Situational Analysis on Primary Teacher Preparation for Environmental Science Education in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Knowledge of the existing situation and of current practices is fundamental to human resources development and training programmes. This article reports on a situation analysis to explore the structural problems, teaching reality, and support needs of college science departments in ten primary teachers colleges in Zimbabwe. It was established that students and lecturers would like the main subject course in science to develop teachers to serve as resource persons for other teachers in their schools. For science departments, the main subject they would, want to offer is Environmental Science developed around topics in the primary school syllabus. The situation analysis established the need for support in order to change the orientation of the college science curriculum and teaching to become more responsive to the demands of primary school Environmental Science leaching.