The Southern African Journal of Environmental Education最新文献

{"title":"Exploring the Relevance and Quality of the VaRemba Initiation School Curriculum and its Impact on Formal Schooling in a Rural District in Zimbabwe","authors":"C. Chikunda, Pamela Shoko","doi":"10.4314/SAJEE.V26I0.122825","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/SAJEE.V26I0.122825","url":null,"abstract":"The study explores the relevance and quality of the VaRemba initiation school curriculum and analyses its impact on formal education. A case study design was used to come up with a descriptive, interpretive as well as an evaluative account of the initiation curriculum and its impact on formal schooling in Chomusenda village in Mberengwa district of Zimbabwe. Interviews, questionnaires, observations and analysis of records were used to gather data from teachers, initiates and elderly community members. The study established that the VaRemba initiation curriculum perpetuates gender stereotypical roles and has some aspects which are unsustainable and in tension with formal schooling. Girls are channeled towards reproductive roles and the private sphere while boys are geared for productive roles and public sphere. High dropout from formal schooling is witnessed soon after initiation, as the initiation curriculum seems to tell initiates that they are ‘ripe’ for adult life. However, the curriculum has aspects that contribute to moral development of young people. The study recommends a paradigm shift, to embrace the ubuntu philosophy in the two education systems as a way to harmonise them.","PeriodicalId":272843,"journal":{"name":"The Southern African Journal of Environmental Education","volume":"65 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125861750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Editorial: Understanding Collective Learning and Human Agency in Diverse Social, Cultural and Material Settings","authors":"Lausanne Olvitt, H. Lotz-Sisitka, Jeppe Læssøe, N. Jørgensen","doi":"10.4314/SAJEE.V34I0.172221","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/SAJEE.V34I0.172221","url":null,"abstract":"The significance of environment and sustainability education research and practice, and its potential contribution to a sustainable future for humanity, is conveyed by the International Social Science Council (n.d.), which explains: People everywhere will need to learn how to create new forms of human activity and new social systems that are more sustainable and socially just. However, we have limited knowledge about the type of learning that creates such change, how such learning emerges, or how it can be scaled-up to create transformations at many levels. Here, the important shift is towards considering what social systems, forms of knowledge, learning processes and questions of justice are associated with perpetuating or halting the decline of Earth’s bio-geo-chemical systems. This edition of the Southern African Journal of Environmental Education contributes three research papers and a themed Think Piece collection to these international deliberations about the role of education in enabling transformations to sustainability. Collectively, the articles highlight how relationality and the formation of human agency in socio-cultural and material settings in past–present–future configurations underpin all environment-oriented learning processes. The three research papers constituting the first part of this volume offer glimpses into how current unsustainable socio-cultural and material configurations might be transformed to address social inequalities and damaged people–nature relations. The Think Piece collection, introduced by Lotz-Sisitka, Laessoe and Jorgensen later in this editorial, focuses on how learning can foster and contribute to the development of change agents and collective agency for climate-resilient development.","PeriodicalId":272843,"journal":{"name":"The Southern African Journal of Environmental Education","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129358069","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cultural Historical Activity Theory, Expansive Learning and Agency in Permaculture Workplaces","authors":"M. Mukute","doi":"10.4314/SAJEE.V26I0.122818","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/SAJEE.V26I0.122818","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reports on how Cultural Historical Activity Theory was used to identify and analyse contradictions; model and implement solutions in the learning and practice of permaculture at one school and its community in Zimbabwe. This is one of three sustainable agriculture workplace learning sites being examined in a wider study on change-oriented learning and sustainability practices (Mukute, 2009). It gives a brief background to permaculture and the School and Colleges Permaculture Programme (SCOPE) in Zimbabwe. The paper focuses on how contradictions were used as sources of learning and development leading to ‘real life expansions’. This demonstrates and reflects on the value of an interventionist research theory and methodology employed in the study to enhance participants’ agency in sustainable agriculture workplaces.","PeriodicalId":272843,"journal":{"name":"The Southern African Journal of Environmental Education","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129697426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Think Piece: Re-thinking Education for Sustainable Development as Transgressive Processes of Educational Engagement with Human Conduct, Emerging Matters of Concern and the Common Good","authors":"R. O’Donoghue","doi":"10.4314/SAJEE.V30I0.121961","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/SAJEE.V30I0.121961","url":null,"abstract":"The modernist expansion of Education is examined to explore how the concept of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has emerged, is being worked with, and is being assessed in imperatives intended to foster social-ecological change on a global scale. The opening review sketches how education developed as a mediating process in modernity, tracking some recent shifts that are shaping ESD in more and more diverse contexts of education practice. It scopes an ESD terrain where knowledge and ethics-led learning in relation to valued purposes might enable citizens to become engaged in change that secures a  sustainable future for generations to come. Within these processes, competence specification is  examined as a useful but under-theorised social imaginary for framing learning for future sustainability, primarily in teacher education and curriculum contexts. Here, ESD presents as an open process of situated social learning where emergent  competences steer social innovation towards a more sustainable future (SD). The paper attempts to navigate some of the current tensions in relation to knowledge and participation in these processes of learning-to-change. It probes ESD as praxiological processes of dialectical reflexivity that can become situated in contexts of risk and develop as transgressive1 expansions within many conventional learning sequences in curriculum settings. The paper notes that current discourses on ESD and its assessment have often come to stand outside, and in contrast with, conventions of teaching and learning. These discourses also often conflate  education and sustainable  development in ways that ascribe change to ESD without adequately theorising the expansive and reflexive learning of citizens and how these processes might produce the desired change towards  sustainable development (SD) in diverse contexts of learning in and about a changing world.","PeriodicalId":272843,"journal":{"name":"The Southern African Journal of Environmental Education","volume":"309 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116224580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sustainable Schools in the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development: Meeting the challenge?","authors":"A. Gough","doi":"10.4314/SAJEE.V23I0.122724","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/SAJEE.V23I0.122724","url":null,"abstract":"Within UNESCO’s conception of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), schools should be implementing approaches to teaching and learning that integrate goals for conservation, social justice, appropriate  development and democracy into a vision and a mission of personal and social change. ESD also involves  developing the kinds of civic virtues and skills that can empower all citizens and, through them, our social  institutions, to play leading roles in the transition to a sustainable future. As such, ESD encompasses a vision for global society that is not only ecologically sustainable but also one that is socially and economically  sustainable. This paper traces the history of ESD in Victorian schools and analyses the current sustainability policies and initiatives in terms of their achievement of the educational, environmental, economic and social indicators of ESD. It also problematises the feasibility, and desirability, of any one programme being able to incorporate all aspects of ESD as elaborated by UNESCO.","PeriodicalId":272843,"journal":{"name":"The Southern African Journal of Environmental Education","volume":"64 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122260301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Naturalist's Niche natuurhoekie","authors":"John Ledger","doi":"10.4314/SAJEE.V7I1.137479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/SAJEE.V7I1.137479","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":272843,"journal":{"name":"The Southern African Journal of Environmental Education","volume":"65 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126644747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Developing Capability and Agency through a Poverty-reduction Approach to Community Education and Sustainability in Botswana","authors":"M. Ketlhoilwe, K. Jeremiah","doi":"10.4314/SAJEE.V29I0.122264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/SAJEE.V29I0.122264","url":null,"abstract":"Women in the Tswapong Region of Botswana depend on natural resources for their livelihood. These resources are seasonal and are often affected by unreliable rainfall patterns. Botswana government policies create sustainable, natural resource management opportunities. This article is based on research investigating how women in rural communities, and in the specific context of the Kgetsi-ya-Tsie (a community trust), who are dependent on arable agriculture and on natural resources are making an effort to reduce poverty. The research also sought to understand what constitutes quality and relevant education for the promotion of sustainable development in such a context. The research examined how women in the eastern part of Botswana exploit natural resources for subsistence and commercial reasons. It also examined the different skills employed by women to cope with economic and social challenges and to promote sustainability. Furthermore, the research explored the women’s/communities’ conceptions of quality and relevant adult education, capabilities, agency, and adult-education pedagogies in order to promote social change relating to poverty-reduction strategies among rural women. Data for this article was generated through a questionnaire, a research schedule, focus-group discussions, document analyses, interviews and observation. The results of this research show that the benefits of promoting social change relating to poverty-reduction strategies are increasing annually, although some challenges are reducing the enthusiasm of some members of Kgetsi-ya-Tsie. During the research, it emerged that the knowledge that is shared and learnt in communities of practice is social capital. Women connect at various levels, without the constraints of a formal structure, in order to acquire skills that enable them to be more resilient to environmental and economic challenges. They share their expertise and experiences, and they learn from one another through different ways of solving the problems they face, developing new capabilities, leveraging best practices, standardising practices, and increasing their talents. Poverty reduction requires multifaceted approaches by those affected and by government institutions offering opportunities for assistance. However, what has not emerged clearly from this ongoing research is how power is distributed among women in relation to strategies for coping with poverty and organisational practices.","PeriodicalId":272843,"journal":{"name":"The Southern African Journal of Environmental Education","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126889166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Children's Opinions about the Loss of Nature","authors":"A. Mabelis","doi":"10.4314/SAJEE.V22I0.122704","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/SAJEE.V22I0.122704","url":null,"abstract":"A survey was conducted among approximately 400 Dutch schoolchildren (age: 8–16 years) in order to test their feelings about deterioration of the environment and the extinction of species. The majority of pupils answered that they regret the extinction of species more or less, especially popular ones. For a minority it does not matter at all. The proportion of pupils who expressed indifference to the pollution of air, water and soil was 7%, 10% and 13%, respectively. Dying of the forest was taken very seriously by approximately 60% of the pupils; this percen tage increased after a slide of a dead forest was shown. A similar result was obtained in respect to the assumed extinction of a common plant species: it was taken more seriously after some information was given. More than half of the pupils predicted a bad future for the Netherlands. However, this pessimis tic view can be changed into a more optimistic one by stimula ting activities to improve the environment. The fact that most pupils judged their own future positive may indicate that they feel to have some control on the quality of their own life.","PeriodicalId":272843,"journal":{"name":"The Southern African Journal of Environmental Education","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125257906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Role of Indigenous Knowledge in Biodiversity Conservation in the Lesotho Highlands: Exploring Indigenous Epistemology","authors":"T. Mokuku, C. Mokuku","doi":"10.4314/SAJEE.V21I0.122680","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/SAJEE.V21I0.122680","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is based on part of a broad study to investigate indigenous knowledge applied by the Lesotho Highlands communities to conserve biodiversity. A questionnaire was administered in 12 villages, to a population of 139 interviewees. It guided interviews on conservation of selected faunal and floral species with various community groups in the highlands: men, women, herd-boys and school pupils. It is illustrated that there are practices and beliefs about certain species that contribute towards their conservation. Through these beliefs species are perceived to have powers to cause certain awesome consequences for humans if destroyed, seen or encountered, and some species are believed to have abilities to communicate some messages to humans. It is argued that these beliefs and practices reflect evidence of the existence of a complex epistemological framework characterised by physical and spiritual interconnections of humans with other species. Some implications of the emergent epistemology for educational and conservation approaches are discussed.","PeriodicalId":272843,"journal":{"name":"The Southern African Journal of Environmental Education","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126482804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Environmental education and outcomes-based education in South Africa: A marriage made in heaven?","authors":"L. Grange, C. Reddy","doi":"10.4314/SAJEE.V17I0.137441","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/SAJEE.V17I0.137441","url":null,"abstract":"The infusion of environmental education into a new South African curriculum marks a historic shift from the past where it was marginalised from mainstream, formal education. Through the Environmental Education Policy Initiative (EEPI), environmental education was included as a key principle in the most recent government white paper on education and training. This policy process provided a platform for the establishment of an Environmental Education Curriculum Initiative (EECI) to ensure that environmental concerns form part of the new outcomes based curriculum (OBE) for South Africa. Many members of the environmental education community have been actively involved in EECI activities and environmental education and OBE was one of the key features at the most recent conference of the Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa (EEASA). In this article we attempt to highlight the parallels between environmental education and OBE and raise a critical debate around the institutionalisation of environmental education in South Africa.","PeriodicalId":272843,"journal":{"name":"The Southern African Journal of Environmental Education","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130618829","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}