Regarding teachers’ competence, the study shows that teachers have different feelings on the issue. Some teachers felt that they were sufficiently competent and others felt not competent. In the first category the teachers felt that they were adequately competent to teach environmental education. From this category, there were three sub-categories based on the teachers’ feelings of competence. The sub-categories include elementary knowledge, self-learning and in-service training.
In the sub-category elementary knowledge, the teachers considered the environmental knowledge taught in primary schools to be elementary. As a result, they feel that they are confident and possess the required knowledge as far as teaching environmental education is concerned. They argue that most of what they have to teach they learnt in school and at college when training as teachers. And also some of the things they have to teach are quite elementary, like identifying things in the environment. The teachers’ observations are true in the sense that at primary school level, the subject content to be taught is very elementary. However, as a teacher, at times you may be required to explain complex issues in simple ways to fit the elementary level of the learners.
Other teachers said that even if they did not have the knowledge, they could learn on their own, i.e. self-learning, which forms the second category of teachers who said they are competent to teach environmental education. These teachers feel that they have the responsibility to seek the knowledge that they have to teach from different sources. Teachers in Switzerland share the same thinking because they feel that they are responsible for filling their own knowledge gaps and it is a way to continue developing professionally (Lindemann-Mathies, 2009). Searching for knowledge by teachers indicates their ability to expand their view of knowledge by going beyond the textbook. This supports the idea that teachers who have developed environmental ethics seem to find ways of integrating environmental education into their programs as they teach (Hart, 2008). It is believed that schools with self-learning teachers develop attitudes of sensitivity, responsiveness and adaptability necessary to meet the external and internal changing conditions of the environment (Cheung & Cheng, 1996). Therefore, teachers should be encouraged to search continuously for knowledge from different sources instead of waiting for the government to organize courses and workshops for them.
Other teachers attributed their competence in teaching environmental education to in-service training. The training which they got was from non-governmental organizations like the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Wildlife Conservation Society of Tanzania (WCST), in the form of short seminars and workshops aimed at exposing the teachers to environmental content in the syllabus, the teaching of environmental education and the greening of schools. Although non-government organizations have trained teachers, only a few could benefit because of limited funding. The teachers in this category demonstrate the importance of in-service training for teachers. Training widens their knowledge base and their professional skills, hence making them competent.
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From what the teachers revealed, it seems that when they talk about being competent, they refer to subject matter only, which Shulman (1986) refers to as subject matter knowledge. But competence is more than the possession of enough subject matter knowledge. It also includes the pedagogical knowledge and knowledge of context (Grossman, 1990; Shulman, 1986). Therefore, although teachers’ competence in subject matter is important, the teachers’ ability to help learners understand what they learn and the learner’s context is also of great importance.
In contrast to teachers who claimed that they were competent, there were other teachers who said that they were not competent enough to teach environmental education. These teachers were grouped into two categories based on the factors which contributed to their not being competent. These factors were the changing
nature of the environment, and inadequate training.
Teachers who attributed their incompetence to the changing nature of the environment claimed that since the environment is constantly changing, the knowledge about it also changes. This implies that environmental knowledge is not static but dynamic: what is true today about the environment, may not be true tomorrow. Moreover, the environment is different from one place to another. Thus, wherever you go you have to learn. Therefore, as far as environmental education is concerned, no one can claim that they are competent, because one needs to learn all the time. In this subcategory the teachers focused on change and time in relation to place. By change they meant the increase in scope or transformation of the way people see, understand, experience or perceive something in their environment. The change process is related to time because it happens over time. As a result of these changes in the environment, the teachers said that they always have to search for new knowledge if they are to teach environmental education effectively. In support of this, Hua (2004) suggests that environment and environmental science are advancing rapidly; therefore, teachers have to continually educate themselves so as to update their knowledge base in order to improve their understanding of the environment. The other sub-category of teachers who considered themselves not competent, are those who attributed this state of inadequacy to inadequate training. These teachers hoped that they would be trained adequately to teach environmental education when they were being trained as teachers. But they said that they did not have environmental education training either as pre-service or in-service training. Similar findings were observed by Lindhe (1999) among teachers in primary and secondary schools in Tanzania. The study revealed that teachers did not get any training in environmental education. Also in a study of primary school teachers in Greece by Spiropoulou, Antonakaki, Kontaxaki and Bourasfound (2007), it was found that there is knowledge gap among teachers in education for sustainable development because they did not receive any pre- service training, which, they argued, cannot be covered by short in-service training programs.
The issue of teachers not being trained in what they are expected to teach is crucial because it would be difficult for them to teach what they have not been trained to teach. For teachers to be able to teach efficiently, they need also to be trained adequately. Teachers must master the content to be taught to learners,
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and the content must be scientifically and ideologically correct (Hua, 2004). For example, in this study, it is observed that teachers are required to teach about the environment while most are not content specialists. Thus they could not responsibly teach the scientific principles behind environmental problems. Also, teachers cannot be experts in all areas of the curriculum and might be unable to help learners understand the complex relationship between social, economic and environmental problems (Hungerford, 2010). This situation suggests that teachers should be trained in environmental education when training as teachers and also should be given the opportunity to attend in-service courses in environmental education. It can be said that teachers who did not receive any training in environmental education and do not have the initiative for self- learning are not competent to teach environmental education because they lack pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986).