and is made the attempt for didactic characteristic of communication in geography training process. It is important to study the opportunities for development of geographic communication competency and to focus on discussion as training method and developing the pupils' skills to assert their opinion.