The Primary Study On Environmental Education Based On Inquiry Learning

Environmental education is an important part of quality-oriented education and it has become one of our country's educational goals at present. How to carry out environmental education effectively is also an important subject of our nation's educational development in the 21 st century.Inquiry learning is not only a characteristic but also an attracting point in the current curriculum reform in our country. It is regulated in the book "the Guide of Implementing Inquiry Learning in Regular High School" that inquiry-learning curriculum is compulsory in high school. By comparing environmental education and inquiry learning, we can find that they have many similar respects. The combination of courses is one of the trends of the current curriculum development .Can environmental education be combined with inquiry learning? How can they be combined effectively? The paper is aimed at discussing the above two issues.The paper mainly discusses the origin, essence and development of environmental education and analyzes the relationship between environmental education and inquiry learning. In addition the paper illustrates that inquiry learning is not only an important approach but also ha s great significance in the process of implementing environmental education .On the basis of theories-analyzing, the researcher carried out a real example study. The experimental objects of the study are the students from the two teams--"Environmental Protection", "Cultivation without soil" of Jiangdu Middle School in Jiangsu province .The researcher collected the materials about the study and made a feasible and effective analysis about the result of the real example study.The real example study indicates that the activity has a high acceptability and validity. The following goals have been achieved through the activity. First, stimulate students' desire to study and probe. Second, make students grasp basic environmental science knowledge. Third, help students understand their own relation with environment. Fourth, develop students' sense of social responsibility and improve their environmental awareness. Fifth, develop students' ability of finding and putting forward questions and improve their capability of solving practical environmental problems. The last one is to develop students' creativity and practical ability.Both the theory-analyzing and the real example study indicate that it is acceptable and effective to implement environmental education in inquiry learning.