Absenting absence: Expanding zones of proximal development in environmental learning processes
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436939 , vital:73318 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: In this chapter I demonstrate that indigenous knowledge practice is com mensurate with critical realist scientific practice. Critical realism under labours for Western scien-tific knowledge, helping to bring its practice in line with its theory. In this paper I similarly underlabour for indigenous knowledge. I use examples from the Eastern Coast of Tan-zania to suggest that the kind of knowledge that is gener-ated through indigenous pro cesses is based on retroduc-tive and retrodictive reasoning (as well as induc tive and deductive reasoning) and is thus grounded in the theory development principles of DREI(C)/RRREI(C) which, ac-cording to Bhaskar (1993), is the basis for all scientific knowledge. The chapter therefore creates a basis for indi-viduals, groups, organiza tions, and institutions that are involved in the field of environment and sustainability edu-cation and have an indigenous knowledge component, to use the DREI(C)/RRREI(C) for learning and research pur-poses. In this way, they can assume the commensurablity of both Western scientific knowledge and indigenous knowledge. This work substantiates the signifi cance of indigenous knowledge as science in its own right, which pursues specified scientific principles and procedures to inform practice or praxis in the coastal learning environ-ment in a manner that may enhance social learning. There already exists a body of literature that regards indigenous knowledge as ‘local science’ (Sillitoe, 2007). However, I hope to expand this view by more closely aligning this ‘lo-cal science’ with the same prac tices used by science in general, where this science is defined according to critical realist principles.
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- Date Issued: 2015
'We must start with our own children’: reflectively researching intergenerational leadership for social justice, education, and sustainability
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437207 , vital:73353 , ISBN 978-9086862528 , https://doi.org/10.3920/978-90-8686-802-5_1
- Description: This paper was prepared today, 13 December 2013, for this book on ‘Intergenerational learning and transformative leader-ship for sustainable futures’, to be released in November 2014 at a World Conference to mark the end of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UN-DESD) in Nago-ya, Japan. The UNDESD was born in Johannesburg in 2002; it was an outcome of the Johannesburg Implementation Plan formulated by world leaders at the World Summit on Sustaina-ble Development, hosted by the South African government, building on the earlier Rio Earth Summit. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela attended the opening of the World Summit on Sus-tainable Development soon after he left office as the first dem-ocratically elected President of the Republic of South Africa. He passed away a week ago today, on 5 December 2013, at the age of 95. His life story is well known. I write here about his words ‘We must start with our own children’.
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- Date Issued: 2014
A reflection on the use of case studies as a methodology for social learning research in sub Saharan Africa
- Authors: Cundill, Georgina , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Mukute, Mutizwa , Belay, Million , Shackleton, Sheona E , Kulundu, Iinjairu
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436636 , vital:73288 , ISBN 1573-5214 , https://doi.org/10.1016/j.njas.2013.04.001
- Description: A recent review has highlighted that the methodology most commonly employed to research social learning has been the individual case study. We draw on four examples of social learning research in the environmental and sustainability sci-ences from sub-Saharan Africa to reflect on possible reasons behind the preponderance of case study research in this field, and to identify common elements that may be significant for social learning research more generally. We find that a com-mon interest in change oriented social learning, and therefore processes of change, makes case studies a necessary ap-proach because long term process analyses are required that are sensitive to social-ecological contexts. Common elements of the examples reflected upon included: a focus on initiating, tracking and/or understanding a process of change toward sustainability; long term research; an action research agenda that involves reflecting on data with research participants; and temporal, process based analysis of data coupled with in-depth theoretical analysis. This paper highlights that there is significant scope for exploratory research that compares case studies of social learning research to generate a deeper un-derstanding of social learning processes, and their relationship to human agency and societal change.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Transformative learning and individual adaptation
- Authors: Kronlid, David O , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437147 , vital:73347 , ISBN 978-1-137-42804-2 , https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137428042_4
- Description: The first part of this chapter explores learning as a Capability to transformatively engage with the world in a climate change context. It draws on previous work that shows that modern as well as indigenous knowledge systems are being affected by climate change. There is no doubt that for societies to adapt to climate change, there is a need for substantive transformative learning, as people everywhere will need to learn new values, practices, relations, and new ways of being and becoming. Such learning on a societal scale has occurred before—as humans adapted to the emergence of the Industrial Revolu-tion, for example. However, the transformation in the climate change adaptation context in many ways is in response to maladaptations that emerged from previous massive societal transformation processes, making this complex to navigate. It is also well known that climate change is leaving many people insecure and highly vulnerable to climate change impacts; it is affecting us all, but the impacts are uneven (Field et al. 2014), requiring different kinds of transformative learning processes in different places and contexts. In this chapter, we therefore propose that, under climate change conditions, we view learning as a key Capability in climate adaptation contexts.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Traditions and new niches: An overview of environmental education curriculum and learning research
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Fien, John , Ketlhoilwe, Mphemelang
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437323 , vital:73370 , ISBN 9780203813331 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203813331-26/traditions-new-niches-heila-lotz-sisitka-john-fien-mphemelang-ketlhoilwe
- Description: In this chapter we consider the traditions of environmental ed-ucation curriculum and learning research, their relationship to wider education research traditions, and point to new niches for curriculum and learning research, as opened up (in part) 1 through the contributions in this section of the IRHEE. The chapter points to the fact that environmental education re-search seems to primarily be seeking to fulfill a “cultural inno-vation role” in the wider education research landscape, carving out niches and spaces that speak to educational innova-tion/transformation and change. This may in part be due to its “youthfulness” within the more established and traditional edu-cation research landscape and trajectory, but also to its trans-formative intent. Environmental education researchers such as Stevenson (2007) continue to lament the “marginal” or “perma-nently peripheral” status of environmental education and envi-ronmental education research, noting that it is almost impossi-ble to situate effectively within modernist educational para-digms oriented mostly toward reproduction of existing cultures and practices, traditions which continue to characterize formal education institutional settings.
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- Date Issued: 2013
Climate injustice: How should education respond?
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437268 , vital:73364 , ISBN 9780203866399 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203866399-11/climate-injustice-education-respond-heila-lotz-sisitka
- Description: The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli-mate Change (IPCC 2007) identifi es Africa as one of the continents of the world most vulnerable to climate change. Africa’s vulnerability to climate change is aggravated by the interaction of multiple stresses such as poverty, poor governance, and weak institutions, limited access to capi-tal (including technology), ecosystem degradation, confl ict and disasters (UNEP 2006), and a generally poor quality of education (UNESCO 2004). The climate injustices and exacerbating circumstances experienced by poor and weak states today lie in the long-term historical emergence of a modern (and increasingly global) world order framed by a hegemonic Westphalian state system. This state system privileges exclusive, undi-vided sovereignty over a bounded territory (Fraser 2008), and is known more popularly as the ‘nation state’ system.
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- Date Issued: 2010
South Africa: Applied competence as the guiding framework for environmental and sustainability education
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Raven, Glenda
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437395 , vital:73375 , ISBN 978-1-4020-8194-1 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8194-1_22
- Description: Following the demise of apartheid rule in South Africa in 1994, the new government adopted the South African Qualifications Act (RSA, 1995a) which established the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA). The SAQA was tasked with the responsibility for developing and im-plementing a national qualifications framework (NQF) based on princi-ples of quality, equity and redress. A primary objective of the NQF was to establish a portable and responsive model for lifelong learning and one which could recognize prior learning according to an outcomes-based education and training framework. In addition to this mandate and amongst other responsibilities, SAQA has had a responsibility to design and develop qualifications that respond to the environmental rights and sustainable development clauses of the Constitution and as-sociated national policies. Through this, environment and sustainability education was placed on the national education and training agenda (see Lotz-Sisitka and Olvitt in this volume).
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- Date Issued: 2009
South Africa: Strengthening responses to sustainable development policy and legislation
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Olvitt, Lausanne L
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437382 , vital:73374 , ISBN 978-1-4020-8194-1 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8194-1_23
- Description: A key objective of the newly established South African national qualifi-cations framework (NQF) is to enable the transformation of society, fol-lowing the demise of apartheid in 1994. Through the South African Constitution, which enshrines the right to a healthy environment for all citizens, and the sustainable utilization of resources for current and fu-ture generations (RSA, 1996), South African society adopted a devel-opment path that is oriented towards sustainable development. The de-velopment and implementation of the NQF (established by the South African Qualifications Authority Act in 1995) has involved various initia-tives to design and develop qualifications that respond to the environ-mental rights and sustainable development clauses of the Constitution and associated national policy. The past 10 years have been an active period for reconceptualizing education and training in South Africa, par-ticularly in the previously neglected1 area of workplacebased learning. New structures were put in place to develop and approve flexible and portable qualifications in unit-standard format, new service delivery structures and mechanisms have been established which allow for flex-ible forms of programme delivery and new learning programmes have been designed to respond to the outcomes-based, flexible format of the NQF. The NQF has created new opportunities for lifelong learning and new possibilities for those formerly disadvantaged by apartheid exclu-sionary policies and systems to gain access to education and training, and recognition for their skills and competencies. It has also created the space for new innovative programmes to emerge that respond to emerging issues in society, such as increased environmental degradation, increased health risks and new social and economic challenges.
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- Date Issued: 2009
The unit-based sustainability assessment tool and its use in the UNEP mainstreaming environment and sustainability in African universities partnership
- Authors: Togo, Muchaiteyi , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437409 , vital:73376 , ISBN 978-1-4020-8194-1 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02375-5_15
- Description: This paper reports on the development and use of a Unit-based Sustainability Assessment Tool (USAT) for establishing the status of Education for Sustainable Development initiatives and sustainable development practices in universities. The tool was developed for use in the Swedish/Africa International Training Programme (ITP) on ‘Education for Sustainable De-velopment in Higher Education’ and complements the UNEP Mainstreaming Environment and Sustainability into African Universities (MESA) ‘Education for Sustainable Development Innovations Programmes for Universities in Africa’ materials. The USAT facilitates a quick assessment of the level of inte-gration of sustainability issues in university functions and op-erations, both to benchmark sustainability initiatives and identi-fy new areas for action or improvement. It is based on a unit-based framework which allows for sustainability assessments to be done per division, unit, department, or faculty within uni-versities. Collectively, the unit-based assessments provide for development of an institution wide picture of university sus-tainability.
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- Date Issued: 2009
Utopianism and educational processes in the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development: a critical reflection
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437367 , vital:73373 , ISBN 978-9086860937 , https://doi.org/10.3920/9789086866915_007
- Description: South Africa and its recent political transformation pro-cess, infused with hope for a better future, is often pre-sented as a utopian form of democracy – or an icon of hope – nationally and in the contemporary global land-scape. Similarly, adult hopes for youth, and youth idealism itself, are often utopian in nature, and young people are often iconised in society as the hope for the future. Re-cent international policy literature on education for sus-tainable development puts forward the utopian concepts of sustainable development and transformed learning (UNESCO 2005a) as objects for educational thinking and practice, and ethical codes such as the Earth Charter (www.earthcharter.org) present useful visions and guid-ance on how to think about and create a better world. But, the realities of the day keep such utopianism in check. Today, South Africa is experiencing xenophobic vio-lence, extreme levels of crime, and continued disenfran-chisement.
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- Date Issued: 2009
Participation, situated culture, and practical reason
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , O'Donoghue, Rob B
- Date: 2008
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437436 , vital:73378 , ISBN 978-1-4020-6415-9 , https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4020-6416-6_7
- Description: This chapter examines the emergence of participatory education as both a central feature and a terrain of ambivalence within the develop-ing landscape of environmental education in South Africa. From its roots in nature experience activities through to more socially critical forms of environmental education, participatory imperatives in this area have yet to address sufficiently the conceptual and practical challenges inherent in pedagogies of participation. We argue that more recent de-velopments reveal similar anomalies, such that participatory education in South Africa has now become an idealised and techniqued logic of practice.
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- Date Issued: 2008
Exploring learning interactions arising in school-incommunity contexts of socio-ecological risk
- Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob B , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Asafo-Adjei, Robert , Kota, Lutho , Hanisi, Nosipho
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437501 , vital:73389 , ISBN 978-90-8686-031-9 , https://brill.com/edcollbook-oa/title/68793?rskey=Y3i6Wfandresult=1
- Description: Today, few educators would dispute that learning arises in diverse so-cio-cultural contexts of meaning-making interaction. As such, learning can strengthen social relationships across school and community and has the potential to develop as reflexive praxis in response to environ-ment and health risks in a local context. These processes of ‘social learning’have recently appeared as a new ‘category’for thinking about human meaning-making interactions. It is difficult to conceive of any human learning interactions that are not social processes of engaged meaning making either by learners as social agents in context or from the point of view of what is learned relating to social life in a world of in-terdependent living-things. Given the complexity of contemporary sus-tainability questions and an arising ambivalence in modernist notions of knowledge transfer, we note how educators are usefully using this somewhat ambivalent category for probing socio-cultural perspectives on how we see and approach learning interactions for environment and sustainability education. In foregrounding a critical perspective, we sig-nal a cautious approach to a popularising of the term ‘social learning’as a ‘renaming’that provides a more coherent perspective for research and reflection on social processes of meaning making and change.
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- Date Issued: 2007
Enabling environmental and sustainability education in South Africa’s national curriculum: Context, culture and learner aspirations for agency
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437486 , vital:73388 , ISBN 978-1594549458
- Description: This chapter describes the broad agenda for cultural and social change in South Africa, as introduced by post-apartheid policy development. It briefly describes how environment and sustainability questions have been incorporated into the National Curriculum Statements, alongside a concern for culture, context and indigenous knowledges. The chapter considers some of the contemporary concerns with the disjuncture be-tween policy and practice, and highlights learner aspirations for agency, and associated expectations for education. The chapter draws its orien-tation from the Rhodes University Environmental Education and Sus-tainability's' Environmental Learning and Curriculum' research pro-gramme. This programme is funded by the National Research Founda-tion and aims to inform curriculum change in South Africa. It programme incorporates a strand on indigenous knowledge and curriculum.
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- Date Issued: 2006
Curriculum patterning in environmental education: A review of developments in formal education in South Africa
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437280 , vital:73365 , ISBN 978-07969-2001-0 , https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/environmental-education-ethics-action-in-southern-africa
- Description: Written by environmental practitioners from across the region, the Monograph is a window onto envi-ronmental challenges in a diversity of African con-texts. These contexts include Malawian officials and community leaders, new to multi-level governance, taking up the challenge of environmental manage-ment in villages and districts; Ugandan small-scale farmers in partnership with NGOs trying to produce sustainably for the household and the international market; and government-civil society partnerships in South Africa, where the political transformation of the education system introduced a focus on envi-ronment and human rights in the national school curriculum.
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- Date Issued: 2002