Education in times of COVID-19: Looking for silver linings in the Southern Africa’s educational responses
- Mukute, Mutizwa, Francis, Buhle, Burt, Jane C, De Souza, Ben
- Authors: Mukute, Mutizwa , Francis, Buhle , Burt, Jane C , De Souza, Ben
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/389799 , vital:68484 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/198219"
- Description: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has disrupted socio-economic activities, including formal and non-formal education, across the world at lightning speed. By mid-April 2020, it had interrupted the formal education of nearly 1.6 billion students in 192 countries. COVID-19’s disruption of education in Africa, and especially in southern Africa, has been severe for several reasons. However, educational responses to COVID-19 suggest that it has stimulated the appetite for developing educational innovations – silver linings to the COVID-19 cloud. This paper is based on interviews conducted with 56 parents, students and educators involved in formal and non-formal education in Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. We identified the main educational challenges in these countries as being concerned with adapting to: (i) online education and learning, (ii) continuity of education from home, and (iii) community-based learning in small groups. The silver linings that we identified are: (i) putting greater emphasis on finding context-specific solutions to education and health problems (improvisation), which is important for educational relevance and reveals the value of local actors, (ii) making linkages between social and ecological systems clearer, which is making the value of education for sustainable development (ESD) in this century more explicit, and (iii) revealing structural inequality and justice issues in education, which draws attention to the need for urgently addressing them as part of transformative change in education and sustainable development.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Mukute, Mutizwa , Francis, Buhle , Burt, Jane C , De Souza, Ben
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/389799 , vital:68484 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/198219"
- Description: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has disrupted socio-economic activities, including formal and non-formal education, across the world at lightning speed. By mid-April 2020, it had interrupted the formal education of nearly 1.6 billion students in 192 countries. COVID-19’s disruption of education in Africa, and especially in southern Africa, has been severe for several reasons. However, educational responses to COVID-19 suggest that it has stimulated the appetite for developing educational innovations – silver linings to the COVID-19 cloud. This paper is based on interviews conducted with 56 parents, students and educators involved in formal and non-formal education in Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. We identified the main educational challenges in these countries as being concerned with adapting to: (i) online education and learning, (ii) continuity of education from home, and (iii) community-based learning in small groups. The silver linings that we identified are: (i) putting greater emphasis on finding context-specific solutions to education and health problems (improvisation), which is important for educational relevance and reveals the value of local actors, (ii) making linkages between social and ecological systems clearer, which is making the value of education for sustainable development (ESD) in this century more explicit, and (iii) revealing structural inequality and justice issues in education, which draws attention to the need for urgently addressing them as part of transformative change in education and sustainable development.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Think Piece. Working for Living: Popular Education as/at Work for Social-ecological Justice
- Burt, Jane C, James, Anna, Walters, Shirley, Von Kotze, Astrid
- Authors: Burt, Jane C , James, Anna , Walters, Shirley , Von Kotze, Astrid
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/388150 , vital:68310 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/165826"
- Description: Drawing on the working lives of popular educators who are striving for socioeconomic and socio-ecological justice, we demonstrate how popular education is a form of care work which is feminised, often undervalued and unrecognised as highly skilled work. It is relational work that aims to forge solidarity with communities and the environment. Given the state of the planet, the radical transformations that are needed, and the future projection of ‘work’ as including the care economy in large measure, we argue that popular education is a generative site for further exploration of research into work and learning. However, to move popular education as work from the margins means to rethink the current economic system of value. Addressing the contradiction that undervalues work for life/living, popular education engages transformative action motivated by a deep sense of solidarity and a focus on imagining alternatives as an act of hope.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Burt, Jane C , James, Anna , Walters, Shirley , Von Kotze, Astrid
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/388150 , vital:68310 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/165826"
- Description: Drawing on the working lives of popular educators who are striving for socioeconomic and socio-ecological justice, we demonstrate how popular education is a form of care work which is feminised, often undervalued and unrecognised as highly skilled work. It is relational work that aims to forge solidarity with communities and the environment. Given the state of the planet, the radical transformations that are needed, and the future projection of ‘work’ as including the care economy in large measure, we argue that popular education is a generative site for further exploration of research into work and learning. However, to move popular education as work from the margins means to rethink the current economic system of value. Addressing the contradiction that undervalues work for life/living, popular education engages transformative action motivated by a deep sense of solidarity and a focus on imagining alternatives as an act of hope.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Research for the people, by the people: The political practice of cognitive justice and transformative learning in environmental social movements
- Authors: Burt, Jane C
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/392177 , vital:68728 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.3390/su11205611"
- Description: This paper describes how Changing Practice courses, developed by environmental activists in South Africa and based on social learning practice, have seeded cognitive justice action. For the educator-activists who facilitated these courses, it became apparent that we needed a bold emancipatory pedagogy which included cognitive justice issues. This enabled us and the activist-researcher participants to understand the extent to which local, indigenous, and spiritual knowledge had been excluded from water governance. The paper investigates how participants in the ‘Water and Tradition’ change project, established by the Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance (VEJA, engaged with cognitive justice, to demonstrate how African spiritual practice offers a re-visioning of the natural world. Finally, using the tools of critical realist theory, the paper reviews how VEJA bring about transformative social action through their participation in the Changing Practice course.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
- Authors: Burt, Jane C
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/392177 , vital:68728 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.3390/su11205611"
- Description: This paper describes how Changing Practice courses, developed by environmental activists in South Africa and based on social learning practice, have seeded cognitive justice action. For the educator-activists who facilitated these courses, it became apparent that we needed a bold emancipatory pedagogy which included cognitive justice issues. This enabled us and the activist-researcher participants to understand the extent to which local, indigenous, and spiritual knowledge had been excluded from water governance. The paper investigates how participants in the ‘Water and Tradition’ change project, established by the Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance (VEJA, engaged with cognitive justice, to demonstrate how African spiritual practice offers a re-visioning of the natural world. Finally, using the tools of critical realist theory, the paper reviews how VEJA bring about transformative social action through their participation in the Changing Practice course.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
A peaceful revenge: Achieving structural and agential transformation in a South African context using cognitive justice and emancipatory social learning
- Authors: Burt, Jane C , James, Anna
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/392049 , vital:68717 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14767430.2018.1550312"
- Description: This is an account of the emancipatory struggle that faces agents who seek to change the oppressive social structures associated with neo-liberalism. We begin by ‘digging amongst the bones’ of the calls for resistance that have been declared dead or assimilated/co-opted by neoliberal theorists. This leads us to unearth, then utilize, Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness and Shiv Visvanathan's ideas; which are examples of Roy Bhaskar’s transformative dialectic. We argue, using examples, that cognitive justice – a concept common to each of our chosen theorists – is vital in enabling emancipatory social learning. By embracing cognitive justice, the agents gained confidence, which led to their increased ability to champion community and non-academic knowledge. It also uncovered structural tensions – attendant in neoliberalism – around privilege. By articulating these tensions, the participants were able to ‘come closer together’. Such processes, initiated by ensuring cognitive justice, are possible steps in achieving universal solidarity; which is likely to be a necessary step along the path of achieving emancipation.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
- Authors: Burt, Jane C , James, Anna
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/392049 , vital:68717 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14767430.2018.1550312"
- Description: This is an account of the emancipatory struggle that faces agents who seek to change the oppressive social structures associated with neo-liberalism. We begin by ‘digging amongst the bones’ of the calls for resistance that have been declared dead or assimilated/co-opted by neoliberal theorists. This leads us to unearth, then utilize, Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness and Shiv Visvanathan's ideas; which are examples of Roy Bhaskar’s transformative dialectic. We argue, using examples, that cognitive justice – a concept common to each of our chosen theorists – is vital in enabling emancipatory social learning. By embracing cognitive justice, the agents gained confidence, which led to their increased ability to champion community and non-academic knowledge. It also uncovered structural tensions – attendant in neoliberalism – around privilege. By articulating these tensions, the participants were able to ‘come closer together’. Such processes, initiated by ensuring cognitive justice, are possible steps in achieving universal solidarity; which is likely to be a necessary step along the path of achieving emancipation.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
Citizen Monitoring of the NWRS2. WRC report 2313
- Wilson, Jessica, Munnik, Victor, Burt, Jane C, Pereira, Taryn, Ngcozela, Thabang, Lusithi, Thabo, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Authors: Wilson, Jessica , Munnik, Victor , Burt, Jane C , Pereira, Taryn , Ngcozela, Thabang , Lusithi, Thabo , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/432979 , vital:72920 , xlink:href="https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/2313%20_final.pdf"
- Description: In 2014, the South African Water Caucus (SAWC), a network of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and community-based organisations (CBOs) who are active in the water sector, embarked on a social learning and action research journey supported by the South African Water Research Commission (WRC) to deepen its monitoring of South Africa’s Second National Water Resources Strategy (NWRS2). They focused on three issues in three cases study areas.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Wilson, Jessica , Munnik, Victor , Burt, Jane C , Pereira, Taryn , Ngcozela, Thabang , Lusithi, Thabo , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/432979 , vital:72920 , xlink:href="https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/2313%20_final.pdf"
- Description: In 2014, the South African Water Caucus (SAWC), a network of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and community-based organisations (CBOs) who are active in the water sector, embarked on a social learning and action research journey supported by the South African Water Research Commission (WRC) to deepen its monitoring of South Africa’s Second National Water Resources Strategy (NWRS2). They focused on three issues in three cases study areas.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
Investigating water knowledge flow to communities
- Burt, Jane C, Berold, Robert
- Authors: Burt, Jane C , Berold, Robert
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/433013 , vital:72923 , xlink:href="https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/KV%20288-11.pdf"
- Description: Those of us who work in water resource management have found that very few knowledge/research resources are accessible to most people. This happens because resources are not disseminated properly (or at all), or because they are inappropriately technicist, or because potential readers are hampered by low education. What is the best way to make water research accessible to as many people as possible and especially to people whose lives would be affected by the research? In the early 1980s an attempt was made to address this issue when Robert Berold edited People's Workbook (EDA 1981), a user-friendly book that presented basic technical information for rural people – not only on water, but also on agriculture, health, building construction, and income generation. The book included real-life interviews, and was disseminated by rural fieldworkers. Perhaps because there was nothing like it at the time, it was enormously popular.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
- Authors: Burt, Jane C , Berold, Robert
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/433013 , vital:72923 , xlink:href="https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/KV%20288-11.pdf"
- Description: Those of us who work in water resource management have found that very few knowledge/research resources are accessible to most people. This happens because resources are not disseminated properly (or at all), or because they are inappropriately technicist, or because potential readers are hampered by low education. What is the best way to make water research accessible to as many people as possible and especially to people whose lives would be affected by the research? In the early 1980s an attempt was made to address this issue when Robert Berold edited People's Workbook (EDA 1981), a user-friendly book that presented basic technical information for rural people – not only on water, but also on agriculture, health, building construction, and income generation. The book included real-life interviews, and was disseminated by rural fieldworkers. Perhaps because there was nothing like it at the time, it was enormously popular.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
Local Institutions for Water Governance: A Story of the Development of a Water User Association and Catchment Forum in the Kat River Valley, Eastern Cape
- Burt, Jane C, McMaster, Alistair, Rowntree, Kate, Berold, Robert
- Authors: Burt, Jane C , McMaster, Alistair , Rowntree, Kate , Berold, Robert
- Date: 2008
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/433040 , vital:72927 , xlink:href="https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/TT 295 -web-Water policy and General.pdf"
- Description: This report describes the development of water resource management organisations (institutions) in the Kat River Valley from 1997 to 2006. The two organisations described here – the Kat River Valley Water User Association and the Kat River Catchment Forum – are given separate narratives for the sake of clarity, although they developed in close association. Both these organisations were nurtured and supported as a result of a research process by members of the Catchment Research Group (CRG) from the Department of Geography at Rhodes University. Funding came largely through the Water Research Commission (WRC).
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Burt, Jane C , McMaster, Alistair , Rowntree, Kate , Berold, Robert
- Date: 2008
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/433040 , vital:72927 , xlink:href="https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/TT 295 -web-Water policy and General.pdf"
- Description: This report describes the development of water resource management organisations (institutions) in the Kat River Valley from 1997 to 2006. The two organisations described here – the Kat River Valley Water User Association and the Kat River Catchment Forum – are given separate narratives for the sake of clarity, although they developed in close association. Both these organisations were nurtured and supported as a result of a research process by members of the Catchment Research Group (CRG) from the Department of Geography at Rhodes University. Funding came largely through the Water Research Commission (WRC).
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
Learning about participation in integrated water resources management: A South African review
- Burt, Jane C, du Toit, Derick, Neves, David, Pollard, Sharon
- Authors: Burt, Jane C , du Toit, Derick , Neves, David , Pollard, Sharon
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/433025 , vital:72924 , xlink:href="https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/TT293-06.pdf"
- Description: The National Water Act (1998) opens the way for ordinary people to take part in water resource management (WRM). This is a significant move towards a more social orientation and away from an approach that focused almost exclusively on the technical aspects of WRM. This set of two books asks what a social orientation means in practice. Since the National Water Act became law in 1998, how have WRM practitioners involved people in the process of managing water? What have we learnt so far? And how can we use these lessons to move forward? The content of the books is based on research that looked in some depth at national and local participatory practice in South Africa, and also broadly at international trends. The research was conducted by three WRM practitioners and two researchers in the field of participatory approaches.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Burt, Jane C , du Toit, Derick , Neves, David , Pollard, Sharon
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/433025 , vital:72924 , xlink:href="https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/TT293-06.pdf"
- Description: The National Water Act (1998) opens the way for ordinary people to take part in water resource management (WRM). This is a significant move towards a more social orientation and away from an approach that focused almost exclusively on the technical aspects of WRM. This set of two books asks what a social orientation means in practice. Since the National Water Act became law in 1998, how have WRM practitioners involved people in the process of managing water? What have we learnt so far? And how can we use these lessons to move forward? The content of the books is based on research that looked in some depth at national and local participatory practice in South Africa, and also broadly at international trends. The research was conducted by three WRM practitioners and two researchers in the field of participatory approaches.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
Being Brave: Writing Environmental Education Research
- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Burt, Jane C
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Burt, Jane C
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/184734 , vital:44267 , xlink:href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ654591"
- Description: The heroine came back from her very important quest and sat down to write a thesis . . . While mythical journeys do not always end this way, the stories have to be told. The work of telling the story in the hero’s journey is often left untold. This paper explores some of the headwork that goes into textwork (Van Manen, 1995) in environmental education research. We argue that writing is an integral part of the research process, and should not be viewed as an “add on” or a silent, untold part of the adventure. We reflect on some of the institutional and epistemological issues associated with writing social science (in our case environmental education) research texts. Writing research is never an easy enterprise, it is bound by history and tradition, convention, institutional habit, and regulation. It is also constrained by the uncertainty of the process of writing itself, by problems of power relations in research, and the difficulty of writing to represent experience rigorously and authentically while recognizing that all writing is a constructed symbolic representation of experience. The paper reflexively reviews our attempts at “being brave” in the construction of our research texts.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Burt, Jane C
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/184734 , vital:44267 , xlink:href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ654591"
- Description: The heroine came back from her very important quest and sat down to write a thesis . . . While mythical journeys do not always end this way, the stories have to be told. The work of telling the story in the hero’s journey is often left untold. This paper explores some of the headwork that goes into textwork (Van Manen, 1995) in environmental education research. We argue that writing is an integral part of the research process, and should not be viewed as an “add on” or a silent, untold part of the adventure. We reflect on some of the institutional and epistemological issues associated with writing social science (in our case environmental education) research texts. Writing research is never an easy enterprise, it is bound by history and tradition, convention, institutional habit, and regulation. It is also constrained by the uncertainty of the process of writing itself, by problems of power relations in research, and the difficulty of writing to represent experience rigorously and authentically while recognizing that all writing is a constructed symbolic representation of experience. The paper reflexively reviews our attempts at “being brave” in the construction of our research texts.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
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