AN ASSESSMENT OF TEACHERS ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS ON ENVIRONMENT AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS IN PUDUCHERRY AND CUDDALORE REGIONS, INDIA

Environmental education (EE) deals with the positive attitudes, behaviour and actions to conserve and protect of natural environment. The main objectives of this study were to investigate the levels of awareness and perception on environmental protection and conservation of high school teachers with various educational variables such as school type, residential background, and gender. The results revealed that the male teachers exhibited more positive attitudes towards environment than the female teachers. Teachers felt that the current teaching approach is more teacher-centered than student-centered. The teachers’ attitudes on environment significantly varied between schools location-higher for urban school teachers than that of the rural schools. A similar trend was observed with reference to type of school management- higher value with government school teachers- than that for private school teachers. Hence it is recommended that the teaching approach for environmental science subjects should include the activity based environmental educational methods with various activities, problem solving techniques, issue investigation, hands-on-experiences, field exposures and active classroom sessions. They would be more appropriate for developing student’s knowledge, attitudes, behaviours and skills to solve various environmental problems at local level. This research provides detailed guidelines for planning/implementing environmental education program at the high school level based on an in depth study on chosen schools.