The changes taking place in the modern educational process require modern specialists to make various independent, quick and non-standard decisions and cannot be fully provided with the existing training system. Currently, educational programs are saturated with new information, as a result of which students do not always focus on acquiring new knowledge and skills and hardly follow modern scientific achievements, not always realizing their importance. To overcome this disadvantage, specialized training is provided, one of the main goals of which is to develop students' ability to see, explore and solve problems. This goal can be achieved only by creating conditions for students to master research activities that develop the research skills of middle-level students. Research activity can be interpreted as a process of assimilation of new knowledge, which is a form of cognitive activity of a student. But in modern specialized pedagogical dictionaries, the following concepts are often used in the context of educational tasks: research training, research teaching methods, research activity. They are often vague and, therefore, do not contribute to the improvement of educational practice. An important feature of the research activity of high school students is the creative component aimed at the disclosure, reproduction of new knowledge and ways of activity. Modern pedagogical conditions require fundamentally new educational technologies and approaches to teaching from the point of view of geographical education. In the modern framework, these conditions cannot be met for a number of reasons, including: insufficient level of training and insufficient elaboration of many teachers to organize students' research activities, as well as the uncertainty of the content, methods and forms of its organization at various stages of their education in geography lessons. The article discusses approaches to the organization of research activities of students in geography lessons in secondary schools.