Exploring learning interactions arising in school-incommunity contexts of socio-ecological risk
- O'Donoghue, Rob B, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Asafo-Adjei, Robert, Kota, Lutho, Hanisi, Nosipho
- 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.
- Full Text:
- 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.
- Full Text:
Exploring the practical adequacy of the normative framework guiding South Africa’s National Curriculum Statement
- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Schudel, Ingrid J
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Schudel, Ingrid J
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/294386 , vital:57217 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620701284860"
- Description: This article examines the practical adequacy of the recent defining of a normative framework for the South African National Curriculum Statement that focuses on the relationship between human rights, social justice and a healthy environment. This politically framed and socially critical normative framework has developed in response to socio‐political and socio‐ecological histories in post‐apartheid curriculum transformation processes. The article critically considers the process of working with a normative framework in the defining of environmental education teaching and learning interactions, and seeks not only to explore the policy discourse critically, but also to explore what it is about the world that makes it work in different ways. Drawing on Sayer’s perspectives on the possibilities of enabling ‘situated universalism’ as a form of normative theory, and case‐based data from a teacher professional development programme in the Makana District (where the authors live and work), the article probes the relationship between the establishment of a ‘universalising’ normative framework to guide national curriculum, and situated engagements with this framework in/as democratic process. In this process it questions whether educators should adopt the ‘norms’ as presented by society and simply universalize and implement them as prescribed by curriculum statements, or whether educators should adopt the strategies of postmodernists and reduce normative frameworks to relations of power situated in particular contexts.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Schudel, Ingrid J
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/294386 , vital:57217 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620701284860"
- Description: This article examines the practical adequacy of the recent defining of a normative framework for the South African National Curriculum Statement that focuses on the relationship between human rights, social justice and a healthy environment. This politically framed and socially critical normative framework has developed in response to socio‐political and socio‐ecological histories in post‐apartheid curriculum transformation processes. The article critically considers the process of working with a normative framework in the defining of environmental education teaching and learning interactions, and seeks not only to explore the policy discourse critically, but also to explore what it is about the world that makes it work in different ways. Drawing on Sayer’s perspectives on the possibilities of enabling ‘situated universalism’ as a form of normative theory, and case‐based data from a teacher professional development programme in the Makana District (where the authors live and work), the article probes the relationship between the establishment of a ‘universalising’ normative framework to guide national curriculum, and situated engagements with this framework in/as democratic process. In this process it questions whether educators should adopt the ‘norms’ as presented by society and simply universalize and implement them as prescribed by curriculum statements, or whether educators should adopt the strategies of postmodernists and reduce normative frameworks to relations of power situated in particular contexts.
- Full Text:
Learning in a Changing World
- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, O'Donoghue, Rob B, Robottom, Ian
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , O'Donoghue, Rob B , Robottom, Ian
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182679 , vital:43853 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122733 "
- Description: The year 2007 is a significant year for environmental education. It marks 30 years since the first internationally agreed principles of environmental education were developed at Tbilisi, commonly known as the Tbilisi Principles. It is also the year in which human beings apparently are finally ‘waking up’ to the fact that human-induced environmental change is causing impacts which are infinitely complex and difficult to resolve. This year, through various highly publicised and politicised events, people have begun to recognise that it is getting hot on planet Earth, and that the associated social, economic and environmental costs are profoundly disturbing. The Stern Review and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change both firmly indicated that human-induced environmental change will threaten human economies and security in ways that are unprecedented in human history. Southern Africa, where this special edition of the EEASA Journal is being produced to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the existence of the Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa, and the hosting of the 4th World Environmental Education Congress, is one of the areas most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. More than 70% of the people in southern Africa live in rural areas, and depend directly on natural resources for their livelihood and food security, making environment (and environmental education processes) a central concern in development discussions in the region. Patterns of global inequality are pronounced in the region, which has some of the poorest countries in the world. Out of its 25-year history, EEASA and its members, along with colleagues around the world, continue to seek ways of educating and empowering people to successfully participate in resolving environmental issues and create more sustainable and socially just living patterns. In drawing attention to our constant need to learn how to improve our understandings of environmental education and learning as the world around us changes, the World Environmental Education Congress organising committee chose to profile the question of ‘Learning in a Changing World’, by making this the theme of the Congress.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , O'Donoghue, Rob B , Robottom, Ian
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182679 , vital:43853 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122733 "
- Description: The year 2007 is a significant year for environmental education. It marks 30 years since the first internationally agreed principles of environmental education were developed at Tbilisi, commonly known as the Tbilisi Principles. It is also the year in which human beings apparently are finally ‘waking up’ to the fact that human-induced environmental change is causing impacts which are infinitely complex and difficult to resolve. This year, through various highly publicised and politicised events, people have begun to recognise that it is getting hot on planet Earth, and that the associated social, economic and environmental costs are profoundly disturbing. The Stern Review and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change both firmly indicated that human-induced environmental change will threaten human economies and security in ways that are unprecedented in human history. Southern Africa, where this special edition of the EEASA Journal is being produced to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the existence of the Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa, and the hosting of the 4th World Environmental Education Congress, is one of the areas most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. More than 70% of the people in southern Africa live in rural areas, and depend directly on natural resources for their livelihood and food security, making environment (and environmental education processes) a central concern in development discussions in the region. Patterns of global inequality are pronounced in the region, which has some of the poorest countries in the world. Out of its 25-year history, EEASA and its members, along with colleagues around the world, continue to seek ways of educating and empowering people to successfully participate in resolving environmental issues and create more sustainable and socially just living patterns. In drawing attention to our constant need to learn how to improve our understandings of environmental education and learning as the world around us changes, the World Environmental Education Congress organising committee chose to profile the question of ‘Learning in a Changing World’, by making this the theme of the Congress.
- Full Text:
Reflecting on the 2007 World Environmental Education Congress
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/183047 , vital:43907 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1177/097340820700100207"
- Description: What motivates more than 800 people from 101 countries around the world to meet at a World Environmental Education Congress? And how does one make the most of such an incredible gathering of people, cultures, thoughts and minds? What did people learn and was it worthwhile? These are just some of the questions that have been chasing through my mind in the weeks following the fourth World Environmental Education Congress held in Durban, South Africa, in July 2007. This short paper shares some preliminary reflections on the 2007 WEEC event, noting that in-depth analyses will only become possible as time passes.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/183047 , vital:43907 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1177/097340820700100207"
- Description: What motivates more than 800 people from 101 countries around the world to meet at a World Environmental Education Congress? And how does one make the most of such an incredible gathering of people, cultures, thoughts and minds? What did people learn and was it worthwhile? These are just some of the questions that have been chasing through my mind in the weeks following the fourth World Environmental Education Congress held in Durban, South Africa, in July 2007. This short paper shares some preliminary reflections on the 2007 WEEC event, noting that in-depth analyses will only become possible as time passes.
- Full Text:
Rhodes University EE and Sustainability Unit
- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Schudel, Ingrid J
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Schudel, Ingrid J
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/294423 , vital:57220 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1177/097340820700100127"
- Description: In the early 1990s, in response to the emphasis laid on environment and development issues by the new South African Constitution, Rhodes University undertook several initiatives such as establishing the first Chair of Environmental Education (EE) in Africa. Another important initiative was the introduction of an open-entry participatory course for environmental educators. Owing to its flexible format and practice-based methodology, the course gained rapid popularity, necessitating the setting up of a Service Centre to help meet the increased demand. The Chair and the Service Centre have been providing a range of short courses in environment and sustainability education to professionals, and are today widely known as the Rhodes University Environmental Education and Sustainability Unit (RUEESU). The Unit offers PhD and Masters level programmes in EE, encourages meaningful research in key thematic areas, and is actively involved in publishing, and policy transformation. It also endeavours to define the role of Universities in enabling sustainability education.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Schudel, Ingrid J
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/294423 , vital:57220 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1177/097340820700100127"
- Description: In the early 1990s, in response to the emphasis laid on environment and development issues by the new South African Constitution, Rhodes University undertook several initiatives such as establishing the first Chair of Environmental Education (EE) in Africa. Another important initiative was the introduction of an open-entry participatory course for environmental educators. Owing to its flexible format and practice-based methodology, the course gained rapid popularity, necessitating the setting up of a Service Centre to help meet the increased demand. The Chair and the Service Centre have been providing a range of short courses in environment and sustainability education to professionals, and are today widely known as the Rhodes University Environmental Education and Sustainability Unit (RUEESU). The Unit offers PhD and Masters level programmes in EE, encourages meaningful research in key thematic areas, and is actively involved in publishing, and policy transformation. It also endeavours to define the role of Universities in enabling sustainability education.
- Full Text:
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