Empirical Analysis of Equity, Environmental Awareness, and Sustainable Development in Social Studies Classrooms

This study investigated the integration of equity, environmental consciousness, and sustainabledevelopment assumptions in Social Studies pedagogy across Nigerian secondary schools withparticular reference to Osun state. It inquired the differences based on school type and gender, andassessed the association between problems faced by teachers and their use of reformation teachingstrategies. This study was grounded in transformative learning theory which emphasizes criticalreflection and perspective change in teaching and learning. A descriptive survey design was used,and data were gathered through two sets of questionnaire tagged Teacher Transformative TeachingPractices Questionnaire (TTTPQ) for teachers and Student Perception and Awareness Scale(SPAS) for students which were pilot tested with a reliability coefficients of 0.84 and 0.81respectively while the validity was done through experts review. The population of the studycomprised 20,506 Junior secondary school II students and 657 Social Studies teachers. Simplerandom sampling technique was used to select a sample of 300 students made up of 150 males and150 females and 45 teachers. Statistical tools including t-test and multiple regression were usedfor data analysis. Findings showed a major difference in the degree to which teachers blendinnovative content based on school type, with 75% of respondents affirming differences betweenpublic and private schools. Gender-specific analysis indicated that students’ impressions andunderstanding of fairness and sustainability significantly differed, as reported by 65% ofrespondents. The study suggest the need for skill development among Social Studies teachers andthe provision of fair-minded teaching resources across school types among others.