Teachers’ awareness and readiness towards disaster education in schools

Disaster education involves teaching students how to prepare for potential disasters in the future by promoting resilience and ensuring safety for everyone. Schools play a pivotal role in equipping students with the knowledge and skills needed to reduce risks and build adaptive capacities. Teachers, being close to the students, help schools in achieving this goal. This requires them to possess a sound understanding of disaster concepts and be prepared to teach them in the classroom. Therefore, this study aimed to assess teachers’ awareness of disaster-related concepts and the influence of gender, subject specialization, and training; their readiness for classroom transaction; and their suggestions for curriculum incorporation. The purposive sampling method was used to collect data from 108 school teachers through a questionnaire and 10 school teachers through an interview schedule. Findings revealed that while teachers demonstrated a strong readiness and willingness to teach disaster education, this was undermined by an average awareness level and a lack of institutional support. Furthermore, gender, prior training, or subject specialization did not significantly influence this awareness level. Teachers identified a lack of resources and effective training as key barriers and suggested an integrated, activity-based curriculum as the preferred solution. The study concluded that for disaster education to succeed, educational policies must mandate its inclusion in the teacher training programs to actively build teachers’ capacity for classroom transaction.