The impact of the National Environmental Education Policy initiatives in South African schools
Date
2007-02-19T11:25:26Z
Authors
Maluleke, Nash Nelson
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Abstract
The South African environmental policies, NEMA (1998), and the White Paper on
Environment and Development (1995) support the incorporation of environmental
education into the national school curriculum. These policies propose that environmental
education should be interdisciplinary and holistic in approach and should run across all
school learning areas and disciplines. The policies further recognize the role of
environmental education as a potential tool through which learners and the general public
can engage themselves in critical issues related to environmental justice in South Africa.
Interviews with teachers, government officials and Delta personnel show that the national
policy initiatives, documents and projects have not yet reached schools in the Gauteng
region. The triangulated findings from this research show that there is poor coordination
between parties responsible for the implementation of policies. This poor coordination
has resulted in teachers not being prepared and empowered to initiate, organise,
implement and run environmental education in schools. As a result integrated
environmental education is not being implemented across the curriculum in the schools
that were interviewed in the study. The basic problem seems to be that teachers and
school principals have poor understanding of the nature of environmental education. It
appears, from the research findings, that this is linked to a lack of training and support.
Description
Student Number : 0102782D -
MA research report -
School of Geography, Archaeology and
Environmental Studies -
Faculty of Humanities
Keywords
South Africa, environmental policies, NEMA, White Paper, school curriculum, education