Ecology Education as an intEgral componEnt of primary natural sciEncE Education: somE rElEVant issuEs
Journal Title: Problems of Education in the 21st Century - Year 2010, Vol 21, Issue 6
Abstract
A contemporary environment solves highly relevant issues of environmental protection, natural usage, ecology, etc. In order to overcome all serious obstacles, it all requires our new approach and efforts of the experts’ of different fields. The global matters are our general concern. This is ipso facto because none of the problems is isolated. Most of them are mixed, versatilely determined and originally undivided. Thus, the process of the correlation awareness is rather complex and hardly achievable. The decision is possible only if the points are thoroughly examined in a close correlation. On the other side, the mentioned issues cannot be the only scientists’ concern. This is a business of the whole society and school as “the scale of human activity started reaching the elemental natural processes. The ideal of partnership between nature and human being changed when the latter has become the lord of nature in reality... The ecology era is considered to have been started because neither science nor practice can dispose of ecology problems. The bearing between human being and biosphere is a relevant question for both sides: to be or not to be?” (Minkevičius, 1987). These arguments have to comprehensively be discussed by secondary school pupils. Natural science education, obviously, must solidify the ecology world outlook. Prof. J.Vaitkevičius thinks that one-sided, wrong way of natural science education, the insufficient perception of the phenomenon of nature and human being anticipates the social cataclysms of humankind. Therefore, “the goal of nature comprehension is the development of children’s abilities to aware a natural world and to communicate with it” (The General curricula, 1997). On the other side, it seems to be not enough. A wider point of view would have been helpful. The knowledge of ecology allows us to partially foresee the outcomes of our actions (Pleijelis, 1994). The formulation of a complex concept is acclaimed to be important, i.e. when nature is understood as a cultural value and a tangible property.� Ecology education is a permanent process, thus it has to coherently take place in all forms of comprehensive school. Every age range is useful for ecology education. Therefore, we cannot think that if something has been lost in primary school, we will have a chance improve. Full attention should be turned to primary school pupils as they receive propaedeutic, systemized and integral knowledge about nature which is the basis for the adaptation of information and attitudes (for example, environment protection) as well as for humanistic, aesthetic and cognitive motivation. Knowledge (information) about ecology could effectively be implemented only if suitable material facilities of training existed. Primary ecology education is a coexisting part of an immediate interest in nature, fauna and flora care, inhabited locality protection, responsibility for the results of human activity in nature. The sampling, adaptation and implementation of the content of ecology education using particular means (material facilities) are the foremost stages of integration. It could be justly maintained that ecology is an integral component of primary natural science education. The major result of ecology education is individual ecology education that includes cognitive (systemic knowledge), valuable (understanding of values, the models of behaviour in nature etc., a concept of respect to nature), and practice (practical environment protection work, participation in various actions, etc.) fields.� Most of the teachers are looking for the so called non-traditional methods as they consider that the existing patterns are very traditional, and therefore are little effective. Basically, it is a wrong attitude because the essence is not the methods or forms that are used. The most important points are the focus, priorities, directions (objective, value, normative, etc.), objectives, tasks and content that we choose. A frequent search for the assumed “innovations” is not effective and even useless in the whole educational process. In this case, the teacher’s attitude and competence in the ecology education field is a fundamental feature. Last of all, fragmentary ecology education is also useless and poorly effective. Ecology education should be coherent and fragmentary in primary school. Individual planning of ecology education for the whole four-year period, the teacher’s disposition to broaden experience and raise qualification in the field, community and parents’ involvement into the activity of ecology education helps to reach the objective. Yasvin and Deriabo (1996) seem to be right that a particular system of ecology education rather than the experts of environment protection will overcome the ecology crisis in our planet. In a broad sense, it must be noticed that the previous ecology-environment protection education is extremely important. On the contrary, the opponents uphold the idea that ecology education is hardly possible in the preschool and primary school period. In fact, an early school age is supposed to be a positive feature of ecology education. Therefore, we cannot refuse the period of individual ontogenesis as it is relevant for effective ecology education.
Authors and Affiliations
Vincentas Lamanauskas
Keywords
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