Abstract
The purpose of this study was to analyze the elementary school teachers＇perception toward the environment-related subjects in science education and to investigate their instructional methods in delivering the subjects in the classroom. The participants of this study were 300 elementary school teachers sampled from elementary schools in Kyung Nam Province. The findings of this study were as follows; First, more than half of the teachers surveyed showed that the environment-related units and contents in the science textbook were insufficient to the existing issues. Second, the large portion of teachers responded that the teaching materials in the textbook were insufficient to deliver the contents. Third, the largest portion of respondents replied that their preferred instructional method was a teacher-directed instruction followed by a case study approach. Fourth, in terms of the effectiveness of environmental education, both male and female teachers showed negative responses. Furthermore, male teachers were more negative than female teachers. Fifth, total means of their preference of the environment-related units was 3.13. The unit for sixth graders titled｀Environmental Pollution and Protecting Nature＇showed the highest preference, whereas the unit for fifth graders titled｀Structure and Functions of Plants＇showed the lowest preference. Sixth, there was no statistically significance in gender and their working areas. Seventh, there was statistically significant differences between male and female teachers in terms of teaching experience. In detail, the teachers with 5 to 9 teaching experience showed the lowest scores, while the teacher with more than 15 years teaching experience showed the highest scores in their perception of the units. Eighth, there was a significant difference between two groups in terms of their educational background. For example, two-year college graduates showed higher preference than four-year college graduates.
