International Journal of Educational Research Open (Jan 2022)
Determinants of effective environmental education policy in South African schools
Abstract
In recent years, environmental issues have dominated the global conversation. This has necessitated the inclusion of environmental content in educational curricula. The effectiveness and potency of educational initiatives are heavily reliant on their design. As a result, the purpose of this empirical study is to identify the elements that determine the efficacy of environmental education policy. The study's philosophical perspective was founded on policy cycle theory. A mixed-methods approach was used in the study. The study used a pragmatist paradigm and triangulation strategy to explore the opinion of 175 teachers and personal experience of 10 principals from Buffalo City Metro Education District. Descriptive statistics was used to harness quantitative data. Implementation of Environmental Education Questionnaire (IEEPQ), and semi-structured interview were used to collect data from 185 respondents. The findings revealed, amongst other things, that there is no practical and structured policy design for Environmental Education (EE) in schools, that few schools have school-level environmental education policies supported by the School Governing Body (SGB), and that teachers and principals do not understand the policy objective of environmental education as stated in the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) document due to its obscurity. The study concludes that the phenomenal aspects that determine good environmental education policies are seldom present in school curricula. It was suggested that the broad goal of environmental education in the CAPS document be re-aligned to specifics rather than generality, and the Department of Basic Education should establish an environmental education directorate with a defined responsibility to develop environmental education policy documents, assess, and monitor their implementation.
