The South African curriculum assessment and policy statement (CAPS) envisions a learner who embodies numerous principles which include commitment towards a healthy environment. This behoves in-service teachers to expose learners to environmental education (EE) throughout the education system. To be able to do this, they need to have tangible levels of environmental literacy (EL) on various issues of environmental concern. This paper reports on a case study conducted in the North West province of South Africa to explore the EL of in-service teachers regarding global warming and the depletion of the ozone layer. Fifteen teachers participated in this interview-driven qualitative research inquiry. The findings suggest that some in-service teachers hold various scientific misconceptions regarding global warming and the ozone layer. These findings corroborate those of previous studies involving pre-service and in-service teachers. The researcher recommends support to help enhance the EL of in-service teachers, in respect of topical issues such as global warming and the ozone layer. Additionally, due the dearth of research that focuses on the EL of in-service teachers on issues explored in this study, globally, the researcher also posits that more research similar to this one is essential.

The South African Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) advocates for the integration of Environmental Education (EE) in all grades and subjects. The purpose of this study was to conduct a review of CAPS documents that guide pedagogy in all three subjects offered in Grade R, namely; English (Home Language), Life Skills and Mathematics. This was done to determine whether an alignment exists between the South African school curriculum aims and the curriculum content to enable the implementation of EE as espoused in CAPS. Informed by literature, the researcher singles out the "failure" of the CAPS documents to pinpoint the topics that could be used to facilitate the implementation of EE to focus his investigation. He uses an interpretivist qualitative approach to direct this inquiry. Through the application of content analysis and the deductive, inductive and abductive modes of inference, he examines the CAPS documents used to guide pedagogy in Grade R to identify the topics that could be used to facilitate the implementation of EE. The findings suggest that the CAPS documents contain various topics that could enable the implementation of EE. These findings hold positive implications for the teaching of EE both in South Africa and elsewhere, globally.

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Scholars, globally, acknowledge environment and sustainability education (ESE) as a key vehicle towards addressing the myriad of environmental challenges. This paper is premised on empirical evidence which succinctly points to the dearth of literature that focuses on the implementation of ESE in the realm of early childhood education (ECE). The approach adopted for this inquiry is a multiple-embedded case study, underpinned by an interpretivist qualitative research paradigm which focussed on four institutions enlisted for investigation. One-on-one interviews, participant observations and document analysis were used for data generation while thematic and domain analyses were used for data interpretation. The findings of this inquiry suggest that there are numerous factors that support the teaching of ESE. The researcher asserts that the findings highlighted in this paper corroborate those of numerous studies conducted elsewhere in the world. However, based on the findings, the researcher also notes and can thus conclusively aver that there is a dearth of research that focuses on enablers of ESE. Furthermore, the researcher recommends that more research be conduct which focuses on the investigation of the factors that support the environment-inclined pedagogy.