[[alternative]]Action Research on Environmental Education Incorporated into the Life Learning Field of Nine-Years-Joint Curriculum

[[abstract]]In September 30th, 1998, the Ministry of Education published "The Nine-Year-Joint curriculum syllabus of Required Education," which was followed by the "Draft of Seven Fields in the Nine-year Joint curriculum syllabus " announced in March 1999. This latter draft incorporates in the syllabus six important social issues and Environmental Education is one of them. This is the first time that Environmental Education is incorporated into the formal education. Moreover, the new curriculum undergoes revolutionary changes. Every teacher is bound to encounter some difficulties or problems. Therefore, this research adopts the method of action research, cooperating with the teachers and incorporating Environmental Education into the life fields of nine-year curriculum in the cooperative research method. The objectives of this research are as follows: 1. Explore the developmental methods and modes of how EE is incorporated into the life fields of nine-year curriculum. 2. Study the thematic teaching process and effect of the life field of nine-year curriculum. 3. Explore students' environmental sensitivity and awareness, environmental knowledge, environmental ethics, environmental skills and action. 4. Study parents' view on the incorporated syllabus and environmental education, teachers' professional skills in the integrated curriculum and the researcher's own opinions and gains. This research adopts the action research method. The researcher plans the curriculum with the teachers and participates. The methods of data collection are in the class observation and records, interview, collecting documents regarding students’ learning state, parents participation and reaction to the course, teacher's thoughts on the course. This research can be divided into five stages. The first is research initiative periods, describing the process of how the researcher discovers and gets into the research field. The second is the discussion and planning period of life field course, explaining the developmental process of the curriculum. The third period is the first stage of curriculum implementation, during which a lot of courses and activities are developed. This period belongs to the passionate engagement by trial and error. The fourth period is the review and modification of the curriculum whenever difficulty or frustration occurs. The fifth period is second stage of the curriculum implementation and document analysis. The conclusions are as follows: 1. Environmental education is very suitable for thematic teaching which is incorporated in the life field of nine-year curriculum because environmental education is the education of life. Issues of environmental education, if undergone through course design and planning, can reach the segmental ability index of life field in the nine-year curriculum. 2. Because of the familiar learning materials of environmental education and its emphasis on personal experiences, students' learning interest and motivation can be boosted. 3. Environmental education provides students with a learning environment and an opportunity for deeper learning and research, developing students' ability to study and resolving the problem. 4. In the lower grades, environmental education should put its emphasis on elevating students' consciousness and sensitivity to their environment, at the same time constructing students' environmental ethics and values. 5. The research discovers that a teacher with high EE sensitivity and knowledge will affect students' learning of EE. The suggestion is as follows: 1. The life field of low grade should adopt EE as the issue to be incorporated. 2.When incorporated into the life field, EE can adopt thematic units from Social Science or Natural Science to integrate the teaching and learning. 3.Suggestive further research on developing the models of incorporated EE into seven learning fields will be necessary.