Investigation of perceptions of high school teachers on environmental education and environmental knowledge level of their students

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increasing concern in environmental education policies in Turkey. With the addition of the environmental learning objectives to the high school curricula, which started to be revised in 2008, the students are expected to graduate with high skills of environmental literacy. However, nationwide implementations of the new curriculum of geography, biology, chemistry, and physics have not been reported. The views of teachers, who are the most important person in the curriculum implementation process, can be important factors to identify problems encountered. This study was conducted to investigate high school teachers’ opinions on the revised curricula of physics, chemistry, biology, and geography lessons as well as self-criticisms of their competency for environmental education. The study also analyzes environmental knowledge questionnaires given to 12th grade students who were taught the new four year high school curricula. The sample included 20 teachers who were given semi-structured interviews about the integration of environmental issues into their lessons. The teachers were working in three different private high schools in Istanbul and 161 students of these teachers were applied a questionnaire which let them rate themselves on environmental means and assess their knowledge. The interviews and questionnaires were statistically analyzed. As a conclusion, the self-efficacy of teachers in environmental education tends to be low, that is because the number of courses with environmental content is inadequate and sufficient attention is not paid to the environmental issues in teacher education. However, the suggested hours to spend for environmental topics for each subject lesson are generally more than 20% of the total lesson hours. This study concludes the need of both pre-service and in-service environmental education competency.