Enhancing the teaching of education for sustainable development in the Foundation Phase through community-based education

Abstract

Teacher education for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been neglected in teacher-education programmes and there is a need to improve South African teachers' knowledge and capacity to teach ESD content, values and skills. The aim of this study is to enhance the teaching of ESD in the Foundation Phase by exploring the teaching needs of teachers in terms of ESD, determining what the local environmental issues in the community are and establishing how teachers can link these issues to their teaching. I also aim to provide guidelines to inform the integration of ESD into the Foundation Phase through Community-Based Education (CBE). Suitable teaching approaches for this aim are experiential and transformative learning, which are, therefore, the theoretical frameworks underpinning this study. This critical qualitative study implemented Participatory Action Learning and Action Research (PALAR) as the methodology. Participants were recruited by means of convenience sampling and consisted of two Grade 2 teachers and two Grade 3 teachers. Data generation consisted of two cycles. The aim for cycle one was relationship building, forming a shared vision for our study, negotiating an ethical agreement and then determining what teaching needs in terms of ESD in the Foundation Phase teachers experienced. During cycle two, we determined what knowledge the teachers already had about CBE, discussed the local environmental issues, collaboratively designed action plans to implement ESD using CBE and reflected thereon to determine the impact and usefulness of our action plans. We concluded with our findings and recommendations which were used to create a digital informational brochure to mobilise knowledge on ESD in the school. Data was generated by means of action learning sets (ALS) and various arts-based methods and analysed by myself and the participants using content analysis.