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APPROPRIATENESS OF THE CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH IN IMPLEMENTING ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION IN THE TEACHING PROCESS

Jukic, R.

Abstract

Contemporary scientific, technological, societal, social, cultural and civilizational changes present new challenges for school and teaching to confront with, and systematically respond to with teaching contents and its specific didactic organization. Ecology as a synoptic, diffuse and interdisciplinary science, which dialectically connects the natural-scientific with the social-scientific area, is an ideal polygon for creating teaching contents that deal with the changes of the contemporary world. However, in the teaching process we notice a predominance of the natural-scientific approach to environmental education, which limits students to technocratic rational thinking about ecology, and, by extension, about the environment and the whole community. Numerous studies of students' attitudes towards scientific curriculum in schools conclude that it is socially †sterile', impersonal, intellectually irksome, frustrating, detached from everyday experiences and personal life goals. Didactic materialism and factography are still encouraged in schools, and development of critical thinking, creativity, social and communicational skills and development of a value system are neglected. Within the constructivist paradigm and teaching that derives from it, we have identified determinants through which it is possible to mitigate the stated inadequacies and come closer to effective proecological behaviour using a cross-curricular approach to ecology contents. The learning process is taking place based on personal construction and reconstruction of knowledge that is a result of students' interactions with the natural world in a certain sociocultural context, with a dynamic mediation of their experiences. Therefore we conducted a research, through which we examined the appropriateness of the constructivist approach in implementing ecology education. 591 students and 190 secondary school teachers participated in the study. The indicators and variables were taken over from CLES research instrumentation (Constructivist Learning Environment Survey; Taylor, Fraser and Fisher, 1997), which is, according to its authors, applicable in different social and cultural settings. Students assessed the appropriateness of the elements of the constructivist environment in ecology education (activism, constructiveness, cooperation, dialogue, reflexivity, contextualization, complexity and purposefulness) through five CLES indicators (personal relevance scale, student negotiation, shared control, critical voice and uncertainty). Taking into consideration the methodological limitations of the study, our findings indicate that the constructivist approach to teaching is applicable in promoting the goals of environmental education in the teaching process. With certain alterations 95 SGEM 2014 International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conferences on Social Sciences and Arts and taking into consideration the specificities of school curriculums, this approach could be a constituent part of teaching practice planning and programming.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2014/B13/S3.013

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