Teacher education as key to adaptation to environmental degradation in Tanzania: Development of environmental education through participatory action research

Summary of the Thesis Environmental education (EE) is a key component of socio-economic transformation. Thus, teacher colleges and schools emphasize environmental topics in their curricula. Yet, environmental degradation continues in spite of the increasing number of people educated in line with EE curricula. Therefore, EE has not increased the community’s capacity to adapt to the changing environmental conditions, including the environment and humans’ individual and societal use of place-based resources. Policy makers emphasize participatory teaching as the way to transition out of unsustainability. Still, a lack of a wide range of resources is normally the major constraint, especially in rural primary schools, where communities remain as the major victims of the degradation and the changing socio-ecological systems. Through participatory action research (PAR) implemented in collaboration with student-teachers, tutors at Ilonga Teachers’ College, teachers in practice in primary schools, and surrounding local community members, we1 attempted to create an example of an active teaching strategy for environmental topics using locally available resources. We formulated the following research question to guide our study: In which ways can participatory teaching of environmental topics in schools and teacher colleges facilitate local community members’ adaptation to and management of harsh environmental conditions? We addressed the main research question through three underlying research questions that addressed different dimensions of the main question: 1. How can we engage local actors in the participatory planning of environmental activities? 2. How do the student teachers learn environmental education and how does that influence their practice of environmental education in primary schools and in the local community? 3. To what extent do democratic teaching processes in the Teachers’ College enhance the stakeholders’ ability to manage environmental challenges? We chose tree planting as the main, concrete approach for EE and linked the research process with experiential learning theories. Tree planting was a meaningful, comprehensible, and manageable environmental activity in the participating rural community, and a solution to the persistent environmental degradation. The PAR strategy involved two cycles of plan–act–reflect. After implementing the PAR cycles, we conducted a follow-up study to ascertain the sustainability of the intervention. The result of the PAR, as linked to the three underlying research questions, constitutes the three published articles that form part of this thesis. 1 Throughout the summary section I have used “we” to reference the researchers. iv Paper 1 summarizes and discusses the dynamics of engaging poor rural communities in EE and some critical empowerment issues. The paper relies on the mapping of the environmental conditions and resources, and on the engagement of the local communities in a critical reflection of their environmental realities. Therefore, the findings refers to the initial interaction between researchers and community leaders and EE committees. We followed the interaction up with interviews, focusgroup discussions (FGDs) including local community members, and participant observations of environmental realities accompanied by learning workshops. The mapping gave important insights for elaborating and improving the theoretical perspectives and for contextualizing experiential learning theories in accordance with the realities of the local communities, aiming at improvements in future environmental practices. The critical reflection promoted a common understanding of the main environmental challenges and built local trust and confidence between the researchers and local leaders, which later became important social capital and an alternative to the lack of physical resources for the management of environmental stressors. Paper 2 discusses the challenges involved in the transfer of experiential teaching strategies from the initially selected primary schools to a wider population of primary schools (i.e. the student teachers’ practice schools all over Tanzania). In addition, we discuss the learning outcomes among the student teachers involved in the transfer of teaching strategies. In the paper, we analyze student teachers’ teaching logs, interviews with practice teachers and student teachers, and FGDs involving student teachers who received experiential education and then participated in the second teaching practice to understand the realization of experiential teaching strategies in the primary schools. We found that educating the student teachers in experiential learning strategies enhanced their confidence and autonomy in planning and implementing EE programs in accordance with local realities in the teaching practice schools. The student teachers capitalized on democratic relationships to realize the teaching of environmental topics in order to secure social capital and physical resources in the schools they were teaching. The building of social capital increased their ability to handle contextual challenges when applying ideas in a new context. Paper 3 focuses on the power dimension. We experienced the development of democratic power relations through student teachers’ interactions with local stakeholders in the implementation of environmental management activities in the practice schools and the surrounding local communities. Still, we wanted to explore the sustenance of these relations and to understand the nature of power relations in the local community after the closure of the project. We interviewed primary school headmasters, the Dean of the Teachers’ College, and tutors and teachers in the participating schools and at the Teachers’ College. The result revealed an opposition between the participants’ exercise of democratic power relations in schools and the top-down decisions in the educational system, for example, the distribution and allocation of teachers decided by the district authorities. The local community members countered the challenges made by hierarchical top-down decisions by recruiting new members, by expanding their network and support systems, and by attracting new v sources of funding. We realized that the implementation of EE to a large degree relied on political and economic aspects. In spite of the challenges that were encountered, the three papers demonstrate that experiential learning strategies can contribute to the transformation of EE in Tanzania. The reason for this is that the teaching strategies both comprehended the transfer of knowledge and skills related to the selfsustaining management of environmentally-friendly activities and to the building of capacity to manage the lack of resources as well as the top-down-organized educational system. This means that the combination of experiential learning strategies and PAR is crucial. Although I will not underplay the significance of the challenges related to a lack of resources and power, the findings show examples of how to overcome these severe barriers. Thus, we recommend experiential learning strategies combined with the development of democratic relations as an approach for teaching EE in Tanzanian teacher colleges. Another finding is that mobile phones seem to be important vehicles for enriching the partnership between schools, the local community, and teacher colleges, and for relating the community to their physical environment. The use of the phones seemed to enhance participants’ environmental care due to the possibility of experiencing local environmental challenges, creating social, cultural, and symbolic capital, and building a community of learners, which could grow beyond the geographical boundaries of the projects.