Research portfolio : environmental education
- Authors: Le Roux, Kim
- Date: 1999
- Subjects: Environmental education -- South Africa , Environmental education -- Study and teaching -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1738 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003622
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1999
- Authors: Le Roux, Kim
- Date: 1999
- Subjects: Environmental education -- South Africa , Environmental education -- Study and teaching -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1738 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003622
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1999
Detached harmonies : a study in/on developing social processes of environmental education in eastern southern Africa
- Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob B
- Date: 1997
- Subjects: Environmental education -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1939 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007726
- Description: Long-term social processes are explored to examine the shaping of environmental education in eastern southern Africa. The study opens with early Nguni social figurations when 'to conserve was to hunt.' It then examines colonial conservation on the frontiers of imperial expansion and developing struggles for and against wildlife preservation. These processes shaped an inversion of earlier harmonies as declining wildlife was protected in island sanctuaries of natural wilderness and 'to conserve was not to hunt.' Inside protected areas, conservation management struggles shaped new harmonies of interdependence in nature, enabling better steering choices in developing conservation science institutions. Here more reality congruent knowledge also revealed escalating risk which was linked to a lack of awareness amongst communities of 'others' outside. Within continuing conservation struggles, education in, about and for the environment emerged as new institutional processes of social control. The study examines wilderness experience, interpretation, extension, conservancies and the development of an environmental education field centre, a teacher education programme and a school curriculum. Naming and clarifying the emergent education game for reshaping the awareness and behaviour of others is examined within a developing figuration of environmental education specialists. Particular attention is given to academic and statutory processes shaping environmental education as a field of objective principles and rational processes within modernist continuities and discontinuities into the 1990's. An environmental education field centre, an earth-love curriculum and research on reserve neighbour interaction are examined as political sociologies developing within a declining power gradient and wide ranging socio-political change. Into the present, a final window on a local case of water pollution examines shifting relational dynamics revealing how environment and development education models of process may have little resonance amidst long-term socio-historical struggles and shifting controls over surroundings, others and self. A concluding review suggests that grounded critical processes engaging somewhat blind control over surroundings may yet reshape self-control and social control amongst others. The trajectories of these clarifying struggles must remain open-ended as sedimented myth and memory is reshaped within ongoing processes of escalating risk and global intermeshing.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1997
- Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob B
- Date: 1997
- Subjects: Environmental education -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1939 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007726
- Description: Long-term social processes are explored to examine the shaping of environmental education in eastern southern Africa. The study opens with early Nguni social figurations when 'to conserve was to hunt.' It then examines colonial conservation on the frontiers of imperial expansion and developing struggles for and against wildlife preservation. These processes shaped an inversion of earlier harmonies as declining wildlife was protected in island sanctuaries of natural wilderness and 'to conserve was not to hunt.' Inside protected areas, conservation management struggles shaped new harmonies of interdependence in nature, enabling better steering choices in developing conservation science institutions. Here more reality congruent knowledge also revealed escalating risk which was linked to a lack of awareness amongst communities of 'others' outside. Within continuing conservation struggles, education in, about and for the environment emerged as new institutional processes of social control. The study examines wilderness experience, interpretation, extension, conservancies and the development of an environmental education field centre, a teacher education programme and a school curriculum. Naming and clarifying the emergent education game for reshaping the awareness and behaviour of others is examined within a developing figuration of environmental education specialists. Particular attention is given to academic and statutory processes shaping environmental education as a field of objective principles and rational processes within modernist continuities and discontinuities into the 1990's. An environmental education field centre, an earth-love curriculum and research on reserve neighbour interaction are examined as political sociologies developing within a declining power gradient and wide ranging socio-political change. Into the present, a final window on a local case of water pollution examines shifting relational dynamics revealing how environment and development education models of process may have little resonance amidst long-term socio-historical struggles and shifting controls over surroundings, others and self. A concluding review suggests that grounded critical processes engaging somewhat blind control over surroundings may yet reshape self-control and social control amongst others. The trajectories of these clarifying struggles must remain open-ended as sedimented myth and memory is reshaped within ongoing processes of escalating risk and global intermeshing.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1997
A pilot study of secondary teachers' understanding of population dynamics
- Authors: Hockey, Athol James Temlett
- Date: 1996
- Subjects: Environmental education -- South Africa , Population -- Study and teaching (Secondary) -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1703 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003586
- Description: Population dynamics is a South African secondary school biology syllabus topic which deals specifically with ecology or concepts within the realm of ecology. It is currently taught in a way which largely emphasises the teaching and learning of facts and concepts, often out of any context to which students can relate. While it is important to convey scientific concepts, it is just as important to address social and political issues regarding overpopulation and the environment. This research involved the administration of a questionnaire to Std 10 biology teachers in the Department of Education and Training (DET), which sought to obtain information about various aspects of teachers' teaching of population dynamics. These included their feelings toward the teaching of the specific sections of the population dynamics syllabus, and their knowledge and views of environmental issues and human population expansion. The findings of the research suggest that population dynamics is an important topic for students to learn about. The traditional teacher-centred approach to teaching is used by the teachers in the research sample. The sections considered by the teachers to be most important for learning were also considered the most interesting and the easiest to teach. The majority of the teachers in the research sample recognised that human population growth is a global and local problem and that South Africa cannot sustain its present population growth. The teachers in the sample show a diversity of opinions about sustainable development, and have a limited understanding of the links between population, poverty and consumption. Important information gained from the research will be significant in the development of a teaching and learning module on population dynamics that reflects the aims and purpose of environmental education.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1996
- Authors: Hockey, Athol James Temlett
- Date: 1996
- Subjects: Environmental education -- South Africa , Population -- Study and teaching (Secondary) -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1703 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003586
- Description: Population dynamics is a South African secondary school biology syllabus topic which deals specifically with ecology or concepts within the realm of ecology. It is currently taught in a way which largely emphasises the teaching and learning of facts and concepts, often out of any context to which students can relate. While it is important to convey scientific concepts, it is just as important to address social and political issues regarding overpopulation and the environment. This research involved the administration of a questionnaire to Std 10 biology teachers in the Department of Education and Training (DET), which sought to obtain information about various aspects of teachers' teaching of population dynamics. These included their feelings toward the teaching of the specific sections of the population dynamics syllabus, and their knowledge and views of environmental issues and human population expansion. The findings of the research suggest that population dynamics is an important topic for students to learn about. The traditional teacher-centred approach to teaching is used by the teachers in the research sample. The sections considered by the teachers to be most important for learning were also considered the most interesting and the easiest to teach. The majority of the teachers in the research sample recognised that human population growth is a global and local problem and that South Africa cannot sustain its present population growth. The teachers in the sample show a diversity of opinions about sustainable development, and have a limited understanding of the links between population, poverty and consumption. Important information gained from the research will be significant in the development of a teaching and learning module on population dynamics that reflects the aims and purpose of environmental education.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1996
The influence of children on decision-makers in their homes : a case study in environmental education
- Authors: Kruger, Jacqueline
- Date: 1992
- Subjects: Environmental education -- South Africa , Parent and child -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1574 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003456
- Description: This study explores the possible influence of twenty children on their 'parents', with a view to better understanding the potential 'multiplier effect' of children regarding environmental responsibility. The criteria employed to study the potential influence included certain of the environmental activities learnt by the children during an Environmental Education programme. The programme was undertaken by the researcher with a Std 4 class from Ryneveld Primêreskool in Graaff-Reinet. An action research approach was adopted and results were analysed qualitatively. Due to the short duration and exploratory nature of the project, these results should be viewed as tentative. Proposals are made for increasing the impact of Environmental Education programmes in peri-urban township communities, and recommendations are put forward to help facilitate related studies in the future.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1992
- Authors: Kruger, Jacqueline
- Date: 1992
- Subjects: Environmental education -- South Africa , Parent and child -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1574 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003456
- Description: This study explores the possible influence of twenty children on their 'parents', with a view to better understanding the potential 'multiplier effect' of children regarding environmental responsibility. The criteria employed to study the potential influence included certain of the environmental activities learnt by the children during an Environmental Education programme. The programme was undertaken by the researcher with a Std 4 class from Ryneveld Primêreskool in Graaff-Reinet. An action research approach was adopted and results were analysed qualitatively. Due to the short duration and exploratory nature of the project, these results should be viewed as tentative. Proposals are made for increasing the impact of Environmental Education programmes in peri-urban township communities, and recommendations are put forward to help facilitate related studies in the future.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1992