DefinePK

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to explore elementary teachers’ (geography) perceptions about teaching global issues . Employing random sampling technique, a total of 110 public elementary school geography teachers (60 male and 50 female) were selected from Lahore as a sample of the study. A self-tailored questionnaire, developed on five-point Likert Scale, was self-administered for data collection purpose. Both descriptive (Mean, SD, frequency, and percentage) and inferential (independent sample t -test) statistical techniques were e mployed using SPSS(Version 24).The results revealed that teachers prioritize education and literacy, terrorism, war, conflict, health, poverty, and human rights issues as the most important global issues. Majority of the teachers agreed that global issues have multiple effects . The teachers also had contradictory perceptions about global issues as they perceived that global issues would be resolved in the future and would get worse in future. They also perceived that global issues are mostly caused by human activities as well as by natural process. They identified curriculum, assessment, test, time, lack of resources and school climate as some of the factors hindering teaching global issues. Both male and female teachers’ perceptions with reference to their concerns about global issues were not significantly different, but their perceptions about teaching global issues found significantly different. The researchers recommend introducing more issues-based education at elementary level.