Conflicted epistemologies in secondary school environmental education: implications for sustainable climate action in Uganda

Transformative secondary school environmental education is likely to impact climate action by producing environmentally responsive citizens. We present a case study of environmental education in northern Uganda, and how learners’ intended actions are moderated by their exposure to both formal and non-formal indigenous environmental knowledges. Guided by the Critical Place Inquiry theory, we undertook a pragmatism paradigm where a mixed methods approach was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data from 1,282 secondary school learners and 12 teachers in 30 rural and urban schools. Individual interviews, focus group discussions, document reviews, questionnaires, and arts-based scenarios were used to collect data. Findings revealed that learners’ school-acquired environmental knowledge is not transforming them into environmentally responsive citizens because formal and non-formal knowledges are conflicted across pedagogy, curricular, and textbooks. We propose a harmonisation of the two epistemologies so that learners can relate school knowledge with their every-day environmental realities for climate-smart citizenry.