Comparative Study On The Contents Of Environmental Education In Chinese And American Junior Physics Textbooks

Nowadays,environmental problems are becoming more and more serious and have become one of the major problems affecting global development.protecting the environment,solving environmental problems and rethinking the path of human survival and development have been put on the agenda,and environmental education comes int the version of people.To cultivate young teenagers' awareness of environmental protection,enhance their action abilities has become an effective way to deal with environmental crisis.As an important course resource,what environmental education contents are contained in textbooks? This is an important issue to be attended to.In this paper,the author conducted a research on the contents of environmental education on Chinese and American junior high school physics textbook with the reference of environmental education content checklist developed by Taiwan scholar Wu Zhonghong.By scanning and counting the environment education contents in the two versions of physics textbooks,the author made a comparison about the environmental education contents on macroscopic level first,and then with the use of content analysis method,combined with the related theories,the author leaded a qualitative analysis,and revealed the following problems existing in the two versions of physics textbooks:(1)the contents of environmental education in Chinese and American junior physics textbooks are unevenly distributed,while retaining great potential for development.(2)there is insufficient emphasis on environmental action ability in the textbook.(3)both textbooks ignore students' experience of the environment,including not only the natural environment,but also the artificial environment.At the same time,the textbooks show the negative impact of human behavior on the environment,while the positive impact is almost absent.(4)both textbooks present a narrow "anthropocentric" view of nature with human interests as the core.(5)the lack of discussion on environmental justice in environmental issues in the two editions of textbooks,including international justice,inter-generational justice and inter-generational justice.(6)inequality in environmental education exists in both textbooks,such as gender inequality,urban-rural inequality,and lack of care for vulnerable groups.Finally,the author provides some suggestions for textbook editors and physics teacher based on the results of this study.