환경행정전문가 양성을 위한 사회교육적 접근

A Social Study Approach to Education for Environmental Administration Specialists

Environmental professional education in Korea has been mostly concentrated on the scientific and technological approaches to environmental problems. Many undergraduate majors in environmental engineering or sciences are designed to produce more technical manpowers in environmental fields. Most graduate schools on the environment also place an emphasis on teaching the technical aspects of environmental problems. Some environmental administration related courses, such as environmental law, environmental administration, environmental policy, environmental economics, environmental impact assessments, etc. are partically reflected in some curricula of very limited graduate or undergraduate environment majors. However, teaching environmental administration related courses in science or engineering major institutions has not been successfully carried out so far because lack of interests in such courses by most students and the shortage of competent teachers as well. Furthermore, those courses are not widely accepted by the departments of law, political science, public administration, etc. because their major interests are not in the environment-oriented. Environmental problems cannot be solved by the technical approach along. They should be systematically dealt with through interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary approaches, including natural and social sciences covering all relevant disciplines. in this respect, undergraduate environmental education should preferably cover broader courses on the environment, and the education for environmental professionals, including environmental administration specialists, is preferably handled by graduate schools offering many specialty area courses. Education for environmental administration specialist at graduate level is urgently needed in order to supply the competent manpower at government, business, and private organization levels dealing with environmental administration related problem. This is a new challenging area and the education for such specialists will become more important in the near future than technical manpowers which we ate now concentrating on their education.