Environmental Education Curriculum of West Bengal Board of Secondary Education and Central Board of Secondary Education- A Comparative Study

Abstract

The current study aims to compare the curriculum of West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) and Central Board of Secondary (CBSE) on the basis of environmental aspect. This comparison is done from two aspect- first, comparison of contents of both syllabuses with each other i.e. WBBSE and CBSE and second, comparison of both syllabuses on the basis of Environmental Education objectives. In order to do this content analysis method is used. The study is qualitative in nature. But after analysing the data researcher tried to interpret the result and present it quantitatively by using tables and bar-diagrams. The syllabuses of the secondary education (class: ix-x) of both WBBSE and CBSE are considered as the selected level of education for this study. The subjects considered for the comparison and analysis are Physical Science, Life Science and Geography. The environmental objectives those are considered for the analysis of content are Knowledge, Awareness, Attitudes, Skills and Participation. The five environmental divisions, Lithosphere, Bio-sphere, Atmosphere, Hydrosphere and Others are considered in this study for content analysis. “Others” as an environmental dimension is represented as the current environmental issues, pollution, health and diseases. Analysis of content is done by considering the title of the sub-units, objectives and inherent questions of each textbooks of each syllabus. For each subject textbook total number of sub-units and sub-units dealing with environment are presented separately for each syllabus. The data analysis revealed that in comparison of two curriculums it is found that except for class-ix Life Science the environmental content representation is same for both curriculums. But a major difference is found for class-x in Geography, where the environmental content representation is much higher in CBSE than WBBSE curriculum. It has been developed totally by considering the environmental content. It is also found by the researcher that in general both the curriculum has covered Environmental Education content as suggested in the NCF-2005 and it is significant for both classes (ix-x). But the Environmental content covering and specifying intended objectives are comparatively higher in CBSE curriculum than WBBSE curriculum.