Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine teachers’ awareness of chemical waste produced in elementary school laboratory experimentation and how this awareness relates to collection and disposal of chemical waste. More specifically, the study looked at the correlation between the handling of chemical waste and factors such as years of teachers’ educational career, class size and amount of waste produced. The target population were 250 elementary school teachers in Gyeongnam area and 237 subjects were responded. Among the 237 responses, 37 cases that did not complete the questionnaire were eliminated. Therefore, 200 responses were analyzed in this study. The survey questionnaire consisted of 15 questions. The categories of the questionnaire were their skills of management and treatment of the chemical waste. The data collected were analyzed by SPSS 10.0, and the relations among variables such as class sizes and years of teaching experience were also analyzed by $x^2-test.$ The results in this study were as follows: First, there were no significant differences between the years of teaching and class sizes in the training experience of chemical waste disposal. Second, there was a significant difference between the science laboratory size and class sizes in the laboratory actual condition. In addition, in the relations between the number of times of experimentation and the years of teaching experience, there was a significant difference. Third, in terms of the discharge amount of chemical waste, there was a significant difference between the years of teaching and class sizes. Fourth, in the simple chemistry waste disposal process in the science laboratory, there also was a significant difference between the kinds of experimental equipments that used in the experimentation and the years of teaching. Based on this study, it was found that great amount of the chemical wastes produced in the science laboratory dumped into the drain and the treatment process of chemical waste was also inattentive. Even the importance of environmental education is emphasized in the elementary education, the basic problems occurred in the science laboratory is disregarded. Therefore, not only students but teachers have to pay attention to the disposal process of chemical waste in the laboratory in order to prevent environment pollution. Furthermore, the efforts of preventing environment pollution are needed such as opening the teacher training course about environment education, minimal use of chemicals, treatment of chemical waste, and so forth.
