Browsing by Subject "immediate environment"

Aims. Sustainable development has become the most important theme in the development co-operation in the 21st century. Sustainable development is pursued by environmental education among other things. This research rose from the discussion about the meaning of environmental education in developing countries and especially the effect it might have in the environment and society. Nepal and one of its rural private schools was selected as a research object. The themes and questions of the research are: 1. Conceptions of the immediate environment of students and teachers: What does immediate environment mean according to the students and teachers? 2. Students' most important acts in the environment: What kind of effect do the students think they can have on the environment in their everyday life? 3. Teachers' opinions, experiences and methods in environmental education: What do teachers think should be taught to the students in environmental education? What are the teachers actually teaching? What kind of methods are the teachers using while teaching environmental education? Researching the conceptions of immediate environment and acts in the environment gives information about the students' and teachers' relation with the nature in their everyday life and the baseline from which environmental education will be implemented from. Teachers' opinions, experiences and methods in environmental education provide information on the current implementation of the environmental education. Methods. Ethnography was selected as a research method. Before collecting the actual data, a pre-study was conducted. The aim of the pre-study was to specify the research themes and practice the cross-cultural interview as a research method. The actual data was collected in the last week of January 2010 in Dhangadhi, Nepal. The data included twenty-two drawings and captions from the students and one group interview with the teachers. The data was analyzed with brief quantitative analysis and full analysis was done with a qualitative method called content analysis. Results and conclusions. Teachers' and student's conceptions of immediate environment differ from each other. Students saw the immediate environment from the scientific approach while the teachers thought it was more social conception. The interface was found in their own personal environment. This interface is a good baseline for environmental education. The most important acts in the environment for the students were protection towards the environment. The students saw their possibilities to have an influence in the environment through the school. A connection between the school and acting in the environment was evident. In the teachers' opinions and experiences of environmental education, environmental problems and the importance of teaching attitudes and values were found. No logic thematic entities were discovered but the teachers did use different kinds of methods in their teaching. Achieving the international aims for environmental education was very challenging in the research school because of the teachers' lack of information and skills to teach the subject. The context where the school works was also challenging.