KAZAKHSTANI TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS EMBEDDING GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION INTO THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM

Abstract

Environmental education has become widely a part of the school curriculum with the purpose of raising the environmental awareness of students about environmental concerns since the 1970s. Having teachers with positive attitudes toward embedding global environmental education into the school curriculum is crucial since teachers’ perceptions and motivations might influence the quality and frequency of teaching global environmental education during classes. Despite this topic being largely investigated around the world, in the Kazakhstani context, there is a scarcity of research on teachers’ attitudes towards the integration of global environmental education at schools. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the attitudes of secondary school teachers toward environment-subject integrated classes, to understand teachers’ beliefs and challenges in embedding global environmental knowledge into the curriculum. A qualitative phenomenology research design employing semi-structured interviews was applied for this research. Ten secondary school teachers from one private school in Kazakhstan participated in this research. The findings revealed that participants had positive attitudes toward environment-subject integrated classes at school by valuing such integrated classes as a beneficial teaching approach for raising students’ global environmental awareness and supporting such practices. However, participants encountered challenges during the integration of global environmental education into the school curriculum because of their low mastery of environmental expertise, lack of time for preparation, curriculum overload, lack of teaching guidance and materials, and other reasons. Based on the results of this study, it was concluded that teachers’ positive attitudes toward environment-subject integrated classes might not be indicative of their commitment to actively delivering environment-integrated classes in their own classes.In addition to that, providing specific training courses on the possibility of integrating global environmental knowledge into topics suggested by the school curriculum and extending their understanding of the concept of global environmental education might be a considerable contribution to raising the level of students’ environmental literacy. Ultimately, this study suggests conducting a further content analysis of school curriculum at all school levels and research on the attitudes and contribution of government representatives and school leadership to the development of global environmental literacy of school students.