Decolonising Education for Environmental Conservation: A Participatory Action Research: A doctoral dissertation

Research output: ThesisDoctoral Thesis

Abstract

This dissertation examined the environmental education content in Nigeria to
understand its colonising elements, teachers’ perceptions of these elements, and the
process of decolonising environmental education, which is necessary for the
improvement of environmental education and conservation. Ten teachers, one
researcher, and one educational technologist/research assistant engaged in a
participatory action research study – the Decolonising Environmental Education
Pedagogy (DEEP) Project – where curriculum materials were critically analysed, and
a decolonisation model was created and implemented.
The main research questions were: (i) What are the colonising elements and
methods of Nigeria’s environmental education and what preserves them? (ii) What
are teachers’ perceptions of the colonising elements and methods of Nigeria’s
environmental education and what are their visions for a decolonised environmental
education? and (iii) To what extent will a model generated in a participatory action
research be effective for decolonising Nigeria’s environmental education? Data
included government-recommended textbooks, teachers’ lesson plans, video-recorded participatory action research meetings (also referred to as focus group meetings), video-recorded lesson observations and field notes, and audio-recorded
interviews.
The DEEP project’s main findings were (i) contextless, non-indigenous, and
westernised content contribute to colonised education, while teacher-centred
learning, student distrust, belief in Western superiority, field trip ban, time
constraints, and emphasis on standardised examinations preserve the colonised
environmental education, (ii) teachers became more aware of the colonised environmental education as they developed critical consciousness that spurred them
to create a decolonisation model to transform their lessons, and (iii) the
decolonisation model for transforming colonised lessons is effective to some extent.
An introduction of a critical postcolonial lens to the field of environmental
education, an articulation of a conceptual framework for understanding the
decolonisation process, and a decolonisation model for teachers were significant and
novel contributions of this dissertation.
These empirical findings and theoretical contributions to knowledge have
potential implications for education reform in contexts beyond Nigeria and
environmental education. They could inform education reform in varied disciplines,
other countries of the developing world, and also the disadvantaged communities in
the U.S. and other developed nations, where disenfranchised sub-populations are
taught to alienate their particular condition from environmental learning and, instead,
forced to adopt a globalist perspective.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 15 May 2021

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