An Analysis for the status of Environmental Education in the light of the Ecological Knowledge in Korea

생태학적 지식과 관련된 우리나라 환경교육의 실태 분석

Environmentally literated students and adults should be able to use and apply the basic ecological concepts when considering environmental problems and issues. Because ecology forms the foundation of environmental education, a review of the literatures on the degree of students' understanding for ecological concepts can provide useful insights for environmental educators. The purposes of this study were as follows: first, to analyse the parts connected with ecological knowledge of two environmental education books, ‘environments’(middle school) and ‘environmental science’(high school), second, to investigate the level of understanding on ecological concepts by the use of new developed instrument. The 20 most important ecological concepts from Cherrett(1989) and the important ecological concepts' lists from Hungerford and Volk(1990), Ramsey, Hungerford and Volk(1992), Volk(1993) would be recognized and endorsed by most environmental educators as concepts essential to environmental literacy, We referenced these informations and sequenced ecological knowledge as four main categories(communities, populations, ecosystem, man as a component of the nature systems). We have used it as a criterion in the analysis of teaching materials and the development of a new test instrument($\alpha$=0.81). According to the analysed results, the understanding levels for scales and relationships of communities, populations, ecosystem were high but those for individual concepts and differences were low. By the analysis of Korean High School EE book, ‘environmental science’, learning for some concepts(succession, material cycling, niche etc.) has pointed out as one of problems. Environmental educators must pay a careful attention to the concepts that showed high rates of incorrect answer and this work will contribute toward consolidating the basis of EE and help the accomplishment of the ultimate goals in EE.