Preschool Education Professionals as Mediators of Environmental Health Education

Author(s):

Abigail López-Alcarria(presenting / submitting)Jose Gutierrez-Perez María de Fátima Poza Vilches

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

30 SES 05 A, Pre-School and Place Responsive Contacts

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-03

11:00-12:30

Room:

B119 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Elsa Lee

Contribution

According to the World Health Organization, environmental health is a discipline which comprises those aspects of human health, including quality of life and social welfare, which are determined by physical environment factors as well as chemical, biological, social and psycho-social factors. Hence the need for educating citizens from an early age in pro-environmental values which stand for respect and conservation of their surrounding environment. This allows for prevention of both short and long term problems of current and future generations. Environmental Education (EE) is an optimal way to integrate environmental health in the education system.

We are facing and environmental crisis which lays out the necessity of including new proposals from early stages of education which help the students to create positive attitudes to the environment. There comes into play EE as an instrument to integrate novel contents which are demanded by the new society. There exists a wide-ranging discussion in our society on how to integrate new and not merely academic contents in the curriculum (Gutiérrez, 2011). In short, the main goal is to complete the training process including abstract concepts related to ethics, social skills, values, etc. EE is taking off and is currently being incorporated to the education system through experiences, which are conveyed by aware education professionals to the students by means of activities and programs oriented to the respect and care of the environment. EE is a process which takes place in parallel to the permanent training of every citizen. Therefore, Preschool Education (PE) should be considered as a key development stage to approach the students to a global conception of the environment as a system of multiple relations. This will permit the clarification of values and the development of attitudes which allow them adopt a critical and participative position regarding the issues related to conservation and exploitation of natural resources (Cano, 1992). EE enriches and provides new meanings to the education of young students. Moreover, it helps them on how to learn to feel and interpret the environment in which they are immersed in order to be able to act in it, so when they grow and move forward in the education system they can acquire a more globalized vision of the world they live in.

One of the main goals of any education system if to prepare new generations to face systems of norms and values which are considered essential in each moment by the society, and which are worth to be transmitted to the youngest citizens. The Spanish Organic Education Law from the 4th of May 2006 (LOE, 2006), states that PE has the purpose to contribute to the physical, affective, social and intellectual development of children. The development of their affective abilities through the observation and exploration of the family and the natural and social environments is also considered an objective of this stage. Moreover, it stands for the progressive acquisition of elementary coexistence and social relations guidelines as well as for the practice of pacific conflict resolution.

This work is in the context of a training course for PE professionals from municipal schools in Granada which aimed to raise the awareness of the participants in EE and pro-environmental issues. In addition, another objective was to provide them with basic knowledge and ideas which can be applied in their daily practice with their students. At the beginning of the course we enquired the degree of familiarity of the participants with EE and their predisposition to include it in their daily practice. Along this text, we show the perceptions of PE professionals with respect to EE as well as their willingness to include it in their curriculum.

Method

Our research is based on a descriptive study since it is a preliminary approach to the reality which may open doors to future research about the professional needs of PE. We chose an interview study for this approach. This type of research is widely used within the education field because it is very useful to describe and predict educational phenomena and it is very efficient to obtain a first approximation to reality (Bisquerra, 2009). In our case, the chosen population is composed of the participants of the EE training symposium, who are all PE teachers. The chosen sample is composed of 15 teachers from different municipal schools in Granada and its province. The components of this sample have an average professional experience of 13.4±11.2 years. 93.3% of them are women and 6.66% are men. The employed sampling is intentionally non-probabilistic since we chose the individuals we estimated representative of the whole population. Regarding the information gathering tool, we opted to elaborate a survey composed of a set of questions which may provide us with information about their professional experience and daily practice. All questions were of the triple-answer kind. In order to extract more information about their perception of the importance of EE in early stages, we also elaborated a value scale. The value scale depicted 15 statements related to EE and PE and the participants had to choose between 1 (strongly disagree) and 5 (strongly agree). Statistical analysis through boxplots was also carried out to ease the inference of conclusions from the obtained results.

Expected Outcomes

The survey revealed the lack of contact of teachers with EE in their daily practice. More specifically, 40% of them had no experience at all, 46.6% had some experience, and only 13.3% of them were highly experienced. Regarding the inclusion of EE topics in the activities carried out at classrooms results show that, in spite of the acknowledged low experience in EE, it has been included in some occasions in the curriculum. Participants do also consider that when carried out, EE activities had a positive reflection in the change of attitude of the students towards the environment. Moreover interviewed subjects state that they have occasionally (60%) or assiduously (40%) incorporated different members of the community in the planned activities. Results also denote their acknowledgement of the importance of the inclusion of EE in the curriculum. All the interviewed participants show high expectations about the degree of influence that the symposium will have in their daily practice. 66.6% of them think they will considerably modify it while 33.3% will introduce slight changes. The value scale revealed a generalized heterogeneity in most answers. As an example when assessing the difficulty of the inclusion of EE in PE many consider this task to be very complicated while others consider it easy. However, answers are more homogeneous when recognizing the high importance of including EE topics in early education stages. Interviewees agree with the fact that direct contact with nature supposes the best way to address these topics with young students. Family environment is another important influence factor in the environmental behavior of students. Answers show an absolute disparity when assessing the possibilities of action at the school in the event of families not being aware of environment.

References

Bisquerra, R. 2009. Metodología de la investigación educativa. Madrid: La Muralla. Burgos, O. 2011. Evaluación de la calidad de los establecimientos certificados ambientalmente en Bio Bio (Chile) en comparación con Granada (España). PhD. Thesis, Universidad de Granada, Spain. Burgos, O., Perales, F.J., & Gutiérrez, J. 2010. “Evaluación de la calidad de los establecimientos educativos incorporados al sistema nacional de certificación ambiental de la provincia de Bio Bio (chile)”. Profesorado: Revista de curriculum y formación del profesorado 14 (2). Retrieved from http://goo.gl/hScU1 Accessed January 29, 2014. Burgos, O., Gutiérrez, J. & Perales, F.J. 2012. “Evaluación de la calidad de ecoescuelas. Un estudio comparado entre Chile y España”. Interciencia 37 (5):340-349. Retrieved from http://goo.gl/eaNsm. Accessed January 29, 2014. Cano Martínez, M.I. 1992. Orientaciones didácticas para la EA en EI. Programa ALDEA. Sevilla: Conserjería de Educación y Ciencia, Conserjería de Cultura y Medio Ambienta y Agencia de Medio Ambiente de la Junta de Andalucía. Gutiérrez Pérez, J. (2011). La Educación Ambiental. Fundamentos teóricos, propuestas de transversalidad y orientaciones extracurriculares. Madrid: La Muralla. Ley Orgánica de Educación http://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2006/05/04/pdfs/A17158-17207.pdf, Accessed January 29, 2014. World Health Organization http://www.who.int/topics/environmental_health/es/

Author Information

Abigail López-Alcarria (presenting / submitting)

Universidad de Granada

Departamento de Métodos de Investigación y Diagnóstico en Educación

Granada

Jose Gutierrez-Perez

University of Granada

Educational Methodology Research

GRANADA

María de Fátima Poza Vilches

UNIVERSITY OF GRANADA. FACULTY CIENCES OF EDUCATION

DEPARTMENT OF RESEARCH AND DIAGNOSTIC METHODS IN EDUCATION