People’s Republic of China
Education for Sustainable Development in Primary and Middle School in China
Professor Wang Hongqi
School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875
Abstract: Education for sustainable development (hereinafter ESD) in primary and middle school in China has been developing from social advocacy activities to normal lessons in classes, forming a sustainable developing educational system combining thematic education and permeating education. ESD has been carried out in other subjects by supplementing with relative contents and ideas on environments. Along with the deepening of the 8th national curriculum reform cause, the Ministry of Education promulgated and implemented the Syllabus of thematic education for Sustainable Development in Primary and Middle school and Guidebook for Implementing Sustainable Education in Primary and Middle School in 2003. At present, the thematic education for sustainable development has been carried out widely and successfully in primary and middle school. The Thematic ESD, combined with research-based learning practices, are organized effectively in classroom according to the so-called principle “ spiraling up on the main theme, two dimensions and four phases”.
Keywords: China ESD Thematic Education for sustainable development
In modern China, due to the deterioration of natural environment and increasingly severity of development issues,people pay more attention to education for sustainable development. In 1996, the National Bureau for Environment Protection, the Central Bureau for Publicity and the Ministry of Education collaboratively issued an important document named “The Guideline for Advocating Education for Sustainable Development in China”. From then on, the ESD is carried out widely throughout the country just like “the growth of bamboo shoots after spring rain”. What needs to be mentioned here particularly, is that the ESD was called Environmental Education at very beginning and the target was just to protect our natural environment and make people live better. Thanks to the exchanges and communication with other countries, the concept of “Environmental Education” (EE) was gradually replaced by “Sustainable Development Education” to include more contents and ideas with a view to promoting harmonious development between the human kind and the nature.
In 2003, the 10th National People’s Congress put forward the Strategies of Sustainable Development and Rejuvenating the Nation With Science and Education. In the same year, the Ministry of Education launched theSyllabus of Thematic Education for Sustainable Development in Primary and Middle school and the Guidebook for Implementing Sustainable Education in Primary and Middle School to promote ESD in the formal education system.
So far, China has founded a dozen ESD centers in 12 teachers universities in order to help carry out the “Green SchoolProgram” in primary and middle schools. So far, about 16,933 “Green Schools” have been established in our country, which lay a solid foundation of sustainable education in the future. These institutions deserve special honors for their excellent performance in promote ESD. What is more, the program also inspired a lot of Publishers to publish a series of creative reading materials for ESD.
In China, education for sustainable development in primary and middle school plays an important role in citizenship education. Especially, the ESD has started and grown with the development of environmental protection. For the last two decades, ESD in primary and middle school has been evolving from non-formal advocacy activities to classroom as an important part of formal education, which would be delivered in the thematic ESD lessons or in other subjects combining ESD content.
1. Development of ESD in primary and middle school
In China, ESD started in late 1970’s in primary and middle school, and has lasted about 20 years so far. The development of ESD could be divided into four stages:
(1) Starting period (1973-1983): At first, ESD was defined as Environmental Education (EE). The 1st National Conference on Environmental Protection was held in 1973, where the official document entitled “Decisions on Protecting and Improving Environment” was released. EE has been started after the conference. In 1981, the State Council stipulated,“Knowledge on environmental science should be popularized in primary and middle schools”. Then the content of environmental protection education was included in the national syllabus and curriculum.
(2) Developing period (1983-1992): the government announced that environmental protection is a cardinal national policy in China in the Second National Conference on Environmental Protection in the year 1983. In this period, EE has been expanded from some experimental schools to many primary and middle schools countrywide. The objective of EE became clearer. The environmental content have been integrated into related subjects and many reading materials on EE were published for optional use.
(3) Reorientation period (1992-1997): In 1992, the former State Education Commission has promulgated the National Curriculum Plan for 9 Years’ Compulsory Education for Primary and Middle school. The content of EE was widely expanded from knowledge on environment and nature, technology to solve environmental problems etc. to the harmonious interaction between environment and social development, the concept of sustainable development and effective participation of people in environment protection. At that time, the concept of ESD was getting popular.
(4) New period (1997- ): Initiation of the National Green Education Program in primary and middle school has changed ESD from social advocacy activities to formal lessons in classrooms. in primary and middle schools
2. Status quo of ESD in primary and middle school in China
ESD is conducted in three approaches in primary and middle school as follows:
The first approach is thematic ESD lessons in classroom, the second is other subjects in classroom incorporating ESD content, and the third is the extra curricula activities around the topic of ESD. According to a study report on ESD in primary and middle school, there are 71.2% primary and middle schools bringing ESD into their teaching plan in 1994. 21% of these schools included the thematic ESD in their curriculum. By contrast, the second approach mentioned above is the most popular vehicle for ESD. Accoording to their survey, ESD was mainly delivered in subjects of Nature (60.8%), Geography (23.8%) and Moral/Social Study (13.8%) in primary, while in subjects of Geography (66.2%), Biology (18.8%) and Chemistry (10.2%) in middle schools(Fig 1 and Fig 2). In addition, 86.8% of total schools have developed environment education activities after school.
Taking middle schools in Beijing as an example, research shows that at present ESD is delivered by combining with other subjects. Though most of the teachers immerse the content of ESD into their subjects in accordance with the requirement of syllabus, most teachers only did a little (Fig 3).
For the past dozens of years, ESD in China have been integrated with other subjects by immersing the ESD contents into other subject matters. And this is the dominating model for ESD. Based on the model, the thematic ESD lessons have been gradually developed specially for ESD as a whole. At present, the thematic ESD lesson plays a supplementary role in ESD. At the same time, in order to improve the teaching effects, interactive and research teaching methods are also well received by teachers and researchers.
Fig 4 education system for sustainable development in primary and middle school
3. Implementation of Thematic education for sustainable development in primary and middle school in China
3.1 Curriculum Orientation of Thematic education for sustainable development in primary and middle school in China
Thematic education for sustainable development has the character of being an independent course. Based on the permeating education, students are supposed to synthesize all their experiences and achieve the comprehensive understanding of humankind, society and environment. Moreover, they are supposed to consider deeply the relationship and interaction of environmental factors. Through Thematic education for sustainable development, we can help students enjoy and love nature, pay attention to the environmental problems concerning family, community, country and the world, understand the relationship between people, society and nature, and finally obtain the necessary knowledge and skills to live harmoniously with nature.
3.2 Design of Thematic education for sustainable development in primary and middle school
To embody the characteristic of Thematic education for sustainable development, we design the syllabus according to the so-called principle“spiraling up on the main theme, two dimensions and four phases” (Fig 5), which could be elaborated in details as follows:
Fig 5 Designing sketch map of Thematic education for sustainable development synopsis
(1) “The main theme” refers to the sustainable development. The ESD will particularly emphasizes the balance between the environment, society and economy in social development. In the teaching process, responsibility of the human kind would be a focus for protecting the natural environment. And students are guided to realize and analyze the environmental problems comprehensively and synthetically, and at last to form the idea of sustainable development in their mind.
(2) “Two dimensions”: One dimension is the learning activities with environment as the objective of learning; the other is the cultivation of students’ habits and attitudes on ESD.
The Dimension No.1 mainly focused on the content of ESD, i.e. understanding the origin, the process and the future trouble of some strains of sustainable development. The content is arranged according to the cognitive developing law, that is, from the near to the far, from the environment nearby to community, region and even global environment problems. The specific perception will develop to comprehensive understanding of environment and exploration of cause of effect relationship, and that will be the foundation for pondering on how to solve the environment problems.
The Dimension No.2 is about the cultivation of behavior, attitude and values concerning the environment. The arrangement of the teaching content reflects the laws of the forming and developing of behavior and attitude. It began with the practice of environmental protection that help establish habits of friendly behavior toward environment. Then, evaluation of our own behavior and the behavior of others’ are made so that students can independently choose the ways of behavior friendly to environment. Furthermore, students can reflect on the restricting factors and understand the significance of people’s participation in environmental protection and sustainable development, thus to form the sense of social responsibility for the whole environment.
(3) From primary school to Grade 11, the teaching content would be organized into four phases, and in each phase there will be four learning hours on average. The first phase is from Grade One to Grade Three in primary school and there will be 12 hours in all. The second phase is from Grade Four to Six and also 12 hours in all. The third phase is from Grade 7 to Grade 9, 12 hours in all. The fourth phase is from Grade 10 to 11 in senior middle school , 8 hours in all.
(4) Content belonging to the same dimension could reappear in different phases, but would be more difficult gradually and spirally. A step-by-step model could vividly show that students in different age group could deepen the knowledge and ideas on ESD continuously (chart 6). At first, students know little about sustainability. But after study and exercises, the knowledge volume gained at each phase will increase remarkably and there will be a great leap in the final. In chart 6, the height of the taper represents the depth of knowledge and cognition, and the bottom area indicates the extension of knowledge. The model shows that the accumulation of knowledge in each phase is based on the that of the previous phase. At the same time, horizon of the students will be broadened phase by phase, and their emotion and consciousness will be enriched also. In one sentence, it shows the development idea that along with the augmentation of the taper’s volume from nearness to farness, knowledge, attitudes and values of students are also accumulated and developed step by step.
(5) Design of the four phases could be explained as follows:
The first phase: Observation of students on various environmental phenomena and problems is superficial and there are no deep knowledge and consideration, and thus a punctuation mark of full stop “。” is use to indicate this stage..
The second phase: after a period of learning students will have strong sensation for good or bad phenomena and elementary skills for judgment, an exclamation mark“！”is used to indicate this phase.
The third phase: Students have rational thinking for environment phenomena and problems and would like to enter and know society with questions, a question mark“？”represent this phase.
The fourth phase: In this phase, students will gain the desire and ability to explore the infinite potential of sustainable development, the mark of dots“……”indicate this phase.
Fig 6 Step-by-step model for ESD in primary and middle school
3.3 Teaching Objective and Content in the four phases of Thematic education for sustainable development
According to children’s cognitive development and the step-by-step model, we divide the course of Thematic education for sustainable development into four phases: the first phase is from grade one to three in primary school, the second is from grade four to six in primary school, the third phase is the junior middle school, and the fourth phase is the senior middle school. Each phase has a different theme suitable for the student’s age and ability. Through the study of the different themes, students learn to care for the living environment, master the life skills to live harmoniously with nature and choose the lifestyle which is helpful for the sustainability..
1.The first phase Age: 7~10 years old
Orientation: Children of 7~10 years old are full of curiosity with all kinds of phenomena. They always learn through intuition because of the limitation of cognitive and understanding ability. So direct observation and perception are the main methods of learning for this age group and they accords with children’s feature of image thinking.
Teaching objectives: Students get close to, appreciate and cherish the nature; notice the developing problems nearby; think about the relationship between daily life and the environment and then accept simple behavior criterion of sustainable development.
Knowledge Points: get to know common environmental phenomena and problems nearby and realize basic developing factors.
Emotion and Attitude: Approach, appreciate and cherish the nature and enjoy the beauty of nature while feel disagreeable for the bad environment.
Process and Ability: get to know things from multiple perspectives and have the ability to observe and express the differences and changes of the environment.
2. The second phase Age: 10~13 years old
Orientation: Students from Grade Four to Six will have certain knowledge storage and wider world view. They have gained primary skills of judging and evaluating. Although the recognition of complicated things is still superficial and obscure, their cognitive development is toward the rational direction. So recognition and imagination are the necessary approaches to strengthen the understanding of what is sustainability. It accords with children’s more mature thinking.
Teaching Objectives: Understand the definition of sustainable development and probe those problems of the community; apperceive the relationship between nature and people.
Knowledge Points: Know the basic factors of the community environment; understand the characteristics of local environment; recognize the existing environment problems and the relationship between people’ lives and environment changes.
Emotion and Attitude: Taste the harmony of the nature; analyze the direct or indirect affection of their and other’s unfriendly behavior to the environment; foster a sense of responsibility for the environment nearby.
Process and Ability: Have the ability to judge and evaluate people’s behaviors; can raise questions about environmental problems.
3. The third phase Age: 13~16 years old
Orientation: Students of 13~16 years old will have accomplished the elementary education and entered junior middle school. In this period, their cognitive feature and mental structure will have great changes accompanying with the birth of radiation thinking and ability of exploration. They will be concerned at the environment with thoughtful thinking and will understand the close relationship between environment and people. Their outlook will be wider and more comprehensive. In a word, deep concerning and thinking are characteristic of this age group.
Teaching Objectives: Understand the main problems in sustainable development and their probable aftermath for some region and the entire world; consider the relationship between environment and society’s development; understand that man must choose the way of sustainable development; choose the friendly behavior towards environment on their own will.
Knowledge basics: Understand the origin, process and aftermath of all kinds of environmental problems; critically consider the regional and global environmental problems; know the interrelationship and interaction between people and environment and the necessity of choosing the way of sustainable development.
Emotion and Attitude: Consider the influence of our daily consumption activity; realize that to cherish the environment is to cherish ourselves; choose the lifestyle friendly to environment.
Process and Ability: Take explorative thinking on environmental problems; have the ability to collect, organize and verify information on the basis of observation and assumption; give evaluation and orientation on people’ activity.