REFLECTIONS ON THE STUDY AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

5.4.1 Lessons learned

As a teacher educator, it is my duty to help teachers in the areas where they experience

difficulties. From the readings I engaged with for this study and through interviewing teachers and through observations and analysis of documents relevant to this study, I have learned that

as teacher educators we have to narrow the gap between student teachers theoretical understanding and practical understanding of learner centred approaches to teaching. I also learned that learner centred education is a broad concept that is not well understood by many teachers and needs still more attention at the professional development level, as well as better support for implementation of the reform policy at school level. I also learned, through an analysis of international Eco-School programmes that policy developments in South Africa and Namibia have an international context, and through working in the two countries, I learned that applications of such policies and programmes such as Eco-Schools are contextually and historically shaped.

5.4.2 The potential value of this study

Environmental education and learner centred education are two central components of the Namibian and South African education reform initiatives. Research into the potential to improve either has obvious value. As reported in Chapter 2, some research is taking place to consider the relationship between learner centred education policies and environmental education, but no research has, to date, been undertaken to investigate how the Eco-Schools framework enhances learner centred education. This is despite the rapid growth of the Eco- Schools programme where, within a 5 year period the programme in South Africa has grown from 50 schools to over 800 schools, indicating significant and rapid growth. In a programme this size, and given the significance of integrating it into the education systems of the

countries for it to be sustainable and effective, such research has potential value to inform and improve the implementation of the programme.

5.4.3 Limitations of the study

The limitations of the study lie in the small number of schools that I was able to work with. The study cannot therefore claim to be representative of the wider Eco-Schools programme, or of the practices of the many other schools participating in the Eco-Schools programme. The study was, however, not intended to provide comparative data, or predictive data, or

generalisable results, but rather insights into the way in which the Eco-Schools framework can enhance learner centred education. Recommendations made from the study are therefore limited to the 7 schools where the research took place, but may have wider value through a process of ‘fuzzy generalisation’ that Bassey (1999) referred to, which means that the

to the need for contextualized examination of their implications in relation to the Eco-Schools practices taking place in other schools.

As such, the study only provides insights into Eco-School practices and learner centred education links in 3 schools in Namibia which piloted the Eco-Schools framework in rural schools where there were limited resources to make the programme possible. This obviously affected and influenced the progress and effects of the Eco-Schools in the Namibian schools that were included in the study. The results and data from these three schools has value and provides important insights but the inclusion of some urban and or better resources schools in the study may well have produced a different or more comprehensive picture with additional insights. Of the 4 schools in South Africa, 3 were township schools and 1 was a well

resourced private school. Similar to the Namibian situation if more and different schools were included, different insights would have been obtained.

The study therefore only provides starting points for understanding how Eco-Schools can potentially enhance learner centred education in schools, and ideally similar investigations need to be undertaken in every single school involved in the study, due to the contextual and historical differences that exist between schools. For this study, I did not choose a

representative sample, but rather used convenience sampling, which also affected the

outcomes and insights of the study, but since the purpose was to gain in-depth insight into the research context, this probably did not affect the study’s outcomes too much, except that different insights would have been gained if a different set of schools had been selected as indicated above.

5.4.4 Tentative suggestions for further research

From the data gathered and the interpretations generated in this study, I recommend the following as aspects for further research:

• Undertaking similar research with a wider sample of schools, as indicated above.

• The findings in Chapter 4 indicate that schools are not making use of the Eco-

Schools pack fully and are therefore not fully oriented to the full potential of the Eco- Schools framework. It would therefore be interesting to investigate how teachers can strengthen the use of the Eco-Schools pack in the schools, and how this will

• As indicated in Chapter 4 and in the discussions above, teachers are also not fully integrating the Eco-Schools framework into the curriculum. Further research can be done on how more comprehensive integration of the Eco-Schools framework into the curriculum in a number of learning areas would enhance learner centred education in the school.

• Another finding of the study pointed to the lack of learner initiated Eco-Schools practices. Further investigations into the significance of learner initiated Eco-Schools practices in relation to learner centred education theory and policy can be undertaken.

5.5 CONCLUDING SUMMARY

This chapter provided a more in-depth interpretation of the data presented in Chapter 4 using some of the theoretical and contextual perspectives presented in Chapter 2. The chapter also made key recommendations, based on the analytical statements, associated evidence and discussions, but also noted that these recommendations can only be seen to be relevant to the schools that were involved in the study, due to contextual differences between schools, and because the study did not intend to be predictive or to offer broad-based generalisable results due to its interpretive and case study based design.

The chapter then included a reflection on the study, outlining lessons learned, the value and limitations of the study, and some recommendations for further research.

This study raises some possibilities for improving the way in which the Eco-Schools framework can enhance learner centred education. As mentioned before, the main focus of this study was to investigate how the Eco-Schools framework can enhance learner centred education. It was not an evaluative study, and therefore merely sought in-depth insight into the question. The main value of the study is therefore to provide insight into this question which has not been researched before. The insights can be taken further through additional research, and through considering the findings in relation to ongoing Eco-Schools practices.