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Socijalna ekologija : časopis za ekološku misao i sociologijska istraživanja okoline, Vol. 22 No. 3, 2013.

Preliminary communication

Environmental Education in Grammar School Curricula

Renata Jukić orcid id orcid.org/0000-0003-1433-5920 ; Faculty of Philosophy J. J. Strossmayer, Osijek, Croatia

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Abstract

The paper presents the analysis of ecological content in grammar school curricula for all school subjects. Furthermore, it gives the results of the empirical research conducted on 591 grammar school students and 190 grammar school teachers. Using a questionnaire, the respondents were asked to score the degree of representation and suitability of environmental education for each school subject. In our theoretical approach, we define ecology as a holistic, interdisciplinary science, located at the intersection between natural and social sciences, through which they are dialectically connected and opposed.
The research reveals that ecological content currently dominates in school subjects in the natural sciences. Additionally, both students and teachers graded the suitability of ecological content higher in relation to its current degree of representation for all school subjects. These results show that there is room and interest within the educational system (of both students and teachers) for the increase of ecological content in all school subjects. We should not expect young people to independently connect the pieces of information they receive from their teachers but should rather work on changing the educational system in which environmental issues are currently dealt with only in subjects in the natural sciences. The essential elements of ecology as a scientific discipline are so complex that in order to reach a more comprehensive understanding we cannot rely only on the natural sciences viewpoint. In other words, we need to teach ecology as a whole, as a system composed of proto-elements which appear in all school subjects throughout school curricula.

Keywords

environmental education; cross-curriculum approach; degree of environmental content; suitability of environmental content; ecology; holistic approach

Hrčak ID:

118824

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/118824

Publication date:

15.3.2014.

Article data in other languages: croatian german

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