Understanding the implementation of sustainable and unsustainable practices within LGCSE Agricultural Curriculum

Abstract

The demand for sustainable agriculture has increased and schools are expected to adopt it to meet the rising demand for agricultural output while maintaining agro-ecological systems. Despite this importance, LGCSE agriculture curriculum consists of unsustainable agricultural practices. The purpose of the current study was to explore how LGCSE agriculture teachers implement the contradicting agriculture curriculum on sustainable and unsustainable agricultural practices. The research also aimed to establish if the participating teachers are aware of the contradictions in LGCSE agriculture curriculum. The study is informed by the theory of curriculum implementation developed by Rogan and Grayson’s (2003) who argue that the implementation of the curriculum is not the same in schools and can be affected by various factors like teachers subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. Open-ended questionnaire and follow-up interviews were employed in this study as data collection methods using the qualitative method. Twenty teachers from Maseru district who participated in the study were selected using purposive sampling. They were selected based on the knowledge they have on teaching LGCSE agriculture. The pilot study was conducted with five teachers from Mafeteng district. The pilot study was done to assess the reliability and validity of the questionnaire before final data collection to check the suitability of the instrument. The results reveal that most teachers understand the sustainable and unsustainable practices with different meanings like sustained food production, continued supply of food and the practices that meet the present and future needs. The teachers indicated that they are not aware of the contradictions about sustainable and unsustainable agricultural practices. They showed that the practices are independent and each deals with the different idea. The findings also indicate that during teaching of the practices, teachers employ different strategies such as classroom discussions, demonstrations and field trips. The results demonstrated that most teachers prefer to use classroom discussions to other techniques. The study recommends that teachers be trained about sustainable agriculture before they can teach it in their classrooms. It also suggested that the same study be conducted in more than one district.