Measuring the Effectiveness of Environmental Education Programmes in Promoting Sustainable Living in Secondary Schools

Msawenkosi Sandile Mbokazi (), Rachel Gugu Mkhasibe () and Chinaza Uleanya ()
Additional contact information
Msawenkosi Sandile Mbokazi: Teaching Professional Unit, University of Zululand KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Rachel Gugu Mkhasibe: Teaching Professional Unit, University of Zululand KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Chinaza Uleanya: Department of Education Leadership and Management, University of Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

Technium Social Sciences Journal, 2021, vol. 23, issue 1, 164-176

Abstract: Environmental education has been contemplated as the field of study enabling people to live a sustainable livelihood. In recent years, the South African government took an initiative to integrate Environmental Education into all learning areas or subjects. Despite such inclusion, a gap still exists between what is learned in class and what learners are actually doing in their daily activities. Alexander and Poyyamoli, (2014: 1) suggest that Environmental Education is an essential advancement to encourage learners to save, protect and improve the local environment. As a result, the present paper seeks to examine the effectiveness of environmental education programmes in enforcing sustainability behaviours in school children and how it fosters the acquisition of knowledge and understanding, skills, attitude and behaviors compatible to sustainability. The paper employed sustainable indicators as an instrument to evaluation the effectiveness of environmental education programmes in promoting sustainable livelihood. Questionnaires were distributed to teachers, principals and learners from twenty schools in the district. Participants were subjected to pre-test, innovative sustainable living programmes, and post-test assessment. The results of the pre-test portrayed a gap of learners' knowledge, skills and attitude towards their environment, whereas the post-test results confirmed that EE promotes sustainable living when forged with EE programmes.

Keywords: Environmental Education; sustainable living; environmental education programme; sustainable schools; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://techniumscience.com/index.php/socialsciences/article/view/2838/1568 (application/pdf)
https://techniumscience.com/index.php/socialsciences/article/view/2838 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tec:journl:v:23:y:2021:i:1:p:164-176

DOI: 10.47577/tssj.v23i1.2838

Access Statistics for this article

Technium Social Sciences Journal is currently edited by Tasente Tanase

More articles in Technium Social Sciences Journal from Technium Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tasente Tanase ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).