Planetary Urgency, Researcher Reflexivity and ESE Research: Questions Arising from an Initial Exploration of Goethean-inspired Phenomenology
- Authors: Olvitt, Lausanne L
- Date: 2022
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437541 , vital:73392 , ISBN
- Description: Many of the theoretical and methodological frameworks that are currently influential in Environment and Sustainability Education (ESE) research in South Africa foreground interventionist research, activism, causal explanation, critique, social-ecological transformation and decoloniality. These frameworks guide ESE researchers to design, implement and report on research in particular ways, hence influencing how social-ecological phenomena, learning and social change are understood and enacted. In this essay, I present some exploratory perspectives on the relevance and potential contribution of phenomenological approaches to ESE research, especially Goethean inspired observation.
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- Date Issued: 2022
An Exploration of what Grade 7 Natural Sciences Teachers Know, Believe and Say about Biodiversity and the Teaching of Biodiversity
- Authors: Isaacs, Dorelle , Olvitt, Lausanne L
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435153 , vital:73134 , ISBN 9781928502241 , https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/64082
- Description: This chapter shares the findings of a small-scale qualitative research project that investigated what three Grade 7 Natural Sciences teachers know, believe and say about biodiversity (Isaacs 2016). The study was sparked by the researcher’s interest in environmental learning and the importance of school curricula in preparing children to take care of their local and global environments. Biodiversity refers to Earth’s rich variety of plants and animals. It has been described as ‘the complex web of life’that includes diversity at genetic, species and ecosystem levels (Gurr et al. 2012: 4). The concept came to prominence in 1992 when the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity defined biological diversity as ‘the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems’(United Nations 1992: Article 2).
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- Date Issued: 2021
Environmental ethics: A sourcebook for educators
- Authors: Jickling, Bob , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Olvitt, Lausanne L , O’Donoghue, Rob B , Schudel, Ingrid J , McGarry, Dylan K , Niblett, Blair
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435834 , vital:73205 , ISBN 978-1991201287 , https://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Ethics-Sourcebook-Bob-Jickling/dp/1991201281
- Description: This well-constructed, and highly original, sourcebook inte-grates educational materials for teaching environmental eth-ics with theoretical reflections. The book is set to contribute immensely to its aim of taking ethics out of philosophy de-partments and putting it into the streets, into villages, and on the Earth—to make ethics an everyday activity, not some-thing left to experts and specialists. Context-based activities are presented in almost every chapter. While it acknowledg-es foundational theories in environmental ethics, and the work that they continue to do, it wholeheartedly embraces a growing body of literature that emphasises contextual, pro-cess-oriented, and place-based approaches to ethical reflec-tion, deliberation, and action. It walks on the ground and isn’t afraid to get a little dirty or to seek joy in earthly relationships. And it ultimately breaks with much Western academic tradi-tion by framing “ethics in a storied world”, thus making room to move beyond Euro-American perspectives in environmen-tal issues. This work will be of interest to school teachers and other non-formal and informal educators, teacher educators, college instructors, university professors, and other profes-sionals who wish to bring environmental ethics to the fore-front of their pedagogical practices.
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- Date Issued: 2021
The emergence of environmental ethics discourses in laminated, open systems: Some educational considerations
- Authors: Olvitt, Lausanne L
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437094 , vital:73330 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: The contemporary social-ecological condition is characterized by powerful changes in the way that we relate to each other and to the environment. This has led to increased ecological vulnerability, which is also accompanied by ongoing, and in-creased societal vulnerability. Nevertheless there remain op-portunities for developing new social-ecological relations, and for social-ecological learning and change. This would seem to require a strong project of recovering ontology, and a challeng-ing and broadening of dominant ways of knowing (Mignolo, 2000) that also tend to commit what Bhaskar describes as the ‘epistemic fallacy’, or the ‘the analysis or reduction of being to knowledge of being’ (Bhaskar, 2010, p. 1). In response, Bhaskar (ibid.) suggests critical realism as an alternative that embodies a ‘compatibility of ontological realism, epistemologi-cal relativism and judgmental rationality’. This includes a ‘re-vindication of ontology’ and the possibility of recognizing and accounting for structure, difference and change in the world in ways that escape ontological actualism and ontological mono-valence or ‘the generation of a purely positive account of reali-ty’ (ibid., p. 15).
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- Date Issued: 2015
Environmental ethics as processes of open-ended, pluralistic, deliberative enquiry
- Authors: Olvitt, Lausanne L
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437309 , vital:73368 , ISBN 9780203813331 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203813331-15/environmental-ethics-processes-open-ended-pluralistic-deliberative-enquiry-lausanne-olvitt
- Description: By the very nature of their work, environmental education re-searchers must engage with environmental philosophy and questions of values and ethics. But this terrain, despite being resourced with an apparently endless supply of typologies, an-thologies, and handbooks, can remain a vast and daunting philosophical sea—at least in my experience as a newcomer to the field, and possibly for many other scholars and re-searchers. This essay makes no claim to altering that and in-stead optimistically pursues Ball’s (2001, p. 89) suggestion that “there is much to be learned about, and from, the philosophical life-forms inhabiting these thickets and swamps.” My intention here is to review a relatively small but growing cluster of work in environmental ethics that proposes that:“Ethical positions are always open for discussion, re-examination, and revi-sion”(Jickling, 2004, p. 16) and are thus, by their very nature, open-ended, relational processes. My starting point in writing this essay is as an educator-researcher-environmentalist trying to explore what the field of environmental ethics has to offer in response to the question:“As educators, how can we learn and do more with others in the face of an unprecedented socioeco-logical crisis?”
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- Date Issued: 2013
Ethical deliberations in environmental education workplaces: a case story of contextualised and personalised reflexivity
- Authors: Olvitt, Lausanne L
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437421 , vital:73377 , ISBN 9789086867578 , https://doi.org/10.3920/9789086867578_0010
- Description: This chapter explores the fluidity and complexity of individual ethical deliberations in an environmental education workplace and ‘teases out’the associated learning processes. Based on the author’s recent doctoral research, the chapter tells the story of one South African environmental educator grappling with environmentoriented ethical tensions in his work. These ten-sions range from immediate officebased concerns such as paper wastage, to wider concerns such as lowering his carbon footprint through his choice of transport. The environmental educator has recently completed a one-year part-time course in environmental education. Does the course’s new capital of concepts and terminology influence his ethical deliberations? Does learning about environmental philosophies and other people’s ethical dilemmas support him to deepen his engage-ment with ethical tensions in his ownwork? The case study suggests that course-based learning processes are not espe-cially influential until they interface with the multi-layered soci-ocultural and historical dynamics in work-based and home-based ethical deliberations. Deciding what is ‘right’, and then teaching others about that ‘rightness’ is not as simple as know-ing the facts or norms, and acting on them. Past experiences, cultural norms, religious convictions, power gradients and even logistical constraints, all influence the nature and outcome of individual ethical deliberations, as do people’s future aspira-tions and their professional identities as environmental educa-tors.
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- Date Issued: 2012
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