Recently, it is getting accepted that education giving the first consideration to knowledge can not solve environmental problems fundamentally and that Education for Sustainable Development(ESD) has been more important which can introduce people to pa...
Recently, it is getting accepted that education giving the first consideration to knowledge can not solve environmental problems fundamentally and that Education for Sustainable Development(ESD) has been more important which can introduce people to participate in solving environmental problems and issues. In Korea, most schools teach students environmental issues not only in a basic subject but in a different subjects. Especially in mathematics, there are many contents related to the environment. Therefore, studying how to teach students environmental issues more effectively in mathematics courses can be meaningful for ESD. The goal of this study is to develop an infusing program of mathematics education and environmental education at first, and then promoting students' creative problem solving abilities and desirable sense of values on the environment through project learning. To carry out the goals, first, an infusing program should be developed which can put math education and environment education together. Next, a teaching plan of topic-centered project learning class with the infusing program should be developed and performed. Finally, analyses on students' creative problem solving abilities and environmental values system should be performed after the topic-centered project learning class.
For this study, two 8th-grade classes were selected first. Also, theoretical bases of the infusing program was founded on document researches. The developed program was adapted to the project learning class. Then, the project learning class was compared with the former non-project learning one to find out the change of students' creative learning abilities and environmental values system. The results of this study are these;
First, some units which contain environmental factors were discovered in math courses and used to develop an infusing programs for environmental topics.
Second, according to the school's circumstances and the students' intellectual levels and characteristics, a project learning model for ESD was developed and then adapted to math classes.
Third, the analyses of creative problem solving abilities shows that the two groups achieved better grades after the experimental classes. This means that the infusing program worked in improving students' creative problem solving abilities.
Besides, the change of students' environmental values system was also analyzed. In this analysis, the two groups was turned out to be improved and the experimental group was better than the comparative group at 5% of significance level. It suggests that the infusing program can work in developing students' environmental values system as well as creative problem solving abilities and that the topic-centered project learning can help students build desirable point of view on the environment.
The results of this study can be concluded as followings.
First, it became clear that the infusing program helped students to improve creative problem solving abilities and to develop positive environmental values system without damaging the objectives and the essence of mathematics education.
Second, topic-centered project learning classes using the infusing program of environment and mathematics are proved to be more effective than knowledge-centered learning classes to help students to develop their own environmental awareness and willingness.
Third, topic-centered project learning suggested the direction which ESD should head for.
This study shows that the infusing program and topic-centered project learning made a valuable contribution to developing students' creative problem solving abilities and environmental awareness. However, to get some meaningful effects in widespread areas, teaching-learning activities and new teaching methods which are making use of ESD based on project learning are to be done. In addition, infusing programs and project learning must be studied much more systematically.