LEESP introduced syllabus attachments to the existing syllabuses for all secondary school subjects as a strategy to integrate EE into the curriculum. The attachments were appended to the Environmental Education Teachers Handbook, which was distributed to the model schools. These syllabus attachments, contrary to the usual process of curriculum development (see Section 2.5), were developed by subject specialists at NCDC with the exclusion of subject panels. The views of the subject panels were only solicited through one conceptualisation workshop which was held during the early phase of the project‘s operations. The project had employed a material design specialist, a Lesotho citizen who had been sent by the project for a training programme on materials development at the EE regional centre in Howick, South Africa. This might have created space for regional input into the conceptualisation of environmental education in Lesotho.
This material design specialist worked with the NCDC subject specialists in developing syllabus attachments. I held informal discussions with this person to get her views on the social process of developing these attachments. She said that the role of subject specialists was to make suggestions on how EE could be integrated into their specific subjects, and these suggestions would be discussed in professional staff meetings at NCDC. She alleged that some specialists came to the meetings unprepared, and that sometimes the discussion was not fruitful because of petty controversies. She said that mostly she would just go ahead and introduce changes, based on her readings in EE and material design, and with the help of two external editors appointed by the project for the purpose.
Although the material design specialist felt that there was less than complete cooperation from the NCDC subject specialists, the responses of the former geography subject specialist suggest that there was a collegial social environment conducive to a cross-curricular approach. She described the process as follows:
…we had to sit down as different subject specialists and see how we relate to each other. For instance you would realise that geography links with science and agriculture. So we sat down and established the common themes so that we avoid duplication. We used the thematic approach to develop the syllabus attachments. (NCDC staff 6)
The former director of NCDC felt that his professional staff (subject specialists) played a pivotal role in devising the syllabus attachments:
LEESP, though had consultants, it was not consultant-driven. On their own they would not mange to go to model schools for workshops. They would not even, on their own, manage to develop syllabus attachments. (NCDC Staff 2)
While the NCDC staff, according to the NCDC director, played a major role in developing the syllabus attachments, the fact that subject panels, with teacher representation, were not involved in this exercise, is a cause for concern. The Lesotho curriculum change management model employs what can be described as a participatory approach, recognising the important role of subject panels in reviewing and developing syllabuses (see Table 2.1). Commenting on the process of developing the syllabus attachments, a geography subject officer at ECOL, who was previously a geography subject specialist at NCDC, said that she was not involved in the development of the attachments. She added that ECOL was only involved at the broader level of stakeholder consultation workshops, when EE was discussed at the conceptual level. In her view, her involvement in this process would have been helpful in terms of understanding her role as an examiner. The respondent expressed her frustration at the fact that, despite her efforts to seek information on how EE could be integrated into geography assessment, there was no assistance forthcoming. She further explained that since she did not participate in the development of the syllabus attachments, she was not in a position to know whether she was doing enough to integrate EE into geography assessment. Whether or not EE has been integrated into geography examinations for junior secondary education is beyond the scope of this study. Nonetheless, one might infer from the views of this geography examination officer and the concerns expressed earlier by another ECOL staff member (in Section 7.3.3), that little is being done to integrate EE into national geography assessment standards. This could have implications for its implementation at classroom level, given that the Lesotho education system is examination oriented (see Chapter 2).
Another respondent who was then a science subject officer at ECOL said she was not even aware of the syllabus attachments that were intended to guide integration of EE into science. She noted that,
If a project is based at NCDC sometimes the ideas do not get to us at ECOL, because there is some sort of… maybe now it can happen because curriculum and assessment are sort of working together. They inform us if they think we need it. (ECOL staff 2)
Another flaw in the process of developing syllabus attachments is that subject inspectors, whose work it is to supervise the implementation of the curriculum in schools, were not involved. An inspector who was then responsible for geography and history at the Central Inspectorate within the MOET said, in our informal discussion, that he did not participate in any activities relating to LEESP, including development of syllabus attachments. He added that he does not remember getting an invitation to attend any of the LEESP meetings or workshops.
The data reported in this sub-section seems to suggest that the participation of subject panels, which include teachers and other key stakeholders, is evident at the level of consultation workshops, but was minimal at key points in the development of the
Reference Note and syllabus attachments. This has the potential to compromise the
value of curriculum recontextualisation in the processes of conceptualising and implementing environmental education. The process reflects also a technical rational model of introducing curriculum change, where teachers are regarded as mere implementers, denied the opportunity to contest and give consent to new ideas in the light of their specific work contexts. It should be noted that LEESP, as claimed in the
Reference Note, was indeed built on democratic principles, adopting a participatory
curriculum development strategy that recognised the importance of stakeholder participation and empowerment (LEESP, 2004).