A Study on The Environmental Unit of Geography Curriculum - Centering in High School

지리과에서의 환경교육에 관한 연구 - 고등학교를 중심으로 -

On the border between the Geography subject and the Science subject, much of the content area is found to be interrelated or shared in common due to the characteristics of each subject. This possibly causes a problem of which of the two subjects should treat these overlapping areas with more responsibility and importance, and, as a result, might cause teachers to neglect the areas and result in insufficient treatment of the areas on both sides. In other words, these overlapping area can be overlooked on both subjects. On the other hand, as the science subject treats these areas more deeply and widely in both quantity and quality, the geography subject might lose its original content area to the science subject and accordingly lose its characteristics as an independent subject. To conclude, the following suggestions must be taken into consideration when we develop and organize the environment-related unit in the geography subject. First, the various real cases damaged by pollution, the efforts and steps to avoid being polluted, the inquiry questions and activities to set up the value of the environment conservation, and sufficient assistant materials such as maps, graphs, photos, illustrations, statistics, which will help to realize the environment problem more directly and clearly, must be presented in the textbooks. Second, as the environment education is not just teaching the environmental pollution, the content should be composed for the students to realize the value of the environment and to change their awareness and attitude toward the environment. Third, the environment education cannot be restricted to a certain subject, or it needs to be approached in multi-subject areas. To exercise a effective environment education while we maintain the unique characteristics of the geography subject, a way to link the environment and the region, which is one of the main concepts of geography, should be developed. Finally, textbooks are indispensible materials to teaching-learning, but for more effective teaching the teachers of geography should try to recompose and reorganize the content and to develop newer and more effective teaching material-aids.