How about the Attitudes towards Nature? Analysis of the Nature and Biology Primary School Education Curricula in Poland

Abstract

One of the most important goals in biology education is shaping positive attitudes towards nature, social and global problems, as well as health. Environmental education is an essential element because without pro-environmental attitudes, every environment-protecting action is less successful, and the results have much less impact on society. In the following article, we tried to combine this idea with the school curriculum, which is one of the most important documents used in education. The research question addressed in this paper is to what extent does biology/nature primary school’s education curriculum highlight shaping attitudes (at sensory, functional, and rational levels), and how did it change during the educational reform in Poland? The sample is the Polish core curricula for nature and biology for primary school. National curricula have been revised by the analysis of the content methods before and after the 2017 reform of the education system. The results showed that while sensory and functional levels are represented quite equally in the curricula, the rational level is neglected and has decreasing tendency (when comparing curricula before and after educational reform in 2017). It is presented an interdisciplinary method of analyzing the core curriculum, particularly what relates to attitudes. The presented analysis method is, by definition, interdisciplinary, combining the approach of cognitive sciences, psychology, and science education. On the basis of the research, new elements that should or might be taken into consideration in school practice are proposed. The proposed approach assumes that the combination of teaching ideas and values (that are deeply rooted in our nature) will be successful in shaping pro-environmental attitudes toward nature and health.

1. Introduction

Attitude can be understood as a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor, and—as a summary evaluation of an object—has affective, cognitive, and behavioral components [1]. Attitudes are one of the most important elements which should be created and shaped during the didactic process [2]. As Osborne, Simon, and Collins claim, “attitudes are enduring while knowledge often has an ephemeral quality”. This quote highlights the value that attitudes possess in education [3]. The major role of the teacher is not the transmission of their scientific knowledge to the students, but enhancing motivation, inspiration, and positive attitudes towards the subject which he is teaching [4,5]. We might all agree that generating pro-environmental attitudes is essential in the fight against big world problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental pollution. It is necessary to continue educating students and whole societies on these matters since they are crucial for the world’s survival as we know it. As Inmaculada Aznar-Díaz and coworkers [6] claim: in this regard, governments must be involved and legislate to include environmental education across the board within the different educational stages. Their work on 307 Spanish students—future primary education teachers—showed a high level of environmental attitudes and a positive interdependence among the different subscales of analyzed attitudes. On the other hand, Cotton [7] has shown different aspects of that theme. She revealed that investigated teachers were willing not to influence their student’s attitudes while teaching controversial environmental issues. She also points out a significant difference between the teachers’ beliefs and the aims of much environmental education literature and the geography syllabus. This suggests that curriculum developers should consider teachers’ beliefs in designing new curriculum materials. What is worth highlighting, research shows that positively shaped attitudes toward science can significantly increase students’ achievements [8]. With age, attitudes toward specific subjects can change—for example, as Spall and coworkers presented [9,10], the positive attitudes towards biology increase with age, although with physics, the opposite effect is observed. Even though attitudes are such an important element of educating students, they are often overlooked when designing or/and conducting a didactic process [11]. Taking the multi-component model of attitudes [1] as a theoretical framework of consideration, we can assume that especially the affective component is neglected. There are numerous reasons for that, mainly pragmatic—as from the attitude there are no exams, so teachers who are accountable for students’ knowledge and abilities will not use their precious time to focus on emotions, values, and evaluations [11].

Meanwhile, research shows that the emotional component is pivotal in shaping attitudes. Affect is the first stage of information processing in the human brain, resolving the dilemma: approach (dopamine) or avoid (noradrenaline). Shortly speaking, affective states—moods, feelings, and emotions—evaluate the adaptive side of past, present, and anticipated activity. Only after an effective decision will activity increase the adaptive value of our phenotype; the brain moves to the next stage: possible forms of thinking [12]. For example, Pooley and O’Connor [13] present that our emotions and beliefs strongly influence our attitudes towards the environment; more importantly, they argue that what we feel is always more important than what we know. Honabarger [14] created the “Value-action-gap” concept, which is a discrepancy between our environmental knowledge, and how we actually feel and behave towards environmental awareness. Bridging this gap between our rational knowledge and emotions could be accomplished by influencing students on an axiological level.

There are various publications on this topic of shaping attitudes towards nature [15,16,17,18]. Numbers of them investigating what might have influenced students’ attitudes, especially pro-environmental, are quite common.

The academics explore the topic from various angles and take into account different factors. The anthropocentric point of view has been discussed as a major obstacle in biology education, as it leads to viewing humans as beings dominating the natural world, free to exploit plants and animals almost without any limits [19,20]. According to Lirodos and coworkers [21], a lack of awareness of the interconnectivity of the living world leads to a lack of understanding of the effect of disturbing a single element of an ecological network that can have an impact on the whole environment. It has been shown that this kind of knowledge is necessary to raise the understanding of why some particular species (or their environmental niche) need special protection [21]. Other factors worth mentioning are: folk biology influence [22], lack of essentially correct knowledge about animals [23], the gender and age of students [22], education level of the research participants [24], internal locus of control, health literacy [25], optimism [26] or family factors, such as having talks about the environment [27]. As it is presented in the work of Damerell [28], the first and the most influential are students’ households. It is not surprising that a family is where we learn our first social behaviors; this is also where we gain attitudes towards the environment. Recently the other media also started influencing our interactions (and therefore our attitude towards it) with nature. It might be observed, for example, by discovering new animal species, by going outdoors because of the Pokémon GO game [29], by the popularity of an internet application used for recognizing birds’ calls [30], or the CyberParks phenomenon [31,32]. There were already some attempts to use those new media, for example, by raising environmental awareness by creating suitable mobile phone applications [33].

The purpose of this article is to look at school as a place where pro-nature attitudes are shaped. We want to achieve our goal by analyzing the biology and nature education curriculum. The curriculum is similar to a guidebook for a teacher with specific guidelines on how to design their lessons and what elements should be included in them [34]. The question is: how may this curriculum influence teachers and their actions? How often does the content of the curriculum refer to shaping pro-environmental attitudes, to resolving emotions? There is a low probability that teachers, overwhelmed by how much content they must prepare and high expectations and demands of reaching high scores in exams, will have an incentive to conduct lessons and activities which will focus on crucial to didactic success attitudes and emotions [13]. There is no tool for the didactic process or in Polish law that might measure whether the teacher is shaping the attitudes of students or not. In addition, in the case of Polish schools, teachers’ attention is directed toward constructing students’ knowledge and skills. The attitudes in their emotional components are a less important factor, which is expected to be conducted on random occasions [35].

One of the reasons might be the increasing focus of teachers on preparing students for national exams [36]. Teachers concentrate on what is required of them, and for which activities they are held accountable. Because of that, students’ attitudes might not be their priority in the classroom [37]. Suppose it is assumed that the goal of nature education is not preparing students for national exams but helping students to understand relations with nature and the protection of the environment by raising awareness and sensitivity about it. By helping students to construct the idea of nature as a superior value from which depends on our life (because of air quality or access to water), we will have a society that will be concentrated on working solidary on important issues such as climate change, and its direct and indirect consequences as smog or drought [38]; however, being unanimous about the consequences of climate change might be not easy if even in online textbooks recommended by the Polish Ministry of Education readers could assess false information about the plus sides of climate change as in Poland; for example, lower bills for apartment heating in the winter [39].

Nevertheless, the importance of curriculum is broadly discussed. The United States is often used as an example in the discussion, as a country that has one of the most frequently changed curriculum has, and yet still have one of the lowest results in education despite the effort and money invested by the US government. According to the studies by Glatthorn and coworkers [40], it is highly possible that the curriculum has moderate influence; however, in European countries, the approach to the curriculum is different, and researchers, as well as politicians, try to find the right balance between motivating more students to STEM-related subjects and the amount of money spent on education reforms. For example, the United Kingdom, launched the program Twenty-First Century Science, in 2008. The goal of the program was, among others, to educate people who will be able to appreciate and understand the impact of science on everyday life, make decisions about humans’ health, diet, and energy resources, or critically approach the scientific information served in the media. At the same time, recipients would be able to verify sources of scientific knowledge and conduct substantive discussions based on information provided by the research community [41]. The results of the program were promising, and teachers found it more rewarding, but at the same time, the coordinator of the program noticed that the emphasis on change should also be placed at the level of policy, institutions, and professional development opportunities for teachers because barriers at these levels can inhibit the effects that we can achieve at schools [42].

Turkey is another interesting example of changes focusing on attitudes and values in the curriculum. Turkish education politicians (Ministry of Education) have introduced a new curriculum which, in addition to such elements as Life and Living Beings; Matter and Change; The Earth and the Universe; Science Process Skills (SPS); Science-Technology-Society-Environment (STSE), also introduced the subject of Attitude and Values (AV) [43]. The intended long-term effect was for the graduates of the 8th class to, among other things, pay attention to their place and relations with the environment, care for their safety and the environment, and take actions and behaviors to serve a healthy lifestyle that is supposed to lead to love, peace, and happiness in harmony with each other and surrounding environment. While it is worth appreciating such changes and seeing attitudes and values as an important element in the science curriculum, the proposed reform at the same time has led to some controversy in the education community. The major complaint was that students, teachers, inspectors, parents, academics, and NGOs were not officially invited and involved in consultations, so they could not submit formal applications and have a real impact on the changes in the provided curriculum [43].

In the curriculums, it is possible to observe the content which refers to different issues—the main groups which can be observed in different international curriculums are environmental [44] and health [45], but authors discuss whether they are adequate and sufficient [46,47,48]. Both of those groups are important during teaching as the attitudes create action. Despite the age of the students, both the groups of attitude content goals are important and should be addressed during the lessons. Some of the researchers even present how those categories of goals are intertwined and cannot be separated from each other during the didactic process. The content of the curriculum is supposed to be suited to the level of psychological development of children. In Poland, there are the following educational stages in the school education system [49]: institutions for children aged 0–3 years: crèche or kids club (not obligatory); institutions for children aged 3–6 years: nursery school or pre-school class in a primary school, pre-school unit, pre-school center (optional for 3- to 5-year-old children and obligatory for 6-year-olds); primary education: grades 1–3 (early school education) and grades 4–8 (teaching by subject) (before the 2017 educational reform this stage was divided differently, because junior high schools (13–16 years old) existed. It was: primary education: grades 1–3 (early school education) and grades 4–6 (teaching by subject), grades 1–3 junior high schools.); secondary education: 4-year general secondary school, 5-year technical secondary school, or 3-year Stage I sectoral vocational school and 2-year Stage II sectoral vocational school.

Elementary students’ age is characterized by high sensitivity and empathy skills formation. In addition, they accept the opinions of their supervisors—parents and teachers—with rather small individual reflection. Older primary school students are also an important target group for influencing attitudes, because of their high sensitivity and potential emotional attitudes [50]. In addition, this is the age when they create their own opinions and statements, and teachers have here very brought possibility and obligation to show them every side of the problem they are learning about and create for their possibility to form their own opinion. High school students are also at a promising age because they are starting at this educational level, with a partly chosen direction of study, constructed opinions, and attitudes about the majority of life’s important topics [51]. Therefore, teachers have the opportunity to create conflict—in cognitive means, between students’ different opinions in the classroom and recreate their own ideas. Developed abilities of discussion are also the potential that teachers should exploit. With high school education comes certain limitations, as is preparing students for the national exam, whose results also affect their entrance to university. Because of that, many teachers are focused on helping students to construct certain knowledge and abilities necessary to pass exams, and shaping their attitudes is not a priority.

Having that in mind, it is important to mention the recent changes and developments in polish schools and their influence on the role of the teachers. As Kwiatkowska showed [5], the Polish school is a much more stressful place than it was, which also confirms what Gerrig and coworkers [52] mention, that Polish students are one of the most stressed in Europe. On each education level, excluding kindergarten, we have tests and exams. At the beginning of the didactic process, we stressed students and stressed teachers, which may lead to mutual aggression in schools. These attitudes and emotions are supposed to play a key role in a whole didactic process conducted by teachers. As we know, attitudes and emotions are essential to succeed in every educational activity that we are conducting [53]. Attitudes toward educational activity refer to enduring positive (“I love math”) or negative (“I hate math”) feelings about it. Feelings are supposed to be produced in the insular cortex of the human brain [54] and—thanks to the connection of the insula with interceptions—feelings inform humans about their level of comfort during a given activity. It is crucial because the insular cortex is tightly joined to the anterior cingulate cortex, commonly regarded as one of the brain’s motivational centers. So the student is motivated to study when they feel positive about it, and it happens when they feel socially safe. Emotions, on the other hand, are assembled from biological feelings and cultural emotional concepts [55], so they express the interpretation of student comfort in the light of social norms. The question is, why, despite a variety of proposed resolutions and widespread environmental education in school and very expensive media campaigns, are the results not satisfactory? Taking into account the definition of the pro-environmental attitude, we might notice the patchwork of many elements, including emotions, cognition, behavior, etc. From the educational perspective, the interplay between emotions and cognition has an important impact on the learning experience. One possible approach to look at the problem is to take a meta-perspective. According to Haidt [56], the human mind is implemented with six universal values—care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity, and liberty—and everything that we are doing and thinking in everyday situations is led and assigned to one of these.

We elaborate on this interplay from the perspective of a reflective teacher with a framework proposed by Błaszak and coworkers [57,58]. The following framework can be used to categorize and interpret the usefulness of the ideas presented in any curriculum in environmental education, and we have adjusted this framework for the purpose of this study.

We have distinguished three major levels of goals by which a teacher might be able to impact students when presenting nature: (1) Sensory level, where students are able to use their senses to become familiar with a topic; basically, every lesson or day life experiences in nature deals with this level. It is important for a teacher to use this level to anchor the students in the subject—to make them feel welcome and emotionally connected with each topic. The part of the human brain primarily involved in making emotional connections with the subject is the salience network, comprising the insula—responsible for feeling generation—and the anterior cingulate cortex, one of the motivational centers of the brain [59]. (2) Functional level, where students might notice that nature offers something more than organisms by themselves. Humans are able to think about the environment as something that offers us some ecological services, for example, by providing us with oxygen or energy to heat the water or space to spend our free time. At that level, students might notice that it is not only a matter of how a frog looks like—it also matters what it does—for example, it reduces and controls the number of mosquitos, etc. In addition, this is the level with which society finds the easiest to connect—as they can see direct goal and usefulness, and also gain satisfaction from having the information, which might give them an advantage in the future. The usability of the student’s surroundings, and affordances that nature offers to the individual, are analyzed by the central executive network, localized mainly in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, one of the motivational centers of the brain [60]. (3) Rational level, where the teacher might reflect on internal values that are parts of our mind, where ecosystems would be viewed as a set of situations perceived and recognized in relation to the values (e.g., values of holiness and loyalty). The neocortex that computes information about values is called “the default mode network” and is localized in the medial prefrontal cortex [61]. We consider any statement that corresponds to any of the six values by Haidt [56] as a statement that can influence the audience on a rational level. In such relation, natural ecosystems are the only place where one might meet a purely equitable system of relations between individuals (nobody is favorable; everybody is equal, and treated in the same way). Or, to put it differently, while teaching nature/science, at the same time, we guide and correct students’ morality. It is easily possible because teaching involves students’ consciousness (Daniel Kahnemann’s System 2) [62] with a very narrow information bandwidth (40–120 bits per second), and the student’s embodied activity and situated engagement in the world of nature are executed by her cognitive unconscious (Kahnemann’s System 1), whose bandwidth is at the level of 11 million bits per second [63]. The fullest insight into a student’s mind is not through her speech but her action, especially in an ecologically adaptive situation. It means that if a teacher wants to know the effects of teaching, he/she can either expect conceptual answers (System 2) or existential action (System 1) on the part of the student. The first could show her ethical knowledge, and the second could reveal her moral competence. For example, engaging students in protecting social insects’ nests makes them sensitive to examples of cooperation and altruism. It does not matter that these phenomena have different natures among insects and primates. The effect is an activity of modules of care, fairness, and loyalty in the moral sense, as understood by Haidt [56]. It is often subconsciously understood by parents that good teachers should be able to influence the attitudes of their students—teach them on this rational level. For example, a field trip for students should not be used only to meet the requirements and guidelines of the curriculum. The lesson plan should start with decisions about which of the six values (proposed by Haidt [56]) will be dominant in that teaching practice. Environmental education in the presented framework offers much more than knowing and understanding nature; it should offer the basic teaching about the difference between the good and the bad, which is linked directly with ethics and leads us to attitudes. Rationality gives a cautious reflection on experiences, generates goal achievement feelings, and a sense of personal orientation with respect to realizing one’s own potential [58].

On the basis of our literature analysis, we assumed that:

(a)

In the curriculum, there are a limited number of goals that may obligate teachers to shape attitudes,

(b)

After the education reform, the number of AC goals decreased in the curriculum,

(c)

The sensory and functional levels of goals will appear in the curriculum more often than goals from the rational level.

We chose the primary school for the analysis, assuming that we should focus on the stage that is potentially less stressful due to exams when work with student attitudes begins. The major goal of the presented work is to compare two curriculums with a focus on the shaping of attitudes. The first curriculum (C1) was obligatory till June 2017, and the next curriculum (C2) started obligating in September 2017. Reform of the curriculum should change it for the better with the application of the current knowledge about the importance of pro-nature attitudes. Moreover, designing a new curriculum with attitude-shaping content is more important now with the climate change crisis. Shaping pro-environmental attitudes worth students should be a priority, and creating a new curriculum creates big opportunities for it. The research question addressed in this paper is to what extent does biology/nature primary school’s education curriculum highlight shaping attitudes end how it changes during the educational reform in Poland?

2. Materials and Methods

The curriculums (C1 and C2) were investigated by an analysis of the content method [64,65]. In order to help the reader to follow the changes that occurred in the Polish educational system, following which the curriculum C1 was replaced with C2; the figure below (Figure 1) has been prepared.

In the case of the Polish educational system, environmental education is a part of nature and biology subjects. The curriculum C1 differs from C2 (in the aspects that interest us in this text) not only because of the time when biology replaces nature but also with the goals and content that are the subject of our analysis. This also applies to integrated education (6–9 years old), in which there is content assigned to nature/science education (apart from art, music, social, mathematical, technical, language, computer, and physical education). Using the example of integrated education, we can see the direction of changes in the content of curricula. There are goals and content in C2 that were not in C1, for example: searching through various available resources, including the Internet, for information on the natural environment; attention to hygiene and aesthetics of one’s own and the environment; awareness of the importance of a proper diet for maintaining health, the importance of limiting the consumption of low-nutritional meals; awareness that responsible or irresponsible use of technology has an impact on human health; therefore, it can be said, based on the preliminary analysis that the changes in the curriculum are aimed at focusing on competencies and attitudes; however, as mentioned above, on the basis of literature analysis, we can assume that, in the curriculum, there are a limited number of goals that may obligate teacher to shape attitudes, and after education reform number of AC goals decreased in the curriculum. This was one of the reasons for undertaking the research presented in this text.

There were several attempts to analyze the content of the curriculum [66,67], although none of them analyzed goals from attitude shaping point of view, and because of that, we would like to propose a new approach.

In the Polish curriculum, each chapter is divided into general and specific objectives. In those objectives, we were looking for direct and indirect indicators of content that would shape attitudes—attitudes shaping content.

The attitude’s shaping content was then attributed to one of the categories corresponding to different levels—sensory (S), functional (F), or rational (R). Every chosen expression should refer to shaping attitudes, both pro-environmental and other. Examples of goals assigned to each level are presented below. In the beginning, researchers counted how often in the goals and contents of the curriculum the idea of shaping attitudes, opinions, prophylactic actions, or awareness was mentioned. Each curriculum was revised twice by two independent researchers, and any disagreements were discussed until the conflict was resolved. The intercoder agreement was calculated using MaxQDA (Kappa = 0.88).

In order to be assigned to the S category, the element of attitudes shaping content should contain an expression such as visiting a particular ecosystem, observing nature, defining nature phenomena, mentioning protected areas, naming ways of transmitting different diseases, naming and using the basic hygiene activities, and listing the basic threats for the young health. For example, a statement such as: “[Student]: defines the role of the fungi in nature, as a decomposer of organic matter;” “Student names human senses and explain their role in discovering nature and implements the safety rules during nature observations.” would be classified into a sensory category.

For the goal to be assigned to the F category, it should mention some activate/abilities for students to make—it should contain expressions such as explaining the relationship between consumers in the ecosystem, the utility of living organisms, understanding the idea of recycling, taking action in protecting the environment, and taking care of the health of themselves and other people. For example: “[Student]: presents a meaning of bacteria for human” or “Students shows examples of positive and negative influence of the environment on human health”. In order to be assigned to the R category, the element of attitudes shaping content should contain expressions such as shaping the attitudes threat to the environment, social meaning of blood donation and transplanting of the organs, stages of sexual development and meaning of prophylactic medical examination and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, the meaning of using drugs and how to, in an assertive way, refuse them, and the importance of good sleeping hygiene. For example, a statement such as “[Student]: justify the necessity of nature protection; presents the attitude of respect towards herself/himself and any other living; describes the attitude and behavior of the person responsibly using the goods of nature”.

We compared both curricula to find out which one contained more R elements and would be more likely to inspire a teacher to shape attitudes during biology lessons.

To achieve that, the data were entered into MaxQDA for analysis. The Pearson chi-square was performed in SPSS. Goals were normalized in the context of the duration of each education level, but the obtained average was not proportional.

3. Results

The results of attitudes shaping content elements (general and specific) for the old curriculum (C1) are presented in

Table 1. The number of goals with content shaping the attitudes in polish nature and biology C1 curriculum on the different educational levels: 1—primary school (6–9 years old), 2—primary school (9–13 years old), 3—junior high school (13–16 years old).

C1 Curriculum Educational Levels	General Objectives in Curriculum	Total Number of General Objectives	Specific Objectives in Curriculum	Total Number of Specific Objectives in Curriculum	Total Number of Objectives
Primary school (6–9 years old)	3	8	3	22	30
Primary school (9–13 years old)	3	5	34	89	94
Junior high school	1	5	31	106	111

.

Educational levels had the following number of attitude content shaping goals: junior high school (1 general objective, 31 specific objectives—in summary, 32 objectives), primary school 9–13 years old students (3 general objectives, 34 specific objectives—in summary, 37 objectives), primary school 6–9 years old students (three general objectives, three specific objectives—in summary, six objectives).

In the new curriculum (C2 introduced with education reform in Poland), as mentioned above, that is no junior high school. The results show that for the first three years of education, three general objectives and three specific objectives could be attributed as attitudes shaping content. In the second stage, which is 5 years long, there are twelve general and 53 specific objectives categorized as attitudes shaping content, which gives us 2 goals per year in the first stage and 13 in the second stage of primary school. The total number of goals, which included attitudes shaping content for each educational level in the C2 curriculum, are presented in

Table 2. The number of goals with attitude shaping content in polish nature and biology C2 curriculum on the different educational levels: 1—primary school (6–9 years old), 2—primary school (9–16 years old).

C2 Curriculum Educational Levels	General Objectives in Curriculum	Total Number of General Objectives	Specific Objectives in Curriculum	Total Number of Specific Objectives	Total Number of Objectives
Primary school (6–9 years old)	3	32	3	30	62
Primary school (9–16 years old)	12	44	53	196	240

.

The results show that the C1 curriculum had a low number of goals and contents, which shaped the pro-environmental attitudes in the early years of primary schools (9%). However, the percentage of attitude shaping content (attitudes shaping content) rose to 39% level in the next years of primary school (9–13 years old). The trend slows down and drops in junior high school, with the number of attitudes shaping content elements decreasing to 38%.

The C2 curriculum has the same number of attitudes shaping content as the pro-nature attitudes directed in the early years of primary schools (9%). However, contrary to C1, in the future years, that percentage rose only to 11% level in the next years of primary school (9–16 years old). It should be stated that there are some statements that could be attributed to the attitude’s shaping content in a commentary at the end of the curriculum, but this part of the document is not considered to be obligatory.

The objectives above were assigned to categories—Sensory (S), Functional (F), or Rational (R).

The distribution of distinguished aspects associated with the attitudinal educational goals are presented in

Table 3. Distribution of distinguished aspects associated with the attitudinal educational goals. School type: PS—primary school old curriculum, JHS—Junior high school (old curriculum), PSN—primary school new curriculum.

Aspect
		Sensitivity		Functionality		Rationality		Total
		N	%	N	%	N	%	N
Type of school	PS	18	54.5	23	21.9	7	24.1	48
	JHS	11	33.3	28	26.7	14	48.3	53
	PSN	4	12.1	54	51.4	8	27.6	66
Total		33	100	105	100	29	100	167

. Some goals were so elaborate that they were assigned to several categories of distinguished aspects.

The results of the Pearson Chi-square analysis (x² (2) = 24,024, p < 0.001) showed that there was a significant association between the type of school and whether or not curricula implemented the aspects. The distribution of aspects was not even, with a noticeable decrease in the aspect of sensitivity in new curricula for primary school (PSN). The aspect of rationality was better represented in curricula goals dedicated to JHS.

4. Discussion

The comparison of the number of different aspects of goals between both curricula (PS and JHS versus PSN) shows that, while functional levels are represented quite equally and dominantly, the rational level is neglected and has a decreasing tendency (when comparing C1 with C2)—this is also true for the sensitivity aspect. Sensitivity is the aspect that relates to learning by interacting with nature through the senses, and experiencing it in the new version of the curriculum is kept to a minimum. As is known, childhood experiences are one of the main factors in shaping preferences and perceptions later in life [68,69]. Avoiding the possibility of interaction with nature, failure to refer to the aspect of sensitivity may lead to the extinction of experience. This, in turn, can lead to a feedback loop where the consequences accelerate the further loss of interaction with nature [70]. At this point, it is worth referring to the idea of biophilia. Biophilia is a hypothesis put forward by Edward O. Wilson [71], who defines it as “the need to feel community with other living organisms”. He claims that living creatures have an innate sense of community with the natural world, which is needed for the proper development of us as individuals. Nature has a positive effect on our balance and tranquility, restoring the desired balance and supporting concentration. Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis includes the claim that, as a consequence of evolution, humans have an “innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes”. This idea is also visible in urban architecture and, for example, in the fact that the provision of parks and the preservation of nature reserves have been supported by the belief that exposure to nature fosters psychological well-being, reduces the stress related to modern living, and promotes physical well-being [72] Additionally Soga, Gaston, Yamaura, Kurisu, and Hanaki [73] analyzed the effects of interacting with the environment on Japanese children’s environmental awareness. They have shown that children who have experience with nature more frequently develop greater ecological awareness and a disposition to preserve biodiversity. In addition, the third aspect, regionality, is a neglected part of the attitudes model in the analyzed curricula, since that aspect relates to justifying the necessity of nature protection, respect towards oneself and any other living being, and responsibly using the goods of nature. After the education reform, we even notice a decline in goals on a rational level, which was almost not represented earlier.

In our research, we have observed a very small difference in the number of goals that address the attitudes of students in both investigated curricula. According to our analysis, the functional aspect appears to be dominant in both curricula. Based on that, we assume that both Polish biology curricula were created without any higher idea in mind. The lack of such aims in education—curriculum—may affect the lack of pro-environmental attitudes in students’ behavior and in the end, the initiative to change.

This finding is similar to the report of Osborne and Dillon [74], showing that with time and changes in the curriculum, the amount of content aimed at changing its pro-environmental values did not increase, and there is no common agreement on how to develop science education across the EU. Furthermore, Oulton, Dillon, and Grace [75] claim that the problem might be bigger than we think, and more focus should be put on working on grassroots issues with teachers, although the interplay between curricula and classroom practice might be difficult; therefore, the solution may be the introduction of teachers’ trainers to support teachers in implementing the new curriculum. In the Netherlands [66], a new curriculum introduced a whole new subject—Algemene Natuurwetenschappen (‘General Natural Sciences’) [76]—but an emphasis was put on the adhibition of a new qualitative core curriculum by providing the teachers with appropriate support at the same time. Teachers declared that it is difficult to escape the teaching tradition, and the researchers evaluating the program reached very similar conclusions [77]. Similar challenges in teacher education and in the introduction of new teaching styles are also observed in Portugal, France, Great Britain, Taiwan, and Poland [78,79]. The main problem is that the style of the teacher and their way of conducting classes is usually similar to how they were taught at school. As noted by Osborne and Dillon [74], a certain culture and teaching tradition is passed from one science teacher to another, and the acquired habits are difficult to change. Nevertheless, it also means that the reflective and ethical teacher will pass their style on to the next teachers. Unfortunately, as indicated in our other research, this kind of teacher, having the ability and incentive to put more stress on attitudes and values, and less on the knowledge that we named “ethical teacher”, was rarely identified among the teachers participating in the research [79]. The need to support such a reflective teaching approach is prescribed.

In the discussion of obtained results, it is also worth emphasizing the fact that students are a very susceptible group in a didactic situation. Society and information transmitted in media (including social media) have a vast impact on student attitudes. This might be considered a threat; students, especially in primary school, have no ability or knowledge to filtrate some information and subject them to critical analysis. On the contrary, they are very vulnerable to peer pressure. Consequently, Kollmuss and Agyeman [80] mention that it is impossible to construct one framework that would be appropriate to model and predict the attitudes of students, let alone the whole society.

On the other hand, the importance of environmental literacy and work with attitudes are shown in a number of studies. For example, Trewhella and coworkers [81] present how appropriate provided environmental education can be in the long term cheaper and with more long-lasting effects than the majority of nature conservation activities. Accordingly, as Kellert [82] mentioned, only long-lasting attitudes shaping activities have a point. As loud and short media campaigns may change the pro-environmental attitudes of society, they rely on emotions. In addition, as soon as an emotion caused by, for example, TV spots disappear, the attitude toward the environment will come back to its previous state.

The limitation of this study is using proposed categorization on documents that have not clearly stated goals as it may create difficulties with content analysis of the text and proper categorization. Furthermore, our analysis covered only the biology curriculum in Poland, where the goals we are interested in (regarding pro-ecological and health attitudes) are located. It would be interesting to investigate to what extent biology/nature primary school’s education curricula highlight shaping attitudes in various European countries, allowing for generalization of our results.

The analysis could include curricula from different countries when it would be possible to indicate examples of goals that relate to all aspects we analyzed. The results would be worth referring to the question of how teachers implement the content of the curriculum in practice and how it correlates with the content of textbooks. This requires further research.

5. Conclusions

Content of a curriculum might encourage teachers to reflect on shaping the student’s attitudes. For the teachers who might not understand the need for attitude-shaping activities, including appropriate cues in the curriculum might be a useful way to familiarize them with that need. Meanwhile, the conclusions that arise from our research indicate that there is no significant difference in the number of attitudes shaping content found in both curricula (there is no significant change in time). In addition, the rational and sensitivity aspects are neglected and have decreasing tendencies (when comparing C1 with C2). The lack of top-down system indications means that—especially in such an important area as learning by interacting with nature, through the senses and experiencing—shaping attitudes depends on whether the teacher is a reflective practitioner.

Our recommended implication is to include a step aimed at recognizing the student’s attitudes and their background in the didactic process. At the beginning of the year, the teacher should, by any method (preferable to some of the active forms), investigate students’ pro-environmental attitudes by, for example, conducting a debate (or in-depth interviews or questionnaires) to understand their motivations, emotions, and beliefs towards different environmental problems and cases—preparation to this debate should be complex and thorough.

We take the position that teachers should be supported in their work in the area of student attitudes, both in the practice of working at school, and—above all—at the level of the educational curriculum and other documents regulating his/her work. Since the curriculum is lacking in this regard, a different kind of support is needed. Evidence-based school projects professional development dedicated pointing to attitudes shaping mechanisms and the importance of attitudes towards nature for the future of Earth are essential [7,83,84]. From the perspective of the idea of sustainable development, the contribution of resources necessary for such projects may be disproportionately lower than the effects on future common assets [81]. The results of our research could therefore be interesting for organizations supporting the work of schools in Poland and for teachers designing their professional development.