A Study of the Ecological Paradigm of Elementary School’s Teachers in Keelung City

• Main Authors: Chang Chien,H.C., 張簡秀金
• Other Authors: Lwo,L.S.Laurence
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/34238148915758822385

碩士 === 國立臺灣海洋大學 === 教育研究所 === 96 === As the ecological crisis continues, such as global warming and ozone depletion, there has been a call from many environmentalists for a change in people’s basic values, principles, and attitudes toward nature. Teachers are relatively accessible, active and influential to the worldview of public, especially to the next generation. The purpose of this research is to investigate the elementary school teachers' ecological worldview by the Dunlap et. al. (2000) revised New Ecological Paradigm(NEP) scale and 9-item local environmental issues, made by the authors, questionnaire. 303 teachers were drawn from schools in Keelung, Taiwan as the subjects. The conclusions are as followed: 1. A few teachers in Keelung have taken courses about environment but most of them have participated conferences about environment. Very few teachers have jointed the environmental groups or participated environmental activities. 2. Most of teachers’ worldviews recognize the NEP. The total Pro-NEP mean is 77.05. The highest 3 pro-environment items are 7, 11, and 9. The lowest 3 items are 14, 4, and 6. 3. In some of 5 facets of the NEP scale, there is significant difference in educational degree, taking environmental course, participating environmental conference, jointing environmental group, and participating environmental activities. There is no significant difference between teachers’ gender, among religious beliefs, among 5 age levels, among college majors. 4. Totally, over 90 % teachers concern the environmental issues and have talked about environmental issues in their classroom. Their main environmental information comes from TV programs, newspapers, and computer network. 5. Teachers consider that the 3 most serious problems which need our efforts to solve in Taiwan are air pollution, water pollution, and shortage of resources. Over half of teacher disagrees to construct the highway between Yu-lan and Hua-lien. But there are near 1/3 teachers standing their neutral position in economic and environment dilemma problems. 6. There are 66% teachers unsatisfied and strongly unsatisfied the quality of everyday lives in Taiwan. 7. Teachers agree that they care about the protection of endanger animals (70.6%) and strongly agree by 24.4%. Most of them agree if people know the whale sharks are protected animals, it may affect the behavior of eating the whale shark. 8. Those scored high in NEP are also significantly high in local environmental concern. The higher scores express higher degree of concern in environmental issues; they object to construct Yu-lan and Hua-lien highway; and they often talk about environmental issues in their classroom. However, the scores in NEP have no difference with the satisfaction of the living environment. Finally, some suggestions based on the findings are provided for the policy- makers in educational school settings and environmental protection agencies.