Abstract

The article seeks to identify those environmental concepts which may pose a problem when being integrated into the knowledge structures of elementary school pupils. Based on the presence of these concepts in curriculum documents, especially in textbooks, of most of the primary and lower-secondary school grades, 20 were selected according to predetermined criteria. The concepts fall into the area of environmental education (EE); they appear in primary and lower-secondary school curricula; they had been consulted with both methodologists and educators; they are either among the key concepts of environmental education, or difficulties in understanding them can be anticipated; connections can be found between them. We present the assessment of these concepts as they are perceived by both beginning and experienced teachers (N = 60) of both primary and lower-secondary school levels, in terms of their difficulty for pupils and possible misconceptions. The respondents evaluated each concept on the five-level Likert scale and also
verbally. When comparing the responses of the primary and lower-secondary teachers, the number of points attributed to each individual concept was summed up, with the resulting sum characterizing the construct of the “perception of the difficulty of the concept” by an individual teacher. The reliability of the research tool was sufficient (α = 0.89). The study established that the length of the teachers’ practice only had a minor influence on the studied construct (r = 0.32, p < 0.001). The difference in the perception of the researched
concepts among the primary and lower-secondary teachers was not proven (p = 0.19). The final analysis then taxonomizes the concepts into three categories, the easily understandable, understandable and difficult to understand, and compares the results with other relevant research. The article also discusses possible reasons why the teachers might have chosen the particular concepts, and outlines other research directions related to this issue.

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of the published work (See The Effect of Open Access).