A CONTENT-ANALYSIS VARIOUS ASPECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN PRESENT IN NCERT SCIENCE TEXTBOOK OF CLASS VIII

Abstract

Education is to be seen as a transformative social practice and it links the school practice to the world. In this regard, the school textbooks have been useful resources for communicating environmental issues by the environmentalism. There has been a large number of global issues, environmental and ecological issues. Theses environmental consequences caused by massive industrialization and urbanisation have become a important issue. Hence , more effective and higher quality environmental education is one of the agenda to promote ecological awareness and desirable actions among students. Moreover, the environmental issues have been included in the curriculum as well as in text books. Some of the environmental issues are in interdisciplinary manner. This study looks at the environmental education in the context of secondary education and attempts to explore how environmental issues are represented within NCERT text book. Environmental education has now become an inseparable part of the school curriculum. Various aspects related with environment are so wide that it is not possible to limit them in the boundaries of a single subject. Moreover keeping in view the burden of syllabus on school children it is essential to impart environmental education through different subject areas. Emphasis on infusion model of environmental education in the school curriculum has brought the necessity for the content analysis of the textbook, so that various aspects of environmental concerns could be incorporated in different subject areas. Science is very closely related to environmental issues. Thus, content analysis of science textbook with respect to ten formulated categories of environmental concern helps in the identification of potentiality of this subject for the inclusion of environmental aspects in the form of content, tables, figures and activities. The content analysis included the different aspects like type of subjects, units devoted to environmental issues, number of activities encouraging participation in percentages and types of participation. This study method was conducted and found that these text book functions as to raise awareness of environmental issues rather than encourage real active participation and transformational practices.