Teachers’ understanding and enhancement of learning for sustainability in Mauritian primary schools.

Abstract

Mauritius, a small island, is confronted by numerous environmental challenges such as pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change. The Government developed various policies and strategies at different levels to address these issues to sustain the country’s resources and to maintain the island’s greenery. The education sector has entrenched Learning for Sustainability (LFS) in the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) with the vision of learners becoming responsible citizens. The current NCF which highlights the learning outcomes, acts as a guide for teachers regarding the implementation of the LFS content. Although many concepts and values pertaining to environmental and social citizenship (such as helping and sharing) are taught at school (MoEHR, 2016), the objectives are still to be realised. Many challenges which threaten children’s future have arisen over the years; these are because they continue growing up in an environment that may become unsustainable. School curricula, through LFS, can intervene in this endeavour (Casinader, 2021). The purpose of this study was to explore teachers’ understanding and enhancement of LFS in primary schools using a participant-designed action research methodology, within a multiple case study design framework. The potential value of the participant-designed action research methodology’s findings was to inform teachers and school administrators about teachers’ understanding of LFS in the Mauritian education context. Theoretically, the research drew from two models, Burns’ Model of Sustainability Pedagogy and O’Donoghue’s Active Learning Framework. Burns’ Model of Sustainability Pedagogy focuses on the current need to align teaching and learning strategies with contemporary socio-cultural and ecological issues by empowering and transforming learners into agents of sustainability for the future. O’Donoghue’s Active Learning Framework provides opportunities for authentic decisionmaking that has a positive impact on local communities. Learning for Sustainability may be simply understood as a concept that describes all educational activities concerned with developing an understanding of related concepts in sustainability. However, teachers struggled to align their understanding and practice of LFS, and thus could not efficiently enhance the quality of teaching-learning. Hence, this study aimed to intervene and potentially ‘redress’ the weaknesses in the schools’ teaching and learning system which included observations and reflections in order to generate data from six participants. Data generated was analysed by applying the thematic analysis approach which facilitated categorising and interpreting data into common themes which were synthesised and generalised to provide an overall representation of the case study. The findings indicated that there were various understandings of LFS among primary school teachers which significantly influenced their attempts to enhance the teaching of LFS. This was inconsistent with the various levels of knowledge about teachers’ understanding and their enhancement of LFS; it should have elicited a positive change in teachers’ understanding of LFS practices. Further, the study’s results revealed that LFS enhances teachers’ practices and experiences by exposing them to new knowledge which increases their understanding of LFS. It is recommended that this study concientises other teachers, school leaders, policymakers, and curriculum writers and designers to incisively understand LFS, address the dearth of data on the subject, and provide insights for future teachers to improve the teaching-learning of LFS by ushering in transformation and adaptation strategies to promote best practice.