| dc.description.abstract | However, these ecosystems are facing major threats such as climate change, land-use change, overexploitation and invasive alien species. The majority of these problems have an anthropogenic origin. The creation of an environmentally conscious citizenry through continuous environmental education (EE) especially at youthful ages has been proposed to resolve this problem. The inclusion of environmental awareness units in the Kenyan education curriculum has made teachers the key actors in the achievement of environmental objectives. It has been known that the transfer of knowledge to students is dependent on their attitudes, and experiences on the subject matter. Teachers with good knowledge, attitudes, and practices can impact the understanding of environmental issues by students and their willingness to participate in proconservation activities. This research study sought to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of secondary school teachers in Yatta Sub County, Kitui County, Kenya on rangeland conservation and environmental education. A cross-sectional research design was utilized in this research study. Simple random sampling was used to select 17 schools from a sampling frame of 70 schools. It was also used to pick four teachers from each school for the teacher interviews resulting in a total sample size of 68. Fisher’s exact Test was used to test for the presence of significant differences between these levels and the sociodemographic variables of the teachers. The teachers showed moderate levels of knowledge of rangeland conservation concepts, local ecosystems, and their benefits and threats (mean = 0.71, SD = 0.18). The level of knowledge however differed with the teaching subject (p = 0.0005), duration of stay in the current school (p = 0.005182), training in EE (p < 0.05), marital status (p = 0.001), and the age group of the teacher (p < 0.05). Teachers of natural sciences showed significantly higher pro-conservation attitudes than the teachers of other subjects. The respondents also displayed moderate attitudes toward the enjoyment of nature, waste recycling, rangeland conservation, EE, and Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) (mean = 0.61, SD= 0.09). None, however, showed good levels of attitude. There were significant differences between the level of attitude and teaching subject (p = 0.007839), duration of stay in the current school (0.03096), and age (0.02933). Training on EE did not promote better levels of attitudes (p = 0.9358). The teachers also showed moderate environmental practices (mean = 0.70, SD = 0.69). Almost half did not participate in planting trees (42.7%). Language teachers showed significantly better environmental practices than the teachers of natural sciences (p = 0.001281). The major challenges affecting the implementation of EE in the Sub-County are; limited EE content in the syllabus especially in languages and humanities, lack of sufficient and diverse reference materials, heavy workloads, and lack of support from school administration. The study recommends the inculcation of EE in non-natural science subjects and the continuous training of teachers on EE and CBC. | en_US |
