A study of environmental science curriculum implementation of secondary school teachers in schools under the jurisdiction of the Department of General Education, education region seven
Abstract:
The purpose of this research was to study the environmental science curriculum implementation of secondary school teachers in schools under the Department of general education, education region seven. The subjects were two hundred and forty-three environment science teachers. The data were collected by means of quesitonnaires, structured interview and observation. The obtained data were analyzed by means of percentage and content analysis. The research findings were as follows: Most of the environment science teachers were female, earned bachelor of education majoring in general science and had only one year of experience in teaching this subject. Most of them never neither studied environmental science nor took part in the meeting, training, seminar or field study regarding environment. The environmental science curriculum implementation consisted of three tasks as follow: 1. Administration and curriculum services. In most schools, the sdministrators assigned teachers to teach environmental science according to their abilities by consulting with head of science section. However most of schools did not allocate budget for environmental science instruction, including the budget for purchasing field study equipment. 2. Supporting and promoting curriculum implementation. Only few environmental science teachers received supervision. The head of science section was a person who gave supervision that mostly about the instruction. 3. Curriculum instruction. Most of the environmental science teachers prepared their lessons by studying the curriculum and environmental science content, but did not have lesson plan. The activities guided in the manual that teachers used the most were ecological system and analysis of environment problem respectively. Teaching methods that the teacher used the most were discussion and lecture. Teaching aids the teacher used the most were video and newspaper. Objective tests were mostly used in measurement and evaluation. The extra curriculum that the teacher used the most were survey and environment conservation project. The problems of teaching this subject were the shortage of documents and resources and teachers were lacked of skills in various instructional techniques. The methods teacher used to solve the instruction problems were studying documents provided by the schools and consulting with colleagues and head department