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A landscape view of emerging sustainability responses within VET

- Ramsarup, Presha, McGrath, Simon, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila

  • Authors: Ramsarup, Presha , McGrath, Simon , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2024
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/482604 , vital:78670 , https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2024.2320911
  • Description: With evidence of global climate change and ongoing ecological degradation, there is an urgent need to give more attention to sustainability within VET to ensure that VET does not remain complicit in reproducing the unjust and unsustainable trajectories of current economic and development pathways. At present, the VET literature does not adequately address these issues, hence the need for this special issue. In response, this paper offers a meta-reflective ‘landscape view’ of the sustainability within the VET ‘field of knowledge’ as it is emerging. Here, we use landscape review as a multi-dimensional, ‘outside-in’ view that provides a basis for understanding the broad context and helps to inform actionable next steps. This analysis we believe helps to highlight the key emerging priorities as well as what paths VET is taking on the journey to sustainability. The analysis shows that while some progress has been made in policy and practice related to the ‘greening’ of VET, much of the current response within VET to the environmental challenge reflects a minimalist reformist approach, characterised by ‘bolt-ons’ to existing institutional structures and curricula whilst leaving the fundamental beliefs in productivism, industrialisation and growth in place. Yet, as argued by researchers working on green economy, these beliefs are often complicit in co-creation of the environmental crisis.
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Engaged sustainability science and place-based transgressive learning in higher education

- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Le Grange, Lesley, Mphepo, Gibson Y

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Le Grange, Lesley , Mphepo, Gibson Y
  • Date: 2024
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480429 , vital:78441 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-sajsci-v120-n9-a22
  • Description: This article is located within current debates on engaged science and learning in higher education, with emphasis on types of learning emerging from engaged sustainability science, and associated contributions to debates on decoloniality in higher education. In par ticular, the ar ticle deliberates how a focus on sustainability science practised as place-based transgressive learning can add to debates on decoloniality in higher education. Through analysis of two case studies, we propose that co-engaged place-based research and learning emerges as a form of multi-loop, transgressive learning that offers possibilities for advancing understanding of decolonising learning processes, at least in those par ts of the higher education system where the learning and sustainability sciences meet. This is offered as an approach to deepen science engagement in contemporary African contexts.
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Interrelated transformative process dynamics in the face of resource nexus challenges an invitation towards cross case analysis

- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Pahl-Wostl, Claudia, Meissner, Richard, Scholz, Geeske, Cockburn, Jessica J, Jalasi, Experencia M, Stuart-Hill, Sabine, Palmer, Carolyn G

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Pahl-Wostl, Claudia , Meissner, Richard , Scholz, Geeske , Cockburn, Jessica J , Jalasi, Experencia M , Stuart-Hill, Sabine , Palmer, Carolyn G
  • Date: 2024
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/482626 , vital:78672 , https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2023.2297707
  • Description: The need for more attention to the social and human dimensions in global change sciences and natural resources management requires in-depth understandings of transformative approaches and processes. More inclusive and systemic approaches are needed that embrace complexity and support transformative learning, shifts in power relations, collective and relational agency and structural transformations for adaptive and innovative governance. Scientific understanding of how such change can be brought about is still limited. In this paper, which sets the scene for this Special Issue, we develop a conceptual framework for analyzing transformative processes across a range of diverse cases. Aspects of the conceptual framework are applied, tested and elaborated in three following papers in the Special Issue, deepening understanding of how transformative change in complex social-ecological systems may originate at nexus boundary zones such as that portrayed by the water-food-energy nexus. Specifically, the paper conceptually elaborates four iteratively related dynamics of transformative learning, transforming power relations, transformative agency and transforming structures which intersect in transformation processes. The perspectives offer tools for cross case analysis in the longer term, but also tools for supporting co-engaged, generative research processes.
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Oil, transport, water and food: a political-economy-ecology lens on VET in a climate changing world

- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, McGrath, Simon, Ramsarup, Presha

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , McGrath, Simon , Ramsarup, Presha
  • Date: 2024
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/482648 , vital:78674 , https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2024.2320910
  • Description: In this paper, drawing on an extensive research project across three countries (VET Africa 4.0 Collective 2023), we produce an emerging argument that it is necessary to rethink and reframe VET logics and approaches in a warming future dominated by informality and mass unemployment. Currently, neither the formal VET college or workplace are adequately set up to provide the type(s) of VET that are in demand or needed for just transitioning and sustainable futures. We acknowledge the importance of political economy accounts in developing a richer understanding of VET, but suggest these are not sufficient for dealing with the existential and practical crisis of the climate emergency. We note that many scholars have sought to address this tension in the academic literature by adopting a political ecology account that reframes the theoretical and political challenge. This leads us to call for a political-economy-ecology account of VET. Although we acknowledge the limited nature of our approach here, we offer some thoughts for VET analysis with reflection on these theoretical issues applied to four cases studies from Uganda and South Africa of VET provisioning in oil, transport, water and food (which materially shape our cases).
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Introducing VET Africa 4.0

- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, McGrath, Simon

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , McGrath, Simon
  • Date: 2023
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/434930 , vital:73117 , ISBN 978-1529224634 , https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/transitioning-vocational-education-and-training-in-africa
  • Description: This book is about vocational education and training (VET). It is concerned with how the current policy and practice orthodoxy is not working despite the efforts of educators and learners. It is driven by a realization that the futures for which VET is intended to prepare people are ever more precarious at the individual, societal and planetary levels. And it is motivated by a sense that while better futures are possible, VET is poorly positioned to respond to the new skilling needs these will require.
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Supporting social learning and knowledge management withing the ecological infrastructure for water security project

- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Cockburn, Jessica J, Rosenberg, Eureta, le Roux, Liesl, Zwinkels, Marijn, Mbaniwa, Wenzile, Ward, Mike, Brownell, Faye, Sithole, Nkosigithandile, Makhaya, Zanele, Mponwana, Maletje, du Plessis, Pienaar

The Role of the University as Mediator in a Skills Ecosystem Approach to VET

- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Openjuru, George, Zeelen, Jacques

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Openjuru, George , Zeelen, Jacques
  • Date: 2023
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/434907 , vital:73115 , ISBN 978-1529224634 , https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/transitioning-vocational-education-and-training-in-africa
  • Description: In this chapter, we focus particularly on the mediating role of the university, in close connection with vocational institutions and informal community actors, in developing an inclusive approach to vocational education and training (VET) through an expanded social ecosystem for skills model. Here we draw upon lessons learnt from the Alice and Gulu cases on communitybased approaches to establishing an expanded skills ecosystem approach to VET in Africa. The main ques-tion guiding this chapter relates to the possible mediating role of the university to enhance a regional expanded ecosystem for supporting quality vocational education that is also rele-vant to its context, including emergent possibilities to build skills and livelihoods linked to just transitions. Universities are not VET centres as conventionally understood, but they can contribute to VET in various ways. Most often, universities are identified as contributing to the qualifications and training of VET educators. In this chapter, we take a different angle and consider the role of engaged research and community engagement as two approaches that can contribute to the advancement of an expanded social ecosystem model with positive benefits for VET institutions. Drawing on insights gained in the earlier chapters of this book requires us to take into account several important realities as previously dis-cussed, as well as key ingredients for the development of a regional skills ecosystem of vocational education, as demon-strated by the two cases considered in this chapter.
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Water, Transport, Oil and Food: A Political–Economy–Ecology Lens on Changing Conceptions of Work, Learning and Skills Development in Africa

- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2023
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/434894 , vital:73114 , ISBN 978-1529224634 , https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/transitioning-vocational-education-and-training-in-africa
  • Description: Not enough has been said about the kinds of skills develop-ment that are needed if we are to stem the rising tides and impacts of political economies that have been driving what some call ‘fossil capital’(Malm, 2016). In this book, we are producing an emerging argument that it is necessary to also rethink and reframe vocational education and training (VET) logics and approaches if we are to fully consider the implica-tions of a warming future. This chapter provides the context of why this is such an urgent challenge and some thinking tools for understanding where we have come from and where we need to go. The prognosis is that it is now almost impossible to stop global warming below 2oC. The 2021 In-tergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is-sued a ‘red alert’for humanity, noting climate change to be one of the most severe challenges facing human societies for decades and potentially centuries to come. Scientists are warning that we have entered a new ‘geological epoch’, named the ‘Anthropocene’, in which human activity, especial-ly the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through fossil-based pollution, is transforming the stability of the earth system and creating knock on effects such as ice melt and methane release, which exacerbate the impacts of pollutants on the stability of the earth system.
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Alignment, scaling and resourcing of citizen-based water quality monitoring Initiatives

- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Ward, Mike, Taylor, Jim, Vallabh, Priya, Madiba, Morakane, Graham, P Mark, Louw, Adrienne J, Brownell, Faye

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Ward, Mike , Taylor, Jim , Vallabh, Priya , Madiba, Morakane , Graham, P Mark , Louw, Adrienne J , Brownell, Faye
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , report
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435729 , vital:73195 , ISBN 978-0-6392-0344-7 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/2854%20final.pdf
  • Description: This action-oriented research project seeks to address the policy-practice contradiction that exists between commit-ments and requirements for citizen engagement and in-volvement in Integrated Water Quality Management (IWQM) and a lack of sustainable support for scaling high quality Citi-zen-based Water Quality Monitoring (CBWQM) practices that exist in South Africa.
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AMANZI For Food

- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Pesanayi, Tichaona, Sisitka, Lawrence, Metelerkamp, Luke, Chakona, Gamuchirai, Van Staden, Wilma, Durr, Sarah, Matiwane, Mandelive, Maqwelane, Lwanda, Conde-Aller, Laura, Shawarire, Patience

Digitalisation and Transformative Learning for Sustainable Futures in Rural Africa Leaving No One Behind

- Shetye, Nyanta, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Albrecht, Eike, Durr, Sarah, Marx, Dirk, Chirambo, Dumisani, Metelerkamp, Luke, van Zyl-Bulitta, Verena

  • Authors: Shetye, Nyanta , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Albrecht, Eike , Durr, Sarah , Marx, Dirk , Chirambo, Dumisani , Metelerkamp, Luke , van Zyl-Bulitta, Verena
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435263 , vital:73143 , ISBN 9781928502241 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003274322-14/digitalisation-transformative-learning-sustainable-futures-rural-africa-niyanta-shetye-heila-lotz-sisitka-eike-albrecht-sarah-durr-dirk-marx-dumisani-chirambo-luke-metelerkamp-verena-van-zyl-bulitta
  • Description: This chapter assesses the use of Information and Telecommunication Technologies (ICTs) for social and community learning to achieve sustainable development in rural communities in Africa. It focuses on new and emerging trends in the cooperation between the African Union and European Union (AU–EU) and links two thematic areas; namely green transitions and digital transformations. The chapter highlights low-cost and effective digital learning solutions. It is based on a literature review and cases that provide insight into potential AU–EU cooperation and the “leave no one behind” agenda. The chapter argues that in addition to digital technology transfer, innovation and investments are needed in building a learning-centred support for green transitioning and digital cooperation. Hence, we focus on transformative learning opportunities and informal Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). In response to ICTs becoming a catalyst for such a transformation, we seek insights into how constructive AU–EU cooperation and co-learning can pave ways for societal transformations, particularly in rural communities.
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Advancing Assessment Thinking in Education for Sustainable Development with a Focus on Significant Learning Processes

- Shumba, Overson, Mandikonza, Caleb, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila

  • Authors: Shumba, Overson , Mandikonza, Caleb , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2021
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435209 , vital:73138 , ISBN 9781928502241 , https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/64082
  • Description: This position paper is developed in the context of the Fundisa [Teaching] for Change teacher education programme (www.fundisaforchange.co.za), as well as the Sustainability Starts with Teachers programmes for teacher education (www. sustainabilityteachers.org/course). Fundisa for Change is a South African programme while Sustainability Starts with Teachers is a Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) programme for teacher educators. Both these programmes seek to enhance transformative environments and sustainability education processes in teacher education. They have a strategic focus on situated and transformative learning approaches for learners to learn to ‘know the world’ and practice ‘being in the world’. The real world provides the context for learning and assessment for learning, but not enough is known about assessment of such learning.
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Engaging Education for Sustainable Development as Quality Education in the Fundisa for Change Programme

- Schudel, Ingrid J, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Songqwaru, Zintle, Tshiningayamwe, Sirkka

  • Authors: Schudel, Ingrid J , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Songqwaru, Zintle , Tshiningayamwe, Sirkka
  • Date: 2021
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435031 , vital:73125 , ISBN 9781928502241 , https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/64082
  • Description: Since the Industrial Revolution began in the late 18th century, development has provided humankind with numerous benefits, such as modern medicine, housing, transport and communication systems. However, progress and the contemporary model of development has also brought its problems, as non-renewable resources have been overextracted, and large volumes of waste created, resulting in pollution that has impacted on the health of people and the environment. Most people are now aware that human actions are changing the climate in unpredictable ways. Massive over-consumption of resources and continued environmental degradation are undermining the natural systems we depend on, impacting most severely on the poor and marginalised people in our society. Societies around the world must adapt and change their practices for a low-carbon, more sustainable future.
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Enhancing Capabilities of Life Sciences Teachers: Professional Development, Conversion Factors and Functionings in Teachers’ Professional Learning Communities

- Tshiningayamwe, Sirkka, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila

  • Authors: Tshiningayamwe, Sirkka , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2021
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435220 , vital:73139 , ISBN 9781928502241 , https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/64082
  • Description: South Africa is rich in biodiversity and is home to about 95 000 known species (South Africa DEA 2014; SANBI 2019). Yet, compared to other southern African countries, the country has a high number of threatened species (Driver et al. 2012). Approximately 12 million South Africans depend on the natural environment to meet their needs. Among other factors, overharvesting of biological resources is one of the main causes of biodiversity loss in the country (South Africa DEA 2014; SANBI 2019). In line with assessment of biodiversity reports, Unesco (2018) notes that biodiversity loss is a global phenomenon. Emphasis in these reports is that over 7 billion people in the world rely on biodiversity to maintain and enhance their well-being. The realisation of biodiversity conservation as a global concern has resulted in various international conventions, policies, legislation and educational programmes that foreground biodiversity (Shava and Schudel 2013). Aligned with international trends, South Africa also has national policies and legislation aimed at protecting biodiversity. Among these is the National Environmental Management Biodiversity Act which introduces a legal framework for governing sustainable development in the country, and includes a clause for all training and education programmes to integrate education for sustainable development (RSA 1998). Thus, like many other countries in the world, South Africa has incorporated biodiversity components in its ongoing curriculum reforms including in the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS).
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Making sense of climate change in a national curriculum

- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Mandikonza, Caleb, Misser, Shanu, Thomas, Kgomotso

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Mandikonza, Caleb , Misser, Shanu , Thomas, Kgomotso
  • Date: 2021
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435193 , vital:73137 , ISBN 9781928502241 , https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/64082
  • Description: This chapter draws on three recent South African reviews of climate change education that have been undertaken by the authors: one in partnership with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) and the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) in 2016 which produced a national case study on Climate Change Education in South Africa (Lotz-Sisitka and Mandikonza 2016); another that was undertaken for the Department of Environmental Affairs in 2018 for the Third National Communication on Climate Change for the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2018); 1 and a more recent review undertaken in the context of a research seminar series hosted by Rhodes University focusing on climate change education in South Africa (Lotz-Sisitka 2021). The chapter also draws on perspectives being developed in the Fundisa for Change Keep it Cool Project (VVOB/GreenMatter 2021) and from wider studies being undertaken for the international Monitoring and Evaluation of Climate Change Education programme (McKenzie 2020).
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Strengthening Environment and Sustainability Subject Knowledge Curriculum Challenges and Opportunities

- Schudel, Ingrid J, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila

  • Authors: Schudel, Ingrid J , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2021
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435045 , vital:73126 , ISBN 9781928502241 , https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/64082
  • Description: This chapter serves as a positioning paper for the chapters that follow in which different environment and sustainability knowledge foci will be explored in the South African Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS). As a series of interconnected and cross-cutting complexities, environment and sustainability content knowledge has relevance for, and is widely distributed across, different phases and subjects in the school curriculum (see discussion of environmental content knowledge in Schudel and Lotz-Sisitka, Chapter 1; Lotz-Sisitka et al., Chapter 6; Msezane, Chapter 7). Knowledge that makes its way into education curricula and teaching is produced within the wider scientific context. Bernstein (2000), in his theory of the pedagogical device, refers to this as the ‘Field of Production’. A significant knowledge-producing community for sustainability concerns is the global change research community (international and national)(South Africa DST 2010). Examining their research outputs and discourses can provide important insights for the development of knowledge in what Bernstein names ‘regions’, where singular disciplines such as Science (eg climate sciences/biodiversity sciences/water sciences/health sciences), come together with other singular disciplines such as education. Bernstein suggests that a first level of knowledge recontextualisation in the Field of Production occurs in these regions (eg where environmental educators or science educators recontextualise the knowledge of scientists).
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Teaching and learning for change: Education and sustainability in South Africa

- Schudel, Ingrid J, Songqwaru, Zintle, Tshiningayamwe, Sirkka, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila

  • Authors: Schudel, Ingrid J , Songqwaru, Zintle , Tshiningayamwe, Sirkka , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2021
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/434971 , vital:73120 , ISBN 9781928502241 , https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/64082
  • Description: Like many national curricula around the world, South Africa’s curriculum is rich in environment and sustainability content. Despite this, environmental teaching and learning can be challenging for educators. This comes at a time when Sustainable Development Goal 4 via Target 4.7 requires governments to integrate Education for Sustainable Development into national education systems. Teaching and Learning for Change is an exploration of how teachers and teacher educators engage environment and sustainability content knowledge, methods, and assessment practices – an exposition of quality education processes in support of ecological and social justice and sustainability. The chapters evolve from a ten-year research programme led out of the DSI/NRF SARChI Chair in Global Change and Social Learning Systems working with national partners in the Fundisa for Change programme and the UNESCO Sustainability Starts with Teachers programme. They show the integration of education for sustainable development in teacher professional development and curricula in schools in South Africa. They reveal how university-based researchers, teachers and teacher educators have made theoretically and contextually reasoned choices about their lives and their teaching in response to calls for a more sustainable world in which education must play a role. Teaching and Learning for Change will be of interest to education policymakers in government, advisors and educators in educational and environmental departments, NGOs and other institutions. It will also be of interest to teacher educators, teachers and researchers in education more generally, and environment and sustainability education specifically.
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Introduction “New” theory,“post” North-South representations, praxis

- Rodrigues, Cae, Payne, Phillip G, Grange, Lesley L, Carvalho, Isabel C, Steil, Carlos A, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Linde-Loubser, Henriette

  • Authors: Rodrigues, Cae , Payne, Phillip G , Grange, Lesley L , Carvalho, Isabel C , Steil, Carlos A , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Linde-Loubser, Henriette
  • Date: 2020
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182736 , vital:43858 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2020.1726265"
  • Description: At a recent academic conference in the South, nine of us grappled for four days with these “old” questions and their presence within the “new” discourse of “post” environmental education research. We struggled for an additional six-month period of email exchange to see and feel these questions in our own research. That slow, rich, and deeper academic exchange between us culminated in a research agenda, partially (re)presented in a collectively constructed Mindmap (Figure 1), for critiquing the post/new whose framing is described in the remainder of this Introduction to the politics of knowledge production. That politic of slowly and judiciously engaging a collective form of criticism culminates in identifying the research problem, and questions, of this Special Issue (SI) about the role and place of allegedly new theory in the global discourse of allegedly post environmental education research. This specially assembled issue of The Journal of Environmental Education (JEE) is our best effort to (partially) represent a considerable amount of thought about the challenge presented by “post” and “new” Western thought. In translating our collective thought processes to a SI, we anticipate the reflexivity of the field will be critically advanced through engaging a number of emerging debates (Robottom and Hart, 1993) identified in the following pages of this Introduction, and in three “sample” articles specially written by Isabel Carvalho, Carlos Steil and Francisco Abraão Gonzaga, Louise Sund and Karen Pashby, and Phillip Payne, and an “in process” Conclusion written by Cae Rodrigues. There remains much work to do. This SI is only a start of reengaging overdue debates about the post (Hart, 2005).
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Think Piece: Learning, Living and Leading into Transgression–A reflection on decolonial praxis in a neoliberal world

- Kulundu-Bolus, Injairu M, McGarry, Dylan K, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila

  • Authors: Kulundu-Bolus, Injairu M , McGarry, Dylan K , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2020
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182406 , vital:43827 , xlink:href="10.4314/sajee.v36i1.14"
  • Description: Three scholar activists from South Africa reflect on what it means to transgress the limits of a neoliberal world and its crisis times, particularly considering transgressions in the service of a decolonial future. The authors explore three questions: i) What kind of learning can help us transgress the status quo? ii) How do we extend this learning into a commitment to actively living in transgressive ways? iii) What does it mean to lead in ways that re-generate a transgressive ethic in a neoliberal world? In a dialogical conversation format, the authors outline nine different but interconnected perspectives on learning, living and leading into transgression, with the aim of concurrently revealing the multiple layers of work that a decolonial future depends on, while demonstrating the ambitions of a pluriversal decolonial future through their writing. The intertwined narrative is not conclusive, as the processes marked out in brief are experiences that still need to be fully practised in new relations in times to come within academia-in-society-and-the-world with human and more-than-human actors. However, they do offer a generative set of questions, concepts and metaphors to give courage to boundary-dwelling scholar activists attempting transgressive research. These reflections seek to regenerate the transgressive ‘decolonial gestures’ (decolonialfutures.net) that we can undertake in a neo-liberal world, as an important part of environment and sustainability education practices. It draws out what an embodied practice of transgressive learning can entail when we become discerning of hegemonic discourses that reproduce the status quo. We pay homage to those decolonial scholars in the field of environment and sustainability education as we traverse this terrain, recognising their imagination and the transgressive movement that has come before us, but importantly we seek to also open pathways for those yet to come.
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Vocational education and training for African development: A literature review

- McGrath, Simon, Ramsarup, Presha, Zeelen, Jacques, Wedekind, Volker, Allais, Stephanie, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Monk, David, Openjuru, George, Russon, Jo-Anna

  • 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.
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