Challenges and Opportunities of Mainstreaming Environmental Education into the Curricula of Teachers’ Colleges of Ethiopia

Abstract

One of the cardinal goals of education is to unravel key societal problems. In Ethiopia, challenges arising from environmental degradation, which is partly caused by environmental ignorance, are immense. This paper examines the curricula of two teachers‟ colleges alongside knowledge and opinion of prospective teachers on local and national environmental issues. A questionnaire was employed to capture the factual knowledge, attitude towards environment, and the readiness of prospective teachers to harness local environmental resources for outdoor teaching. Sample students were randomly selected from the Kotebe College of Teachers‟ Education and St. Mary‟s College, Addis Ababa. Comparisons were made along gender, college and enrollment/program categories. The result showed a paradigm shift from “core-biased” to “pedagogical-biased” curricula; a declining trend of outdoor environmental teaching, inadequate environmental knowledge of students, and bleak prospect of their readiness to carryout effective environmental teaching. In general, students belonging to the old curricula were found to be better knowledgeable of environmental facts and more concerned about its degradation than the new curricula students. The study concludes by discussing the implications of mainstreaming environmental issues into the geography curricula and the need to revisit the proportion of course categories in teachers‟ education.