Forest and Climate Change Education Across Foreign Language Curricula: A Teacher-Based Study
摘要
Raising pupils’ awareness regarding forest and environmental issues has become particularly significant in recent years. The need to promote new educational approaches, teaching methods, and special tools to successfully implement cross-thematic curricula and prepare climate-aware citizens has been accentuated by scientists and environmental activists from all over the world. This study aims to evaluate whether the English language textbooks in Greek primary schools support English language teachers in their effort to raise pupils’ awareness regarding forest and climate change issues. To this purpose, a questionnaire was created and addressed to 172 English language teachers employed in the Administrative Region of East Macedonia and Thrace, Greece, during the school year 2021–2022. In addition, content analysis was performed in the English language textbooks of all grades of primary school. The results revealed that English language textbooks frame climate change, forest, and environmental issues as being limited to a certain number of problems. English language teachers have very little time available to devote to forest and climate change education. What is more, they have either very little or no training at all to present these issues to their classes and expand on them successfully. Finally, English language teachers mostly use social media, news websites, television, and the radio to be informed about forest and climate change issues.