Promoting Environmental Citizenship through Social Studies Education: An imperative for Botswana

Abstract

Botswana has a strong policy support for the integration and infusion of environmental issues into school curriculum. This article reports on a study which was carried out to investigate the responsiveness of Social Studies (SS) teacher training programme towards Environmental Citizenship in Botswana. The study was triggered by the researcher’s awareness that teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge regarding environmental citizenship is an important and under-researched area in Botswana. The study was conducted at two teacher training colleges in Botswana. Individual interviews, group discussions and qualitative-questionnaire were used as means of gathering data. The participants for the study were drawn from year three Social Studies (SS) student–teachers and lecturers. Findings of the study show that the teaching of environmental citizenship through Social Studies is not as successful as expected since the value of Environmental Education (EE) which is capable of developing learners to be effective caretakers of the environment are not well included in the syllabus. While there are also efforts by lecturers to practicalise the teaching of environmental concepts their over usage of traditional teacher cantered approaches defeat their efforts. In the light of the findings, important recommendations are made to the policy makers, curriculum planners and Social Studies lecturers. The study ends by recommending specialised training for teachers and college lecturers on Environmental Education methodologies to enable them acquire deeper knowledge on environmental issues.