Abstract

The paper explains how environmental science can be integrated with the aquatic ecosystem dynamics to overcome the problem of pollution and loss of biodiversity. Human activities such as pollution and climate change are a major threat to aquatic ecosystems, which are important in supporting biodiversity and in the provision of important ecosystem services. These obstacles indicate that there is a necessity for proper education in environmental science that integrates theoretical ecological concepts with practical environmental concerns. The proposed research is expected to come up with an integrated curriculum that will enhance the wisdom of the students about the aquatic ecosystem, pollution management, and biodiversity conservation. The design-based research is applied in creating the curriculum and in the analysis of the curriculum: the experimental group was taught an integrated curriculum and the control group taught the curriculum based on conventional lecture teaching. Field based learning, simulations, and multimedia have been included in the curriculum in order to engage the learners. Analysis revealed the experimental group improved significantly in ecological knowledge (p = 0.001, pre-test mean 45.3 ± 8.4 vs post-test mean 82.1 ± 6.9) and the environmental attitudes (p = 0.003, pre-test mean 3.1 ± 0.7 vs post-test mean 4.5 ± 0.4). The amelioration of the two aspects was less in the control group (p = 0.065 (as far as the knowledge) and p = 0.070 (as far as attitudes) are concerned). The students rated such multimedia tools as virtual field trips and GIS applications as very valuable which facilitated the process of learning but also assisted in learning. The study concludes that an integrated approach, which implies the integration of both theoretical and practical training, can be rather effective in the increase of the ecological literacy and the attitude of students towards the environment. Nevertheless, there are still gaps that need to be filled when translating theory to practice and some research is assumed to be conducted in future to understand the long-term effects of such curriculums on careers of the students in the field of environmental conservation and policy making.

Keywords: Aquatic ecosystems, Environmental science education, Biodiversity conservation, Pollution management, Field-Based learning, Multimedia tools, Ecological literacy