ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION AS A PART OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOL EDUCATION - EXAMPLE FROM SLOVAKIA

Environmental pollution is a growing global problem around the whole world. Environmental awareness can be an important factor in solving the problems of environmental contamination. One of the ways to cultivate these values in people is environmental education. Ecological education is a key factor in improving the state of the environment, and it is important to be taught from an early age. Teachers are an important point in shaping children's interests, attitudes and opinions on issues about the environment and its problems. This research explores some of the possibilities, attitudes and views of teachers in teaching the topic of environmental contamination. Our research represents a record of the environmental education connected with environmental pollution. The main goal of this research paper was to address teachers and find out their real possibilities in education about environmental contamination. The necessary information was obtained by a questionnaire (240 respondents) sent to all relevant primary and secondary schools in Slovakia. Particular emphasis was placed on goals, time range of teaching, methods and forms, pedagogical principles. The concluding discussion critically evaluates the obtained results. The results show a high level of teachers' interest in topics related to environmental contamination. The average annual number of lessons taught is only 2.62 lessons, while the ideal number of lessons according to the teachers is 3 times higher. For individual types of pollution, water and air contamination appear to be the most interesting to teachers. When mediating the curriculum, teachers use the principle of respect for living and inanimate nature in the first place (19%). Interestingly even today some teachers rely on the principle of insufficient technical progress which is limited by nature conservation (2%). From the teachers' point of view, the method of discussion (34%) is one of the most common activating ways of teaching about the problem of contamination. On the other hand, the least applied method is a simulation game (1%). Despite the fact that the topic of pollution is not taught in Slovakia, teachers use interdisciplinary relationships to introduce the issue into the curriculum. The results of the survey generally indicate that teachers are interested in including the issue of environmental pollution in to the curriculum. Research has shown that teachers think that in order to cover the issues the number of lessons dedicated to this topic should be tripled. The obtained results support the efforts of teachers to solve the problems of environmental pollution which is a good trend.