is working as a university lecturer of geography education in University of Helsinki, Faculty of Educational Sciences. She is an adjuct professor (the title of docent). Her research interests are climate education, global education, geography education and phenomenon-based learning.

A rapid growth of population and more materialistic ways of life have given rise to what many geologists now call the era of the Anthropocene. 1 In the Anthropocene, it is human activities that are the main factor determining the future of civilization. Climate change is a wicked problem 2 that threatens the continuity of life. According to the analysis of 11,944 scientific papers, written by 29,083 authors and published in 1980 journals, there is over a 97% consensus on anthropogenic global warming (Cook et al. 2013). The importance of climate is clear for humans as we need food, fresh water, fiber, timber and protection from hazards to survive and thrive. Climate influences crop productivity, disease, water scarcity or availability, and vulnerability to hazards (Sachs 2015).

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This article introduces the main ideas of ‘powerful knowledge’, which have recently been applied to geography education, for example, by Lambert (2011), Maude (2015), and Béneker and Palings (2017). Lambert et al. (2015) have described three levels of geographical knowledge that would enhance young people’s access to powerful geographical knowledge. The first level consists of deep and descriptive world knowledge, the second of relational understanding and geographical thinking, while the third level consists of the propensity to think through alternative social, economic, and environmental futures in specific locations and the ability to think critically. These three levels of knowledge are applied in the analysis of powerful geographical knowledge in the context of Finnish matriculation examinations. The empirical data set consists of 28 geography exams from 2006 to 2019, including 273 questions in total, 63 of which have been published in the form of the digital exams offered since the autumn of 2016. Digital exams have increased the amount of background material included in the questions, but they have also lead to the disappearance of tasks in which students should draw maps. The analysis shows how all three levels of powerful geographical knowledge are present in the matriculation questions. The number of simple first-level questions has been reduced, and the number of questions requesting relational understanding and geographical thinking has increased. However, value-based issues as well as questions requiring the student’s personal reasoning and ability to evaluate certain controversial themes are non-existent in the exams, even though they are described in the framework curriculum.

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