Abstract:

The aim of this paper was to elucidate the fundamentality of instructional strategies in the integration of environmental education in the primary school. The interest of this paper arises from the researcher anecdotal evidence during training of becoming a teacher, whereby it was observed that teachers in senior phase would rely on one instructional strategy to integrate environmental education. That instructional strategy was outdoor learning, and this became the purpose of the study to find out other instructional strategies that are used and how in order to integrate environmental education.

A qualitative interpretative multiple case study design was adopted. This paper was conducted in one of the primary schools situated in Tweefontein South circuit, Nkangala district, Mpumalanga province in South Africa. Three grade 7 teachers who taught subjects like natural science, technology and life orientation were purposefully sampled as the participants. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and lesson observations. Three teachers were separately interviewed within their school premises and they were observed when presenting their lessons inside and outside the classroom environment.

A typology approach was used to analyse data. Based on the results and findings of this paper, the researcher can infer that teachers had misconceptions on which instructional strategies to use when integrating environmental education. It has shown that some teachers used instructional strategies such as narrative method, lecture method, project method, jigsaw method, textbook method and student team’s achievement division method, which hindered the integration of environmental education. However, instructional strategies such as interactive method, outdoor learning method, question and answer method and discussion teaching method, enabled some of these teachers to integrate environmental education.

The problem is that some of these teachers were not aware that they were integrating environmental education using these instructional strategies. It is therefore recommended that during content workshops, curriculum implementers should emphasise on the importance of integrating environmental education fully in teaching and learning. Teachers should be capacitated with more knowledge on various instructional strategies that they can use and how to use them in teaching and learning process in order to enable them to integrate environmental education.

Curriculum implementers together with teachers, should introduce continuous environmental education programmes that are aligned to Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement, as this might assist in ensuring that there is education for sustainable development. Further studies are recommended on finding out the challenges and opportunities of integrating environmental education in teaching and learning.

Keywords:

Environment, Environmental education, Instructional strategies, Education for sustainable development.