Enhancing environmental awareness of schoolchildren

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: By Sunila Bhalla Mehan

Emergence of environmental education as a compulsory subject at school level is a welcome development. India can protect and restore environmental and natural resources by spreading awareness on such issues among its citizens. Teaching of environmental education can be an important vehicle.

We have to create awareness about the environment and an attitude of caring and sharing of natural resources in the minds of those children who are the future citizen of our nation. The importance of sensitising students on environmental issues has led the Supreme Court to deliver a judgment on 18th December 2003 and direct NCERT to prepare a model syllabus for environmental education for different classes, which has been prepared under the title ‘Environmental Education in Schools, June 2004’. From the academic session 2004- 2005, environment education has been introduced as a compulsory subject at all levels in the school curriculum.

Models of teaching: All these models are specific objective oriented. The work of Bruce Joyce & Marsha Weil (1972) has transformed different theories into different models of teaching, which can be easily used by teachers for classroom teaching in schools. These models are based on dependable theories of teaching established only during last decade.

Generally, a model of teaching consists of six elements termed as fundamental elements, namely focus, syntax principle of reaction, social system, support system and evaluation system. At present there exists a variety of models of teaching, which are based on theories of learning and teaching developed in various fields. These models have been labeled under four families by Marsha Weil and Bruce Joyce (1985) on the basis of chief emphasis on each model. In each family there is a group of models.