How to combine student science education with modern environmental education?

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How to combine student science education with modern environmental education?

Andrii Chepok, Natalia Yevtushenko

Abstract

This work is devoted to current problems of modern education: the formation and development of scientific thinking of the individual from the school age and the improvement of environmental education of students both of high school and older ones, since the authors do believe that these issues are interrelated. In this paper, some issues of students' scientific education are considered from the standpoint of strengthening the science intensity of the proposed educational content. The authors, being in the systems of secondary and higher schools and based on their own professional experience, found their way to improve the level of scientific education of students by involving them in educational environmental/bionic research works in the form of IT projects. The students' work on such a project implies the main stages of modern researching - from mathematical modeling of a selected natural phenomenon to mathematical processing of the corresponding computer experiment results and their interpretation. The organization of training- and-research activities of high school students and working on such researches have several positive outcomes, one of which is not only the improvement of knowledge in the Natural sciences, but also other positive aspects related to certain types of human thinking - critical, algorithmic, logical and creative ones. The authors believe that significant success in conducting student research can be achieved by working with “ordinary-and-average" but motivated students. The authors prove with their practical experience that it is possible to identify and educate young people with qualities (maybe with talents!) of researchers in time. The paper also points an important question about the contents of modern education at the secondary school and higher levels.

Keywords: natural science, scientific education, environmental education, non-formal education, student's motivation, motivation for educational achievements, student-and-teacher interaction.

Чепок Андрій, Евтушенко Наталя. Як поєднати наукову освіту учнів із сучасною екологічною освітою?

Стаття присвячена актуальним проблемам сучасної освіти: формуванню й розвитку наукового мислення особистості зі шкільного віку та вдосконаленню природничої освіти (зокрема, екологічної) учнів основної та профільної школи, а також студентів. У цій роботі деякі питання освіти студентів розглядаються з позицій посилення наукової інтенсивності запропонованого змісту навчання. Автори, працюючи в закладах загальної середньої та вищої освіти і спираючись на власний професійний досвід, знайшли свій шлях до підвищення рівня наукової освіти школярів та студентів шляхом залучення їх до освітніх екологічних/біонічних дослідницьких робіт у формі ІТ-проєктів. Робота учнів / студентів над такими навчально-дослідницькими проєктами передбачає реалізацію основних етапів сучасного дослідження - від математичного моделювання обраного природного явища до належної статистичної обробки відповідних результатів комп'ютерного експерименту та їх інтерпретації. Організація навчально-дослідницької діяльності старшокласників та робота над такими дослідженнями мають низку позитивних результатів, один з яких - це не лише вдосконалення знань з природничих наук, а й інші позитивні сторони, пов'язані з певними типами людського мислення - критичного, алгоритмічного, логічного та творчого. Автори вважають, що значних успіхів у проведенні студентських досліджень можна досягти, працюючи із «звичайними», але умотивованими до наукових пошуків учнями.

Автори власним практичним досвідом доводять, що можна своєчасно виявити та виховати молодих людей з якостями (а можливо, і з талантами!) дослідників. У статті також висловлено позицію авторів щодо змісту сучасної освіти в закладах загальної середньої освіти та на вищих рівнях.

Ключові слова: природознавство, наукова освіта, екологічна освіта, мотивація учнів, мотивація навчальних досягнень, взаємодія школяра та вчителя.

INTRODUCTION

In December 2019, the results of the international PISA survey were published (known that Ukraine took part the PISA survey for the first time in 2018 [1]): these results confirmed the rather low educational level of Ukrainian schoolchildren in the field of “exact" disci plines and Natural sciences. Surely, it is very sad to realize the mentioned fact, especially it given that these figures are not the so-called “that historically lowest point which was reached in 2018", but it is a clear trend that continues currently, in 2021 [8, 10, 12]. The certain level of final knowledge in Mathematic and Natural sciences is very important not only as an abstract statistical indicator, it is rather a kind of dual indicator - and it is not so much for a certain or current date, but for the future.

Any "good education" (or "quality education") is always thorough education, and it is that basis which can guarantee of well-being and progress - both individual and social ones [8, 10, 12, 14, 20]. Quality education does allow incomparably better understanding of Nature, i.e. the Natural processes, as well as their relationship and mutual impact on the Reality that surrounds us [9, 11, 16].

Education with a significant share of the Natural science components is that basis that allows anyone to get fully and accurately understanding the Laws of Nature, and at the same time mentioned education helps to find quickly the shortest ways to reveal yourself positively as a scientist, or a researcher, or an engineer etc. [2]. And one cannot disagree with V. Lamanauskas and J. Holbrook that the Natural science education has always been a very important one for the existence and development of a civilized society [10, 14].

Sketchy and/or fragmentary knowledge, or banal "knowing through a smartphone", unfortunately, prevails now, or even simply dominates. As one can see, this infamous ability to obtain instantly any available information without a formed basis as well shortage of critical thinking allows you to use the information obtained abstractedly, primarily without the slightest idea of what it is and how to use it. So, this peculiarity is not evidence of quality education. Surely, deep knowledge has always been associated with the ability to self-improvement, maintaining intellectual and professional competitiveness throughout one's life.

In the past two decades high-level scientists and researchers have said a lot and unequivocally on the close connection and strong correlation between "knowledge-intensive education" and "technological complexity", on the one hand, and personal and social w ell-being, on the other hand [12, 18, 20]. That is, the guidelines for educational practice should be modern standards of teaching quality, which provide for strengthening the scientific component of education, and the acquisition of certain practical competencies by students [10, 19, 23].

The authors have been working for many years at the crossroads of two levels of "habitual" education - the secondary vocational and higher ones, and all these working years they teach their students mathematics, physics, computer science and programming. For more than 20 years of teaching, the authors note a notable decrease in students' interest in traditionally "difficult disciplines" that belong to the natural-and-mathematical cycle. And afterwards the certain share of graduates of specialized classes of secondary schools goes to universities as usual. And then the next stage is expected: there will be the second act of the same play, but it will be more difficult and more significant act because one will see insufficient preparation of former schoolchildren plus their reluctance to master some higher school science-intensive disciplines: now they are university students of early academic years.

On the other hand, the authors note with concern that this trend does not contribute to the process of research personnel reproduction, and the preparation and training of such people are extremely important for the development of any country.

Let's make a right away reservation: in this paper we will focus on the out-of-school education as an additional one. But, as for the authors, the problems raised and the related issues are characteristic ones of the secondary and higher school system as a whole.

At the beginning of the authors' joint work (2012), the main their goal was findi ng some ways to harmonize the contents of training in secondary school specialized classes and the university requirements. And in order to realize this idea we used an extracurricular "learning platform" since out-of-school education makes it possible to more optimally build an individual learning path for each student. профільна школа навчальний мислення

Working at the "junction" of middle and high schools, the authors tried to solve the most important task for each of their students - how to teach the pupil to think. It is regarding one's ability to think creatively, critically and independently. And one knows that these kinds of thinking will not be possible without one's ability to analyze, compare, and evaluate. For the authors, a successful way to solve this particular problem was to involve students in educational research activity.

Naturally, the authors undertook a search for those topics and directions to implement student's educational researches that could attract students in research works in the fields of Natural sciences. It turned out that it was precisely the environmental and bionic topics that became a strong motivating factor for the students.

So, we can say that since 2012 a small pedagogical experiment has been launched with the main goal of educating a new generation of research-and-engineering personnel. The mentioned work is being carried out up to the present.

1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Within the framework of the Ukrainian national education system, the authors have long and quite acutely felt the need to increase the share or degree of scientific character (another words - the science intensity) in training, and also against the background of growing environmental problems of our Planet do understand the need to improve the ecological education of students.

As for the importance and necessity of mass environmental education, this fact has long been beyond doubt. The UNESCO-UNEP Conference on the Necessity of Environmental Education was held in 1975 [22], but these pressing ideas concerning the mass environmental education should become a compulsory part of the school curriculum, and these ideas were only the first step along the overall positive direction [3, 7, 8, 9, 11].

The authors of this work, daily practicing the rules and requirements of their national educational system, and based on their experience as well, share the following standpoints that the modern problems of education quality and certain difficulties of environmental education are closely linked and it is probably due to the following reasons:

1) If the content of educational disciplines of the Natural cycle is reduced to a greater extent to informing students (or to the level of awareness) students (or to the level of awareness), i.e. without the sufficient scientific basis for the content of educational material, these contents are evidently insufficient and become unattractive for well-informed and attentive students. It is true, in the modern secondary school it is increasingly possible to detect a low level of scientific intensity of the acquired knowledge [17, 3, 13], which inevitably affects not only the general educational level, but also the environmental educational level of the students [13].

2) Many students, if not most of them, do not fully understand the causal links between different natural phenomena and their scientific explanations (there are many current technical and environmental problems and their possible solutions among them). This failure can be remedied by a sufficient level of scientific knowledge in the field of Natural sciences, which, unfortunately, is not often provided in high school [1]. Similar problems [2, 3, 8, 11, 13] occur here as well, in Ukraine [15, 24].

1.1 PURPOSE OF THE WORK AND HYPOTHESES

2.2 WHY DO WE OFFER NAMELY THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND BIONIC TOPICS FOR STUDENT RESEARCHES?

The experience of recent years of our working has shown great need and interest in the environmental and biophysical/bionic researches. In addition, the environmental problems in general "almost do not cause any phobias and allergies" amongst modern youth: from an early age they are accustomed to the fact that the environmental issues are very important topics from many viewpoints. Finally, the environmental issues are often really interesting to them! Therefore, the authors do believe that environmental problems are a priori attractive to significant part of modern students.

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

3.1 RESULTS

If one looks at the results of joint work of authors and their pupils, one can see the next coming list of their students' research IT projects (in the different areas of science and technology): the list presented shows the research topics that high school students have worked on under the guidance of the authors in recent years (see Table 1).