Tracing The Footprints of Environmental Education in Teacher Education: A Review of Pre-Service Teachers’ Training in Universities

A REVIEW OF PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ TRAINING IN UNIVERSITIES

Abstract

The development of environmentally literate persons with the awareness, information, attitudes, and skills necessary to make ethical judgments and take part in addressing environmental issues is one of the objectives of environmental education. Pre-service teacher education is one way to encourage environmental literacy, thus it's essential to provide them with the professional skills necessary to become environmentally literate individuals and educators. This study aimed to critically assess the footprints of Environmental Education within the pre-service teachers' curriculum in the universities and colleges of education in Sub-Saharan Africa.A thorough search of references and databases turned up 8550 academic articles and records, of which 19 satisfied the requirements for inclusion in a comprehensive analysis of Environmental Education in pre-service professional education. PRISMA technique was employed to demonstrate how data was collected sequentially and logically for the systematic review. The findings of the study among others include a lack of qualified lecturers in the field of environmental education at the faculties of education and a lack of framework for the teaching and learning of environmental education in most of the universities used for the analysis.  It also emerged that there is a lack of clarity of EE curriculum structure in the teacher trainee universities. The study recommended that all teachers trainee universities and colleges should make environmental education modules compulsory module for all pre-service teachers and Universities should organize workshops and capacity-building programs to equip teacher educators.