Malaysia’s Environmental Education From NUTP’s Perspective

Major problems standing in the way of successful implementation of Environmental Education in Malaysia:

1.  Although Environmental Education is being implemented in schools by integrating it across the curriculum and its importance is being recognized within our National Education Policy, there is no specific policy on Environmental Education. Environmental Education is taught as a classroom subject per se.

2.  The implementation of ‘Environmental Education across the Curriculum‘ requires that school administrative staff fully understand and the teachers be adquately trained with the necessary knowledge and skills of the concepts in Environmental Education. The lack of a strong policy on Environmental Education within the National Education Policy pushed this requirement to the bottom of the list of Malaysian schools priorities.

3.  As the guidebooks for the implementation of Environmental Education are not widely distributed, teachers are not aware of their existence. Much classroom teachings on envrionment do not create the awareness that is required to be instilled in our students.

4.  Activities on Environmental Education are consedered extracurricular activities and as such not given serious attention by many Malaysian schools. This is caused by a lack of understanding of the broad and complex concepts in Environmental Education that cover not only extracurricular activities but also every aspect within the education system.

5.  There is a lack of teaching materials for teachers to integrate and infuse Environmental Education at schools, as there is with budget allocation.

For more info, please visit http://www.nutp.org

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