Improving secondary education student's knowledge and skills for enviromental education programas in Greece

Abstract

Greek Ministry of Education, through Locals Administration’s of Secondary School Education, suggests to teachers to implement environmental programs during each school year. Geography plays a leading role in developing the objectives of environmental education. Through geography lessons, applications and tools, pupils must learn about the major environmental and developmental problems (e.g. climatic change, deforestation, land degradation and desertification, depletion of natural resources, loss biodiversity, overpopulation, food security, drought, poverty, and urban decay) through issue-based learning. They must be given opportunities to explore how these issues relate to their everyday lives and how they impact on the quality of the physical and social environment. Teachers must promote a holistic outlook, through promoting a multidimensional (e.g. social, political, historical, cultural, aesthetic) study of environment problems on a variety of scales. Environmental education enables students to understand how people modify, respond to, and conserve their environment. However, environmental education through geography is somewhat difficult for teachers. The purpose of this paper is to suggest and propose new, modern and up to date applications and tools, as for example geographic information systems and remote sensing applications in order to improve students knowledge and skills on environmental education issues.