Abstract
Environment and disaster are two important concepts that have wide implications in our daily lives. This kind of education is more important to the children for ensuring their protection. This education helps them participate in decision-making processes in different stages of their lives that will ultimately impact their future. We identify the numbers and sizes of the titles, elements, and learning outcomes related to the environment and disaster curricula used in the Secondary School (grades VI to X) in Bangladesh, and find the cross-cutting issues, gaps of the curricula, and finally, provide some suggestions. We use content analysis, focus group discussions, and interviews with key informants’ interviews for data collection. Our results show that there are a total of 115 titles on the environment and disasters in the secondary school curricula. Disaster-related titles are numerous than those related to the environment. We record 210 items of contents focus on the environment and 145 disasters. However, some overlap is noted. The highest number of contents (133) focuses on the natural environment followed by 46 on social issues and 31 on physical themes. According to the grade-wise distribution, the highest numbers of contents are found in grade IX–X followed by 62 in grade VII, then 47 in grade VI with the lowest 19 in grade VIII. The subject-wise data analysis showed that the highest 95 contents were found on Agricultural Studies followed by 65 in English For Today, 54 in Science, and 36 each in Geography and Environment and Bangladesh and Global Studies in all classes. The study found some gaps and limitations in terms of its sequence regarding the learning outcomes of the curricula. We propose that an urgent review is needed to assess the whole curricula to reconsider and rearrange as needed for fetching the sequence across the subjects and grades. Our findings are of relevance to policymakers, education specialists, education practitioners, and school teachers.
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Data availability
Data transparency is available upon request.
Notes
Tiles mean the heading of the lesson or chapter or topic of the chapter. This study categorized the titles either environment or disasters.
Elements are the characteristic part of the environment or disasters. This study mentions such characteristics under natural, physical, and social in environment and natural and manmade in disasters.
Learning outcomes are the statements that describe knowledge, abilities. values and skills that students should acquire at the end of a particular course or class. The overall learning outcomes of each textbook from grades VI to X mentions at the beginning of the textbook and also in individual chapter.
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Acknowledgements
This study was completed with the technical and financial supports by the National Academy for Educational Management (NAEM), Ministry of Education, People’s Republic of Bangladesh. The author also acknowledges to two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.
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National Academy for Educational Management (NAEM), Ministry of Education, People’s Republic of Bangladesh.
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Develop proposal, literature review, lead data collection team, data analysis, report writing, and write article.
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Islam, M.R. Environment and disaster education in the secondary school curriculum in Bangladesh. SN Soc Sci 1, 23 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-020-00025-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-020-00025-1