The Infusion of Environmental Values in Science Classroom: Primary School Teachers’ Views and Practices
Keywords:
Teaching science, Primary school, Environmental valuesAbstract
The immense challenge in producing eminence generation would be significant on sustaining the environment calls. Various studies of environmental stewardship could be integrated into teaching and learning. The study aims to investigate primary school science teachers’ views on importance and strategies of infusing environmental values in class. Based on qualitative research design, the interviews were used as the primary strategy to gather the data of this study supported with document analysis. Seven primary school science teachers who were conveniently selected to be participants in this study. Their teaching experiences were 9 to 20 years, and currently serve in different primary schools in Malaysia. Majority of the participants agreed that the infusion of environmental values in the science classroom is deemed as crucial due to several justifications i.e., love and concern towards the environment, safety and comfort life, health condition, and science content is strongly related to the environment. The emerging themes are common topics, active learning strategy, authentic examples approach, informal classroom culture, and targeted environmental values chose by teachers. The study concludes that it is imperative for teachers to play their roles to ensure that environmental values could be successfully imparted to students during teaching and learning at school. The strategy to infuse the environmental values should be considered and planned thoroughly by teachers to ensure positive and significant impact on students. Future studies should be conducted to look for the best classroom practices which effectively infuse environmental values to the students at various educational levels.