Thesis (M.Ed. (Education)) - Rhodes University, 2009. / Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education (Environmental Education)

This master thesis is concerned with current issues of educational politics, namely the integration of environmental aspects into the curriculums of grammar schools and high schools. Environmental education, and awareness raising has appeared in schools following the introduction of the framework education programme as one of its cross-curricular subjects, reflecting new social needs. While there lies a great potential for the development of our education system within cross-curricular subjects and framework education programmes, these also introduce new requirements for teachers, who are not always quite prepared for dealing with them. The introduction of external partners into education is one possible way of dealing with those requirements, as these external partners have many years of experience with ecology oriented education programmes and their methodical specifics. The presented master thesis familiarizes the reader with the individual forms of cooperation among schools and external partners and tries to generalize its pros and cons and outline the possibility of engaging external educational partners in teaching subjects other than environmental education. The paper deals with a multidisciplinary topic in which the findings of public policy, pedagogy, ethics and ecology intertwine. The...

The work has two parts - theoretical and practical. Theoretical part consists of two main themes: the relationship of man to nature, where we deal with the characteristics, development history and the influence of direct contact with nature in the development of individuals, and present selected aspects of the current state of the world, and values for sustainable development. The second part is devoted to environmental education, the basic starting points and objectives and identifies principles of effective environmental education. The practical part is a project of stay summer camp with ecoeducational content on the theme of "Disaster".