Agentive learning for sustainability and equity: Communities, cooperatives and social movements as emerging foci of the learning sciences
- Authors: Engeström, Yrjö , Sannino, Annalisa , Bal, Aydin , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Pesanayi, Tichaona , Chikunda, Charles , Lesama, Manoel F , Picinatto, Antonio C , Querol, Marco P , Lee, Yew J
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , symposium
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436670 , vital:73292 , ISBN 978-1-4312-0852-4 , https://repository.isls.org//handle/1/372
- Description: This symposium expands the object and scope of the learning sciences by introducing communities, cooperatives and social movements as crucially important sites of learning. The sym-posium papers employ and critically interrogate cultural-historical activity theory, specifically the theory of expansive learning, and the emerging methodology of formative interven-tions as a potential framework for dealing with learning in communities, cooperatives and social movements. Expansive learning emerges as a process of revitalizing the commons, or commoning. The contributions of the symposium point toward the importance of analyzing and fostering transformative agency as a quality of learning.
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Citizen Monitoring of The National Water Resource Strategy 2 (NWRS2)
- Authors: Wilson, Jessica , Munnik, Victor , Burt, Jane C , Pereira, Taryn , Ngcozela, Thabang , Mokoena, Samson , Lusithi, Thabo , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Ndhlovu, December , Ngcanga, Thandiwe , Tshabalala, Mduduzi , James, Manelisi , Mashile, Alexander , Mdululi, Patricia
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , report
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436812 , vital:73307 , ISBN 978-1-4312-0922-4 , 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 sec-tor, 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 Na-tional Water Resources Strategy (NWRS2). They focused on three issues in three cases study areas.
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Citizen Monitoring of the NWRS2. WRC report 2313
- 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.
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Co-designing research on transgressive learning in times of climate change
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Ali, Million B , Mphepho, Gibson , Chaves, Martha , Macintyre, Thomas , Pesanayi, Tichaona V , Wals, Arjen E , Mukute, Mutizwa , Kronlid, David O , Tran, Duc , Joon, Deepika , McGarry, Dylan K
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182472 , vital:43833 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2016.04.004"
- Description: This paper reflects on the epistemological context for the co-design of a research programme on transformative, transgressive learning emerging at the nexus of climate change, water and food security, energy and social justice. It outlines a sequence of learning actions that we, as a group of collaborating partners in a Transformative Knowledge Network (TKN) undertook to co-design a research programme, firstly in situ in various case study contexts, and secondly together across case study contexts. Finally, it provides some reflections and learning points.
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Reviewing strategies in/for ESD policy engagement: Agency reclaimed
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182483 , vital:43834 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2015.1113915"
- Description: In this response article, I draw on critical realist perspectives to engage with the argument put forward in Bengtsson's study, which sees agency as an ontological necessity for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) policy engagement. Bengtsson supports a notion of the logic of contingent action over the logic of power as dominance, suggesting possibilities for agency and resistance. Although I do not in principle disagree with the agentive possibilities embedded in this aspect of the Bengtsson argument, it is the scope of the conceptualization thereof that I consider in this response. I start with considering the limitations of a Westphalian analysis of policy appropriations and agency for ESD, and argue that the Westphalian frame for policy analysis may be inadequate for capturing the significance of non-state actors and wider generative mechanisms such as informal normative structures, and private, economic power in the global political economy. Drawing on Fraser's (2008) concept of the transnational public sphere, I explore other potential possibilities for agency-centered appropriations or negations of, and/or resistance to ESD policy discourses, potentially expanding the agency-centered perspective referred to in Bengtsson's analysis and critique of policy making for ESD, or, at the very least, by offering a wider view of possibility for what he refers to as the ‘ineradicable moment of conflict, or antagonism.’ In particular, I broaden the notion of the transnational public sphere to be inclusive of Dussel's (1998) three concerns of transformation, namely; poverty and wealth inequality, environmental degradation, and narrow rationalities involving ongoing colonization of people, territories and resources. In doing this, I concur with Fraser, who suggests that the concept of the public sphere may well be “so thoroughly Westphalian in its deep conceptual structure as to be unsalvageable as a critical tool for theorizing the present” and suggest that public sphere thinking and associated conceptions of agency require expansion, which I offer from postcolonial and decolonization literature, critical realism, ontological experiences, and reflection on Environmental Education (EE) /ESD policy in the southern African region. Ultimately, I propose need for a more radical framework for EE/ ESD policy research that reaches beyond analyses of appropriations of policy within the Wesphalian state framework, and that moves beyond critiquing or seeking out resistance moments associated with the assumptions of trickle down effects from UN level policy, or analysis that is centered on the EE versus ESD debate. Such a framework requires a revitalized notion of agency involving commitment to collective, relational (including the socio-materially relational) and transgressive forms of agency for deep societal transformations all round. Overall, it seems that environmental education policy and praxis research conceptualized within a decolonizing transnational sphere frame appears to still be an open and as yet under-explored terrain.
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Water Use and Food Security: Knowledge Dissemination and Use in Agricultural Colleges and Local Learning Networks for Homestead Food Gardening and Smallholder Farming
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Pesanayi, Tichaona , Weaver, Kim N , Lupele, Chisala , O’Donoghue, Rob B , Sithole, Phindile , van Staden, Wilna , Mabeza, Chris , Denison, C M Jonathan , Phillips, Katrina
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , report
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436825 , vital:73308 , ISBN 978-1-4312-0852-4 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/2277-1-16.pdf
- Description: This final report has detailed the work that went into pilot testing an Ac-tion Oriented Strategy (AOS) to support Agricultural Colleges to make use of the two sets of WRC materials that were the focus of the project. The general objective of this project entitled “Action oriented strategy for knowledge dissemination and training for skills development of water use in homestead food gardening and rain water harvesting for cropland food production” was: To develop a strategy for achieving effective knowledge dissemination and practical training to encourage productive water use for food crop production [amongst smallholder farmers and food growers in South Africa].
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