Disaster Prevention Education in Merapi Volcano Area Primary Schools

This paper described the implementation of disaster prevention education curricula in 24 purposely-selected primary schools in Merapi volcano area in Java Island by looking at the students' perceptions (knowledge, attitude, and behavior) and the teachers' performance. The study took 548 student and 191 teacher respondents through a field survey with the use of questionnaires for the data collection instruments.

The findings showed that, despite of the fact that students in the researched schools have already learnt about natural disasters and prevention for years either under the integrated or isolated teaching method, there are still confusions or problems regarding their effective knowledge, attitude and behavior on natural disasters. This condition is possibly caused by the ineffective disaster prevention teaching practice which relies much on textbooks and pictures as teaching media.

The findings also highlight that teachers still have lack of knowledge and skills related to disaster prevention teaching due to limited teacher trainings. Therefore, it is strongly recommended for the local government together with the schools to make efforts in improving the teachers' performance through appropriate teachers' professional development programs by involving the existing related non-governmental organizations for their valuable assistance.