The environmental education knowledge and attitude among children in selected kindergartens and pre-schools

Abstract

Environmental education (EE) is similar to any types of education accept it refers more to environment. EE has been included in the Malaysian National Pre-School Curriculum in 2003 shows the importance of education regarding environment nowadays even for young children although EE has been recognized since 1986. Early childhood is believed to be the best phase to educate, develop the feeling and build a positive mindset of the children about the importance of environment for the earth and for their future as well. As kindergarten and pre-school are the place where the younger children will obtain their early education about most of the things, therefore, this is one of a suitable place to teach and educate the young one about what need to be delivered to them including about the environment. By giving some questions regarding topics on environment to the children, we can identify the level of the children knowledge and their attitudes regarding environment. This is also the chance to see if the teaching plans, conducted by the teachers worked, and can be accepted by the children. From the pilot study, majority of the children being able to differentiate between living and non-living things and most of them can differentiate between ttems that can be recycled and non-recycled. Other than that, 87% of them love to learn about environment and 71% of them admit that they will throwaway their candy wrappers into the bins as these two questions shows the attitudes of the children for the environments.