The human impact on nature and the environment is a learning topic that appears in Slovenian primary schools in natural science, biology, and the optional subject of environmental education. The main purpose of this topic is environmental awareness and the development of students' environmental literacy, with which we can achieve environmental sustainability.
As with any learning topic, there are both general and specific problems in teaching this topic. We have described them in detail in the theoretical part, and we have also added appropriate solutions, suggestions and ways of working that can eliminate these problems. Because teachers must be adequately familiar with each learning topic before teaching, we analyzed three curricula and three textbooks for biology in which the topic of human impact on nature and the environment is also represented.
Examples of good practice can also be a great help for teachers in teaching, so in our master's thesis we analyzed 47 articles from the online magazine The American Biology Teacher from 2010 to 2021, which were related to the mentioned topic and represent the main part of this paper. First, we reviewed the articles and analyzed them in a table based on the following contents: article title, author, country of the author, year of publication, number of pages, number of cited sources, type of article, level of education, structure of the article, topic of the article, feasibility in Slovenia and why it is not (fully) feasible in Slovenia. To make it easier to visualize, we also presented the findings of certain content items graphically. We also analyzed the content of each article, divided them into certain topics and described the essential content that can help teachers in teaching. Finally, we divided the articles into 10 different topics, which relate to the human impact on nature and the environment. Certain articles are suitable for a specific level of education, but some can be adapted for all levels of education.
The main purpose of the master's thesis was the analysis of articles from the online magazine The American Biology Teacher, which present examples of good practice and enable teachers to enrich lesson and eliminate problems in teaching about the human impact on nature and the environment. Examples of good practice enable more outdoor teaching and can thus represent a positive interaction between students and the environment and nature.
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