Tensions, Contradictions and Inconsistencies in Community-Based Environmental Education Programmes: The Role of Defective Educational Theories

Abstract

This paper is derived from a PhD study conducted in rural Uganda. The study used Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology to explore how educational methods employed in community-based environmental education programmes were empowering communities to respond appropriately to environmental challenges. A community-based rural development programme by Volunteers Efforts for Development Concerns (VEDCO), a local NGO in central Uganda, was used as a case to critically explore the community-based environmental education processes. The programme aimed to empower smallholder farmers economically and socially through training in sustainable agriculture, land use and management, agric trade and microfinance. Through a critical analysis of the different educational processes this paper exemplifies how contradictions, inconsistencies and tensions in educational theory undermined practice and affected the character of the programme, its implementation and outcomes at community level. It further demonstrates how the conscious shift in thinking and actions towards more transformative educational practice created tangible positive results. The paper also engages some of the key assumptions of critical theory and their application in a community-based context, and raises the need to go beyond the simplistic uncritical adherence to such assumptions as it leads to further ‘instrumentalisation’ of education and the accompanying processes.