A Search for Conjunctions at a Time of Direction-setting Review and Synthesis
- Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/387134 , vital:68209 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122240"
- Description: This journal reflects a diversity of environment and sustainability education research and viewpoints alongside two synthesis papers. Read as a whole and within a widely held ideal that diversity reflects resilience, the environment and education for sustainable development landscape in Africa might be said to be healthy and proliferating. But read against the pressure to produce tangible evidence of change on an African landscape of persistent climate variation and poverty, along with a widening gap between rich and poor, the picture remains challenging. These contrasting readings are notable at a time when we are looking towards the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) Triennial in February, 2012, the Rio+20 Earth Summit in June 2012 and our own EEASA +30 conference in September 2012. The UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development is characterised by a proliferation of education imperatives. These emerged as modern education in response to the issues of the day and now a modernity in deepening crisis.
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- Date Issued: 2011
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.
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- Date Issued: 2008
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.
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- Date Issued: 2010
Detached harmonies : a study in/on developing social processes of environmental education in eastern southern Africa
- Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob
- 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.
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- Date Issued: 1997
Engagement in local social-ecological knowledge practices in a seasonal cycles approach for transitioning to future sustainability
- Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/387971 , vital:68294 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/186419"
- Description: This paper explores climate as variable natural forces driving seasonal cycles1 that many African cultures had adjusted themselves to within intergenerational knowledge practices of longue durée. The study points to the need to re-orientate and expand climate science education so that it is centred on the seasonal cycles and intergenerational learning to better align transitioning to future sustainability with these in our southern African contexts of climate change today. The narrative touches upon historical accounts of knowledge practices amongst the Krobo, Bemba, Shona, Zulu and Xhosa, briefly pointing to how each, as an African culture, is situated as a social-ecological entity within the climatic tapestries of our African landscapes. It takes note of how cultural articulation within the seasonal cycles of regional climate have a long history with adaptive change in some contexts in more recent times. The review suggests that our learning in relation to emerging climate change should be informed by these histories of intergenerational knowledge practice. It notes how a better grasp of these could be important drivers of a widening cultural response to the changing dynamics in our climatic surroundings today. The brief study suggests that southern Africa is a special place with many unique and interesting climatic processes and associated socio-ecological systems and practices. These can provide engaging perspectives for informing education to mitigate or adapt to climate change. Here, a situated exploration of seasonal cycles can draw on both the latest in modern climate science and the rich social-ecological heritage of Africa briefly touched upon in the study. A model of process is offered for how both can be used in a seasonal cycles approach climate change education. This better situated and more inclusive approach can enable us to contemplate how we might best adjust our social-ecological dispositions and practices in the changing world that we all share.
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- Date Issued: 2019
Learning in a Changing World
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , O'Donoghue, Rob , Robottom, Ian
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182679 , vital:43853 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122733 "
- Description: The year 2007 is a significant year for environmental education. It marks 30 years since the first internationally agreed principles of environmental education were developed at Tbilisi, commonly known as the Tbilisi Principles. It is also the year in which human beings apparently are finally ‘waking up’ to the fact that human-induced environmental change is causing impacts which are infinitely complex and difficult to resolve. This year, through various highly publicised and politicised events, people have begun to recognise that it is getting hot on planet Earth, and that the associated social, economic and environmental costs are profoundly disturbing. The Stern Review and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change both firmly indicated that human-induced environmental change will threaten human economies and security in ways that are unprecedented in human history. Southern Africa, where this special edition of the EEASA Journal is being produced to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the existence of the Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa, and the hosting of the 4th World Environmental Education Congress, is one of the areas most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. More than 70% of the people in southern Africa live in rural areas, and depend directly on natural resources for their livelihood and food security, making environment (and environmental education processes) a central concern in development discussions in the region. Patterns of global inequality are pronounced in the region, which has some of the poorest countries in the world. Out of its 25-year history, EEASA and its members, along with colleagues around the world, continue to seek ways of educating and empowering people to successfully participate in resolving environmental issues and create more sustainable and socially just living patterns. In drawing attention to our constant need to learn how to improve our understandings of environmental education and learning as the world around us changes, the World Environmental Education Congress organising committee chose to profile the question of ‘Learning in a Changing World’, by making this the theme of the Congress.
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- Date Issued: 2007
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.
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- Date Issued: 2016
Situated environmental learning in Southern Africa at the start of the UN decade of education for sustainable development
- Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/183059 , vital:43908 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0814062600001737"
- Description: Within the globalising trajectory of modernism, conservation, then environmental (EE) and now sustainability education (ESD) have each emerged as developing responses to risk produced by and in the modern state. Through adopting a long term process perspective, this paper narrates the emergence of situated learning perspectives and a developing re-orientation of EE at the start of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD). We identified the need to examine ESD practice in responses to recent ESD consultations in 14 southern African countries, where a rhetorical marking was noted in discussions on ESD practices, particularly with regard to changing teaching and learning processes. The paper narrates how an interplay of review, research and practical engagement activities have all contributed to an extended critical review of learning interactions in environmental education in an attempt to provide useful perspective for educational activities within the UNDESD. We found that EE and ESD initiatives only acquired more substantive meaning and coherent orientation when examined within ongoing inquiries into situated learning, agency and risk reduction in contexts of poverty, vulnerability and risk, the key concern to us in this paper and the primary focus of the WEHAB (Water, Energy, Health, Agriculture and Biodiversity) sustainable development agenda in the region.
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- Date Issued: 2006
Some insights on the gap
- Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182720 , vital:43856 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620220145410"
- Description: In our response to 'Mind the gap' by Kollmuss and Agyeman (2002) we review contemporary pro-environmental behaviour research and perspectives. We apply a social processes vantage point to reveal a blindness to the historical origins of these perspectives. Through drawing on a case in an African context, we illuminate the way in which experts in institutional contexts come to etch instrumental perspectives, and thus we probe the limitations of instrumentalist assumptions associated with pro-environmental behaviour research and perspectives. We also point to ideological blind spots and blockages that persist in disallowing social politics and history to illuminate the complexities of human social habitus, and we reveal some of the complexities that have been set aside in the Kollmuss and Agyeman article.
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- Date Issued: 2002
The Makana Regional Centre of expertise: Experiments in social learning
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , O'Donoghue, Rob , Wilmot, P Dianne
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182634 , vital:43849 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1177/097340820900400114"
- Description: This article deliberates the possibilities for Regional Centres of Expertise (RCEs) to become ‘experiments’ in social learning. The purpose of the article is to advance the broader research agenda of RCEs through reflection on the empirical research agenda of one RCE, Makana RCE in South Africa. As such it opens questions on how we might see RCE’s as morphogenic social learning processes (i.e., processes of social change). It provides an oversight of the key issues, educational foci and developing areas of engagement in the Makana RCE. These provide an overview of the ‘starting points’ for social learning in the Makana RCE. A model of social learning is also provided which seeks to engage the ecocultural nature of sustainability practices in the Makana RCE.
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- Date Issued: 2010
Towards a better grasp of what matters in view of ‘the posts’
- Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2005
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182693 , vital:43854 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620500169593"
- Description: This response to McKenzie suggests that the issues of representivity, legitimacy and politics, inscribed within an institutional continuism characteristic of modernity within the McKenzie discourse, could well be recast within a reflexive view informed by insights derived with developing social theory. It briefly overviews the struggle for human agency that played out within the deconstructive engagements of the posts and probes how perspectives in social theory are opening the way for a break with features of environmental education as an institutional field. The review points to a reconstituting of the idea of environmental education research from scholastic field of/for environmental awareness and sustainable development, to a reflexive engagement within processes of social reproduction and reorientation in a changing world. A shift such as this would constitute a subtle change in a developing field of research, to situated design decisions of reflexive engagement (research) in social fields constituted within developing cultural contexts of risk.
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- Date Issued: 2005
Transformative processes in environmental education
- Authors: Fox, Helen , Palmer, Tally , O'Donoghue, Rob
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/387323 , vital:68225 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/137680"
- Description: This paper presents a case study on the severely degraded Boksburg Lake’s (Gauteng, South Africa) social–ecological system, and on an environmental-education initiative that aimed to support the lake’s transformation with a view to its improved social and ecological well-being. In this case study, three key characteristics of the initiative which appeared to support the transformative process are discussed, namely: 1. Learning was aligned with the local social–ecological context; 2. Human-to-human and human-to-ecological connections were encouraged; and 3. The youth played a key role in initiating and effecting transformation.
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- Date Issued: 2015