The perceptions and educational activities of elementary-school teachers regarding the problem of solid waste: a qualitative research in Greece

Abstract

Aim: The present thesis aims to investigate and describe the way that teachers, working in elementary schools in Greece, perceive the sustainability problem of solid waste, as well as the educational activities that they conduct to address this problem with their students. Having this aim, the research that was conducted in the context of this thesis sought to answer the following two research questions (RQs): ―What are the perceptions of educators who work and teach in elementary schools in Greece about ESD and the topic of waste?‖ (RQ1), and ―What educational activities do elementary-school teachers apply in their teaching with their students about the topic of waste?‖ (RQ2) Theory: The theoretical framework of the present thesis includes the educational theory of Critical Pedagogy (Freire, 2000/1970; Giroux, 2020), which proposes a learnercentred approach to learning, a problem-posing approach to teaching, reflective dialogue and action regarding the various phenomena, structures and issues of everyday life. One such issue is the creation of solid waste materials by humans. Method: Interviewing in qualitative research (Bryman, 2016) is the methodology that was applied to explore the two research questions of the thesis. Ten, one to one, semistructured interviews were conducted with Greek elementary-school teachers in person or via Zoom in Greek language, with their written consent. Each interview lasted forty minutes and were organised through the use of an interview guide. Ten transcriptions were written in Greek language through the method of intelligent verbatim (Knott et al., 2022). The data analysis followed the six-step guidelines of Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA) and resulted in ten themes (Byrne, 2022). Results: The results indicated that the participants of the present study were aware of the framework of ESD and mainly focused on its environmental dimension. Overall, the participants perceived the creation of solid waste as a significant sustainability problem and connected it with the social practice of over-consumption. Moreover, most of the participants frequently included the issue of waste in their teaching and encouraged their students’ participation. In addition, the results showed that the participants conducted a variety of in-class and whole-school activities to facilitate their students’ awareness, to encourage them to take action and to make connections with the Greek curricula.