Secondary-level Environmental Education in Korea

Transcription

1 77 Lee, Jae Young 報告 Secondary-level Environmental Education in Korea Jae Young LEE Kongju National University, Republic of Korea (2008 年 6 月 13 日受理 ) 韓国では過去 12 年間 中等教育段階で独立教科という一般的でない方式で環境教育を実施して来た すべての関連教科で環境に関する内容を扱うと同時に 環境 という別の科目を作って集中的に環境教育を実施する折衷型の学習法を適用して来た 2007 年現在中等教育段階での環境科目選択率は 20% 内外を記録しており 約 2,600 人余りの教師が環境の授業を行っている 環境府を中心に環境教育モデル学校に対する支援と体験環境教育プログラム支援事業も進められている しかし一流大学への入学願望に支配されている韓国の中等教育段階の学校では 環境教育は質的にも量的にも期待した水準に到達していない 2008 年 3 月に環境教育振興法が成立し 環境教育全般の変化と活性化が期待されている しかし 持続可能な発展のための教育との統合的学習法を含む 問題解決中心 プロジェクト中心 社会環境教育との連携強化など 構成と内容両面で画期的な変化が起きない限り 韓国の中等教育段階の環境教育が有効なものになることを期待しにくい これは韓国と類似の教育的ジレンマ状況に陥っている日本にも共通の課題であり 両国の環境教育者間の協力が必要とされる所以である 1. Introduction In 1972 the word environmental education was first introduced to Korea through an official document, the newsletter of the Korean National Commission for UNESCO. While introducing the UN Conference on Human Environment, the newsletter said that a special meeting on environmental education would be held. After that, there have been lots of significant changes in and out of schools for the last 36 years in Korea including the establishment of the National Environmental Education Act in Environmental education activities in Korea are usually categorized into two areas, school EE and social EE. School EE is often defined as educational processes operated by qualified teachers at schools based on curriculum and teaching plans in systematic and periodic ways. School EE includes nature experiential education provided often at conservation areas such as National parks, pollution prevention education operated at environmental facilities like water treatment center, expert in-service education designed for the certification holders by the local government or business sectors. Social EE can be characterized as diverse in terms of period and format. This paper focuses on school environmental education, especially the current status and issues at secondary-level in which environmental education is being taught through both the separate subject Environment and in all other subjects. Secondary school level can be identified as located between the primary school aiming at fundamental skills through experience and practice and higher education focusing on expert training and problem solving. In the circumstance that there exists severe competition for entering good universities, 問い合わせ先 Lee, Jae Young -182 Shinkwan-dong, Kongju-cty, Chungnam-do, Republic of Korea keep@kongju.ac.jp Tel C 日本環境教育学会 2008

2 Secondary-level Environmental Education in Korea 77 secondary education cannot be properly considered separate from this connection to the process of preparing for university entrance examination. As global scale environmental problems including climate change become more severe, it becomes more important for every citizen to modify his or her life style and to make environmentally responsible decisions on a daily basis. The value of secondary education should be appropriately estimated by considering its role in helping young people to grow as environmentally literate citizens equipped with knowledge, eco-friendly attitudes, behavior, values and commitment. Korea has been applying a unique experiment in secondary level environmental education. 2. Korea s National Curriculum and EE A. School EE framed by Curriculum The Korean national curriculum took a dual approach to environmental education and this approach framed school environmental education with both possibilities and risks. A dual approach indicated that the curriculum adopted a cross-curricular approach and a singlesubject (disciplinary) approach at the same time. In the cross-curricular approach, all subjects address environmental issues and contents when needed; in the single-subject approach, the Environment subject focuses on its own content areas which may not be addressed by other subjects on the assumption that a crosscurricular approach to environmental issues is appropriately implemented. B. EE in Each Curriculum 1) The 4th National Curriculum The 4th National Curriculum (1981) initiated discussion on environmental education in Korea. The general summary of the national curriculum said environmental education needs to be addressed in every learning process and activities if possible. 2) The 5th National Curriculum In the 5th National Curriculum (1987), one of the eight cross-curricular topics put an emphasis on environmental education, mentioning every citizen has a right to live in a clean environment and people should respect others and protect nature. 3) The 6th National Curriculum There was a huge change in the 6th National Curriculum announced in 1992 and which came into force in That was to set up separate subjects in middle and high school curricula. In primary schools, environmental education could be applied 2 hours a week in discretionary time and special activity time controlled by the principal or class-based special activity time by teacher. Separate subjects, named Environment for the middle school, and Environmental Science for high school, were opened. 4) The 7th National Curriculum Proposed in 1997 and applied for the first time in 2001 to middle schools, the 7th National Curriculum had two separate subjects, Environment, for middle school, and Ecology and Environment, for the high school without a big change, compared with the 6th National Curriculum. In middle schools, the environment subject could be taught as one of three selective subjects such as Chinese, Computer studies, 4 hours a week at discretionary time. In the case of high schools, students can select Environment as one of the 10 general selective subjects. 5) The 8th or New National Curriculum Environmental education in the new national curriculum proposed in 2007 was framed in a similar way to the previous national curriculum. There were some additional topics or contents that had rarely been addressed in the earlier

3 77 Lee, Jae Young curriculum, such as restoration of eco-space, environmental justice, ecological sensitivity, and more emphasis on comprehensive approaches and understanding as shown in Table 1. C. Summary and Implications Since 1992 when the 6th National Curriculum was notified, there have been a few changes in terms of selection and organization of contents or relative importance of selected contents related to environmental education. Those changes can be summarized into three parts. First, traditional environmental contamination or pollution related contents such as air pollution and groundwater contamination have decreased. Second, socio-cultural features including environmental justice, environmental ethics, and environmental economy and policy increased quantitatively and qualitatively. Third, more frequent efforts and experiments have been devoted to the realization of multi- or inter-disciplinary approaches combining natural science/engineering and social science/arts. However, some argued that there were very few significant changes in terms of content selection and organization among the last three curricula and between the middle and high school curriculum. To my analysis, such similarities have been brought by insufficient structural consideration while developing curriculum. Since the single-subject (disciplinary) approach to curriculum development has been adapted, only small changes or modifications in content selection or their relative proportion could be possible by the developers. From my perspective, even though it is continually stressed by Korean environmental educators, a true interdisciplinary approach has never been applied in Environment classes in secondary school in Korea. 3. Current Status of School Environmental Education Now this paper will describe the current status of school environmental education with three concerned areas involved in environment schools, environment teachers and environmental model schools. A. The Number of Environment Schools According to the Korean Ministry of Environment (2007), 1,037 middle and high schools selected the subject Environment and this was about 20.1% of the total schools. The ratio of schools selecting Environment increased by 0.6% compared to the number of schools in The number of middle schools that selected Environment was found to be 403 and this was about 13.4% of the total middle schools, 3,010. The number of high schools that selected Ecology and Environment was 637 and this was about 29.8% of the total high schools. B. Environment Teachers As of June, 2007, the number of teachers who are responsible for the subject Environment was counted to be 2,620 and among them only 94 teachers (3.6%) were found to have a major in environmental education, 559 teachers (21.3%) surveyed took teacher in-service programs and 147 teachers (5.6%) have double majors in environmental education. There were too many unqualified teachers (1,820, 69.5%) in school classes, that means they were licensed as a teacher but not trained as environment teachers. Since 2000 students majoring in environmental education graduated as qualified-but-unemployed teachers. For the last 8 years less than 10% of the students majoring in environmental education have had chance to teach at middle or high schools after passing national examination.

4 Secondary-level Environmental Education in Korea 77 Table 1. Comparison of content areas of environmental education between 7th and 8th curricula

5 77 Lee, Jae Young Table 2. Yearly change of number of school that selected subject Environment or Ecology and Environment Table 3. Yearly change of teachers that got major of Environment In the year of 2006 only one student was employed as an environment teacher, and even worse in 2007 no one was allowed to get a new position to teach at schools. C. Environment Model Schools The Korean Ministry of Environment (KME) has supported environment model schools since As shown in <Table 4>, for the last 20 years more than 200 schools were designated and supported as environment model schools. However, there was very little evidence that model schools had positive effects on other schools and spread their experience to other regions. While environment model schools project have focused on structural efforts such as reorganizing school curriculum and management plans, creating school forest, and providing a workshop or special training program for all teachers at school level, more than 500 teachers who wanted to operate experiential environmental education programs also were supported at individual teacher level by the ministry in the last 5 years. Now the Korean Ministry of Environment is searching for ways to overcome the limits associated with environment model schools and experiential environmental education support project. Theme-based and problem-oriented approaches can be alternatives. KME also have launched Greenery Mobile Environmental Class using a transformed bus. 4. Lessons from 12 Years of Experiment Since 1995 when the 6th National Curriculum began to apply to middle schools, Korean schools

6 Secondary-level Environmental Education in Korea 77 Table 4. Number of Environment Model Schools supported by Korean Ministry of Environment have conducted unprecedented experiments to teach environmental education as a separate subject. For the last 12 years very small change has been found in terms of the ratio of schools selecting the subject Environment. Only two of the ten Korean middle or high school students had a chance to study environment through the subject as a part of school curriculum. However, continuing efforts and small-and-big changes over the last 12 years may be evaluated as not successful nor sufficient to lead students to responsible and conscious environmental behavior because of the structural distortion of a kind of pseudo-holistic system and approach. Such distortion of structure may have originated from the last-30 years of school education policy dominated by the greed for so-called university of reputation. Environment teachers do not get respected by their students or supported by their colleagues who may teach math, English and other subject areas included in the list of university entrance examinations. 5. Conclusions and Suggestions More effort should be given to develop environmental education models that could better fit the secondary school system of Korea by systematic approaches and evaluation processes. New approaches or experiments may begin with a question, how comprehensive or interdisciplinary are existing curriculum and teaching plans? What alternatives do we have to accomplish the realization of holistic understanding of environmental issues that are becoming more and more complex and uncertain? In this regard, we have both a significant barrier and a good opportunity. The Education policy of this government seems to maintain its focus on development of personal competency by strengthening competition-based strategies. Younger students will be required to take more examinations and be ready to show abilities that can be measured and compared. Middle school students will have to spend more time to prepare math and English. Global environmental problems and sustainable lifestyle may not be able to have any meaningful connection to their daily life. The Korean National Environmental Education Promotion Act has been established and will be activated in September The act has some items related to education policy intended to promote school environmental education such as teacher training and employment, development and dissemination of learning-teaching materials and communication programs between community members in and out of school. Our efforts should be devoted to reform current school environmental education which is too knowledge-oriented, destitute of sequential logic among school levels, and not ready to help students to develop the higher-level cognitive skills necessary for addressing complex issues in the real world. What should be done in secondary environmental classes to help Korean

7 88 Lee, Jae Young Upgraded request for better EE in schools Development of good school EE programs Effective overcoming of Environmental problems Admission committee of university Responsible environmental behavior Support from governments and enterprises Better chances for volunteering activities Certified local NGOs, schools and centers Figure 1. Circulation that could be realized by the EE Act adolescents to be prepared for an environmentally uncertain and economically unstable society? Environmental educators need to understand the relationship between sustainable development education and environmental education, and make more creative attempts to combine them. Secondary school environmental education is required to be more problem-oriented, project-based, practical and collaborative. More efforts should be given to participatory programs designed to enhance communication and co-work between schools and their communities. People reform schools and education. Schools also change people. In terms of secondary environmental education in Korea, schools seem to have failed in changing their students or providing them with proper learning experience. Where can we find momentum for meaningful change? A great opportunity to activate school environmental education could come from changes unidentified so far since the Environmental Education Promotion Act has been established and significant changes which the law will bring about. A high level of attention should be given to the possible interactions between the qualification system on social environmental leaders, certification system on environmental education programs and designation system on environmental education centers clearly stated in the law. There are about four million middle and high school students in Korea and they are required to volunteer for public service 20 hours every year. Their records on such volunteering activities are and will be referred to by university admission committees. However, few quality public facilities and institutions are available. Students experience difficulties in finding opportunities for environment-related voluntary jobs because few environmental NGOs are ready to welcome and work with students. Some local governments who are willing to set up the comprehensive action plan on environmental education and enterprise groups who are interested in social and environmental responsibility will be able to provide certified local NGOs, schools and education centers with budgetary support needed for developing and operating environmental education and volunteer programs. Those programs need to be equipped with problem-based, student-centered and interdisciplinary approaches focusing on

8 Secondary-level Environmental Education in Korea 88 real-world issues. That could make for a good circulation from participation of students via employment of licensed environmental leaders and development and certification of excellent environmental education programs, to upgraded request for better environmental education in schools as well as outside schools. Korean environmental education will have to accept the challenge created by the law. Significant changes in secondary schools pressured by university entrance exams could begin from outside schools. References and Further Reading Korea Forest Service, 2005, Information Collection on the Establishment of Forest Culture and Recreation Act. Korean Ministry of Education, 1991, Middle school curriculum interpretation. DaeHan Textbook Publisher. Korean Ministry of Education, 1991, High school curriculum interpretation. DaeHan Textbook Publisher. Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources, 1997, Middle school curriculum interpretation (V)-Foreign Language, Discretional Activities, Chinese, Computer, Environment, Daily Foreign Language. DaeHan Textbook Publisher. Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources, 1997, High school curriculum interpretation-15 Culture, DaeHan Textbook Publisher. Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources, 2007, Middle school curriculum. unpublished document. Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources, 2007, High school curriculum. unpublished document. Korean Ministry of Environment, 2007, Status of school environmental education. Lee, Jae Young, 2007, 30 Years Lesson from Tbilisi Conference, Korean Society for Environmental Education, Annual Seminar Proceedings the 1st Half Conference Material, Lee, Jae Young, 2007, After-participation Report on the 4th International Environmental Education Conference in India. Korean Society for Environmental Education, Annual Seminar Proceedings the 2nd Half Conference Material. Lee, Jae Young Kim, In-Ho Uhm, Seo-Ho Jean, Young-Woo Jeon, Jung-Ill Jeong, Byung-Jeon, 2005, Program Development of Green Education Center for Youth. Green Cultural Foundation Lee, Sun Kyung Lee, Jae-Young Lee, Soon- Cheol Lee, Yoo-Jin Min, Kyung-Suk Shim, Suk-Kyung, 2005, A Study on the National Strategies responding to UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, Presidential Commission on Sustainable Development, Republic of Korea.