What Are the Perceptions of Pupils and Teachers Around the Teaching and Learning of Animal Agriculture Within Environmental Education?

Human induced climate change is a narrative uttered around the world with increasing concern (Houghton, 2015;Thomas Farmer & Cook, 2013;Ting &Stagner, 2021 andWong, 2016).As such, it deems prudent that the topic is discussed in educational settings with an emphasis on human behaviours that cause a large proportion of the problem, yet most environmental education schemes are devoid of the impact animal agriculture has on the world.This thesis puts forward the question, "what are the perceptions of pupils and teachers around the teaching and learning of the impact animal agriculture has on the environment?"Key thoughts around what the barriers might be, at what age it should be taught, if at all are discussed throughout the focus groups, log books and interviews within an international primary school in Malaysia.One key question centred around the concept of "shying away" (Rousell & Cutter Mackenzie-Knowles, 2019) from discussing the Earth's climate crisis when talking to children.Literature around animal agriculture and children's perspectives often centres around where food comes from and how to maintain a healthier food diet rather than the environmental impact of animal agriculture.Many environmental curriculums are small scale projects (Benavot, 2014) and omit information on animal agriculture.As the thesis is interested in qualitative data in the form of children's and teachers' perceptions and opinions, it used interviews for teachers and a mixture of logbooks and focus group discussions for the children.Children used the logbooks throughout our unit on climate change.After each lesson they wrote down key reflections that they had on that day's lesson or generally anything that they thought about animal agriculture.The key findings are broken into the children's perspectives and then the teachers', perspectives, though many were similar, which will be discussed accordingly.The main themes surrounding the two focus groups was broken into six: age, balancing the argument, portraying the problem, eco-anxiety/ worry, lack of autonomy and potential actions."Are we gonna die?" and "they could understand it and help or they could misunderstand and freak out" were two quotes taken from the focus group discussion.Children felt that only from Year 4 (8-9 year old) should they be taught about animal agriculture as any earlier they would not understand the concept.