Perceptions of Early Childhood Teachers Regarding Environmental Education in Public Sector Schools of Karachi

Abstract

Environmental education (EE) has gained significance in the past few decades due to visible aftermaths of human advancement activities and the resulting destruction. Early childhood is the most significant phase of human life when it comes to development of attitudes, behavior and personality that has long lasting effects. This is also true in the case of cultivating positive attitudes towards the environment. Environmental education in early childhood care and education (ECCE) programmes in Pakistan is an understudied area. Teachers are the key to delivering the knowledge skills and attitudes that are important to create environmental awareness through formal education. This research aimed to gain insights regarding early childhood teachers’(ECT) perceptions of environmental education and employed a quantitative method. The survey questionnaire ‘Perceptions and Attitudes of ECCE Teachers Regarding Environmental Education’ developed by Konstantinou Eleni (2023) was adapted for this research. The results revealed that the ECTs have a positive perception of environmental education, they consider it to be essential as all the items of the survey pertaining to importance resulted in above 70% agreement, however the teachers perceive that implementation of EE misses the mark, as disagreement was found to be above 50% for each item related to implementation of EE in classroom activities. Financial constraints and large size of classrooms was found to be the most crucial obstacles hindering the implementation of EE in ECCE classrooms in public sector schools of Karachi.

Keywords: Environmental education, Early childhood education, Teacher perceptions