The improvement of eco-school students’ environmental awareness in the context of education for sustainable development
2019
Lace-Jeruma, L., University of Latvia, Riga (Latvia) | Birzina, R., University of Latvia, Riga (Latvia)
Nowadays the humankind strives to reach higher and higher standards of living, disregarding the consumption of natural resources in their comfort and failing to think about what they will leave behind for the future generations. As the person’s quality of life depends on the environment in which he lives, it is important to change his environmental awareness in the context of sustainable development. The younger is the person, the easier it is to develop environment-friendly behaviour in him. Eco-school is one of the ways of “greening” students’ thinking. The aim of the study has been to find out how students’ environmental awareness is developed in Biology lessons in Grade 7, basing on education for sustainability goals, objectives and cross-cutting sustainable development key competencies. A study has been performed in eco-school A in 2018 involving 38 students in it. During the study the year topic of the eco-school “Waste” was integrated in 11 Biology lessons using diverse teaching/learning methods; students were surveyed and they also did a test. The obtained data were processed using SPSS programme. The results showed that students’ environmental awareness had improved: the level of knowledge and skills had increased; the choice of an environment-friendly behaviour had changed a little. However, the acquisition of one topic in one school subject is not sufficient to make students’ environmental awareness change considerably in all cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural domains.
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