What Selected Basic Schools in Western Zambia are Best At in Environmental and Sustainability Education

This paper outlines a research project which was conducted on the theme of ‘Education for sustainable development: Enhancing quality and relevance of education for all’. The study was part of a partnership of five southern African universities who joined forces in a research programme under the support of the SADC Regional Environmental Education Programme based at Howick in South Africa. The aim of the research programme was to contribute to the debate on how Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) could enhance the provision of quality education for all in southern Africa. This aim was set within the following broad research question: How can environment and sustainability education programmes contribute to the quality and relevance of education for all in southern Africa? Tackled from the perspective of the University of Zambia, the starting point for our research was to acknowledge that many ESD researchers in southern Africa, and possibly elsewhere, needed to develop competence in sustaining the perception that the majority of the region’s population had areas of strength which merely needed to be identified and then empowered through research. In this regard, this paper reports on a research project which was configured with this assumption in mind; that is, what selected basic schools of Western Zambia were best at in environmental and sustainability education.