Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University examined how the concept of biodiversity is taught in schools. In a survey of schoolteachers in Hachioji City, Tokyo Prefecture, they found that key topics were being covered extensively and evenly, though omissions of topics like mass extinctions stood out. Importantly, they discovered that personal experiences of nature strongly influenced what teachers chose to highlight. Their findings reveal the challenges of effectively teaching a core component of environmental science.
Biodiversity is widely agreed to be an important part of environmental science, and a key aspect of natural conservation. However, even experts are split on its scope and meaning. The challenge is more pronounced for educators, who must navigate vast amounts of media to create a coherent message for students. Official curricula are often designed with a lot of scope for interpretation, making inconsistent messaging a real risk.
This motivated a team led by Professor Shinya Numata from Tokyo Metropolitan University to investigate how the concept of biodiversity is taught in schools. They focused on Hachioji City, an area of Tokyo with a population of around 580,000, covering 69 public elementary schools, and 37 public junior high schools. Not only did they look at how well biodiversity was covered amongst other environmental topics and which subtopics of biodiversity were prioritized, but they turned their attention to teachers' backgrounds. They particularly surveyed teachers' psychological background and derived Nature Relatedness (NR) and Childhood Nature Experiences (CNE) indices, both metrics which are significantly influenced by attitudes towards the environment.
They firstly found that out of environmental topics, those related to biodiversity received a strong focus at both elementary and junior high school levels. However, while subtopics of biodiversity were generally covered in a balanced way, certain aspects such as mass extinction and conservation of endangered species were not prioritized very often. This may be due to teachers choosing relatable, locally observable content over more technical or global concepts. Looking at teachers' backgrounds, they discovered that both NR and CNE strongly influenced what aspects of biodiversity teachers chose to emphasize. For example, a high NR correlated strongly with coverage of environmental threats and conservation, showing that an emotional connection to nature motivates coverage of potential threats to biodiversity. Interestingly, certain topics such as ecosystem services (the benefits received by society from biodiversity) were poorly correlated with teachers' attributes but were also covered frequently; this reflects its explicit inclusion in the syllabus, showing how policy might be used to "level" coverage of important topics. Other factors such as teachers' age group, school year, academic background, and gender, also showed correlations with which topics were selected.
The survey highlighted just how complex biodiversity education can be, influenced by a whole range of background factors, including personal experiences, psychological factors, educational policy, and curriculum design. Moving forward, the team believe that the balanced inclusion of both localized content and foundational concepts is vital to effective coverage of all concepts.
This work was supported by a JST-JICA-SATREPS Grant Number JPMJSA1902.
