독립교과로서 환경교육의 정체성 확립을 위한 제언

What we need to do to establish the individuality of environmental education as a regular stand-alone subject in school?

In Korea almost all subjects in school teach environmental education. In such situation it is difficult that the environmental subject as a regular stand-alone subject for environmental education establishes its own individuality. In many cases it and the other subjects teach identical contents with the nearly same methods. Such redundancy could make students lose their interest in the topics that were already taught by other subject. And the environmental subject and the other subjects might compete with one another rather than cooperate. To avoid such negative effects we need to partition their roles. For example, the other subjects focus on teaching their own knowledge and skills related to environmental problems. And the environmental subject focuses on encouraging students to possess environmental attitude and to participate in environmental activities. Above all, the environmental subject needs to teach the social nature of environmental problems and the social process through which we make a decision on the problems. It should let students experience highly integrated process of environmental decision. In order to establish the individuality of the environmental subject I discussed its goals and contents. I hope that the related persons in all the subjects start to deeply discuss the partitioning of roles, with open mind, in order to effectively achieve the goal of environmental education in school.