Biodiversity education in Hong Kong senior secondary biology teaching

Abstract

Since late 1960, Biodiversity education has been gaining weight in the biology curriculum of Hong Kong senior secondary schools. The Hong Kong Government shows initiatives and actively implements various plans on incorporating the concept of Biodiversity in the classrooms, as one of the actions proposed by the Hong Kong Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of current senior secondary biology curriculum in facilitating biodiversity education, and to provide recommendations on any enhancement being made to biodiversity education. Mixed-methods approach are adopted for data collection in this study. The quantitative method involved a questionnaire survey which aimed to assess the performance of biodiversity education of current senior secondary biology students under the framework of environmental education principles. The questionnaire assessed the students on their biodiversity knowledge, biodiversity awareness, biodiversity attitude, biodiversity mental responsibility and biodiversity participation. The qualitative part involved semi-structured interviews with biology teachers, targeting to determine the teachers’ understanding towards biodiversity education, their views on the relationship between the biology curriculum and biodiversity education, and the difficulties they face in biodiversity education. A total of 339 completed student questionnaires were collected from September 2019 to January 2020. This study finds that there is a statistically significant weak positive correlation between biodiversity knowledge and biodiversity awareness, (Spearman rank correlation, rs = 0.353, p < 0.01). The same association was also noted between biodiversity attitude and biodiversity mental responsibility (Spearman rank correlation, rs = 0.249, p < 0.01), which indicates the two weakest links of the students’ biodiversity education achievements. From the six qualitative interviews conducted from September 2019 to January 2020, the teachers revealed the main reason for a poor linkage between biodiversity knowledge and biodiversity awareness of the students was due to a result and examine-oriented mentation of the students. Also, the lack of reference to local examples and issues in the syllabus, the lack of teaching time, the lack of sustainability elements in the syllabus, and the fact that not all biodiversity education elements were covered in the compulsory part of the curriculum were also possible reasons to explain such poor linkage. The finding of weak linkage between biodiversity attitude and biodiversity mental responsibility could be caused by several reasons, which include the lack of field trip or authentic experience of the students, and that the teachers are not equipped with sufficient ecological knowledge. In order to enhance biodiversity education, incorporation of Hong Kong local conservation issues to the biology curriculum, shifting course contents that involve biodiversity education from elective part to compulsory part of the curriculum, promoting the status of ecological field trip as a compulsory school-based assessment, trimming down of the curriculum to spare more time for value education, and offering more professional development support to teachers in terms of ecological teaching can be introduced into the biology curriculum in the upcoming education reform.