Pre-Service Teachers' Knowledge of and Attitudes to Some Environmental Education Concepts Using Value Education Strategies

The culture of environmental valuing has not been taken seriously in Nigeria at present. This has resulted into the deteriorating state of the environment. It is therefore important that strategies for effective environmental control be put in place. When preparing teachers for EE, innovative strategies should be explored because teachers normally teach the way they were taught. The study therefore investigated the effects of value analysis, value clarification and action learning on the environmental knowledge, attitudes and problem solving skills of pre-service teachers in some Nigeria Colleges of Education. The pre-test, post-test, control group, quasi-experiment design was used for the study. Two null hypotheses were generated and tested at. 05 level of significance. Environment knowledge Test (EKT) and Environmental Attitudes Scale (EAS) were the instruments used for data collection. The data were analyzed using Analysis of covariance, multiple classification analysis and Duncan post-hoc test. The study found out that value education strategies were more effective in promoting subjects' cognitive and affective achievement in environmental education than conventional lecture method. Based on the findings, the study recommended that innovative instructional strategies like value analysis, value clarification and action learning should be adopted in Nigerian Colleges of Education to enhance effective teaching and learning of environmental education.