Wednesday 18 March 2009

Teacher The Panacea of Environmental Education

INTRODUCTION
Over the last fifteen years, an awareness of the subject of environmental education has grown at formal and non-formal levels in Nigeria. Within the formal system in Nigeria, environmental education is taught as part of other school subjects such as social studies geography and integrated science. A great deal of effort has been invested by the Nigeria Educational Research Development Council (NERDC) to infuse the environmental education concept into many subjects in the junior and senior secondary school curricula.
The Science Teachers’ Association of Nigeria on its own part is pursuing a regimen of training for environmental educators for the school system through its annual workshops.
In their work was an evaluation of the teachers’ knowledge of environmental issues and examination of the delivery of environmental education in schools. They further revealed a heightened awareness of environmental issues among Nigerians’ teachers. This also showed a preference for certain teaching strategies in the delivery of environmental education by the teachers. However the participating teachers state that they may not be able to teach environmental education as a core subject because of the number of subjects being taught at secondary school levels.
Environmental Education which is an organized efforts to teach about how natural environments function and, particularly, how human beings can manage their behavior and ecosystems in order to live a sustainable life. Environment is the utmost important part of our lives. It is concerned with the surroundings in which we live and cherish our life. Protection of environment is everyone’s duty. So environmentally educated teachers are needed in order to teach the contents of environmental education effectively. Conservation of environment is not taken seriously by people, there is a “who cares” attitude or “the little I pollute, how does it matter much?” This attitude is because of lack of environmental education to create good orientation and environmental issues.
The goal of environmental education is to develop a world population that is aware of and concerned about the environment and its associated problems and who has the knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivations and commitment to work individually and collectively towards solution of current environmental problems and prevention of new ones. School system provides the largest organized base for environmental education and action. It offers an effective instrument for embedding in them the desirable environmental ethics. Teacher is one of the chief significant factors, which is bound to affect the teaching of environmental education. Teachers who are properly trained with environmental concepts can provide a vital link in the delivery of environmental knowledge, its associated problems and their solutions.
Reasons why teachers has failed in effective delivery of Environmental Education through social studies (Nigeria in Focus)
Teachers are supposed to be the vessels through which the gospel of environmental education can be impacted to the live of learners. So teachers are seen as the four runners of effective delivery of any curricula activities. Being important change agents in the education enterprise, teachers are therefore at the heart of any successful effort to promote environmental education (Okebukola et al. 1997; Disinger 1984). The overall expectation is that teachers’ could be a corpus of environmental educators that could serve as the agent in the spread of the message of sustainable development and environmental protection. But teachers had failed for the effective delivery of environmental education as a result of the following reasons:
1. Professionalism (Poor Professional Values, Professional Knowledge/dispositions and Professional Development.)
2. Poor Content Of Teaching
3. Poor practice of teaching (Communication, classroom Management/instruction, planning/evaluation and Consideration of Individual Needs, Abilities/Disabilities and Aspirations )
4. Teachers’ limited knowledge of ecological concepts and environmental issues
5. Teachers’ look worm attitude
Professional skill and training: Insufficient teacher training has been identified as a major cause of curriculum failure in Environmental Education (UNESCO; 1997, Knapp; 2000, Mckeown-Ice, 2000). Teacher are expected to be professionally trained in related field especially in the area of environmental education such as Foundational competencies in professional education, Competencies in environmental education content, but very high numbers of the teachers are not environmentally educated. Olusanya (2008) Reasons accounting for this belief may probably stem from the sense of ill-preparedness and low professional confidence with regards to their content and pedagogical knowledge of the current environmental issues and problems. .
Poor content of teaching: The teachers failed to base the content of their teaching on clearly defined aims, objectives and learning outcomes as laid down by education authorities and agreed within the profession which has lead to unsound knowledge and understanding of the subject matter, processes of inquiry, concepts and skills, plan their teaching on the basis of recent, relevant pedagogical research
Poor practice of teaching: A lot of teachers fail to establish expectations that are clear, challenging and achievable for students; use a wide variety of fair and consistent assessment strategies and instruments for diagnostic, formative and summative evaluation relate assessment strategies and instruments to learning objectives, content and tasks. Ineffectively select and sequence learning activities, manage and pace teaching time to achieve planned student outcomes and also fail to apply a variety of human, material and technological resources to maximise learning as impartial as possible when discussing controversial matters like environmental issues with students.
Teachers’ limited knowledge about ecological concepts and environmental issues: teachers who are not environmentally educated will encounter problems in the proper delivery of environmental issues
Teachers look worm attitude: Just as revealed in Olusanya (2008) the infusion of EE generated concerns and anxieties from the teachers, who viewed the infusion as overloading of the already loaded curricula. In 1996 the Science Teachers’ Association of Nigeria (STAN) through its National Environmental Education Project (NEEP) commenced, a regimen of training for environmental educators (i.e. train-the-trainers workshop) as a response to growing teachers’ concern regarding overloading of curriculum. (Okebukola et.al. (1997).
Organized on annual basis, the workshops presented opportunities for secondary school science teachers, to learn about the strategies which can best allow easy assimilation of knowledge (Thiele and Treagust 1991; Okebukola 1996); as well as, facilitate students’ understanding of environmental concepts or principles (Ahove 1997). From the above statement one will understand that, the teachers’ attitude is a very strong factor militating against the actualization of the goals of environmental education.
Conclusions: Teachers needed to have more knowledge, skills and change in attitude for them to be able to deliver the goals and objective of environmental education for sustainable living of man in the society. Since the teacher as posits by Ukairo (1978) is the one who help to make society what it is. Therefore, teachers are encouraged to acquire more knowledge related to environmental concepts and issues.
References:
Disinger, J. (2007). Field Instruction in school settings. ERIC/SMEAC 1984 [cited
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Okebukola, Peter. (1996). And the barrier to meaningful learning of science came tumbling down. In Inaugural Lecture. Ojo, Lagos: Lagos State University Press.
Okebukola, Peter, M. Ahove, A Kola-Olusanya, Ben Akpan, and M. Ogunsola-Bandele. (1997). Teachers' perception of the effectiveness of strategies for teaching concepts on the environment. In Strategies for Environmental Education: Focus on Global Warming, Greenhouse effect and ozone Layer Depletion, edited by P. Okebukola and B. Akpan. Port Harcourt, Nigeria: African Pep Publishers.
Gruenewald, D.A. (2004). A Foucauldian analysis of environmental education: toward the socioecological challenge of the Earth Charter, Curriculum Inquiry 34(1):71-107.
Ahove, M. (1997). The use of analogies in teaching some concepts on the environment. In Strategies for environmental education: Focus on global warming, greenhouse effect and ozone layer depletion, edited by P. Okebukola and B. Akpan
Thiele, R. B., and D. F. Treagust. (1991). Using analogies in secondary chemistry teaching. Australian Science Teachers' Journal 37 (2):10-14.
Olusanya, A. K (2008). Environmental Education in Nigeria: A Look beyond the Infusion Problem. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto
Environmentally Educated Teachers The Priority of Priorities? Unesco-Unep Environmental Education Newsletter Vol. XV, No. 1, March 1990
UNESCO. (1997). Educating for a sustainable future: A transdisciplinary vison for concerted action. UNESCO Publication No. EPD-97/Conf.401/CLD.1). Paris: UNESCO.
Knapp, D. (2000). The Thessaloniki Declaration: A wake-up call for environmental education? Journal of Environmental Education, 31 (3), 32-39.
Mckeown-Ice, R. (2000). Environmental education in the United States: A survey of pre-service teacher education programs. Journal of Environmental Education, 32(1), 4-11.
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