A Review of Non‐formal Environmental Education in Uganda

Non‐formal environmental education and training in Uganda is reviewed and a new approach proposed. Contemporary environmental education has been characterised by a top‐to‐bottom approach, which has resulted in a dependence syndrome. It has not allowed for better perception and conceptualization of the ideas learned by the people. It has less emphasis on the roles of social change, economics and politics in environmental crisis. The new approach emphasises the adoption of multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, people‐centred and participatory programmes in environmental concerns. It should embrace the diversity of the biophysical, social and economic environments and be closely associated with permanent, developmental and functional literacy programmes. Special emphasis should be given to youth, women and policy makers. The five basic functions for participation, which are identification, out‐reach, dialogue, assimilation and feed‐back, are discussed.     

中学地理课程中的环境教育价值及目标研究

环境教育关系到未来公民的素质和保护环境的意识,在基础教育阶段强调环境教育要渗透于各个学科教学之中。中学地理课程以人-地关系为主线,强调人与环境的协调发展,在很大程度上与环境教育有统一性。因而以地理课程为载体,挖掘其环境教育的价值并明确地理课程环境教育的目标,可以更好地实现其教育价值,并使得地理课程的环境教育更具有地域空间性和综合性。     

Educational model for environmental‐cognition development

Environmental education (EE) is an holistic educational approach the main goal of which is to develop the students’ environmental cognition, as compared to the disciplinary approach which develops a compartmentalized cognition. Environmental cognition is defined as a reciprocal relationship, comprising knowledge, understanding, sensitivity, perceptiveness and imagination with regard to the environment as well as responsibility and motivation to make environmental decisions. A conceptual model was constructed for this purpose comprising three stages: sensing the environment and generating questions; analysing and then synthesizing a system presentation of the environment, thereby focusing upon the inter‐relatedness and interdependence of environmental components; and environmental problem‐solving.

The model was implemented for training EE teachers and for EE curriculum development. Both of which may enhance the inclusion of EE within the formal educational system.     

The Systems Approach in Education with Special Consideration of Environmental Education: A Review

Abstract

The Ministry of Education of Israel—through its Center of Curriculum Development—commissioned the development and implementation of environmental education curriculum for grades eleven and twelve in the national educational system. The aim of the curriculum was as follows: “This curriculum will deal with the interrelationships between man and his environment and will develop within students the readiness and the capability for personal contribution and social activity towards the improvement of the environment they are living in.” This aim has been translated and crystallized into a new innovative curricular model which, in turn, determines the characteristics, the processes, and the products of the Israeli Environmental Education Project (IEEP). This interdisciplinary, science-, student-, and value-oriented model is based on our contention that environmental education (EE) is problem-oriented education about the environment, in the environment, and for the environment and the human being as part of it, in which the wholistic, interdisciplinary system approach is used for the analysis of issues and the working out of possible alternative solutions. IEEP is currently in the stage of massive development, field testing, and initial implementation.     

Policy and the Practice of Environmental Education in England: a dilemma for teachers

Environmental education in schools in England is subject to conflicting pressures from the policies of central government concerning the environment and education. Schools are considered to be important vehicles for improving environmental responsibility and within this ‘values education’ makes a significant contribution. Recent reform of the education system has been directed towards raising standards, with an emphasis on knowledge and skills. Aspects of affective education, including beliefs, values and attitudes receive less emphasis. Results of a study into how environmentally‐aware teachers in secondary schools see their role in relation to their own attitudes to the environment, the relationship between local and global concerns and their understanding of the nature of environmental education and its contribution to the curriculum are reported and discussed in the context of policy mismatch.     

Postcolonialism And Comparative Education

The article considers the relevance of recent developments in postcolonial theory for comparative education research. The article starts with an account of these developments. This account is then used as a basis for a critical discussion of previous theoretical frameworks that have been used by comparative researchers to explain the colonial legacy. The implications of adopting a postcolonial approach in comparative education are discussed in relation to issues of race, culture, language and the curriculum. The article concludes by arguing that a consideration of the postcolonial condition is necessary for developing a more holistic and less eurocentric understanding of the relationship between globalisation and education.     

A Systemic Approach to Sustainable Environmental Education

Efforts to introduce environmental education can be viewed as a process of educational change. This paper questions whether efforts to introduce environmental education in the last 10‐20 years have given lasting and widespread results (are sustainable) and suggests that this work could be made more sustainable by following a systemic approach to changing the institutional framework for environmental education. Such an approach would focus on placing responsibility for environmental education with the educational authorities; curriculum revision; competence; building and development of networks of intersectoral cooperation with institutions outside the school. The environmental education strategy developed by the Norwegian Education Ministry is presented and discussed as an example of a systemic approach.     

Postcolonialism And Comparative Education

The article considers the relevance of recent developments in postcolonial theory for comparative education research. The article starts with an account of these developments. This account is then used as a basis for a critical discussion of previous theoretical frameworks that have been used by comparative researchers to explain the colonial legacy. The implications of adopting a postcolonial approach in comparative education are discussed in relation to issues of race, culture, language and the curriculum. The article concludes by arguing that a consideration of the postcolonial condition is necessary for developing a more holistic and less eurocentric understanding of the relationship between globalisation and education.     

成人生态环境教育探析

要构建一个人与自然和谐发展的社会,必须加强生态环境教育,而成人教育的特点决定了它在生态环境保护中不可比拟的作用,成人教育以各种各样的形式担任了环境保护中的主力军。因此,在培养目标、课程内容和实施途径等方面加强成人的生态环境教育显得尤为重要。     

Colonial legacies and neo‐colonial practices in Papua New Guinean higher education

This paper explores the Westernization of academic quality within the Papua New Guinea higher education system and the hybridity of the university sector where different actors force knowledge to be created for the needs of a small, formal economy, rather than for the development needs of the country. The country has yet to find a system that best responds to its educational needs; several models have been put into practice but without significant results. The approach that the PNG higher education institutes have taken, continuing the colonial tradition, builds on and is reinforced by the new international trends in higher education that follow the market needs, giving a false guarantee that HE is contributing to the economic growth of the country. Colonial legacies and neo‐colonial practices provide the conceptual framework.     

Subaltern Thinking in Religious Education? Postcolonial Readings of (German) Schoolbooks

ABSTRACT

This paper deals with the disclosure of subaltern thinking in current German-language textbooks for religious education. For the hermeneutical framing of this analysis, the approach of a postcolonial reading is particularly profitable. Obvious hierarchical relationships from clearly up and down can consequently be made visible and their presumed self-evidence unmasked. Even hidden hegemonic forms of expression can be uncovered in this way. With regard to current theology and religious education racism and misogyny, environmental degradation and sexual exploitation are attitudes that have already and almost as amatter of course been taken up critically. They are pedagogically reflected and attempted to overcome by using counter-models such as cultural diversity, equal rights, sustainability and sexual self-determination.In exciting contrast to this there are still nowadays textbooks used with remnants of exactly such formats of colonial thoughts. We argue that decolonising schoolbooks can be a useful part of decolonising the religious education curriculum. The schoolbook analysis carried out for this purpose is structured by four leading categories: Anthropological assumptions (1), religious classifications and interpretations (2), conceptions of culture and its hybridity (3) and finally the relationship to creation and environment (4). Textbooks from primary, secondary and vocational schools were examined.     

Explanation and metaphor: Some empirical questions in science education

This paper examines how science education becomes institutionalized in Third World countries using Malaysia as a case study. The findings shows that the development of science education in Malaysia has been greatly influenced by international trends and the country's socio‐political development. Science gained a place in the school curriculum in the midst of British colonial rule. The strong colonial influence on school science continued throughout the early independence period but, in the 1980s, external influences on science education came from both Western and Islamic countries. In each of the historical periods, external world cultural forces interacted with internal socio‐political forces resulting in a national science curriculum which is in accord with world cultural rules but at the same time quite indigenous in character. This study also suggests that while each nation‐state aspires to develop an indigenous form of science education that would best suit the national context, the outcome tends to be more universalistic than particularistic due to global influences.     

Environmental Education in Serbian Primary Schools: Challenges and Changes in Curriculum,Pedagogy, and Teacher Training

The protection of human health and the preservation of the environment are topics that form an integral part of the primary school curriculum in Serbia. However, research studies have shown that students do not have enough knowledge to contribute to the development of a healthy lifestyle and environmental awareness. The latest changes in school policy and curricula confirm that the relevance of environmental education has been recognized, but changes in school practice are yet to come. This article discusses the challenges encountered in the implementation of the intended curriculum and offers suggestions for changes to the curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher training in order to enhance environmental education.     

Art Education and the Visual Arts in Botswana

The history of art and design education in Botswana has evolved in a unique way and reflects its British colonial history and post‐independence development. It has involved constant exchange and dialogue with other countries through the employment of teachers, teacher trainers and university lecturers from a variety of European, Asian and other African countries. This dialogue has continued as locally trained art teachers pursue their degrees overseas and return with new ideas and influences. At the same time, the development of local crafts for a global market and the inter‐cultural exchange in the visual arts outside the formal education system are thriving with the help of various organisations and the museum and gallery sector. This article will look more closely at the country context, the history and development of art education and the interrelationships that have evolved over the last two decades. It will show how students engage with the challenge of integrating their African heritage and changing traditions with their development as teachers and artists. It will also consider how closer links between the formal and informal art sectors might be mutually beneficial and demonstrate the potential for art and design to play a role in the social, economic and cultural development of the country.     

Implementing curriculum guidance on environmental education: the importance of teachers' beliefs

Many observers have commented on disparities between the theoretical understandings of environmental education portrayed in academic literature and the environmental education that takes place in schools. In much of the literature and in curriculum documents there has been an increasing emphasis on promoting positive attitudes towards the environment, and the results of several surveys suggest that many teachers support this aim. This paper explores the beliefs of three geography teachers teaching controversial environmental issues in UK secondary schools. In contrast to the findings of prior studies, the teachers in this study feel strongly that they should try to avoid influencing students' attitudes, or imposing any kind of pro‐environmental agenda. There is a substantial divergence between the teachers' beliefs and the espoused aims of much environmental education literature and the geography syllabus they were following. This suggests that, unless curriculum developers take account of teachers' beliefs in designing new curriculum materials, those materials are unlikely to be implemented in their intended format.     

Speaking back to Manifest Destinies: a land education-based approach to critical curriculum inquiry

This article examines the ways in which settler colonialism shapes place in the social studies curriculum, producing understandings of land and citizenship in educational settings. To do this, the author uses the emergent framework of land education to move forward the important projects of place-based education, especially its potential for centering indigeneity and confronting educational forms of settler colonialism in environmental education. To emphasize how place-based education can intersect with land education, the author outlines how a concept of place, informed by Indigenous knowledge, renders settler colonialism visible. The author then describes how current models of place-based education differ from land education in a number of ways. Finally, using a land education approach, the author demonstrates how schooling, through social studies curriculum, transmits a settler colonial land ethic that must be made explicit in order to decolonize settler colonial relations attached to current pedagogical models of place. The author insists land education – like environmental education – must take place across the curriculum (k-16). However, land education implies a commitment to begin to understand the process of decolonization that takes seriously the centrality of settler colonialism.     

Language policy in Zimbabwean education: historical antecedents and contemporary issues

This article analyses issues pertaining to language policy in Zimbabwean education beginning with the establishment of formal education under colonial rule. English is the official language of business, government and education, and the dominant language in the media. Official policy, before and after independence, has been characterised by continuities, rather than change, providing limited support for the development of indigenous languages. Furthermore, the capacity to support the development of indigenous languages has declined in recent years. The curriculum policy has progressively served to provide avenues for engaging and locking into limited networks of opportunities within and outside the country.     

Historiographic Reconsideration of Colonial Education in Africa: Domestic Forces in the Early Expansion of English Schooling in Northern Igboland, 1890–1930

Mainstream historiography often turns to Europe's era of empire building to explain the expansion of Western formal education in Africa. Popular accounts suggest that in Africa (1) colonial involvement in education was late and short lived, spanning the early decades of the twentieth century, (2) missionaries were largely responsible for early educational expansion, and (3) education expansion resulted from interdenominational rivalries among missionaries. However, these popular narratives inadequately account for Africans’ own responses to colonial education. This study examines social and cultural shifts in northern Igboland in southeastern Nigeria between 1890 and 1930. It uses colonial archives and oral sources to demonstrate that beyond missionary rivalry, domestic contests converged with the fledgling colonial process to promote English education in northern Igboland. To accomplish this task, the article reviews methodological assumptions responsible for marginal attention to the agency of the colonized in the historiography of Western education in former colonies.     

The Perplexity of Sponsored Environment Education: a critical view on Hong Kong and its future

This study critically examines Hong Kong's environmental education initiatives beyond schooling in the last 5 years with reference to the engagement of environmental non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) in this process under an emerging sponsorship regime. It highlights that the manifested form and mode of environmen‐talism in general and environmental education in particular are embedded within the socio‐political context of colonial governance, the proliferation of green ideas and the local adaptation of ideas of environmental education. It is observed and argued that environmental education programmes in the last 5 years, promoted mainly in the mass media domain, have been partially successful in changing people's perception on environmental affairs, but environmental groups' autonomy is questioned under a sponsorship regime. The paper ends with remarks on the future of environmental education under a new political regime in 1997 and beyond.     

高师教育可持续发展的对策

在知识经济趋势下 ,高师教育可持续发展面临很多障碍 :教育国际化中的殖民主义倾向 ;教育主体对教育的非自主性控制 ;教育与人生疏离 ;知识老化 ;权力性因素干扰 ;资金短缺等。鉴于此 ,必须采取如下对策 :把高师内部管理体制改革与办学模式转变相结合 ;调整和优化课程结构 ;建立现代学校制度 ,实现教育主体对教育的自主控制 ;推行终身教育制度 ,强化师资培训 ;趋利避害 ,走向国际教育舞台 ;把培养创新精神与人文精神品格贯穿于教育过程始终