Cultivating a scholarly community of practice
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Ellery, Karen , Olvitt, Lausanne L , Schudel, Ingrid J , O'Donoghue, Rob
- Date: 2010
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69777 , vital:29579 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC15102
- Description: In the field of Environment and Sustainability Education we are seeking ways of developing our teaching and supervision practices to enable social changes in a rapidly transforming field of practice where global issues of truth, judgement, justice and sustainability define our engagements with the public good. This article explores the process of cultivating a scholarly community of practice as a model of supervision that not only engages scholars in an intellectual community oriented towards socio-ecological transformation, but also extends and enhances dialogue with individuals on the technical and theoretical aspects of their postgraduate studies.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2010
Rhodes University EE and Sustainability Unit
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Schudel, Ingrid J
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/294423 , vital:57220 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1177/097340820700100127"
- Description: In the early 1990s, in response to the emphasis laid on environment and development issues by the new South African Constitution, Rhodes University undertook several initiatives such as establishing the first Chair of Environmental Education (EE) in Africa. Another important initiative was the introduction of an open-entry participatory course for environmental educators. Owing to its flexible format and practice-based methodology, the course gained rapid popularity, necessitating the setting up of a Service Centre to help meet the increased demand. The Chair and the Service Centre have been providing a range of short courses in environment and sustainability education to professionals, and are today widely known as the Rhodes University Environmental Education and Sustainability Unit (RUEESU). The Unit offers PhD and Masters level programmes in EE, encourages meaningful research in key thematic areas, and is actively involved in publishing, and policy transformation. It also endeavours to define the role of Universities in enabling sustainability education.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
Exploring the practical adequacy of the normative framework guiding South Africa’s National Curriculum Statement
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Schudel, Ingrid J
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/294386 , vital:57217 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620701284860"
- Description: This article examines the practical adequacy of the recent defining of a normative framework for the South African National Curriculum Statement that focuses on the relationship between human rights, social justice and a healthy environment. This politically framed and socially critical normative framework has developed in response to socio‐political and socio‐ecological histories in post‐apartheid curriculum transformation processes. The article critically considers the process of working with a normative framework in the defining of environmental education teaching and learning interactions, and seeks not only to explore the policy discourse critically, but also to explore what it is about the world that makes it work in different ways. Drawing on Sayer’s perspectives on the possibilities of enabling ‘situated universalism’ as a form of normative theory, and case‐based data from a teacher professional development programme in the Makana District (where the authors live and work), the article probes the relationship between the establishment of a ‘universalising’ normative framework to guide national curriculum, and situated engagements with this framework in/as democratic process. In this process it questions whether educators should adopt the ‘norms’ as presented by society and simply universalize and implement them as prescribed by curriculum statements, or whether educators should adopt the strategies of postmodernists and reduce normative frameworks to relations of power situated in particular contexts.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
Situated culture, ethics and new learning theory: emerging perspectives in environmental education research
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6095 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008617
- Description: Celebrating the 8th International Invitational Research and Development Seminar. This edition of the EEASA Journal celebrates the hosting of the 8th International Invitational Research and Development Seminar on Environmental and Health Education in South Africa in March 2005. The International Invitational Research and Development Seminars are ‘special events’ in the field of environmental and health education research. They are characterised by their democratic, deliberative nature, and by their intent to scope innovation and methodological issues. First established some years ago in Copenhagen, Denmark, these seminars have provided an evolving international forum for researchers interested in research methodology to meet and frame new themes, trends and issues arising in the field of environmental education and health education research.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
Exploring the practical adequacy of the normative framework guiding South Africa’s National Curriculum Statement
- Authors: Schudel, Ingrid , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/391193 , vital:68630 , xlink:href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504620701284860"
- Description: This article examines the practical adequacy of the recent defining of a normative framework for the South African National Curriculum Statement that focuses on the relationship between human rights, social justice and a healthy environment. This politically framed and socially critical normative framework has developed in response to socio-political and socio-ecological histories in postapartheid curriculum transformation processes. The article critically considers the process of working with a normative framework in the defining of environmental education teaching and learning interactions, and seeks not only to explore the policy discourse critically, but also to explore what it is about the world that makes it work in different ways. Drawing on Sayer’s perspectives on the possibilities of enabling ‘situated universalism’ as a form of normative theory, and case-based data from a teacher professional development programme in the Makana District (where the authors live and work), the article probes the relationship between the establishment of a ‘universalising’ normative framework to guide national curriculum, and situated engagements with this framework in/as democratic process. In this process it questions whether educators should adopt the ‘norms’ as presented by society and simply universalize and implement them as prescribed by curriculum statements, or whether educators should adopt the strategies of postmodernists and reduce normative frameworks to relations of power situated in particular contexts.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
‘Exploring the practical adequacy of the human rights, social justice, inclusivity and healthy environment policy discourse in South Africa’s National Curriculum Statement’
- Authors: Schudel, Ingrid , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/391180 , vital:68629 , xlink:href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504620701284860"
- Description: This article examines the practical adequacy of the recent defining of a normative framework for the South African National Curriculum Statement that focuses on the relationship between human rights, social justice and a healthy environment. This politically framed and socially critical normative framework has developed in response to socio-political and socio-ecological histories in postapartheid curriculum transformation processes. The article critically considers the process of working with a normative framework in the defining of environmental education teaching and learning interactions, and seeks not only to explore the policy discourse critically, but also to explore what it is about the world that makes it work in different ways. Drawing on Sayer’s perspectives on the possibilities of enabling ‘situated universalism’ as a form of normative theory, and case-based data from a teacher professional development programme in the Makana District (where the authors live and work), the article probes the relationship between the establishment of a ‘universalising’ normative framework to guide national curriculum, and situated engagements with this framework in/as democratic process. In this process it questions whether educators should adopt the ‘norms’ as presented by society and simply universalize and implement them as prescribed by curriculum statements, or whether educators should adopt the strategies of postmodernists and reduce normative frameworks to relations of power situated in particular contexts.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
Contextualising learning in Advanced Certificate in Education (Environmental Education) courses : synthesising contexts and experiences
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Le Roux, Cheryl , Loubser, Callie , Schudel, Ingrid J , O'Donoghue, Rob , Shallcross, Tony
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:21224 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/7167 , http://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC32180
- Description: We report on experiences in the Advanced Certificate in Education (Environmental Education) courses of two South African universities, namely, Rhodes University and the University of South Africa. We focus specifically on the whole school approaches which were influenced by a project between these two universities and Manchester Metropolitan University. We illustrate how contextual profiling influenced the perspective or entry point from which the whole school message was approached in the ACE (EE) courses. Through illustrative examples from these two courses, we report on two different approaches to contextual profiling, starting by problematising an approach that relies solely on a priori contextual profiling. We then illustrate how this approach can be complemented by contextual profiling within courses and within context through situated learning processes.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
Mapping epistemic cultures and learning potential of participants in citizen science projects
- Authors: Vallabh, Priya , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , O'Donoghue, Rob , Schudel, Ingrid J
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/128939 , vital:36192 , https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12701
- Description: The ever-widening scope and range of global change and interconnected systemic risks arising from people–environment relationships (social‐ecological risks) appears to be increasing concern among, and involvement of, citizens in an increasingly diversified number of citizen science projects responding to these risks. We examined the relationship between epistemic cultures in citizen science projects and learning potential related to matters of concern. We then developed a typology of purposes and a citizen science epistemic‐cultures heuristic and mapped 56 projects in southern Africa using this framework. The purpose typology represents the range of knowledge‐production purposes, ranging from laboratory science to social learning, whereas the epistemic‐cultures typology is a relational representation of scientist and citizen participation and their approach to knowledge production. Results showed an iterative relationship between matters of fact and matters of concern across the projects; the nexus of citizens’ engagement in knowledge‐production activities varied. The knowledge‐production purposes informed and shaped the epistemic cultures of all the sampled citizen science projects, which in turn influenced the potential for learning within each project. Through a historical review of 3 phases in a long‐term river health‐monitoring project, we found that it is possible to evolve the learning curve of citizen science projects. This evolution involved the development of scientific water monitoring tools, the parallel development of pedagogic practices supporting monitoring activities, and situated engagement around matters of concern within social activism leading to learning‐led change. We conclude that such evolutionary processes serve to increase potential for learning and are necessary if citizen science is to contribute to wider restructuring of the epistemic culture of science under conditions of expanding social-ecological risk.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
Think Piece : conceptions of quality and ‘Learning as Connection’: teaching for relevance
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: Teachers -- Quality -- South Africa , Quality assurance -- South Africa , Effective teaching , Relevance , SADC Regional Environmental Education Programme
- Language: English
- Type: article , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59635 , vital:27633 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122256
- Description: This think piece captures some of the thinking that emerged in and through the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Regional Environmental Education Programme research programme. This research programme emerged over a five-year period (2008–2012) and involved ten southern African teacher education institutions from eight countries (see ‘Acknowledgements’). The research programme sought to understand what contributions environment and sustainability education could make to debates on educational quality and relevance. Issues of educational quality are high on the national agendas of governments in southern Africa, as it is now well known that providing access to schooling is not a sufficient condition for achieving educational quality. Educational quality is intimately linked to the processes of teaching and learning, but the concept of educational quality is not unproblematic in and of itself. It is, as Noel Gough (2005) noted many years ago, an ‘order word’ that shapes the way people think and practise. Our enquiries during this research programme involved a number of case studies (that were reported on in the Southern African Journal of Environmental Education (SAJEE) in 2008, and are again reported on in this edition of the SAJEE), but the programme also involved theoretical engagement with the concept of educational quality and relevance. This think piece helps to make some of this thinking and theoretical deliberation visible. The author of this think piece was also the leader of the regional research programme and was tasked with synthesising the theoretical deliberations that emerged from the research design which were found to be useful for guiding interpretations and deliberation on more detailed case studies undertaken at country level.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
Think Piece. Conceptions of Quality and ‘Learning as Connection’: Teaching for Relevance
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/387159 , vital:68211 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122256"
- Description: This think piece captures some of the thinking that emerged in and through the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Regional Environmental Education Programme research programme. This research programme emerged over a five-year period (2008–2012) and involved ten southern African teacher education institutions from eight countries (see ‘Acknowledgements’). The research programme sought to understand what contributions environment and sustainability education could make to debates on educational quality and relevance. Issues of educational quality are high on the national agendas of governments in southern Africa, as it is now well known that providing access to schooling is not a sufficient condition for achieving educational quality. Educational quality is intimately linked to the processes of teaching and learning, but the concept of educational quality is not unproblematic in and of itself. It is, as Noel Gough (2005) noted many years ago, an ‘order word’ that shapes the way people think and practise. Our enquiries during this research programme involved a number of case studies (that were reported on in the Southern African Journal of Environmental Education (SAJEE) in 2008, and are again reported on in this edition of the SAJEE), but the programme also involved theoretical engagement with the concept of educational quality and relevance.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
Active learning in schools
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Timmermans, Ingrid
- Date: 2001
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/389696 , vital:68475 , xlink:href="https://eeasa.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Bulletin_vol21-_Sep-2001.pdf"
- Description: The Rhodes University Environmental Education Unit has initiated a project to support school-based environmental education work in Grahamstown. In line with national environmental education policy, the project supports a focus on environmental learning in the context of the OBE curriculum, and provides professional development support to teachers implementing the project (NEEP, 2000). An action research evaluation is taking place to monitor key aspects of the project and a number of interim evaluation reports have been produced (Mbanjwa, 2001).
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
National case study : teacher professional development with an education for sustainable development focus in South Africa: development of a network, curriculum framework and resources for teacher education
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: Teachers -- Training of , Career development , Sustainable development -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: article , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59646 , vital:27634 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122242
- Description: This national case study reports on the development of a national network, curriculum framework and resources for teacher education, with specific focus on the inclusion of environment and sustainability, also known as education for sustainable development (ESD) in the South African teacher education system. It reviews and reports on the history of environment and sustainability education in teacher education, and from this, the national case study begins to conceptualise a new approach to environment and sustainability teacher education within a new curriculum policy environment, and a new teacher education and development policy environment. Action research case study methodology is used to document the first phase of the emergence of this network, and this report covers Phase 1 of the initiative, which covers formation of the network, review of previous practices, three conceptual development pilot studies undertaken in both in-service and pre-service teacher education environments and a piloting of a ‘Train the Trainers’ or ‘Educate the Teacher Educators’ programme, which complements and extends the actual teacher education and development (TED) programme under development. The study highlights critical insights of relevance to the shift to a content referenced curriculum in South Africa, and shows how the ‘knowledge mix’ which forms the foundation of the new Teacher Education Qualifications Framework can be engaged. It also highlights some features of the changing knowledge environment, and what dominant knowledge practices are in environment and sustainability-related teaching and teacher education practices, opening these up for further scrutiny. It raises concerns that dominant knowledge work, while integrating a range of forms of knowledge (as is expected of the teacher education system under the new policy), tends to be limited by content on problems and issues for raising awareness, and fails to develop deeper conceptual depth and understanding of environment and sustainability, as issues based knowledge dominates. Similarly, it fails to support social innovation as a response to environment and sustainability concerns, as awareness raising dominates in dominant knowledge work. The study provides a revised conceptual framework for the Teacher Development Network (TEDN) programme, with guidance on key elements necessary to take the programme forward in Phase 2.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
Teacher professional development with an Education for Sustainable Development focus in South Africa: Development of a network, curriculum framework and resources for teacher education
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/128949 , vital:36193 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122242
- Description: This national case study reports on the development of a national network, curriculum framework and resources for teacher education, with specific focus on the inclusion of environment and sustainability, also known as education for sustainable development (ESD) in the South African teacher education system. It reviews and reports on the history of environment and sustainability education in teacher education, and from this, the national case study begins to conceptualise a new approach to environment and sustainability teacher education within a new curriculum policy environment, and a new teacher education and development policy environment.Action research case study methodology is used to document the first phase of the emergence of this network, and this report covers Phase 1 of the initiative, which covers formation of the network, review of previous practices, three conceptual development pilot studies undertaken in both in-service and pre-service teacher education environments and a piloting of a ‘Train the Trainers’ or ‘Educate the Teacher Educators’ programme, which complements and extends the actual teacher education and development (TED) programme under development.The study highlights critical insights of relevance to the shift to a content referenced curriculum in South Africa, and shows how the ‘knowledge mix’ which forms the foundation of the new Teacher Education Qualifications Framework can be engaged. It also highlights some features of the changing knowledge environment, and what dominant knowledge practices are in environment and sustainability-related teaching and teacher education practices, opening these up for further scrutiny. It raises concerns that dominant knowledge work, while integrating a range of forms of knowledge (as is expected of the teacher education system under the new policy), tends to be limited by content on problems and issues for raising awareness, and fails to develop deeper conceptual depth and understanding of environment and sustainability, as issues based knowledge dominates. Similarly, it fails to support social innovation as a response to environment and sustainability concerns, as awareness raising dominates in dominant knowledge work. The study provides a revised conceptual framework for the Teacher Development Network (TEDN) programme, with guidance on key elements necessary to take the programme forward in Phase 2.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
Epistemological access as an open question in education
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:21219 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/7123 , http://joe.ukzn.ac.za/Libraries/No_46_June_2009/Epistemological_access_as_an_open_question_in_education.sflb.ashx
- Description: In his book Learning to Teach in South Africa Morrow (2007)1 argues that teacher education’s ultimate aim is to enable epistemological access2 to knowledge in the modern world, and that there is a need to find new ways of thinking about teaching in South Africa if we are to meet the challenge of enabling all learners to gain such epistemological access. Morrow relates problems of epistemological access to the dominance of an empiricist epistemology in education, and he also comments on how this is obscured by the ideologies of Outcomes Based Education and learner-centred education (with attendant constructivist, relativist assumptions about knowledge). These problems, he argues, have come to shape curriculum thinking, and hence teaching practice, creating a muddled epistemological context in which teaching practices are taking place. He argues for a realist focus but he does not elaborate on what such a realist focus might mean for enabling epistemological access or for associated teaching practice or for teacher education. He does, however, propose that systematic learning is a necessary way forward.
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- Date Issued: 2009
Education for Sustainable Development and retention: unravelling a research agenda
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2010
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/127192 , vital:35975 , https://10.1007/s11159-010-9165-9
- Description: This paper considers the question of what education for sustainable development (ESD) research might signify when linked to the concept of “retention”, and how this relation (ESD and retention) might be researched. It considers two different perspectives on retention, as revealed through educational research trajectories, drawing on existing research and case studies. Firstly, it discusses an ESD research agenda that documents retention by focusing on the issue of keeping children in schools. This research agenda is typical of the existing discourses surrounding Education for All (EFA). It then discusses a related ESD research agenda that focuses more on the pedagogical and curricular aspects of retention, as this provides for a deeper understanding of how ESD can contribute to improving the quality of teaching and learning within a wider EFA retention agenda.
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- Date Issued: 2010
Links between the local trade in natural products, livelihoods and poverty alleviation in a semi-arid region of South Africa
- Authors: Shackleton, Sheona E , Campbell, Bruce , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Shackleton, Charlie M
- Date: 2008
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/181246 , vital:43712 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2007.03.003"
- Description: Can the local commercialization of natural products contribute to reduced poverty and vulnerability? Commentary on this issue is mixed, with some observers being quite optimistic, while others hold a counterview. This paper explores the poverty alleviation potential of four products traded in Bushbuckridge, South Africa—traditional brooms, reed mats, woodcraft, and “marula” beer. While key in enhancing the livelihood security of the poorest households, these products were unlikely to provide a route out of poverty for most, although there were exceptions. Incomes often surpassed local wage rates, and some producers obtained returns equivalent to the minimum wage. Non-financial benefits such as the opportunity to work from home were highly rated, and the trade was found to represent a range of livelihood strategies both within and across products.
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- Date Issued: 2008
Building capacity for green, just and sustainable futures – a new knowledge field requiring transformative research methodology
- Authors: Rosenberg, Eureta , Ramsarup, Presha , Gumede, Sibusisiwe , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: Sustainable development -- South Africa , Renewable energy sources , Climatic changes , Clean energy
- Language: English
- Type: article , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59613 , vital:27631 , http://joe.ukzn.ac.za/Libraries/No_65_2016/JoE_complete.sflb.ashx
- Description: Education has contributed to a society-wide awareness of environmental issues, and we are increasingly confronted with the need for new ways to generate energy, save water and reduce pollution. Thus new forms of work are emerging and government, employers and educators need to know what ‘green’ skills South Africa needs and has. This creates a new demand for ‘green skills’ research. We propose that this new knowledge field – like some other educational fields – requires a transformative approach to research methodology. In conducting reviews of existing research, we found that a transformative approach requires a reframing of key concepts commonly used in researching work and learning; multi-layered, mixed method studies; researching within and across diverse knowledge fields including non-traditional fields; and both newly configured national platforms and new conceptual frameworks to help us integrate coherently across these. Critical realism is presented as a helpful underpinning for such conceptual frameworks, and implications for how universities prepare educational researchers are flagged.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
Reflections on the ‘3rd World Environmental Education Congress: Educational pathways towards sustainability’, Italy, 2005
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6096 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008619
- Description: Conference Theme: The congress theme ‘Educational pathways towards sustainability’ foregrounded the current ‘state of play’ in environmental education / education for sustainability, at the start of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD), and drew attention to the role of education in creating pathways towards sustainability. Mario Solomone, convenor of the congress, in his orientation to the congress describes the congress as being about ‘cultural changes and cultural forces for change’, highlighting the role of education, training and communication in redirecting values, knowledge and behaviour to construct a human society ‘that is fairer and more aware of the equilibrium of a beautiful and fragile planet’ (Salomone, 2005: 6). To facilitate deliberations during the conference a set of interrelated themes were established which included: communication and the environment; paths to sustainability; research and assessment in environmental education; sustainable education; training the trainers; community awareness; promoting participation and governance and creating a network; economics and ecology; environment and health; farming and related issues; ethics; and emotional involvements. These congress themes, together with an impressive array of keynote papers kept congress participants actively engaged with the question of the DESD.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
Vocational education and training for African development: A literature review
- Authors: McGrath, Simon , Ramsarup, Presha , Zeelen, Jacques , Wedekind, Volker , Allais, Stephanie , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Monk, David , Openjuru, George , Russon, Jo-Anna
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182418 , vital:43828 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2019.1679969"
- Description: The SDGs mark the clearest global acceptance yet that the previous approach to development was unsustainable. In VET, UNESCO has responded by developing a clear account of how a transformed VET must be part of a transformative approach to development. It argues that credible, comprehensive skills systems can be built that can support individuals, communities, and organisations to generate and maintain enhanced and just livelihood opportunities. However, the major current theoretical approaches to VET are not up to this challenge. In the context of Africa, we seek to address this problem through a presentation of literatures that contribute to the theorisation of this new vision. They agree that the world is not made up of atomised individuals guided by a “hidden hand”. Rather, reality is heavily structured within political economies that have emerged out of contestations and compromises in specific historical and geographical spaces. Thus, labour markets and education and training systems have arisen, characterised by inequalities and exclusions. These specific forms profoundly influence individuals’ and communities’ views about the value of different forms of learning and working. However, they do not fully define what individuals dream, think and do. Rather, a transformed and transformative VET for Africa is possible.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
The Stinking Ontology of Sh#t in the Water: Higher Education Public Pedagogy and “Existance”?
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182754 , vital:43871 , xlink:href="http://doi.org/10.1089/sus.2019.29161"
- Description: “Existance” is not a spelling mistake. It is a word from Soweto street poet Zachariah Rapola’s poem, questioning our “stance in existence” . In the context of this essay, the poem raises the challenging perspective of our “stance in existence.” for engaging with the SDGs. The SDGs set a range of clear targets, but in doing so, they fail to give a good account of the stinking ontology of some of the issues to be dealt with, and thus lack a certain sense of realism.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019