Teachers’ environmental literacy and teaching – stories of three Hong Kong primary school teachers

Abstract

Environmental education has been widely promoted in Hong Kong schools since the 1990s. Teachers have a crucial role in educating students to be well-informed, environmentally aware and responsible green citizens. The environmental literacy and tendencies of teachers are seen as having far-reaching influences on the development of environmental education in Hong Kong. This paper aims to elucidate teachers’ competence in implementing environmental education in schools through their narrative dialogues regarding their engagement in classroom practice and thinking about environmental education. The teachers were selected from a pool of teacher respondents categorized according to their scores for environmental knowledge, attitude and behaviour in a territory-wide survey of Hong Kong primary school teachers. Follow-up interviews with three teachers of varying levels were conducted to explicate their personal stories, focusing on how the teachers’ knowledge–attitude–behaviour associations influence their implementation of environmental education in schools. The teachers’ experiences and perspectives behind their stories provide crucial, specific baseline information, informing the development of more relevant teacher education programmes in environmental education, and subsequently, enhancing environmental education in schools.

Keywords:

• environmental literacy
• environmental competence
• environmental education
• knowledge–attitude–behaviour associations
• challenges
• individual commitment

Notes

1. General Studies aims to integrate knowledge, skills, values and attitudes across the key learning areas of personal, social and humanities education, science education and technology education. It emphasizes student enquiry and the development of skills for learning to learn. All students learn General Studies from Primary 1 to 6. It is recommended by the government that 12%–15% of students’ learning time in school should be allocated to the learning of General Studies (Curriculum Development Council, 2011).

2. Phase I study was administered between November 2010 and April 2011. Its findings were published in Cheng and So (2011). Phase II study was conducted from April 2011 to December 2011.