Globally, many countries are currently going through a lot of environmental problems like rapid climate changes due to the use of fossil fuel energy, and it is leading to considerable, economic ripple effects at the universal level. To solve out this ...
Globally, many countries are currently going through a lot of environmental problems like rapid climate changes due to the use of fossil fuel energy, and it is leading to considerable, economic ripple effects at the universal level. To solve out this matter, many countries are providing legal and institutional supports for the new renewable energy field with reduction of energy and improvement of energy efficiency. In Korea, the energy education has only focused on reduction of energy, but it is impossible to deal with energy demand and energy issue which are rapidly increasing today, with this educational method. That's why we have to conduct more systematical education of new renewable energy.
This study therefore intends to compare the 6th curriculum that designated the environment field as an independent class to the 2009 revised curriculum and then, to analyze how new renewable energy education in secondary schools is being implemented in the environmental curriculum in order to give implications to development of new renewable energy contents for secondary schools in the future. To examine changes in the environmental curriculum in secondary schools, first of all, purpose and content of each curriculum were compared and analyzed using analysis tools developed in this research.
When investigating changes in the environmental curriculum in secondary schools from the 6th curriculum to the 2009 revised curriculum to understand which content they include on new renewable energy, following results were derived.
Firstly, purposes of curriculums have been clarified with curriculum changes, and their contents have been subdivided in more detail. Also, interdisciplinary characteristics and relation among curriculum subjects have been stressed more than in the past.
Secondly, when analyzing new renewable energy contents in secondary schools from the 6th curriculum and to the 2009 revised curriculum, frequency of new renewable energy contents has gradually increased in both of middle and high schools. In particular, the environmental curriculum in high schools had more contents of new renewable energy than the curriculum in middle schools. Also, except for the 2007 revised curriculum for high schools, majority of curriculums didn't contain overall contents of new renewable energy. Instead, its contents were biased in the necessity mainly.
In conclusion, it was found from these results that contents of new renewable energy in the environmental curriculum of secondary schools were highly biased in some aspects only. It implies, we need to implement more systematical education by developing overall contents of new renewable energy for the curriculum developed in the future. Furthermore, analysis tools developed in this study can be used in follow-up research on analysis of new renewable energy contents, and reliability and validity of these analysis tools can be verified based on analysis results.