Entrepreneurship education in the agro-biodiversity sector: a case study of G-Tech PLA roll planter value creation for a youth community of practice in Gauteng
- Authors: Thupana, Mabora
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: G-Tech PLA roll planter , Entrepreneurship -- South Africa -- Case studies , Entrepreneurship -- Study and teaching -- South Africa , Sustainable agriculture -- South Africa , Agriculture -- Environmental aspects -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/167620 , vital:41497
- Description: Entrepreneurship is widely recognised as a basic skill that can be learned through practice. The main focus of this study was to investigate entrepreneurship education and the type of biodiversity entrepreneurial practices and opportunities that could create value for youth via the use of green technology: the PLA Roll Planter in the biodiversity and agriculture sector. The study was inspired by the need to identify and analyse knowledge, skills and entrepreneurial aspects associated with the use of green technology to strengthen entrepreneurial learning for youth participation in the green economy and green work. The study employed the use of Communities of Practice (COP) and Value Creation adopted from Wenger as theories and a focal lens to portray the contribution of technological practices to youth sustainable livelihoods and green work in the biodiversity sector. Research on the GTECH technology that was in focus in this study, the PLA Roll Planter, shows that newly introduced green innovations can increase agricultural outputs without depleting presently available resources. The study applied qualitative research approaches in a case study of the G-Tech PLA Roll Planter training and participation of a youth Community of Practice (COP) in Gauteng. It started by examining the knowledge capital as potential value embedded in the training and knowledge, skills and entrepreneurial aspects of the G-Tech PLA Roll Planter practices. The study then constructed four value creation stories of youth in the COP to understand other forms of value that were created for youth. The findings of the study depicted that the adoption of improved agricultural technology (PLA Roll Planter) has positive impacts and knowledge capital that can translate into other forms of value to support the emergence of viable economic activity in the agricultural sector. This can help increase food security and the ability to withstand risk of damaging the environment. The study shows that different forms of value were created for youth, and offers insight into how learning in communities of practice can help to advance entrepreneursip education in the biodiversity and especially the agro-ecological production sector.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Thupana, Mabora
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: G-Tech PLA roll planter , Entrepreneurship -- South Africa -- Case studies , Entrepreneurship -- Study and teaching -- South Africa , Sustainable agriculture -- South Africa , Agriculture -- Environmental aspects -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/167620 , vital:41497
- Description: Entrepreneurship is widely recognised as a basic skill that can be learned through practice. The main focus of this study was to investigate entrepreneurship education and the type of biodiversity entrepreneurial practices and opportunities that could create value for youth via the use of green technology: the PLA Roll Planter in the biodiversity and agriculture sector. The study was inspired by the need to identify and analyse knowledge, skills and entrepreneurial aspects associated with the use of green technology to strengthen entrepreneurial learning for youth participation in the green economy and green work. The study employed the use of Communities of Practice (COP) and Value Creation adopted from Wenger as theories and a focal lens to portray the contribution of technological practices to youth sustainable livelihoods and green work in the biodiversity sector. Research on the GTECH technology that was in focus in this study, the PLA Roll Planter, shows that newly introduced green innovations can increase agricultural outputs without depleting presently available resources. The study applied qualitative research approaches in a case study of the G-Tech PLA Roll Planter training and participation of a youth Community of Practice (COP) in Gauteng. It started by examining the knowledge capital as potential value embedded in the training and knowledge, skills and entrepreneurial aspects of the G-Tech PLA Roll Planter practices. The study then constructed four value creation stories of youth in the COP to understand other forms of value that were created for youth. The findings of the study depicted that the adoption of improved agricultural technology (PLA Roll Planter) has positive impacts and knowledge capital that can translate into other forms of value to support the emergence of viable economic activity in the agricultural sector. This can help increase food security and the ability to withstand risk of damaging the environment. The study shows that different forms of value were created for youth, and offers insight into how learning in communities of practice can help to advance entrepreneursip education in the biodiversity and especially the agro-ecological production sector.
- Full Text:
Informal learning in local farming practices by rural women in the Lake Chilwa Basin, Malawi: towards coping and adaptation to climate variability and climate change
- Authors: Mphepo, Gibson Yadunda
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Women -- Non-formal education - Malawi , Non-formal education -- Malawi , Women -- Malawi -- Social conditions , Crops and climate -- Malawi , Agricultural extension work -- Government policy -- Malawi , Environmental education -- Malawi
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/167540 , vital:41490
- Description: Evidence reveals that informal learning is a neglected research area, globally and nationally. Informal learning, like formal and non-formal learning, is context specific. In the case of my study, the context was in local maize cultivation and the associated local farming practices which are also neglected. Research has shown that rural women in Malawi are significant change agents in socio-economic sectors, yet they are heavily affected by inequality. For example, extreme weather events of droughts and floods in the Lake Chilwa Basin, disproportionately affect more women than men because of their traditional gendered roles such as home care. The complexity of the dualistic nature of being change agents and victims of injustices at the same time offers a catalytic opportunity for potentially transformative social learning for transformative adaptation. Against this backdrop, I conducted a study to investigate and expand informal learning processes to contribute to building the resilience of women and other community members in Domasi and Nsanama Extension Planning Areas (EPA) within the Lake Chilwa Basin. Specifically, the study answered the following question: “How do drought and inter-seasonal dry spells influence informal learning processes to enable transformation adaptation among rural women cultivating maize in the Lake Chilwa Basin, Malawi?” To address the question, the first stage was to review local farming practices and the associated informal learning processes in Malawi. I then used third generation Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as an overarching theoretical framework to guide the subsequent research processes which were split into three main phases: mirror data collection for expansive learning, formative change laboratory workshops, and data analysis and reflection. CHAT is a theoretical framework that helps us comprehend and analyze the relationship between the human mind (i.e. what people think and feel) and activity (what people do). It is a formative and activist learning theory that posits learning as occurring through collective activities to meet or change a common object (Mukute and Lotz-Sisitka, 2012, p. 345). For Koszalka and Wu, 2001(p. 493), within a CHAT framework, knowledge is socially constructed by individual learners, building on existing historical experiences, within the learners’ context. To construct this knowledge, learners use technology or mediating tools, as Vygotsky (1978) calls them. To collect mirror data, I conducted focus group discussions, observation studies, and document analysis. I also conducted key informant interviews with selected extension workers responsible for the two case study sites. The hub of my research constituted change laboratory workshops to expand learning through four of the seven expansive learning actions, namely questioning, analysis, modeling and testing the model. One of the essential procedures I relied on to expand learning during these change laboratory workshops was identification and analysis of contradictions that were mirrored back to women. The use of contradictions as fertile ground for learning is premised on Engstrom’s arguments that contradictions form a catalyst for learning. Data were analysed using two approaches: layered and power relations. A layered analysis is a step-by-step process of understanding a situation from the lower to a higher level (mature stage). For my research, this meant understanding sequential learning from questioning (session 1 – lower level) to testing the model (session 8 – higher level). The second data analysis approach, power relations, relates to the Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), a measure of the degree of women empowerment, their agency and inclusion in farming (Ruth et al., 2013, p. 3). I used this type of power analysis tool because my research was agriculture based. Both data analysis approaches relied on N-vivo which is a form of computer-based qualitative data management software. The software was ideal for my study which was also mostly qualitative. During phase 1 of data collection, I identified five local farming practices associated with local maize cultivation, a focus of my study. These practices were slash and burn (mphanje); traditional insect pest control measures; soil fertility enhancement techniques through kuojeka (crop residue incorporation) and livestock manure; traditional weather forecasts; and multiple cropping (mixed and sequential cropping). Among these, the most preferred by the women I interacted with were kuojeka, livestock manure and mixed cropping. I discovered that these local farming practices are informally learned mainly through word of mouth, observation, trials, women-dominated social networks and drama. I also discovered that some of these informal learning pathways are catalyzed by drought and dry spells. For example, during the 1949 and 2002 drought periods, women reported that they had learned new types of coping strategies such as the use of sawdust and banana root flour in place of maize flour to prepare nsima, a staple food in Malawi. During phase 2, change laboratory workshops, I identified 19 contradictions associated with local farming practices, most of which were related to the Government of Malawi bias towards modern farming practices such as hybrids. Other contradictions were related to traditional structures and norms and religion and traditional beliefs. Solutions were suggested for each of the contradictions. Some of these solutions were tested for their workability. These included setting up diversity blocks (demonstration plots) for local maize cultivation under irrigation and engagement of the youth through WhatsApp groups for the first time at the study sites. The results of the tests show that there is potential to transform local farming practices at the study sites and build social resilience against drought and dry spells. For example, from a local maize demonstration plot in Nsanama Extension Planning Area (EPA), farmers learned that kafula local maize is fast maturing and therefore cushions them against hunger as they wait for the main harvest in later months. Eighty-eight households shared local maize seed harvested from the demonstration gardens for upscaling. The Head of Nsanama EPA had also set up another demonstration garden in 2018-2019 growing season consisting of kafula at Nsanama EPA Headquarters for further informal learning purposes. This research has contributed new knowledge to the existing knowledge base about local farming practices and informal learning. These contributions are in the form of methods I used as well as results obtained. Among the key highlights of my contribution to the knowledge base is the development of scenarios as double stimulation tools for the emerging local farming activity system which emanates from the new model solutions resulting from change laboratory workshops. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time rural communities were engaged in scenario development in Malawi. The first scenarios of this type were developed in 2010 for the Malawi State of Environment and Outlook Report and the process involved middle to senior managers of various institutions in Malawi. Through historical analysis, my research identified local crops that existed in the past but which are currently non-existent or rare. My study also identified unique local farming practices that even puzzled professionals, including the use of ripe banana peels of makumbuka and sukari to eradicate nansongole grass and native bamboos respectively. Both plant species are considered a nuisance in that they colonize land for cultivation. A breakthrough for radical transformation of local farming practices via informal learning requires development and review of relevant policies in Malawi. Such a process requires evidence. This research has provided background information for this process. For those policies already developed, this research has provided information that can help guide implementation of the generalized list of activities outlined in implementation plans of the respective policies.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Mphepo, Gibson Yadunda
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Women -- Non-formal education - Malawi , Non-formal education -- Malawi , Women -- Malawi -- Social conditions , Crops and climate -- Malawi , Agricultural extension work -- Government policy -- Malawi , Environmental education -- Malawi
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/167540 , vital:41490
- Description: Evidence reveals that informal learning is a neglected research area, globally and nationally. Informal learning, like formal and non-formal learning, is context specific. In the case of my study, the context was in local maize cultivation and the associated local farming practices which are also neglected. Research has shown that rural women in Malawi are significant change agents in socio-economic sectors, yet they are heavily affected by inequality. For example, extreme weather events of droughts and floods in the Lake Chilwa Basin, disproportionately affect more women than men because of their traditional gendered roles such as home care. The complexity of the dualistic nature of being change agents and victims of injustices at the same time offers a catalytic opportunity for potentially transformative social learning for transformative adaptation. Against this backdrop, I conducted a study to investigate and expand informal learning processes to contribute to building the resilience of women and other community members in Domasi and Nsanama Extension Planning Areas (EPA) within the Lake Chilwa Basin. Specifically, the study answered the following question: “How do drought and inter-seasonal dry spells influence informal learning processes to enable transformation adaptation among rural women cultivating maize in the Lake Chilwa Basin, Malawi?” To address the question, the first stage was to review local farming practices and the associated informal learning processes in Malawi. I then used third generation Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as an overarching theoretical framework to guide the subsequent research processes which were split into three main phases: mirror data collection for expansive learning, formative change laboratory workshops, and data analysis and reflection. CHAT is a theoretical framework that helps us comprehend and analyze the relationship between the human mind (i.e. what people think and feel) and activity (what people do). It is a formative and activist learning theory that posits learning as occurring through collective activities to meet or change a common object (Mukute and Lotz-Sisitka, 2012, p. 345). For Koszalka and Wu, 2001(p. 493), within a CHAT framework, knowledge is socially constructed by individual learners, building on existing historical experiences, within the learners’ context. To construct this knowledge, learners use technology or mediating tools, as Vygotsky (1978) calls them. To collect mirror data, I conducted focus group discussions, observation studies, and document analysis. I also conducted key informant interviews with selected extension workers responsible for the two case study sites. The hub of my research constituted change laboratory workshops to expand learning through four of the seven expansive learning actions, namely questioning, analysis, modeling and testing the model. One of the essential procedures I relied on to expand learning during these change laboratory workshops was identification and analysis of contradictions that were mirrored back to women. The use of contradictions as fertile ground for learning is premised on Engstrom’s arguments that contradictions form a catalyst for learning. Data were analysed using two approaches: layered and power relations. A layered analysis is a step-by-step process of understanding a situation from the lower to a higher level (mature stage). For my research, this meant understanding sequential learning from questioning (session 1 – lower level) to testing the model (session 8 – higher level). The second data analysis approach, power relations, relates to the Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), a measure of the degree of women empowerment, their agency and inclusion in farming (Ruth et al., 2013, p. 3). I used this type of power analysis tool because my research was agriculture based. Both data analysis approaches relied on N-vivo which is a form of computer-based qualitative data management software. The software was ideal for my study which was also mostly qualitative. During phase 1 of data collection, I identified five local farming practices associated with local maize cultivation, a focus of my study. These practices were slash and burn (mphanje); traditional insect pest control measures; soil fertility enhancement techniques through kuojeka (crop residue incorporation) and livestock manure; traditional weather forecasts; and multiple cropping (mixed and sequential cropping). Among these, the most preferred by the women I interacted with were kuojeka, livestock manure and mixed cropping. I discovered that these local farming practices are informally learned mainly through word of mouth, observation, trials, women-dominated social networks and drama. I also discovered that some of these informal learning pathways are catalyzed by drought and dry spells. For example, during the 1949 and 2002 drought periods, women reported that they had learned new types of coping strategies such as the use of sawdust and banana root flour in place of maize flour to prepare nsima, a staple food in Malawi. During phase 2, change laboratory workshops, I identified 19 contradictions associated with local farming practices, most of which were related to the Government of Malawi bias towards modern farming practices such as hybrids. Other contradictions were related to traditional structures and norms and religion and traditional beliefs. Solutions were suggested for each of the contradictions. Some of these solutions were tested for their workability. These included setting up diversity blocks (demonstration plots) for local maize cultivation under irrigation and engagement of the youth through WhatsApp groups for the first time at the study sites. The results of the tests show that there is potential to transform local farming practices at the study sites and build social resilience against drought and dry spells. For example, from a local maize demonstration plot in Nsanama Extension Planning Area (EPA), farmers learned that kafula local maize is fast maturing and therefore cushions them against hunger as they wait for the main harvest in later months. Eighty-eight households shared local maize seed harvested from the demonstration gardens for upscaling. The Head of Nsanama EPA had also set up another demonstration garden in 2018-2019 growing season consisting of kafula at Nsanama EPA Headquarters for further informal learning purposes. This research has contributed new knowledge to the existing knowledge base about local farming practices and informal learning. These contributions are in the form of methods I used as well as results obtained. Among the key highlights of my contribution to the knowledge base is the development of scenarios as double stimulation tools for the emerging local farming activity system which emanates from the new model solutions resulting from change laboratory workshops. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time rural communities were engaged in scenario development in Malawi. The first scenarios of this type were developed in 2010 for the Malawi State of Environment and Outlook Report and the process involved middle to senior managers of various institutions in Malawi. Through historical analysis, my research identified local crops that existed in the past but which are currently non-existent or rare. My study also identified unique local farming practices that even puzzled professionals, including the use of ripe banana peels of makumbuka and sukari to eradicate nansongole grass and native bamboos respectively. Both plant species are considered a nuisance in that they colonize land for cultivation. A breakthrough for radical transformation of local farming practices via informal learning requires development and review of relevant policies in Malawi. Such a process requires evidence. This research has provided background information for this process. For those policies already developed, this research has provided information that can help guide implementation of the generalized list of activities outlined in implementation plans of the respective policies.
- Full Text:
Not Yet Uhuru! Attuning to, re-imagining and regenerating transgressive decolonial pedagogical praxis across times Khapa(ring) the rising cultures of change drivers in contemporary South Africa
- Authors: Kulundu-Bolus, Injairu
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Not Yet Uhuru (Arts Project) , Anti-imperialist movements -- South Africa , Education -- Social aspects -- South Africa , Social change -- South Africa , Education -- Philosophy -- South Africa , Arts and society -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/166081 , vital:41327 , 10.21504/10962/166081
- Description: The “Not yet Uhuru!” project positions itself as emancipatory African research in motion. It is a regenerative project that responds to the concern that whilst dominant discourses can articulate what African states, societies and economies are not, we still know very little about what they actually are. This is a particularly important gap in how research on Africa is conceptualised, especially as it pertains to apprehending the futures that the majority of young people on the continent are instinctively leading themselves to (Mbembe, 2001, p.9). The project seeks to forgo youth development strategies that act as a form of containment by prescribing normative aspects of citizenship on young leaders in ways that stifle the transgressive impulses they have reason to value (Kelley in Tuck and Yang, 2014, p.89). The study traces rising cultures in transgressive decolonial pedagogical praxis across times, as a way of “khapa(ring)” or accompanying the contemporary questions that Change Drivers in South Africa hold at the edge of their praxis. The study co-conspired with 21 Change Drivers in South Africa who were interested in regenerating and re-imagining what transgressive decolonial praxis could be in these times based on their experiences and learnings. Residential art-based workshops that explored each co-conspirator’s offerings on the subject were distilled through the medium of film. These in turn were analysed using an “ethics of attunement” that produced songs as a reflexive pedagogical tool (Lispari, 2014, p.176). Sharing the resonate echoes of their praxis through song created another iterative reflection on their praxis two years after their initial offerings. As a way of weaving together the findings with a historical perspective, the resonant praxis of Change Drivers was put into conversation with three unconventional reviews that trace impulses around transgressive decolonial pedagogical praxis through fictional texts, political theory, poetry and intergenerational analysis, in order to surface resonant themes in praxis that echo across different times in history. This methodology sought to engage the question of the archive in pluriversal ways that appealed to different sensibilities, including the imaginative and hermeneutical, the traditionally analytical as well as the gifts of the lyrical and the erotic as different conceptual threads needed to resource the study. The reviews additionally spanned periods in the history of the continent that hold questions around precolonial and nascent colonial encounters, efforts to transgress within the liberatory movements and the intergenerational transmissions embedded in women and queer people’s struggles. The themes that coalesced across times were leveraged into capsules of rising cultures that form an experimental nexus for the practice of transgressive decolonial pedagogical praxis that is already underway. These rising cultures were conceptualised as meditations on what it means to live into a vision of home built on the explorations of a paradigm of peace, humanness, pluriversality and decolonial love for those like and unlike us that strive for freedom on this continent (Dlala, 2017, p.52; Ndlovu- Gatsheni, 2013, p.142; Gqola, 2017, pp.197, 199). The rising ultures were reconciled through the creation of a litany that chronicles different refrains in transgressive decolonial pedagogical praxis in contemporary times. The litany is a tool that charts particular experiences that are surfacing as symptomatic. It seeks to generously surface the contradictions that we are collectively starting to see past, whilst acknowledging the tensions that we need to straddle, integrate and navigate towards greater synthesis. The litany is an honest way of acknowledging the glimpses gained of who we are in this present moment, while we continually challenge ourselves to open up to questions about what it means to grapple towards decolonial futures. This stance has influenced my role as an educator to unconditionally embrace movements that already underway, and reflect these back to those that I am conspiring with in ways that promote an ethic of care, solidarity and critical engagement. The study celebrates what is possible when we do not theorise ourselves away from the questions embedded in our current praxis. This is an ethic that chooses to stay close to the phenomena arriving at present, whilst acknowledging the historical experiences that echo it as a collective pulse for meaningful experimentation and praxis. The study believes by being faithful to ways of amplifying, integrating and reflecting what has been emerging for us over time, we build our capacity to better respond with an ethic centred on transgressive decolonial pedagogical praxis. This is the kind of accompaniment and care that Change Drivers across the continent deserve as they make the way towards a future worthy of their longing (Rushdie, 1999).
- Full Text:
- Authors: Kulundu-Bolus, Injairu
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Not Yet Uhuru (Arts Project) , Anti-imperialist movements -- South Africa , Education -- Social aspects -- South Africa , Social change -- South Africa , Education -- Philosophy -- South Africa , Arts and society -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/166081 , vital:41327 , 10.21504/10962/166081
- Description: The “Not yet Uhuru!” project positions itself as emancipatory African research in motion. It is a regenerative project that responds to the concern that whilst dominant discourses can articulate what African states, societies and economies are not, we still know very little about what they actually are. This is a particularly important gap in how research on Africa is conceptualised, especially as it pertains to apprehending the futures that the majority of young people on the continent are instinctively leading themselves to (Mbembe, 2001, p.9). The project seeks to forgo youth development strategies that act as a form of containment by prescribing normative aspects of citizenship on young leaders in ways that stifle the transgressive impulses they have reason to value (Kelley in Tuck and Yang, 2014, p.89). The study traces rising cultures in transgressive decolonial pedagogical praxis across times, as a way of “khapa(ring)” or accompanying the contemporary questions that Change Drivers in South Africa hold at the edge of their praxis. The study co-conspired with 21 Change Drivers in South Africa who were interested in regenerating and re-imagining what transgressive decolonial praxis could be in these times based on their experiences and learnings. Residential art-based workshops that explored each co-conspirator’s offerings on the subject were distilled through the medium of film. These in turn were analysed using an “ethics of attunement” that produced songs as a reflexive pedagogical tool (Lispari, 2014, p.176). Sharing the resonate echoes of their praxis through song created another iterative reflection on their praxis two years after their initial offerings. As a way of weaving together the findings with a historical perspective, the resonant praxis of Change Drivers was put into conversation with three unconventional reviews that trace impulses around transgressive decolonial pedagogical praxis through fictional texts, political theory, poetry and intergenerational analysis, in order to surface resonant themes in praxis that echo across different times in history. This methodology sought to engage the question of the archive in pluriversal ways that appealed to different sensibilities, including the imaginative and hermeneutical, the traditionally analytical as well as the gifts of the lyrical and the erotic as different conceptual threads needed to resource the study. The reviews additionally spanned periods in the history of the continent that hold questions around precolonial and nascent colonial encounters, efforts to transgress within the liberatory movements and the intergenerational transmissions embedded in women and queer people’s struggles. The themes that coalesced across times were leveraged into capsules of rising cultures that form an experimental nexus for the practice of transgressive decolonial pedagogical praxis that is already underway. These rising cultures were conceptualised as meditations on what it means to live into a vision of home built on the explorations of a paradigm of peace, humanness, pluriversality and decolonial love for those like and unlike us that strive for freedom on this continent (Dlala, 2017, p.52; Ndlovu- Gatsheni, 2013, p.142; Gqola, 2017, pp.197, 199). The rising ultures were reconciled through the creation of a litany that chronicles different refrains in transgressive decolonial pedagogical praxis in contemporary times. The litany is a tool that charts particular experiences that are surfacing as symptomatic. It seeks to generously surface the contradictions that we are collectively starting to see past, whilst acknowledging the tensions that we need to straddle, integrate and navigate towards greater synthesis. The litany is an honest way of acknowledging the glimpses gained of who we are in this present moment, while we continually challenge ourselves to open up to questions about what it means to grapple towards decolonial futures. This stance has influenced my role as an educator to unconditionally embrace movements that already underway, and reflect these back to those that I am conspiring with in ways that promote an ethic of care, solidarity and critical engagement. The study celebrates what is possible when we do not theorise ourselves away from the questions embedded in our current praxis. This is an ethic that chooses to stay close to the phenomena arriving at present, whilst acknowledging the historical experiences that echo it as a collective pulse for meaningful experimentation and praxis. The study believes by being faithful to ways of amplifying, integrating and reflecting what has been emerging for us over time, we build our capacity to better respond with an ethic centred on transgressive decolonial pedagogical praxis. This is the kind of accompaniment and care that Change Drivers across the continent deserve as they make the way towards a future worthy of their longing (Rushdie, 1999).
- Full Text:
The role of expansive learning in the potential development of rural youth as value creators: a case study of youth farming activity in the Amahlathi Local Municipality in the Eastern Cape
- Authors: Matiwane, Lwazi Mandilive
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Environmental education -- South Africa -- Lenye , Rural development -- South Africa -- Lenye , Unemployed youth -- South Africa -- Lenye , Social learning -- South Africa -- Lenye , Educational change -- South Africa -- Lenye , Youth in development -- South Africa -- Lenye , Sustainable development -- South Africa -- Lenye , Agriculture -- Study and teaching -- Activity programs , Active learning -- South Africa -- Lenye , Cultural Historical Activity Theory
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146034 , vital:38489
- Description: Environmental sustainability and agriculture are key development and transformational concerns in South Africa while rural development and youth unemployment are key national issues pertinent in the Eastern Cape which ranks in the top three provinces for both concerns. As a formative interventionist researcher, working in a singular case study with youth in Lenye village located in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, I sought to investigate the following: Can, and if so, how can expansive learning facilitated by a change laboratory intervention contribute to the development of youth as potential value creators for rural development? This was investigated through the following sub questions: 1) What value is created at each point of the expansive learning process of the change laboratory process and for who? 2) What value can still be created at each point of the expansive learning process of the change laboratory? 3) How is that value created via an expansive learning process? I collected data as I participated as a youth member through: extended contextual profiling via a focus group interview, individual interviews, note taking and document analysis. Furthermore, I attended village meetings, youth meetings and emergent youth development/youth in agriculture/agriculture opportunities. Additionally, change laboratory workshops were conducted and I used audio recordings and notes to capture data. The data collected was then analysed through second generation Cultural Historical Activity Theory using the concepts of immediate, potential, applied, realised and reframing value. In conclusion, the expansive learning process may contribute to the development of rural youth as value creators for sustainable development through youth development, agriculture and community development. All forms of value were created along the expansive learning process for the formative interventionist researcher, the Lenye youth and the greater Lenye youth community. All forms of value may still be created for the Lenye youth, the formative interventionist researcher and the greater Lenye youth community.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Matiwane, Lwazi Mandilive
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Environmental education -- South Africa -- Lenye , Rural development -- South Africa -- Lenye , Unemployed youth -- South Africa -- Lenye , Social learning -- South Africa -- Lenye , Educational change -- South Africa -- Lenye , Youth in development -- South Africa -- Lenye , Sustainable development -- South Africa -- Lenye , Agriculture -- Study and teaching -- Activity programs , Active learning -- South Africa -- Lenye , Cultural Historical Activity Theory
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146034 , vital:38489
- Description: Environmental sustainability and agriculture are key development and transformational concerns in South Africa while rural development and youth unemployment are key national issues pertinent in the Eastern Cape which ranks in the top three provinces for both concerns. As a formative interventionist researcher, working in a singular case study with youth in Lenye village located in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, I sought to investigate the following: Can, and if so, how can expansive learning facilitated by a change laboratory intervention contribute to the development of youth as potential value creators for rural development? This was investigated through the following sub questions: 1) What value is created at each point of the expansive learning process of the change laboratory process and for who? 2) What value can still be created at each point of the expansive learning process of the change laboratory? 3) How is that value created via an expansive learning process? I collected data as I participated as a youth member through: extended contextual profiling via a focus group interview, individual interviews, note taking and document analysis. Furthermore, I attended village meetings, youth meetings and emergent youth development/youth in agriculture/agriculture opportunities. Additionally, change laboratory workshops were conducted and I used audio recordings and notes to capture data. The data collected was then analysed through second generation Cultural Historical Activity Theory using the concepts of immediate, potential, applied, realised and reframing value. In conclusion, the expansive learning process may contribute to the development of rural youth as value creators for sustainable development through youth development, agriculture and community development. All forms of value were created along the expansive learning process for the formative interventionist researcher, the Lenye youth and the greater Lenye youth community. All forms of value may still be created for the Lenye youth, the formative interventionist researcher and the greater Lenye youth community.
- Full Text:
Responding to iconic images of risk through reflexive and narrative enquiry represented in a stratified text for environmental education readers
- Authors: Murphy, Mary
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Sustainability -- Study and teaching , Environmental education -- Philosophy , Environmental degradation -- Study and teaching , Environmental degradation -- Philosophy , Reflection (Philosophy) , Archer, Margaret S (Margaret Scotford). Structure, agency, and the internal conversation
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/96768 , vital:31318
- Description: This thesis presents a stratified textual strategy to represent meaning developed through reflexive and narrative enquiry of environmental risk. Meaning that emerged in responses to iconic images of risk. Umberto Eco cautioned that iconic images over time become conventional taking over from that which they represent. Representations of risk become embedded through cultural coding. Semiotic theory provided access to the contextual and cultural content of environmental education as experienced during professional work as a radio presenter of “Environmental Matters”, as an environmental educator and activist. Methodological rigour was applied through the application of Margaret Archer's theory of the internal conversation and use of an online content management system. Both the reflexive tool of the internal conversation and the textual mechanism of the blog encouraged commitment to Paul Hart's criteria of trustworthiness and authenticity in the process of building the semiotic structure of the PhD. The Internal Conversation was used as a mediating tool in the PhD process and is presented in practice. Rethinking environmental risk from other species' perspectives through imagined experience was achieved through narrative enquiry. A noted anthropocentric limitation of the inability to interview animals for their experience of human-imposed risk was mitigated through representing the imagined, possible perspectives through story, which invites the reader to join the meaning-making process and open up discussions for and about environmental issues and action. This noted anthropocentrism was evident in debates among the characters about violence and non-violence as a conditioned theme and topic discussed in previous academic research about terrorism in divided societies. The story illustrates how the main character, a penguin called Polo, navigates through emerging meaning within a structure that confronts him with choices that end with a decision to become an agent for change. This story is a narrative example of the morphogenetic process. The multi-textual strategy presents possible methods for the exploration of risk (Vol. 1), reflexivity (Vol. 2) and representation (Vol. 3) for the application and contribution in/to environmental education.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Murphy, Mary
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Sustainability -- Study and teaching , Environmental education -- Philosophy , Environmental degradation -- Study and teaching , Environmental degradation -- Philosophy , Reflection (Philosophy) , Archer, Margaret S (Margaret Scotford). Structure, agency, and the internal conversation
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/96768 , vital:31318
- Description: This thesis presents a stratified textual strategy to represent meaning developed through reflexive and narrative enquiry of environmental risk. Meaning that emerged in responses to iconic images of risk. Umberto Eco cautioned that iconic images over time become conventional taking over from that which they represent. Representations of risk become embedded through cultural coding. Semiotic theory provided access to the contextual and cultural content of environmental education as experienced during professional work as a radio presenter of “Environmental Matters”, as an environmental educator and activist. Methodological rigour was applied through the application of Margaret Archer's theory of the internal conversation and use of an online content management system. Both the reflexive tool of the internal conversation and the textual mechanism of the blog encouraged commitment to Paul Hart's criteria of trustworthiness and authenticity in the process of building the semiotic structure of the PhD. The Internal Conversation was used as a mediating tool in the PhD process and is presented in practice. Rethinking environmental risk from other species' perspectives through imagined experience was achieved through narrative enquiry. A noted anthropocentric limitation of the inability to interview animals for their experience of human-imposed risk was mitigated through representing the imagined, possible perspectives through story, which invites the reader to join the meaning-making process and open up discussions for and about environmental issues and action. This noted anthropocentrism was evident in debates among the characters about violence and non-violence as a conditioned theme and topic discussed in previous academic research about terrorism in divided societies. The story illustrates how the main character, a penguin called Polo, navigates through emerging meaning within a structure that confronts him with choices that end with a decision to become an agent for change. This story is a narrative example of the morphogenetic process. The multi-textual strategy presents possible methods for the exploration of risk (Vol. 1), reflexivity (Vol. 2) and representation (Vol. 3) for the application and contribution in/to environmental education.
- Full Text:
Understanding the learning that occurs through up-skilling opportunities and practices in the marine sector of South Africa
- Authors: Bell, Caroline Margaret
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Biodiversity conservation -- South Africa , Human capital -- South Africa , Marine sciences -- Employees -- South Africa -- Training of , Biodiversity Human Capital Development Strategy (South Africa)
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/93966 , vital:30977
- Description: South Africa is characterised by cultural and biological diversity which constitute a unique context in which to conduct educational research, such as this doctoral study looking at human capital development in the marine biodiversity context. The drive for transformation in the country is also a major factor to consider when researching any sector of the economy, in this case, the biodiversity sector. The biodiversity sector includes organisations involved in biodiversity conservation, research and management. Previous research in the sector has found a clear need for well-thought out workplace skills plans within conservation and research organisations. The national Biodiversity Human Capital Development Strategy that was produced in 2010 by the South African National Biodiversity Institute outlines how all the organisations involved in the biodiversity sector of South Africa need to participate in strengthening the sector through a range of human capital development strategies. This includes extending the existing human capacity of managers and scientists who are already in the workplace, i.e. up-skilling. In particular, ‘scarce’ skills, as identified by the national Environmental Sector Skills Plan need further attention and development. The scarce skills relevant to this study are: protected area managers; ecosystem managers and post-graduate researchers, hence the focus on managers and scientists in this research. The marine sector falls within the biodiversity sector and it faces multiple conservation challenges which are complex and it is therefore essential to have skilled and capable managers and scientists in place. By investigating the up-skilling opportunities and practices available to these marine professionals, the goal is to understand if and how learning takes place in the marine sector of South Africa. The main research question of this study is: How do up-skilling opportunities and practices enable learning in, through and for the workplace, by marine professionals? In addition, three sub-questions provide finer details and introduce the central concepts of the research: I. What up-skilling opportunities and professional practices exist in or for, marine research and conservation organisations and how are they constituted and enacted via practice-based sayings, doings and relatings? II. How do the individuals learn and exercise their agency within the socio-material realities of the marine scientific and management context, through making use of up-skilling opportunities that are both formal (e.g. course based) and informal? III. How do generative mechanisms shape the constitution and enactment of up-skilling opportunities and practices, and the learning and agency of marine professionals (scientists and managers)? The theoretical work of this study consisted of, first, considering sensitising concepts which included: defining skill and knowledge; considering what an up-skilling opportunity might look like; workplace learning (both formal and informal learning); professional practices, lifelong learning or adult education, and agency in the workplace. Critical realism was then employed as the meta-theory that underlabours this research, while the substantive theories used for analysis purposes were socio-materialism and practice theory. Of course, critical realism is a socio-material theory itself, and Bhaskar’s four-planar social being or Social Cube was used to interpret and synthesise the findings in the data chapters. The methodological framework of this study explores the implications of critical realism for research design and analysis and includes a contextual profiling phase, semi-structured interviews, analysis of documents and peer-reviewed papers, as well as observations. There are nine case studies that form the focus of this research and in total 18 research participants were involved. Data analysis included abduction and retroduction as the primary modes of inference and the main analytical tool was the framework of practice architectures where I took the ‘sayings’, ‘doings’ and ‘relatings’ as themes. Further themes were developed from the other relevant theories used in this study; hence socio-materialism, learning, agency, and formal and informal opportunities, were also used as themes when coding the data. Issues around validity, ethics and reflexivity are key elements of the research design and were carefully considered throughout the research process. The principal data chapters are structured in such a way that each sub-question is considered and ultimately the findings are presented in the form of generative mechanisms which included: the politics of social transformation and knowledge as a driving force of up-skilling; the influence of individual disposition and passion or will; the importance of the socio-material realities and realistic expectations; and how relationality is critical for the marine sector. Agency was a cross-cutting theme in all the discussions around learning, practices and the role of the material, and was highly influential on the mechanisms that have been described in this study. The experiences, events and mechanisms that were uncovered in this research provide insight into the forms of learning as these relate to up-skilling that occur in the marine sector, as well as the complex relationships between formal and informal learning. The professional practices that occur in the everyday working lives of the marine professionals were shown to be an integral part of the learning process, while formal, certified opportunities are important for strengthening the field and building conservation competence in the country. By uncovering the deeper structures and mechanisms that have power and causal efficacy when it comes to up-skilling opportunities, learning and professional practices, this study has contributed to the field of environmental education as it shows how up-skilling processes operate in complex formations that involve formal and informal learning processes in workplaces. The study also offers a more nuanced view of the relational objects in this field, such as up-skilling and workplace learning, via the inclusion of a socio-material analysis. Through a theoretical and methodological framework that focused on the material using the tools of practice theory and Bhaskar’s depth ontology and four-planar social being (to synthesise and interpret the findings from a critical realist perspective), this research highlights the unique context of up-skilling opportunities and practices in the marine sector and reveals the crucial role of agency in workplace practices. This leads to a better understanding of the up-skilling opportunities and practices of marine professionals in South Africa, which ultimately contributes towards improved human capital development in the biodiversity and environmental sectors. Through offering more complex insights into the forms of learning and up-skilling, as well as a distinct methodological contribution, this research has broader relevance for workplace learning research.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Bell, Caroline Margaret
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Biodiversity conservation -- South Africa , Human capital -- South Africa , Marine sciences -- Employees -- South Africa -- Training of , Biodiversity Human Capital Development Strategy (South Africa)
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/93966 , vital:30977
- Description: South Africa is characterised by cultural and biological diversity which constitute a unique context in which to conduct educational research, such as this doctoral study looking at human capital development in the marine biodiversity context. The drive for transformation in the country is also a major factor to consider when researching any sector of the economy, in this case, the biodiversity sector. The biodiversity sector includes organisations involved in biodiversity conservation, research and management. Previous research in the sector has found a clear need for well-thought out workplace skills plans within conservation and research organisations. The national Biodiversity Human Capital Development Strategy that was produced in 2010 by the South African National Biodiversity Institute outlines how all the organisations involved in the biodiversity sector of South Africa need to participate in strengthening the sector through a range of human capital development strategies. This includes extending the existing human capacity of managers and scientists who are already in the workplace, i.e. up-skilling. In particular, ‘scarce’ skills, as identified by the national Environmental Sector Skills Plan need further attention and development. The scarce skills relevant to this study are: protected area managers; ecosystem managers and post-graduate researchers, hence the focus on managers and scientists in this research. The marine sector falls within the biodiversity sector and it faces multiple conservation challenges which are complex and it is therefore essential to have skilled and capable managers and scientists in place. By investigating the up-skilling opportunities and practices available to these marine professionals, the goal is to understand if and how learning takes place in the marine sector of South Africa. The main research question of this study is: How do up-skilling opportunities and practices enable learning in, through and for the workplace, by marine professionals? In addition, three sub-questions provide finer details and introduce the central concepts of the research: I. What up-skilling opportunities and professional practices exist in or for, marine research and conservation organisations and how are they constituted and enacted via practice-based sayings, doings and relatings? II. How do the individuals learn and exercise their agency within the socio-material realities of the marine scientific and management context, through making use of up-skilling opportunities that are both formal (e.g. course based) and informal? III. How do generative mechanisms shape the constitution and enactment of up-skilling opportunities and practices, and the learning and agency of marine professionals (scientists and managers)? The theoretical work of this study consisted of, first, considering sensitising concepts which included: defining skill and knowledge; considering what an up-skilling opportunity might look like; workplace learning (both formal and informal learning); professional practices, lifelong learning or adult education, and agency in the workplace. Critical realism was then employed as the meta-theory that underlabours this research, while the substantive theories used for analysis purposes were socio-materialism and practice theory. Of course, critical realism is a socio-material theory itself, and Bhaskar’s four-planar social being or Social Cube was used to interpret and synthesise the findings in the data chapters. The methodological framework of this study explores the implications of critical realism for research design and analysis and includes a contextual profiling phase, semi-structured interviews, analysis of documents and peer-reviewed papers, as well as observations. There are nine case studies that form the focus of this research and in total 18 research participants were involved. Data analysis included abduction and retroduction as the primary modes of inference and the main analytical tool was the framework of practice architectures where I took the ‘sayings’, ‘doings’ and ‘relatings’ as themes. Further themes were developed from the other relevant theories used in this study; hence socio-materialism, learning, agency, and formal and informal opportunities, were also used as themes when coding the data. Issues around validity, ethics and reflexivity are key elements of the research design and were carefully considered throughout the research process. The principal data chapters are structured in such a way that each sub-question is considered and ultimately the findings are presented in the form of generative mechanisms which included: the politics of social transformation and knowledge as a driving force of up-skilling; the influence of individual disposition and passion or will; the importance of the socio-material realities and realistic expectations; and how relationality is critical for the marine sector. Agency was a cross-cutting theme in all the discussions around learning, practices and the role of the material, and was highly influential on the mechanisms that have been described in this study. The experiences, events and mechanisms that were uncovered in this research provide insight into the forms of learning as these relate to up-skilling that occur in the marine sector, as well as the complex relationships between formal and informal learning. The professional practices that occur in the everyday working lives of the marine professionals were shown to be an integral part of the learning process, while formal, certified opportunities are important for strengthening the field and building conservation competence in the country. By uncovering the deeper structures and mechanisms that have power and causal efficacy when it comes to up-skilling opportunities, learning and professional practices, this study has contributed to the field of environmental education as it shows how up-skilling processes operate in complex formations that involve formal and informal learning processes in workplaces. The study also offers a more nuanced view of the relational objects in this field, such as up-skilling and workplace learning, via the inclusion of a socio-material analysis. Through a theoretical and methodological framework that focused on the material using the tools of practice theory and Bhaskar’s depth ontology and four-planar social being (to synthesise and interpret the findings from a critical realist perspective), this research highlights the unique context of up-skilling opportunities and practices in the marine sector and reveals the crucial role of agency in workplace practices. This leads to a better understanding of the up-skilling opportunities and practices of marine professionals in South Africa, which ultimately contributes towards improved human capital development in the biodiversity and environmental sectors. Through offering more complex insights into the forms of learning and up-skilling, as well as a distinct methodological contribution, this research has broader relevance for workplace learning research.
- Full Text:
A review of Climate-Smart system innovations in two Agricultural Colleges in the North West Province of South Africa
- Authors: Van Staden, Wilma
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Crops and climate South Africa North-West , Sustainable agriculture South Africa North-West , Agriculture Environmental aspects South Africa North-West , Agricultural colleges Curricula South Africa , Agricultural innovations , Agricultural ecology South Africa North-West
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63426 , vital:28410
- Description: This study was centred on the Agricultural Innovation System in the North West Province, South Africa as a response to climate change. The study developed during a time when Climate-Smart Agriculture emerged in policy and was developed as a strategic agricultural innovation process in response to changes in climate that increased food insecurity. The Agricultural Colleges embedded in the agricultural system realised that they were teaching students without a clear provision for climate change and therefore needed to initiate climate responsive innovations to comply with the Climate-Smart strategy that had been proposed by the provincial authorities. This provided the context for the study to track and support the innovation process of transitioning towards Climate-Smart responsive curriculum and learning practices within the system. A theoretical framework for the study was developed using a Cultural Historical Activity Theory perspective. This allowed the researcher to approach the research process as two case studies of innovation within the Agricultural Innovation System of the North West Province. The study developed as an iterative process of innovation support and tracking. At the early stages of the research process, data were generated through document analysis and a survey completed by the research participants at the preliminary consultative workshop. The contextual data allowed the researcher to begin to develop a clear contextual profile for both case studies. The consultative workshops were held to orientate the research around the central problems and challenges related to curriculum alignment with provincial Climate-Smart Agricultural policies. The methodology thereafter was developed as an iterative process of successive intervention-innovation workshops where the participating staff in each college reviewed their curriculum with the support of a Climate-Smart Innovation Tool. This tool was developed as a mediating resource for participants to undertake intervention work towards curriculum innovation in their context. The historical analysis from the two consultative workshops and the data derived from the initial use of the Climate-Smart Innovation Tool was used to model the activity systems in the respective colleges and the provincial system. This analysis enabled the researcher to scope how the system was currently functioning and how it had changed over time. During the workshops, curriculum innovations were reviewed and a fuller picture of the challenges of system innovation emerged, especially from a curriculum innovation vantage point. This system analysis was used to analyse emergent tensions and contradictions within the system and to build a picture of the complexities of participating staff initiating innovations towards Climate-Smart responsiveness in the colleges and within the Agricultural Innovation System. During the review and tracking of the supported innovation process the Climate-Smart Innovation Tool was developed into online sub-tools where either Departments or individual lecturers could review and track their own Climate-Smart responsiveness. The tool was shown to be a useful tool for surfacing contradictions, and identifying absences, and thus for charting out the start of reflexive learning and change processes needed for introducing climate responsive knowledge into the system. The study reveals that catalysing of curriculum and learning system innovation aligned with wider innovations in the agricultural innovation system requires specific tools, time and the understanding of the importance of micro-level innovation. The innovations within the system revealed the significance of allowing for time and processes that facilitate ‘ascending’ from the abstract concept of Climate-Smart Agriculture into more concrete curriculum processes. The curriculum review tool developed for this study served as an important double stimulation tool, along with activity system mapping, and ongoing refinement and clarification of the object of Climate-Smart Agriculture and associated contradictions and action plans for climate smart responsiveness in the college context. The tools and processes that were developed during this study, assisting in the emergence of micro-level innovation of the curriculum and learning system. The barriers and processes hampering curriculum and learning innovation within the system were identified. The study concludes with the recommendations on how a Climate-Smart innovation process might best be supported with reflexive tools within a curriculum and learning system during a time of institutional flux.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Van Staden, Wilma
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Crops and climate South Africa North-West , Sustainable agriculture South Africa North-West , Agriculture Environmental aspects South Africa North-West , Agricultural colleges Curricula South Africa , Agricultural innovations , Agricultural ecology South Africa North-West
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63426 , vital:28410
- Description: This study was centred on the Agricultural Innovation System in the North West Province, South Africa as a response to climate change. The study developed during a time when Climate-Smart Agriculture emerged in policy and was developed as a strategic agricultural innovation process in response to changes in climate that increased food insecurity. The Agricultural Colleges embedded in the agricultural system realised that they were teaching students without a clear provision for climate change and therefore needed to initiate climate responsive innovations to comply with the Climate-Smart strategy that had been proposed by the provincial authorities. This provided the context for the study to track and support the innovation process of transitioning towards Climate-Smart responsive curriculum and learning practices within the system. A theoretical framework for the study was developed using a Cultural Historical Activity Theory perspective. This allowed the researcher to approach the research process as two case studies of innovation within the Agricultural Innovation System of the North West Province. The study developed as an iterative process of innovation support and tracking. At the early stages of the research process, data were generated through document analysis and a survey completed by the research participants at the preliminary consultative workshop. The contextual data allowed the researcher to begin to develop a clear contextual profile for both case studies. The consultative workshops were held to orientate the research around the central problems and challenges related to curriculum alignment with provincial Climate-Smart Agricultural policies. The methodology thereafter was developed as an iterative process of successive intervention-innovation workshops where the participating staff in each college reviewed their curriculum with the support of a Climate-Smart Innovation Tool. This tool was developed as a mediating resource for participants to undertake intervention work towards curriculum innovation in their context. The historical analysis from the two consultative workshops and the data derived from the initial use of the Climate-Smart Innovation Tool was used to model the activity systems in the respective colleges and the provincial system. This analysis enabled the researcher to scope how the system was currently functioning and how it had changed over time. During the workshops, curriculum innovations were reviewed and a fuller picture of the challenges of system innovation emerged, especially from a curriculum innovation vantage point. This system analysis was used to analyse emergent tensions and contradictions within the system and to build a picture of the complexities of participating staff initiating innovations towards Climate-Smart responsiveness in the colleges and within the Agricultural Innovation System. During the review and tracking of the supported innovation process the Climate-Smart Innovation Tool was developed into online sub-tools where either Departments or individual lecturers could review and track their own Climate-Smart responsiveness. The tool was shown to be a useful tool for surfacing contradictions, and identifying absences, and thus for charting out the start of reflexive learning and change processes needed for introducing climate responsive knowledge into the system. The study reveals that catalysing of curriculum and learning system innovation aligned with wider innovations in the agricultural innovation system requires specific tools, time and the understanding of the importance of micro-level innovation. The innovations within the system revealed the significance of allowing for time and processes that facilitate ‘ascending’ from the abstract concept of Climate-Smart Agriculture into more concrete curriculum processes. The curriculum review tool developed for this study served as an important double stimulation tool, along with activity system mapping, and ongoing refinement and clarification of the object of Climate-Smart Agriculture and associated contradictions and action plans for climate smart responsiveness in the college context. The tools and processes that were developed during this study, assisting in the emergence of micro-level innovation of the curriculum and learning system. The barriers and processes hampering curriculum and learning innovation within the system were identified. The study concludes with the recommendations on how a Climate-Smart innovation process might best be supported with reflexive tools within a curriculum and learning system during a time of institutional flux.
- Full Text:
The National Skills Fund and green skills: towards a generative mechanism approach
- Authors: Sauls, Gideon George
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: South Africa. National Skills Fund , Environmental education Finance South Africa , Green technology Study and teaching South Africa , Postsecondary education South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63740 , vital:28482
- Description: The aim of the study was to investigate the role of the South African National Skills Fund (NSF) in responding to green skills training for the sake of better integration and optimal effectiveness in relation to the green economy in South Africa. The NSF is a multi-billion rand fund for skills development, with the responsibility to respond effectively to the country’s skills development needs. Part of the NSF’s mandate is to ensure the development of green skills in South Africa, with special reference to the allocation of grants, as a key mechanism in ensuring adherence to properly governed skills development funding requirements. This study considers the identification of green skills funding as a skills planning and implementation challenge within the post-school education and training context, the NSF, the green economy and related skills debates, both locally and globally. The study contributes to a growing body of research in South Africa that seeks a wider systemic perspective on green skills concerns. The NSF and its functioning is a critical dimension of the wider skills system and is a significant system element influencing further emergence of a coherent national system for green skills development. Providing further rationale for this study is the 2011 finding of the International Labour Organisation, that the green skills development system in South Africa is re-active and poorly systematised, a finding that was also noted in the first ever Environmental Sector Skills Plan for South Africa undertaken by the Department of Environmental Affairs in 2010. As the study is mainly focused on one aspect of the policy system, namely the NSF’s role in green skills funding, the bulk of the data used in this study is documentary. Research information was obtained from NSF documentary sources to describe the NSF organisationally. Information was also obtained from green skills documentary sources to obtain a better understanding of the nature and purpose of the development of green skills in South Africa. The study has also drawn on references related to grant management as a mechanism for seeding meaningful transformations and skills development research in South Africa to understand the skills development landscape, with special reference to the Department of Higher Education and Training’s (DHET) post-school education and training system. Documentary data was supplemented by selected key respondent interviews from the skills sector and from the green skills research community to provide further perspective on the research focus. Critical realism (CR) is utilised as a meta-theoretical framework that seeks to inform the overall academic reflection and interpretation process. The work of Danermark, Ekström, Jakobsen and Karlsson (2002), which describes the process of data analysis in critical realism, was adapted into a four-phased research approach for this particular policy study, which I framed as a Quadrilateral Policy Analysis Framework (QPAF). This provided a data analysis framework which allowed for taking account of the mechanisms shaping the NSF as an important systemic funding agency within South Africa’s emerging post-school education and training context, as this relates to green skills. However, to further analyse this research question and context, I needed to work with substantive policy theory. Given the nature of the policy object that I was investigating, I found Feiock’s (2013) Institutional Collective Action Framework to be a helpful substantive policy theory as it has adequate nuance with which I could describe the NSF’s core function, namely that of grant-making for the post-schooling policy context. Based on the critical realist meta-theoretical framework and the substantive policy theoretical frameworks, I developed four phases of analysis, namely a) descriptive analysis which is divided into Part A (describing the green skills landscape and its funding demands ) and Part B (describing the NSF as it relates to green skills); b) component analysis which further analyses key components of the above; c) abductive policy analysis which identifies critical mechanisms and how they operate; and d) generative mechanism analysis which identifies the underlying generative mechanisms shaping the NSF’s engagement with green skills (or lack thereof). The following main findings are identified: • It emerged that the responsiveness of the NSF to green skills is emergent, essential and yet multifaceted due to competing stakeholder interests, expectations and claims; • Key strategic relations with critical role players within South Africa’s skills levy funding matrix emerged as a fundamental requirement towards the achievement of the NSF’s organisational mandate to respond effectively to national green skills needs and expectations; • Contracting is the central mechanism driving the NSF grant-making process. Related to this is the finding that partnerships emerged as the most versatile and underutilised mechanism that cuts across all four of the NSF grant-making phases; • The NSF’s current method of making sense of funding policy indications as per national policy documents is too reductionist because the method betrays an alignment-mirroring form of sense-making awareness that uncritically endorses substratum philosophical assumptions like Human Capital Theory (HCT) and associated neoclassical economic theories embedded in the policy frameworks. These assumptions contradict and potentially limit engagement with wider theories and policy frameworks for guiding skills development that are oriented towards the wider common good as argued by non-anthropocentric orientations in critical realism and the green skills sector. In summary, an argument is put forward that the NSF is a key funding mechanism towards green skills delivery in South Africa, but that this funding mechanism is under-utilised and inadequately mobilised for transitioning towards sustainability in South Africa. The study recommends that, in pursuit of better integration and optimal effectiveness thereof and in line with the fund’s legislative, organisational and public mandate, a consensual negotiation skills planning mechanism be considered from an institutional collective action response platform. In terms of recommendations for further research, it is proposed that a comparative analysis study could be considered between the NSF and other leading global funding agencies or other national skills funding mechanisms that are also concerned with the inclusion of green skills development. Comparative studies of this nature could potentially enhance the fund’s policy-making process and assist in the development of more appropriate institutional arrangements towards optimal funding responsiveness. Lastly, in the light of the NSF’s current contribution to green skills in the country, an impact evaluation study on the return on green skills investment presents an additional intriguing research endeavour which would contribute further perspective on the arguments presented in this study.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Sauls, Gideon George
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: South Africa. National Skills Fund , Environmental education Finance South Africa , Green technology Study and teaching South Africa , Postsecondary education South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63740 , vital:28482
- Description: The aim of the study was to investigate the role of the South African National Skills Fund (NSF) in responding to green skills training for the sake of better integration and optimal effectiveness in relation to the green economy in South Africa. The NSF is a multi-billion rand fund for skills development, with the responsibility to respond effectively to the country’s skills development needs. Part of the NSF’s mandate is to ensure the development of green skills in South Africa, with special reference to the allocation of grants, as a key mechanism in ensuring adherence to properly governed skills development funding requirements. This study considers the identification of green skills funding as a skills planning and implementation challenge within the post-school education and training context, the NSF, the green economy and related skills debates, both locally and globally. The study contributes to a growing body of research in South Africa that seeks a wider systemic perspective on green skills concerns. The NSF and its functioning is a critical dimension of the wider skills system and is a significant system element influencing further emergence of a coherent national system for green skills development. Providing further rationale for this study is the 2011 finding of the International Labour Organisation, that the green skills development system in South Africa is re-active and poorly systematised, a finding that was also noted in the first ever Environmental Sector Skills Plan for South Africa undertaken by the Department of Environmental Affairs in 2010. As the study is mainly focused on one aspect of the policy system, namely the NSF’s role in green skills funding, the bulk of the data used in this study is documentary. Research information was obtained from NSF documentary sources to describe the NSF organisationally. Information was also obtained from green skills documentary sources to obtain a better understanding of the nature and purpose of the development of green skills in South Africa. The study has also drawn on references related to grant management as a mechanism for seeding meaningful transformations and skills development research in South Africa to understand the skills development landscape, with special reference to the Department of Higher Education and Training’s (DHET) post-school education and training system. Documentary data was supplemented by selected key respondent interviews from the skills sector and from the green skills research community to provide further perspective on the research focus. Critical realism (CR) is utilised as a meta-theoretical framework that seeks to inform the overall academic reflection and interpretation process. The work of Danermark, Ekström, Jakobsen and Karlsson (2002), which describes the process of data analysis in critical realism, was adapted into a four-phased research approach for this particular policy study, which I framed as a Quadrilateral Policy Analysis Framework (QPAF). This provided a data analysis framework which allowed for taking account of the mechanisms shaping the NSF as an important systemic funding agency within South Africa’s emerging post-school education and training context, as this relates to green skills. However, to further analyse this research question and context, I needed to work with substantive policy theory. Given the nature of the policy object that I was investigating, I found Feiock’s (2013) Institutional Collective Action Framework to be a helpful substantive policy theory as it has adequate nuance with which I could describe the NSF’s core function, namely that of grant-making for the post-schooling policy context. Based on the critical realist meta-theoretical framework and the substantive policy theoretical frameworks, I developed four phases of analysis, namely a) descriptive analysis which is divided into Part A (describing the green skills landscape and its funding demands ) and Part B (describing the NSF as it relates to green skills); b) component analysis which further analyses key components of the above; c) abductive policy analysis which identifies critical mechanisms and how they operate; and d) generative mechanism analysis which identifies the underlying generative mechanisms shaping the NSF’s engagement with green skills (or lack thereof). The following main findings are identified: • It emerged that the responsiveness of the NSF to green skills is emergent, essential and yet multifaceted due to competing stakeholder interests, expectations and claims; • Key strategic relations with critical role players within South Africa’s skills levy funding matrix emerged as a fundamental requirement towards the achievement of the NSF’s organisational mandate to respond effectively to national green skills needs and expectations; • Contracting is the central mechanism driving the NSF grant-making process. Related to this is the finding that partnerships emerged as the most versatile and underutilised mechanism that cuts across all four of the NSF grant-making phases; • The NSF’s current method of making sense of funding policy indications as per national policy documents is too reductionist because the method betrays an alignment-mirroring form of sense-making awareness that uncritically endorses substratum philosophical assumptions like Human Capital Theory (HCT) and associated neoclassical economic theories embedded in the policy frameworks. These assumptions contradict and potentially limit engagement with wider theories and policy frameworks for guiding skills development that are oriented towards the wider common good as argued by non-anthropocentric orientations in critical realism and the green skills sector. In summary, an argument is put forward that the NSF is a key funding mechanism towards green skills delivery in South Africa, but that this funding mechanism is under-utilised and inadequately mobilised for transitioning towards sustainability in South Africa. The study recommends that, in pursuit of better integration and optimal effectiveness thereof and in line with the fund’s legislative, organisational and public mandate, a consensual negotiation skills planning mechanism be considered from an institutional collective action response platform. In terms of recommendations for further research, it is proposed that a comparative analysis study could be considered between the NSF and other leading global funding agencies or other national skills funding mechanisms that are also concerned with the inclusion of green skills development. Comparative studies of this nature could potentially enhance the fund’s policy-making process and assist in the development of more appropriate institutional arrangements towards optimal funding responsiveness. Lastly, in the light of the NSF’s current contribution to green skills in the country, an impact evaluation study on the return on green skills investment presents an additional intriguing research endeavour which would contribute further perspective on the arguments presented in this study.
- Full Text:
Review of two sustainability learning programmes for industrial settings in relation to emerging green learning aspects
- Authors: Visagie, Martha Jacoba
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Environmental education , Sustainable development -- Study and teaching (Continuing education) , Natural resources -- Management -- Study and teaching (Continuing education) , Environmental economics -- Study and teaching (Continuing education) , Green movement
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:2049 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017360
- Description: Driven by the needs of growing populations, industrial and governing powers are successfully accelerating the rate of industrial consumption, production and employment as if the earth’s resources are in unlimited supply. In contrast, a range of international sustainable development forums, inspired by visionary individuals, have made significant progress in creating awareness that the footprint of human activity is exceeding the earth’s sink and source capacity; and educating people in government, workplaces and communities to slow down industrial consumption and clean up production. Turning around conventional and short sighted ‘business as usual’ logic, and directing economies toward greener, long-term sustainability outcomes, still meet with resistance and hidden unsustainable agendas. The ‘green economy’ drive nevertheless since 2008 attracts financial and human resources and bold action in favour of more sustainable management of human-nature relations. The sustainable development movement for example advocates a ‘triple bottom line’ approach, holding that socially and ecologically responsible economic development would be sustainable. The sustainability movement has attained significant buy-in among governments and business communities. It forms the under-labouring philosophy of the programmes reviewed in this case study. The thesis reviews social-economic events paving the way for a global green economy. Taking a leadership role in the sustainable development movement the United Nations (UN) and the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) concurred to respond to the 2008 world-wide economic meltdown with a two-pronged ‘Green New Deal’ (UNEP, 2008). The Green New Deal financial package helps restore multi-national economic growth, employment and markets while re-shaping economies to follow an ecologically and socially responsible growth trajectory. South Africa implements green economy principles as part of the 2010 The New Growth Path overarching policy framework, with an implementation strategy embedded in the 2011 National Development Plan (NDP) (RSA. The Presidency, 2010; 2011). The New Growth Path emphasises that the transformation of South Africa’s un-sustainable economic and educational legacy to a more sustainable future is not expected to follow a smooth, linear process. The transition to a green economy is rather expected to be an event of “… noisy, healthy democracy” (RSA. The Presidency, 2010). A green, low carbon economy particularly constitutes a pledge to slow down and turn the human induced climate change trajectory around. McKinsey (2009) argues that this pledge is attainable on a world-wide scale, as sufficient and suitable environmentally sound techniques and technologies are already in place. Attaining buy-in from business stakeholders toward re-thinking and amending an economy’s self-defying large environmental footprint (inclusive of carbon, water and waste footprints) however requires education starting with awarenessraising followed by educational programmes and official curricula aimed at implementation and continuous improvement of green practices in day to day ‘doings and beings’ (Sen, 1997). This study at implementation level reviews two green economy training programmes and their emergence in South Africa around this rationale. The awareness generation and training programmes elected as case study examples are the ‘Resource Efficient and Cleaner Production’ (RECP) and ‘Industrial Energy Efficiency’ (IEE) programmes, of the hosting agency National Cleaner Production Centre of South Africa (NCPC-SA). The RECP and IEE teams reach out to decision makers, engineers and artisans at industrial workplaces and workplace related events to add green competences to their business-as-usual skill sets. Implementing green options in industry typically slows down industrial scale resource consumption, pollution, waste generation and green-house gas (GHG) emissions while optimising resource productivity and enterprise excellence. Optimised supply side systems allow industry to reduce energy and material intensity of products thus reducing cost and producing more with less. In transitioning to a ‘Green GDP’ economy South Africa is awakening to the reality that natural resources constitute the original, albeit limited feedstock for growth and employment. The RECP and IEE approach also contribute to reduction of industrial waste, waste-to-landfill, and energy and resource security. Literature reviewed for this research provides evidence that the green economy’s triple bottom line philosophy is quantifiable thus manageable. A range of green economy management tools are emerging, including guidelines for carbon, water and environmental footprinting and the green-house gas abatement cost curve (see section 2.2.5) (McKinsey and Company, 2009). Transitioning from business as usual to ecologically sustainable industrial sectors however requires visionary, educated leadership, willing and capable of introducing modern and more efficient techniques and technologies. The boundaries of this half thesis embrace the globally and historically significant Tbilisi Declaration and other education and sustainable development agreements produced by United Nations and OECD mechanisms. Participating nations like South Africa incorporate the essence of these agreements into domestic policies and strategies, and align industries to remain competitive in international markets, which are increasingly enforcing green standards like ISO 14001 and ISO 50001. The focus of this case study guided by inductive, abductive and retroductive inference is to understand how the two sustainability learning programmes for people in industrial workplaces, supported by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and relevant donors, and overseen by the South African Department of Trade and Industry (the dti), relate to emerging green learning aspects. Producing a review of this nature requires a framework of laterally understanding emerging green learning aspects, for which I have reviewed green economy literature and also green learning and conventional education and training literature respectively. Themes emerging from the literature review informed an analytical instrument (questionnaire) in Phase One. In Phase Two the questionnaire was applied through nested case study methodology to show how the educational content and approaches of the RECP and IEE programmes relate to emerging green learning aspects and as such is suitable for mainstreaming in the national educational system. From an explicit educational perspective potential partners for collaboration include the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) the South African Qualifications Authority’s (SAQA’s) Quality Council for Trades and Occupations (QCTO) and the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) representing the training needs of the industrial workforce but affiliated to QCTO and SAQA. In the extended scenario the NCPC-SA as a dti programme recognises the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) as lead agency guiding implementation of South Africa’s green economy, and specifically DEA’s National Environmental Sector Skills Planning Forum (NESPF), a national leader in green skills development in South Africa, as conduit for productively mainstreaming relevant RECP and IEE content and approaches toward green skills development for the green economy.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Visagie, Martha Jacoba
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Environmental education , Sustainable development -- Study and teaching (Continuing education) , Natural resources -- Management -- Study and teaching (Continuing education) , Environmental economics -- Study and teaching (Continuing education) , Green movement
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:2049 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017360
- Description: Driven by the needs of growing populations, industrial and governing powers are successfully accelerating the rate of industrial consumption, production and employment as if the earth’s resources are in unlimited supply. In contrast, a range of international sustainable development forums, inspired by visionary individuals, have made significant progress in creating awareness that the footprint of human activity is exceeding the earth’s sink and source capacity; and educating people in government, workplaces and communities to slow down industrial consumption and clean up production. Turning around conventional and short sighted ‘business as usual’ logic, and directing economies toward greener, long-term sustainability outcomes, still meet with resistance and hidden unsustainable agendas. The ‘green economy’ drive nevertheless since 2008 attracts financial and human resources and bold action in favour of more sustainable management of human-nature relations. The sustainable development movement for example advocates a ‘triple bottom line’ approach, holding that socially and ecologically responsible economic development would be sustainable. The sustainability movement has attained significant buy-in among governments and business communities. It forms the under-labouring philosophy of the programmes reviewed in this case study. The thesis reviews social-economic events paving the way for a global green economy. Taking a leadership role in the sustainable development movement the United Nations (UN) and the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) concurred to respond to the 2008 world-wide economic meltdown with a two-pronged ‘Green New Deal’ (UNEP, 2008). The Green New Deal financial package helps restore multi-national economic growth, employment and markets while re-shaping economies to follow an ecologically and socially responsible growth trajectory. South Africa implements green economy principles as part of the 2010 The New Growth Path overarching policy framework, with an implementation strategy embedded in the 2011 National Development Plan (NDP) (RSA. The Presidency, 2010; 2011). The New Growth Path emphasises that the transformation of South Africa’s un-sustainable economic and educational legacy to a more sustainable future is not expected to follow a smooth, linear process. The transition to a green economy is rather expected to be an event of “… noisy, healthy democracy” (RSA. The Presidency, 2010). A green, low carbon economy particularly constitutes a pledge to slow down and turn the human induced climate change trajectory around. McKinsey (2009) argues that this pledge is attainable on a world-wide scale, as sufficient and suitable environmentally sound techniques and technologies are already in place. Attaining buy-in from business stakeholders toward re-thinking and amending an economy’s self-defying large environmental footprint (inclusive of carbon, water and waste footprints) however requires education starting with awarenessraising followed by educational programmes and official curricula aimed at implementation and continuous improvement of green practices in day to day ‘doings and beings’ (Sen, 1997). This study at implementation level reviews two green economy training programmes and their emergence in South Africa around this rationale. The awareness generation and training programmes elected as case study examples are the ‘Resource Efficient and Cleaner Production’ (RECP) and ‘Industrial Energy Efficiency’ (IEE) programmes, of the hosting agency National Cleaner Production Centre of South Africa (NCPC-SA). The RECP and IEE teams reach out to decision makers, engineers and artisans at industrial workplaces and workplace related events to add green competences to their business-as-usual skill sets. Implementing green options in industry typically slows down industrial scale resource consumption, pollution, waste generation and green-house gas (GHG) emissions while optimising resource productivity and enterprise excellence. Optimised supply side systems allow industry to reduce energy and material intensity of products thus reducing cost and producing more with less. In transitioning to a ‘Green GDP’ economy South Africa is awakening to the reality that natural resources constitute the original, albeit limited feedstock for growth and employment. The RECP and IEE approach also contribute to reduction of industrial waste, waste-to-landfill, and energy and resource security. Literature reviewed for this research provides evidence that the green economy’s triple bottom line philosophy is quantifiable thus manageable. A range of green economy management tools are emerging, including guidelines for carbon, water and environmental footprinting and the green-house gas abatement cost curve (see section 2.2.5) (McKinsey and Company, 2009). Transitioning from business as usual to ecologically sustainable industrial sectors however requires visionary, educated leadership, willing and capable of introducing modern and more efficient techniques and technologies. The boundaries of this half thesis embrace the globally and historically significant Tbilisi Declaration and other education and sustainable development agreements produced by United Nations and OECD mechanisms. Participating nations like South Africa incorporate the essence of these agreements into domestic policies and strategies, and align industries to remain competitive in international markets, which are increasingly enforcing green standards like ISO 14001 and ISO 50001. The focus of this case study guided by inductive, abductive and retroductive inference is to understand how the two sustainability learning programmes for people in industrial workplaces, supported by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and relevant donors, and overseen by the South African Department of Trade and Industry (the dti), relate to emerging green learning aspects. Producing a review of this nature requires a framework of laterally understanding emerging green learning aspects, for which I have reviewed green economy literature and also green learning and conventional education and training literature respectively. Themes emerging from the literature review informed an analytical instrument (questionnaire) in Phase One. In Phase Two the questionnaire was applied through nested case study methodology to show how the educational content and approaches of the RECP and IEE programmes relate to emerging green learning aspects and as such is suitable for mainstreaming in the national educational system. From an explicit educational perspective potential partners for collaboration include the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) the South African Qualifications Authority’s (SAQA’s) Quality Council for Trades and Occupations (QCTO) and the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) representing the training needs of the industrial workforce but affiliated to QCTO and SAQA. In the extended scenario the NCPC-SA as a dti programme recognises the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) as lead agency guiding implementation of South Africa’s green economy, and specifically DEA’s National Environmental Sector Skills Planning Forum (NESPF), a national leader in green skills development in South Africa, as conduit for productively mainstreaming relevant RECP and IEE content and approaches toward green skills development for the green economy.
- Full Text:
Can expansive (social) learning processes strengthen organisational learning for improved wetland management in a plantation forestry company, and if so how? : a case study of Mondi
- Authors: Lindley, David Stewart
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Mondi Group , Wetland management -- South Africa , Wetland conservation -- Study and teaching (Continuing education) , Employees -- Training of -- South Africa , Action theory , Critical realism , Social learning , Environmental education -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2003 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015661
- Description: Mondi is an international packaging and paper company that manages over 300 000 ha of land in South Africa. After over a decade of working with Mondi to improve its wetland management, wetland sustainability practices were still not integrated into the broader forestry operations, despite some significant cases of successful wetland rehabilitation. An interventionist research project was therefore conducted to explore the factors inhibiting improved wetland management, and determine if and how expansive social learning processes could strengthen organisational learning and development to overcome these factors. In doing so, the research has investigated how informal adult learning supports organisational change to strengthen wetland and environmental sustainability practices, within a corporate plantation forestry context. How individual and/or group-based learning interactions translate to the collective, at the level of organisational change was a key issue probed in this study. The following three research questions were used to guide the research: 1. What tensions and contradictions exist in wetland management in a plantation forestry company? 2. Can expansive learning begin to address the tensions and contradictions that exist in wetland management in a plantation forestry company, for improved sustainability practices? 3. Can expansive social learning strengthen organisational learning and development, enabling Mondi to improve its wetland sustainability practices, and if so how does it do this? Cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) and the theory of expansive learning provided an epistemological framework for the research. The philosophy of critical realism gave ontological depth to the research, and contributed to a deeper understanding of CHAT and expansive learning. Critical realism was therefore used as a philosophy to underlabour the theoretical framework of the research. However CHAT and expansive learning could not provide the depth of detail required to explain how the expansive learning, organisational social change, and boundary crossings that are necessary for assembling the collective were taking place. Realist social theory (developed out of critical realism by Margaret Archer as an ontologically located theory of how and why social change occurs, or does not) supported the research to do this. The morphogenetic framework was used as a methodology for applying realist social theory. The expansive learning cycle was used as a methodology for applying CHAT and the theory of expansive learning; guiding the development of new knowledge creation required by Mondi staff to identify contradictions and associated tensions inhibiting wetland management, understand their root causes, and develop solutions. Through the expansive learning process, the tensions and contradictions become generative as a tool supporting expansive social learning, rather than as a means to an end where universal consensus was reached on how to circumvent the contradictions. The research was conducted in five phases: • Phase 1: Contextual profiling to identify and describe three activity systems in Mondi responsible for wetland management: 1) siviculture foresters; 2) environmental specialists; 3) community engagement facilitators. The data was generated and analysed through through document analysis, 17 interviews, 2nd generation CHAT analysis, and Critical Realist generative mechanism analysis; • Phase 2: Analysis and identification of tensions and contradictions through a first interventionist workshop. Modelling new solutions to deal with contractions, and examining and testing new models in and after the second interventionist workshop; • Phase 3: Implementing new models as wetland management projects and involved project implementation. This included boundary crossing practices of staff in the three activity systems, reflection and re-view in a further five progress review/interventionist workshops, and a management meeting and seminar; • Phase 4: Reflecting on the expansive learning process, results, and consolidation of changed practices, through nine reflective interviews and field observations; • Phase 5: Morphogenic/stasis analysis of the organisational change and development catalysed via the expansive social learning process (or not). The research found that expansive social learning processes supported organisational learning and development for improved wetland management by: 1) strengthening the scope, depth, and sophistication of participant understanding; 2) expanding the ways staff interact and collaboratively work together; 3) democratising decision making; 4) improving social relations between staff, reducing power differentials, and creating stronger relationships; 5) enhancing participant reflexivity through deeper understanding of social structures and cultural systems, and changing them to support improved wetland and environmental practice of staff, and developing the organisational structures and processes to strengthen organisational learning and development; and 6) using the contradictions identified as generative mechanisms to stimulate and catalyse organisational learning and development for changed wetland/environmental management.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Lindley, David Stewart
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Mondi Group , Wetland management -- South Africa , Wetland conservation -- Study and teaching (Continuing education) , Employees -- Training of -- South Africa , Action theory , Critical realism , Social learning , Environmental education -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2003 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015661
- Description: Mondi is an international packaging and paper company that manages over 300 000 ha of land in South Africa. After over a decade of working with Mondi to improve its wetland management, wetland sustainability practices were still not integrated into the broader forestry operations, despite some significant cases of successful wetland rehabilitation. An interventionist research project was therefore conducted to explore the factors inhibiting improved wetland management, and determine if and how expansive social learning processes could strengthen organisational learning and development to overcome these factors. In doing so, the research has investigated how informal adult learning supports organisational change to strengthen wetland and environmental sustainability practices, within a corporate plantation forestry context. How individual and/or group-based learning interactions translate to the collective, at the level of organisational change was a key issue probed in this study. The following three research questions were used to guide the research: 1. What tensions and contradictions exist in wetland management in a plantation forestry company? 2. Can expansive learning begin to address the tensions and contradictions that exist in wetland management in a plantation forestry company, for improved sustainability practices? 3. Can expansive social learning strengthen organisational learning and development, enabling Mondi to improve its wetland sustainability practices, and if so how does it do this? Cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) and the theory of expansive learning provided an epistemological framework for the research. The philosophy of critical realism gave ontological depth to the research, and contributed to a deeper understanding of CHAT and expansive learning. Critical realism was therefore used as a philosophy to underlabour the theoretical framework of the research. However CHAT and expansive learning could not provide the depth of detail required to explain how the expansive learning, organisational social change, and boundary crossings that are necessary for assembling the collective were taking place. Realist social theory (developed out of critical realism by Margaret Archer as an ontologically located theory of how and why social change occurs, or does not) supported the research to do this. The morphogenetic framework was used as a methodology for applying realist social theory. The expansive learning cycle was used as a methodology for applying CHAT and the theory of expansive learning; guiding the development of new knowledge creation required by Mondi staff to identify contradictions and associated tensions inhibiting wetland management, understand their root causes, and develop solutions. Through the expansive learning process, the tensions and contradictions become generative as a tool supporting expansive social learning, rather than as a means to an end where universal consensus was reached on how to circumvent the contradictions. The research was conducted in five phases: • Phase 1: Contextual profiling to identify and describe three activity systems in Mondi responsible for wetland management: 1) siviculture foresters; 2) environmental specialists; 3) community engagement facilitators. The data was generated and analysed through through document analysis, 17 interviews, 2nd generation CHAT analysis, and Critical Realist generative mechanism analysis; • Phase 2: Analysis and identification of tensions and contradictions through a first interventionist workshop. Modelling new solutions to deal with contractions, and examining and testing new models in and after the second interventionist workshop; • Phase 3: Implementing new models as wetland management projects and involved project implementation. This included boundary crossing practices of staff in the three activity systems, reflection and re-view in a further five progress review/interventionist workshops, and a management meeting and seminar; • Phase 4: Reflecting on the expansive learning process, results, and consolidation of changed practices, through nine reflective interviews and field observations; • Phase 5: Morphogenic/stasis analysis of the organisational change and development catalysed via the expansive social learning process (or not). The research found that expansive social learning processes supported organisational learning and development for improved wetland management by: 1) strengthening the scope, depth, and sophistication of participant understanding; 2) expanding the ways staff interact and collaboratively work together; 3) democratising decision making; 4) improving social relations between staff, reducing power differentials, and creating stronger relationships; 5) enhancing participant reflexivity through deeper understanding of social structures and cultural systems, and changing them to support improved wetland and environmental practice of staff, and developing the organisational structures and processes to strengthen organisational learning and development; and 6) using the contradictions identified as generative mechanisms to stimulate and catalyse organisational learning and development for changed wetland/environmental management.
- Full Text:
Learning pathways for improving rehabilitation practices in the mining industry : two cases of coal mining and borrow pits
- Authors: Mphinyane, Andani
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Coal mines and mining -- Environmental aspects -- South Africa , Environmental education -- South Africa , Sustainable development -- South Africa , Coal miners -- Education (Continuing education) -- South Africa , Borrow pits -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1989 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013271
- Description: This research investigates cases of learning pathways for improving rehabilitation practices for key occupations in the mining industry. The study is set up as a partnership research programme between Rhodes University Environmental Learning Research Centre in South Africa, and the South African Qualification Authority, focussing on workplace learning and sustainability practices. This research programme seeks to understand the implications of the move to a knowledge society, with its emphasis on knowledge building over time, particularly in and for the environmental sector. The research was conducted as a qualitative case study that made use of semi-structured interviews, document analysis, visual photographs and observations as instruments of data gathering. Participants were sampled from two case studies, one in Limpopo province and the other one in Mpumalanga Province, who are directly involved in rehabilitation practices and related education and training programmes. The study makes use of career stories from the key occupations to provide insight into workplace learning pathways to inform education and training in the mining industry. A series of analytical statements captures some of the main findings on early education histories, career choices, learning pathway decisions and experiences related to sustainable practices and some complexities related to learning pathways. Environment and sustainability education is a cross-cutting issue in the NQF; and it pertains to the mining sector, especially to rehabilitation practices, which form the focus of this study as little is known about learning pathways associated with these sustainability practices. Insights from the study should enable the sector to enhance rehabilitation training for key occupations and at the same time encourage lifelong learning contributing towards sustainable development.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Mphinyane, Andani
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Coal mines and mining -- Environmental aspects -- South Africa , Environmental education -- South Africa , Sustainable development -- South Africa , Coal miners -- Education (Continuing education) -- South Africa , Borrow pits -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1989 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013271
- Description: This research investigates cases of learning pathways for improving rehabilitation practices for key occupations in the mining industry. The study is set up as a partnership research programme between Rhodes University Environmental Learning Research Centre in South Africa, and the South African Qualification Authority, focussing on workplace learning and sustainability practices. This research programme seeks to understand the implications of the move to a knowledge society, with its emphasis on knowledge building over time, particularly in and for the environmental sector. The research was conducted as a qualitative case study that made use of semi-structured interviews, document analysis, visual photographs and observations as instruments of data gathering. Participants were sampled from two case studies, one in Limpopo province and the other one in Mpumalanga Province, who are directly involved in rehabilitation practices and related education and training programmes. The study makes use of career stories from the key occupations to provide insight into workplace learning pathways to inform education and training in the mining industry. A series of analytical statements captures some of the main findings on early education histories, career choices, learning pathway decisions and experiences related to sustainable practices and some complexities related to learning pathways. Environment and sustainability education is a cross-cutting issue in the NQF; and it pertains to the mining sector, especially to rehabilitation practices, which form the focus of this study as little is known about learning pathways associated with these sustainability practices. Insights from the study should enable the sector to enhance rehabilitation training for key occupations and at the same time encourage lifelong learning contributing towards sustainable development.
- Full Text:
Learning pathways of key occupations relevant to sustainable development in Makana Municipality
- Authors: Mohanoe, Elma Nthabiseng
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Makana Municipality , Sustainable development -- South Africa -- Grahamstown , Municipal government -- South Africa -- Grahamstown , Environmental education -- South Africa -- Grahamstown , Sustainable development -- Study and teaching -- South Africa -- Grahamstown , Vocational qualifications -- South Africa -- Grahamstown , Organizational learning -- South Africa -- Grahamstown , Educational equalization -- South Africa -- Grahamstown
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1990 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013322
- Description: This study presents results to be contributed to the field of Environmental Education. It is a new arena for qualifications development and implementation in the South African Education and Training system. The study is located in the context of a joint research programme focusing on understanding issues of articulation and learning pathways development for sustainable development, established between the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) in partnership with Rhodes University, Environmental Learning Research Centre (ELRC). Phase 1 of the SAQA/ELRC research showed that researching workplace learning requires an understanding of learning pathways, if it is to be meaningful. It is for this reason that this research in phase 2 focuses specifically on learning pathways in the context of a local municipality in Makana. Using a case study research approach and qualitative data, this study investigated learning pathways for three occupational categories at different levels in the Makana Municipality: 1) key managerial occupations; 2) key supervisory occupations; and 3) key workers occupations relevant to sustainable development and how they are shaped and experienced. It also identified system and structural factors influencing articulation and access issues relevant to progress in learning pathways relevant to these key occupations. The study was designed using a case study research. Primarily, qualitative research techniques were employed to generate data, including observations, interviews and document analysis. The study used inductive, abductive and retroductive modes of inference to interpret and analyse data, using critical realist and systems perspectives. The findings on worker learning pathways show that there is a discrepancy between the Training Policy and the Environmental Training and Education Strategy of Makana Municipality. The issue of complexity in learning pathways and social structural factors such as inequality emerged as factors that strongly influenced learning pathways for workers. Learning pathways for workers involved in sustainable development practices hardly existed or simply did not exist. Interesting transitions associated with learning pathways such as from home, to work or no schooling in the case of the workers, showed a pattern of emergence. These showed that learning pathways are not accessible and equally available to everyone as can often erroneously be assumed. The findings on supervisor learning pathways show diverse complexities as well as related issues, when compared to the worker’s learning pathways. Issues such as overlapping of study and work emerge as influential to supervisor learning pathways. Lack of support is, however, an influencing factor, but in a different context compared to the workers, and mainly focuses on lack of bursaries, highlighting training policy issues. This aspect was found to also relate to lack of proper resources in order to enable them to learn and do their job better; an issue raised by the workers too. This challenge of lack of support in various forms posed a barrier to learning pathways. Findings related to the manager’s learning pathways show a noticeable gap between the workers, supervisors and managers. The manager’s generally have higher education qualifications related to sustainable development, and in certain cases managers have had exposure to international training related to sustainable development. Factors such as ample opportunities for learning, mentoring, association on professional bodies, and decision making powers influenced the manager’s learning pathways. It was also notable that while managers receive occupationally directed training, it is not necessarily sustainable development related. In theory, the results highlighted a need to understand systems as a whole and how their integration is important in influencing learning pathways. There were also underlying mechanisms and structures identified which needed to be unravelled and understood as these were found to influence learning pathways in this study. The study highlighted critical insights in understanding how learning pathways in a local municipality context (the case of Makana Municipality) are constructed by both systems and structural factors in the workplace, while also identifying ways in which agency of those engaged in learning for sustainable development in workplaces is enabled and /or constrained by such factors. It also showed the persistence of deep-seated inequalities of opportunity, especially for workers, to access and participate in sustainable development learning pathways.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Mohanoe, Elma Nthabiseng
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Makana Municipality , Sustainable development -- South Africa -- Grahamstown , Municipal government -- South Africa -- Grahamstown , Environmental education -- South Africa -- Grahamstown , Sustainable development -- Study and teaching -- South Africa -- Grahamstown , Vocational qualifications -- South Africa -- Grahamstown , Organizational learning -- South Africa -- Grahamstown , Educational equalization -- South Africa -- Grahamstown
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1990 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013322
- Description: This study presents results to be contributed to the field of Environmental Education. It is a new arena for qualifications development and implementation in the South African Education and Training system. The study is located in the context of a joint research programme focusing on understanding issues of articulation and learning pathways development for sustainable development, established between the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) in partnership with Rhodes University, Environmental Learning Research Centre (ELRC). Phase 1 of the SAQA/ELRC research showed that researching workplace learning requires an understanding of learning pathways, if it is to be meaningful. It is for this reason that this research in phase 2 focuses specifically on learning pathways in the context of a local municipality in Makana. Using a case study research approach and qualitative data, this study investigated learning pathways for three occupational categories at different levels in the Makana Municipality: 1) key managerial occupations; 2) key supervisory occupations; and 3) key workers occupations relevant to sustainable development and how they are shaped and experienced. It also identified system and structural factors influencing articulation and access issues relevant to progress in learning pathways relevant to these key occupations. The study was designed using a case study research. Primarily, qualitative research techniques were employed to generate data, including observations, interviews and document analysis. The study used inductive, abductive and retroductive modes of inference to interpret and analyse data, using critical realist and systems perspectives. The findings on worker learning pathways show that there is a discrepancy between the Training Policy and the Environmental Training and Education Strategy of Makana Municipality. The issue of complexity in learning pathways and social structural factors such as inequality emerged as factors that strongly influenced learning pathways for workers. Learning pathways for workers involved in sustainable development practices hardly existed or simply did not exist. Interesting transitions associated with learning pathways such as from home, to work or no schooling in the case of the workers, showed a pattern of emergence. These showed that learning pathways are not accessible and equally available to everyone as can often erroneously be assumed. The findings on supervisor learning pathways show diverse complexities as well as related issues, when compared to the worker’s learning pathways. Issues such as overlapping of study and work emerge as influential to supervisor learning pathways. Lack of support is, however, an influencing factor, but in a different context compared to the workers, and mainly focuses on lack of bursaries, highlighting training policy issues. This aspect was found to also relate to lack of proper resources in order to enable them to learn and do their job better; an issue raised by the workers too. This challenge of lack of support in various forms posed a barrier to learning pathways. Findings related to the manager’s learning pathways show a noticeable gap between the workers, supervisors and managers. The manager’s generally have higher education qualifications related to sustainable development, and in certain cases managers have had exposure to international training related to sustainable development. Factors such as ample opportunities for learning, mentoring, association on professional bodies, and decision making powers influenced the manager’s learning pathways. It was also notable that while managers receive occupationally directed training, it is not necessarily sustainable development related. In theory, the results highlighted a need to understand systems as a whole and how their integration is important in influencing learning pathways. There were also underlying mechanisms and structures identified which needed to be unravelled and understood as these were found to influence learning pathways in this study. The study highlighted critical insights in understanding how learning pathways in a local municipality context (the case of Makana Municipality) are constructed by both systems and structural factors in the workplace, while also identifying ways in which agency of those engaged in learning for sustainable development in workplaces is enabled and /or constrained by such factors. It also showed the persistence of deep-seated inequalities of opportunity, especially for workers, to access and participate in sustainable development learning pathways.
- Full Text:
Mobilising processes of abstraction, experiential learning and representation of traditional ecological knowledge in participatory monitoring of mangroves and fisheries : an approach towards enhancing social learning processes on the eastern coast of Tanzania
- Authors: Sabai, Daniel
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Traditional ecological knowledge , Environmental education -- Tanzania , Environmental education -- Study and teaching -- Tanzania , Coastal zone management -- Tanzania , Social learning -- Tanzania , Experiential learning -- Tanzania , Mangrove conservation -- Tanzania , Fishery management -- Tanzania
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1979 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013060
- Description: This study addresses a core problem that was uncovered in records from coastal management monitoring initiatives on the eastern coast of Tanzania associated with the application and use of coastal monitoring indicators developed by external development partners for the coastal zone. These records suggest that local communities, who are key actors in participatory monitoring of coastal and marine resources, face many challenges associated with adapting and applying the said frameworks of indicators and monitoring plans. These indicators tend to be scientifically abstracted and methodologically reified; given prevailing contextual and socio‐cultural realities amongst them. The research project addresses the following key research question: How can processes of abstraction, conceptualisation, and representation of TEK contribute to the development of coastal management indicators that are less reified, more contextually and culturally congruent, and which may potentially be used by resource users in the wider social learning process of detecting trends, threats, changes and conditions of mangrove and fisheries resources? In response to the contextual problem and the research question, the study employs processes of abstraction and experiential learning techniques to unlock knowledge that local communities have, as an input for underlabouring existing scientific indicators on the Eastern coast of Tanzania. The research is constituted as critical realist case study research, involving two communities on the eastern coast of Tanzania, namely the Moa and the Boma communities (in Mkinga coastal district). Overall, the study involved 37 participants in a series of interviews, focus group discussions, and experiential learning processes using visualised data, and an experiential learning intervention workshop, and follow‐ups over a period of 3 years. The study worked with mangroves and fisheries to provide focus to the case study research and to allow for in‐depth engagement with the assumptions and processes associated with indicators development and use. Through the above mentioned data generation processes, critical realist analysis, and experiential learning processes involving abstraction and representation of traditional ecological knowledge held by mangrove restorers and fishers in the study areas, the study uncovers possible challenges of adapting and applying scientific indicators in participatory monitoring of a mangrove ecosystem. Using ampliative modes of inference for data analysis (induction, abduction and retroduction) and a critical realist scientific explanatory framework known as DRRREI(C) (Resolution, Re‐description, Retrodiction, Elimination, Identification, & Correction) the study suggests a new approach that may lead to the development of a framework of indicators that are less reified, more congruent to users (coastal communities), and likely to attract a wider context‐based social learning which favours epistemological access between scientific institutions (universities inclusive), and local communities. It attempts to establish an interface between knowledge that scientific institutions produce and the potential knowledge that exists in local contexts (traditional ecological knowledge), and seeks to widen and improve knowledge sharing and experiential learning practices that may potentially benefit coastal and marine resources in the study area. As mentioned above, the knowledge and abstraction processes related to the indicators development focussed on the mangrove ecosystem and associated fisheries, as engaged in the two participating communities in the eastern coast of Tanzania. The specific findings are therefore limited by the case boundaries, but the methodological process could be replicated and used elsewhere. The study’s contributions are theoretical and methodological, but also social and practice‐centred. The study brings into view the need to consider the contextual relevance of adapted knowledge, the capacity or ability of beneficiaries to adapt and apply scientific models, frameworks or tools, and the potential of local knowledge as an input for enhancing or improving monitoring of mangroves and mangrove‐based fisheries. Finally, the study comes up with a framework of indicators which is regarded by the coastal communities involved in the study as being less reified, more contextually and culturally congruent, and which may potentially be used in detecting environmental trends, threats, changes and conditions of mangrove and fisheries resources, and attract wider social learning processes.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Sabai, Daniel
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Traditional ecological knowledge , Environmental education -- Tanzania , Environmental education -- Study and teaching -- Tanzania , Coastal zone management -- Tanzania , Social learning -- Tanzania , Experiential learning -- Tanzania , Mangrove conservation -- Tanzania , Fishery management -- Tanzania
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1979 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013060
- Description: This study addresses a core problem that was uncovered in records from coastal management monitoring initiatives on the eastern coast of Tanzania associated with the application and use of coastal monitoring indicators developed by external development partners for the coastal zone. These records suggest that local communities, who are key actors in participatory monitoring of coastal and marine resources, face many challenges associated with adapting and applying the said frameworks of indicators and monitoring plans. These indicators tend to be scientifically abstracted and methodologically reified; given prevailing contextual and socio‐cultural realities amongst them. The research project addresses the following key research question: How can processes of abstraction, conceptualisation, and representation of TEK contribute to the development of coastal management indicators that are less reified, more contextually and culturally congruent, and which may potentially be used by resource users in the wider social learning process of detecting trends, threats, changes and conditions of mangrove and fisheries resources? In response to the contextual problem and the research question, the study employs processes of abstraction and experiential learning techniques to unlock knowledge that local communities have, as an input for underlabouring existing scientific indicators on the Eastern coast of Tanzania. The research is constituted as critical realist case study research, involving two communities on the eastern coast of Tanzania, namely the Moa and the Boma communities (in Mkinga coastal district). Overall, the study involved 37 participants in a series of interviews, focus group discussions, and experiential learning processes using visualised data, and an experiential learning intervention workshop, and follow‐ups over a period of 3 years. The study worked with mangroves and fisheries to provide focus to the case study research and to allow for in‐depth engagement with the assumptions and processes associated with indicators development and use. Through the above mentioned data generation processes, critical realist analysis, and experiential learning processes involving abstraction and representation of traditional ecological knowledge held by mangrove restorers and fishers in the study areas, the study uncovers possible challenges of adapting and applying scientific indicators in participatory monitoring of a mangrove ecosystem. Using ampliative modes of inference for data analysis (induction, abduction and retroduction) and a critical realist scientific explanatory framework known as DRRREI(C) (Resolution, Re‐description, Retrodiction, Elimination, Identification, & Correction) the study suggests a new approach that may lead to the development of a framework of indicators that are less reified, more congruent to users (coastal communities), and likely to attract a wider context‐based social learning which favours epistemological access between scientific institutions (universities inclusive), and local communities. It attempts to establish an interface between knowledge that scientific institutions produce and the potential knowledge that exists in local contexts (traditional ecological knowledge), and seeks to widen and improve knowledge sharing and experiential learning practices that may potentially benefit coastal and marine resources in the study area. As mentioned above, the knowledge and abstraction processes related to the indicators development focussed on the mangrove ecosystem and associated fisheries, as engaged in the two participating communities in the eastern coast of Tanzania. The specific findings are therefore limited by the case boundaries, but the methodological process could be replicated and used elsewhere. The study’s contributions are theoretical and methodological, but also social and practice‐centred. The study brings into view the need to consider the contextual relevance of adapted knowledge, the capacity or ability of beneficiaries to adapt and apply scientific models, frameworks or tools, and the potential of local knowledge as an input for enhancing or improving monitoring of mangroves and mangrove‐based fisheries. Finally, the study comes up with a framework of indicators which is regarded by the coastal communities involved in the study as being less reified, more contextually and culturally congruent, and which may potentially be used in detecting environmental trends, threats, changes and conditions of mangrove and fisheries resources, and attract wider social learning processes.
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Social learning in community based natural resource management project (CBNRM) : a case study of Chipembere gardening project in Zimbabwe.
- Authors: Mukwambo, Robson
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Social learning -- Zimbabwe , Social learning -- Case studies , Vegetable gardening -- Zimbabwe , Economic development projects -- Zimbabwe
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:2014 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1016363
- Description: This investigation of social learning processes in the Chipembere gardening project was conducted in Rockvale village one in Sebakwe communal area in the Midlands province of Zimbabwe. In essence, the study sought to explore how the Chipembere gardening project as a community-based natural resource management initiative (CBNRM), was reflecting and supporting social learning processes of change. It also sought to enrich and deepen an organizational understanding of social learning and to generate ideas and draw recommendations that could be used to strengthen learning in other CBNRM projects. The research was undertaken as a qualitative case study with data generated through semi-structured interviews with individuals and groups. It also included an analysis of project documents and an extended period of participant observation on site and in the gardening activities. Data were indexed and coded for generating analytical memos that were used to extract and represent the scope of social learning interations within the developing project. The study found that within the Chipembere gardening project a wide range of learning interactions were significant in shaping the developing project. Furthermore, these interactions were earmarked as the major drivers of social learning processes within the project. The study concluded that the social learning interactions amongst the gardeners in the Chipembere community garden were instrumental in fostering change that enhanced community livelinhoods and wellbeing.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Mukwambo, Robson
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Social learning -- Zimbabwe , Social learning -- Case studies , Vegetable gardening -- Zimbabwe , Economic development projects -- Zimbabwe
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:2014 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1016363
- Description: This investigation of social learning processes in the Chipembere gardening project was conducted in Rockvale village one in Sebakwe communal area in the Midlands province of Zimbabwe. In essence, the study sought to explore how the Chipembere gardening project as a community-based natural resource management initiative (CBNRM), was reflecting and supporting social learning processes of change. It also sought to enrich and deepen an organizational understanding of social learning and to generate ideas and draw recommendations that could be used to strengthen learning in other CBNRM projects. The research was undertaken as a qualitative case study with data generated through semi-structured interviews with individuals and groups. It also included an analysis of project documents and an extended period of participant observation on site and in the gardening activities. Data were indexed and coded for generating analytical memos that were used to extract and represent the scope of social learning interations within the developing project. The study found that within the Chipembere gardening project a wide range of learning interactions were significant in shaping the developing project. Furthermore, these interactions were earmarked as the major drivers of social learning processes within the project. The study concluded that the social learning interactions amongst the gardeners in the Chipembere community garden were instrumental in fostering change that enhanced community livelinhoods and wellbeing.
- Full Text:
Environmental policy processes surrounding South Africa's plastic bags regulations : tensions, debates and responses in waste product regulation
- Authors: Nhamo, Godwell
- Date: 2013-06-07
- Subjects: Environmental policy -- South Africa Plastic bags -- Law and legislation -- South Africa Environmental protection -- South Africa Environmental law -- South Africa Waste products -- South Africa Refuse and refuse disposal -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1944 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008051
- Description: This study was conducted in South Africa. South Africa is the first country within the Southern African Development Community to have regulated plastic shopping bags waste through the imposition of both a standard on thickness and a levy. Given this scenario, the Plastic Bags Regulations present an illustrative case for researching complexity, uncertainty and controversies surrounding a new trend in environmental policy making, namely waste product regulation. The thesis focuses on understanding and investigating tensions, debates and responses emerging from the policy process as actors and actor-networks put not only the Plastic Bags Regulations asfocal actant (token) but also other actants and actant-networks as well. To this end, a research question that addressed environmental policies, tensions, debates and responses that informed the development of South Africa's Plastic Bags Regulations was spelt out. The research objectives included the need to: (I) analyse selected international environmental policy processes surrounding plastic shopping bags litter and waste regulation and how these influenced developments in South Africa; (2) identify actors, actants and actor/actant-networks that shaped and were being transformed by South Africa's Plastic Bags Regulations and explain the tensions, debates and responses arising in the policy processes; (3) identify environmental policy outputs and assess outcomes emerging from the formulation and implementation of South Africa's Plastic Bags Regulations; and (4) establish patterns in environmental policy process reforms around South Africa's Plastic Bags Regulations. The language of actors (human), actants (non-human) and actor/actant-networks brings to the fore the aspects of processes and relationships that exist around them. As such, insights from the actor/actant-network theory (AANT) were drawn upon to inform the research. AANT enquiry framework collapses binaries such as nature/society, art/science, structure/agency and global/local historically associated with a particular type of social theory. AANT also denies that purely technical, scientific or social relations are possible (the notion of quaSi-objects or token). Data sets were generated following' the Plastic Bags Regulations as token actant with time frames ranging from prior to, during and after the formulation of the regulations. Similarly, data analysis drew insights from AANT's four moments of translation namely problematisation, interessement, enrolment and mobilisation, with the intervention theory providing an evaluative perspective that complemented AANT. The findings were that after the promulgation of the first draft of the Plastic Bags Regulations in May 2000, tensions emerged around the nature of regulation (whether command and control - preferred by government or self regulation - preferred by industry and labour). In this regard the latter group raised concerns about jobs, income and equipment loss as well as the need to have a holistic approach to waste management rather than targeting a single product at a time whilst the former maintained that this would not be so. As such, education, awareness and stringent antilitter penalties were proposed by industry and labour as sustainable responses to the problem of plastic shopping bags waste rather than regulation. These debates continued and resulted in minor amendments to the original regulations as finalised by Government in May 2002. However, industry and labour continued lobbying government resulting in the conclusion of the Plastic Bags Agreement in September 2002 and the ultimate repulsion of the May 2002 regulations in May 2003. As revealed by this research, these responses led to broader social responses and further tensions as demand for plastic shopping bags went down by about 80% although an estimated 1000 jobs were lost and a number of companies lost equipment and business (with some closing down) following the implementation of the regulations. During implementation, debates emerged around the need to promote locally made carry facilities with two alternatives in sight namely: the Green Bag and the Biodegradable Plastic Bag. Debates also took place regarding enforcement of the new law resulting in the amendments of various pieces of legislation including the Environmental Conservation Act, Environmental Management Act and the Revenue Laws Act. Overall, a 15-year policy reform cycle and sub-cycles was determined. The research also established that the government considered the regulations a success and was already implementing simi lar initiatives to regulate other waste products, among them, used tyres, used oil and glass, confirming the trend towards waste product regulation in South Africa. From these research findings, a series of conceptual frameworks were drawn up to clarify the nature of tensions, debates and responses surrounding certain lead actors, actants and actorlactant-networks. Some of the conceptual frameworks that emerged around the actors and actor-networks include Organised Government, Organised Industry and Organised Labour. Conceptual frameworks that emerged around key actants and actant-networks include the Integrated Pollution and Waste Management, Plastic Bags Regulations as well as the discourses surrounding the Green bag and biodegradable plastic bags. The thesis concludes by reflecting on how the above and the grand actor/actant-network conceptual frameworks emerging from this research might be adopted with varying degrees of flexibility to research environmental and waste management policy processes in different waste product regulation set-ups. , KMBT_363 , Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in
- Full Text:
- Authors: Nhamo, Godwell
- Date: 2013-06-07
- Subjects: Environmental policy -- South Africa Plastic bags -- Law and legislation -- South Africa Environmental protection -- South Africa Environmental law -- South Africa Waste products -- South Africa Refuse and refuse disposal -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1944 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008051
- Description: This study was conducted in South Africa. South Africa is the first country within the Southern African Development Community to have regulated plastic shopping bags waste through the imposition of both a standard on thickness and a levy. Given this scenario, the Plastic Bags Regulations present an illustrative case for researching complexity, uncertainty and controversies surrounding a new trend in environmental policy making, namely waste product regulation. The thesis focuses on understanding and investigating tensions, debates and responses emerging from the policy process as actors and actor-networks put not only the Plastic Bags Regulations asfocal actant (token) but also other actants and actant-networks as well. To this end, a research question that addressed environmental policies, tensions, debates and responses that informed the development of South Africa's Plastic Bags Regulations was spelt out. The research objectives included the need to: (I) analyse selected international environmental policy processes surrounding plastic shopping bags litter and waste regulation and how these influenced developments in South Africa; (2) identify actors, actants and actor/actant-networks that shaped and were being transformed by South Africa's Plastic Bags Regulations and explain the tensions, debates and responses arising in the policy processes; (3) identify environmental policy outputs and assess outcomes emerging from the formulation and implementation of South Africa's Plastic Bags Regulations; and (4) establish patterns in environmental policy process reforms around South Africa's Plastic Bags Regulations. The language of actors (human), actants (non-human) and actor/actant-networks brings to the fore the aspects of processes and relationships that exist around them. As such, insights from the actor/actant-network theory (AANT) were drawn upon to inform the research. AANT enquiry framework collapses binaries such as nature/society, art/science, structure/agency and global/local historically associated with a particular type of social theory. AANT also denies that purely technical, scientific or social relations are possible (the notion of quaSi-objects or token). Data sets were generated following' the Plastic Bags Regulations as token actant with time frames ranging from prior to, during and after the formulation of the regulations. Similarly, data analysis drew insights from AANT's four moments of translation namely problematisation, interessement, enrolment and mobilisation, with the intervention theory providing an evaluative perspective that complemented AANT. The findings were that after the promulgation of the first draft of the Plastic Bags Regulations in May 2000, tensions emerged around the nature of regulation (whether command and control - preferred by government or self regulation - preferred by industry and labour). In this regard the latter group raised concerns about jobs, income and equipment loss as well as the need to have a holistic approach to waste management rather than targeting a single product at a time whilst the former maintained that this would not be so. As such, education, awareness and stringent antilitter penalties were proposed by industry and labour as sustainable responses to the problem of plastic shopping bags waste rather than regulation. These debates continued and resulted in minor amendments to the original regulations as finalised by Government in May 2002. However, industry and labour continued lobbying government resulting in the conclusion of the Plastic Bags Agreement in September 2002 and the ultimate repulsion of the May 2002 regulations in May 2003. As revealed by this research, these responses led to broader social responses and further tensions as demand for plastic shopping bags went down by about 80% although an estimated 1000 jobs were lost and a number of companies lost equipment and business (with some closing down) following the implementation of the regulations. During implementation, debates emerged around the need to promote locally made carry facilities with two alternatives in sight namely: the Green Bag and the Biodegradable Plastic Bag. Debates also took place regarding enforcement of the new law resulting in the amendments of various pieces of legislation including the Environmental Conservation Act, Environmental Management Act and the Revenue Laws Act. Overall, a 15-year policy reform cycle and sub-cycles was determined. The research also established that the government considered the regulations a success and was already implementing simi lar initiatives to regulate other waste products, among them, used tyres, used oil and glass, confirming the trend towards waste product regulation in South Africa. From these research findings, a series of conceptual frameworks were drawn up to clarify the nature of tensions, debates and responses surrounding certain lead actors, actants and actorlactant-networks. Some of the conceptual frameworks that emerged around the actors and actor-networks include Organised Government, Organised Industry and Organised Labour. Conceptual frameworks that emerged around key actants and actant-networks include the Integrated Pollution and Waste Management, Plastic Bags Regulations as well as the discourses surrounding the Green bag and biodegradable plastic bags. The thesis concludes by reflecting on how the above and the grand actor/actant-network conceptual frameworks emerging from this research might be adopted with varying degrees of flexibility to research environmental and waste management policy processes in different waste product regulation set-ups. , KMBT_363 , Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in
- Full Text:
Supporting environment and sustainability knowledge in the grade 10 life sciences curriculum and assessment policy context : a case study of the Fundisa for Change teacher education and development programme pilot project
- Authors: Songqwaru, Nonyameko Zintle
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: Fundisa for Change Teachers -- Training of -- South Africa Life sciences -- Study and teaching (Secondary) -- South Africa -- Case studies Environmental education -- South Africa -- Case studies Curriculum planning -- South Africa Curriculum-based assessment -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1907 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006842
- Description: In the context of yet another curriculum revision in South Africa, this study investigates how teachers can be supported to meet the environmental discourse requirements as outlined in the revised curriculum in the Life Sciences. The study takes place in the context of a National Case Study which has resulted in a development of a national network, curriculum framework and resources for teacher education, with specific focus on the integration of environment and sustainability in the South African teacher education system. The study intends to provide insights into what constitutes adequate professional support and assistance to teachers that enables them to understand and work with the environment and sustainability content knowledge requirements of the Life Sciences Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS). The study seeks to inform future curriculum implementation decisions and teacher education programmes. The study is designed as a qualitative case study inquiry that has used open-ended, individual and focus group interviews, direct field observation and document analysis to generate data. The study revealed that: * Teachers developed confidence from an in-depth analysis of the CAPS curriculum. * Teachers have content gaps in environment and sustainability knowledge and these can be addressed through professional development that emphasises rich subject knowledge. * Teachers are not familiar with teaching methods that can be used to teach environmental and sustainability content knowledge. * Teachers struggle to see the relationship between teaching and assessing. * Teachers do not have enough and adequate resources for teaching and learning. * Training given to teachers should be interactive to enable them to recontextualise training received in their work places. * Teacher training should go beyond content knowledge that teachers have to teach, but should also consider how teachers can teach and assess that knowledge. * It is important to have a strong framing for selection and sequencing of content knowledge and a relatively weak framing for pacing and hierarchical rules in teacher training workshops. * Professional development has the potential to lead to whole school development. The study recommends that: ** Recontextualisation should be grounded on interpreting the policy requirements ** Teacher pre- and in-service training should focus on developing teachers’ understanding of the foundational knowledge in the Life Sciences ** The links between Life Sciences pedagogy and environmental pedagogy should be made explicit. ** Good quality resources should be provided for teachers and they should be supported to use these appropriately. ** Teachers’ academic literacy needs to be developed. Further recommendations: * Further studies should be conducted that would look at how teachers can be supported to work with environment and sustainability content knowledge within other subjects or other content areas of Life Sciences. This could provide some insights in terms of looking at the patterns, similarities or differences between different cases. It would be valuable to trace the teachers who participated in this pilot to observe how they recontextualise the training in their classroom practices. There is no point in attending a course or training if it will not impact one’s practice. Some insights into classroom practices were gained through reflective interviews from the teachers who had taught the biodiversity content, but this was not observed in practice.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Songqwaru, Nonyameko Zintle
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: Fundisa for Change Teachers -- Training of -- South Africa Life sciences -- Study and teaching (Secondary) -- South Africa -- Case studies Environmental education -- South Africa -- Case studies Curriculum planning -- South Africa Curriculum-based assessment -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1907 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006842
- Description: In the context of yet another curriculum revision in South Africa, this study investigates how teachers can be supported to meet the environmental discourse requirements as outlined in the revised curriculum in the Life Sciences. The study takes place in the context of a National Case Study which has resulted in a development of a national network, curriculum framework and resources for teacher education, with specific focus on the integration of environment and sustainability in the South African teacher education system. The study intends to provide insights into what constitutes adequate professional support and assistance to teachers that enables them to understand and work with the environment and sustainability content knowledge requirements of the Life Sciences Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS). The study seeks to inform future curriculum implementation decisions and teacher education programmes. The study is designed as a qualitative case study inquiry that has used open-ended, individual and focus group interviews, direct field observation and document analysis to generate data. The study revealed that: * Teachers developed confidence from an in-depth analysis of the CAPS curriculum. * Teachers have content gaps in environment and sustainability knowledge and these can be addressed through professional development that emphasises rich subject knowledge. * Teachers are not familiar with teaching methods that can be used to teach environmental and sustainability content knowledge. * Teachers struggle to see the relationship between teaching and assessing. * Teachers do not have enough and adequate resources for teaching and learning. * Training given to teachers should be interactive to enable them to recontextualise training received in their work places. * Teacher training should go beyond content knowledge that teachers have to teach, but should also consider how teachers can teach and assess that knowledge. * It is important to have a strong framing for selection and sequencing of content knowledge and a relatively weak framing for pacing and hierarchical rules in teacher training workshops. * Professional development has the potential to lead to whole school development. The study recommends that: ** Recontextualisation should be grounded on interpreting the policy requirements ** Teacher pre- and in-service training should focus on developing teachers’ understanding of the foundational knowledge in the Life Sciences ** The links between Life Sciences pedagogy and environmental pedagogy should be made explicit. ** Good quality resources should be provided for teachers and they should be supported to use these appropriately. ** Teachers’ academic literacy needs to be developed. Further recommendations: * Further studies should be conducted that would look at how teachers can be supported to work with environment and sustainability content knowledge within other subjects or other content areas of Life Sciences. This could provide some insights in terms of looking at the patterns, similarities or differences between different cases. It would be valuable to trace the teachers who participated in this pilot to observe how they recontextualise the training in their classroom practices. There is no point in attending a course or training if it will not impact one’s practice. Some insights into classroom practices were gained through reflective interviews from the teachers who had taught the biodiversity content, but this was not observed in practice.
- Full Text:
The integration of natural resource management into the curriculum of rural under-resourced schools : a Bernsteinian analysis
- Authors: Nsubuga, Yvonne Nakalo
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: Conservation of natural resources -- Study and teaching -- South Africa Environmental education -- Curricula -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape Bernstein, Basil B Nature conservation -- Study and teaching
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:4762 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007157
- Description: This study was motivated by the need to improve curriculum relevance in poor rural schools through contextualised teaching and learning based on the management of local natural resources. It involved four schools which are located in the Ngqunshwa Local Municipality of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The study's aim was to provide insight into and better understanding of the curriculum implementation process regarding natural resource management (NRM) education in a poor rural education context. This was done by analysing the extent of NRM integration in pedagogic texts, activities and practices in the different fields which constitute the structure of the pedagogic system in this education sector. The study adopted an interpretivist approach to the analysis, which was based on indicators of the extent of NRM integration, and was informed by Bernstein's concepts of classification and curriculum recontextualisation, and his model of the structure of the pedagogic system. The items which were analysed included national and provincial Grade 10 Life Sciences curriculum documents, Grade 10 Life Sciences textbooks, in-service training workshops for Life Sciences teachers, and various school documents, activities and practices. The analysis also involved interviews with educators, and classroom observations of Grade 10 Life Sciences lessons. The results revealed a very high overall level of NRM integration in the Grade 10 Life Sciences curriculum documents produced at national and provincial levels. The overall level of NRM integration was also found to be very high in the Grade 10 Life Science textbooks that were analysed, but very low in the in-service teacher training workshops, and in the schools' documents, activities and practices, especially in the Grade 10 Life Sciences lessons, and in schools' end-of-year Grade 10 Life Sciences examination papers. The study makes a number of recommendations towards effective integration of NRM into the curriculum of Eastern Cape's rural poor schools which include more specific and explicit reference to NRM in the official Grade 10 Life Sciences curriculum documents, the provision of environmental education courses to district education staff and Grade 10 Life Sciences teachers, the training of teachers in the classroom use of textbooks and other educational materials, and regular monitoring of teachers' work. The study also exposes important knowledge gaps which need urgent research attention in order to enhance NRM education in the poor rural schools of the Eastern Cape. These include analysing power and control relationships between the various agencies and agents that are involved with curriculum implementation in this education sector, and conducting investigation into the creation of specialist NRM knowledge and into the quality of NRM knowledge that is transmitted as pedagogic discourse in schools. This study contributes to the fields of rural education and environmental education in South Africa, and to the growing interest in the study of curriculum from a sociology of education perspective in the context of the country’s post-apartheid curriculum reforms.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Nsubuga, Yvonne Nakalo
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: Conservation of natural resources -- Study and teaching -- South Africa Environmental education -- Curricula -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape Bernstein, Basil B Nature conservation -- Study and teaching
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:4762 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007157
- Description: This study was motivated by the need to improve curriculum relevance in poor rural schools through contextualised teaching and learning based on the management of local natural resources. It involved four schools which are located in the Ngqunshwa Local Municipality of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The study's aim was to provide insight into and better understanding of the curriculum implementation process regarding natural resource management (NRM) education in a poor rural education context. This was done by analysing the extent of NRM integration in pedagogic texts, activities and practices in the different fields which constitute the structure of the pedagogic system in this education sector. The study adopted an interpretivist approach to the analysis, which was based on indicators of the extent of NRM integration, and was informed by Bernstein's concepts of classification and curriculum recontextualisation, and his model of the structure of the pedagogic system. The items which were analysed included national and provincial Grade 10 Life Sciences curriculum documents, Grade 10 Life Sciences textbooks, in-service training workshops for Life Sciences teachers, and various school documents, activities and practices. The analysis also involved interviews with educators, and classroom observations of Grade 10 Life Sciences lessons. The results revealed a very high overall level of NRM integration in the Grade 10 Life Sciences curriculum documents produced at national and provincial levels. The overall level of NRM integration was also found to be very high in the Grade 10 Life Science textbooks that were analysed, but very low in the in-service teacher training workshops, and in the schools' documents, activities and practices, especially in the Grade 10 Life Sciences lessons, and in schools' end-of-year Grade 10 Life Sciences examination papers. The study makes a number of recommendations towards effective integration of NRM into the curriculum of Eastern Cape's rural poor schools which include more specific and explicit reference to NRM in the official Grade 10 Life Sciences curriculum documents, the provision of environmental education courses to district education staff and Grade 10 Life Sciences teachers, the training of teachers in the classroom use of textbooks and other educational materials, and regular monitoring of teachers' work. The study also exposes important knowledge gaps which need urgent research attention in order to enhance NRM education in the poor rural schools of the Eastern Cape. These include analysing power and control relationships between the various agencies and agents that are involved with curriculum implementation in this education sector, and conducting investigation into the creation of specialist NRM knowledge and into the quality of NRM knowledge that is transmitted as pedagogic discourse in schools. This study contributes to the fields of rural education and environmental education in South Africa, and to the growing interest in the study of curriculum from a sociology of education perspective in the context of the country’s post-apartheid curriculum reforms.
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A systems approach to mainstreaming environment and sustainability in universities : the case of Rhodes University, South Africa
- Authors: Togo, Muchaiteyi
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: Rhodes University Education, Higher -- South Africa Universities and colleges -- South Africa Universities and colleges -- Environmental aspects -- South Africa -- Case studies Environmental education -- South Africa -- Case studies Sustainable development -- South Africa -- Case studies
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:4768 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007175
- Description: This study is influenced by the objectives of the Mainstreaming Environment and Sustainability in African Universities Partnership which aims to enhance the quality and relevance of university education through implementation of Environmental Education and sustainability across university functions and operations. It contributes to Education for Sustainable Development through the development of tools to assess sustainability in higher education, investigating sustainability practices in universities and proposing strategies for improving mainstreaming of sustainability. It also contributes to systems approaches in mainstreaming contextual sustainability challenges in university functions and operations. The aim of the study was to investigate how universities can mainstream sustainability in their functions and operations in response to contextual sustainability challenges in a changing environment using a systems approach. The research was a case study of Rhodes University in South Africa, which is situated in the impoverished Eastern Cape Province. The study involved 12 teaching departments (representing all faculties at the university), four research units and institutes, five managements units, the Estates Division and the Student Representative Council. The theoretical framework of the study draws from a critical realist ontology and systems thinking epistemology. Systems thinking emphasises the interdependencies of phenomena, thus providing the methodology and tools for a systems view of relationships between education and the environmental context in which it is embedded. Critical realism was employed as an underlabourer to systems thinking as it provides for some of the dimensions absent in systems thinking including its depth ontology which facilitates isolating causal factors influencing empirical reality. It recognises that explanation of phenomena can be embedded in history and acknowledges the fallibility of knowledge. The data collection methods employed in the study include a sustainability assessment using a Unit-based Sustainability Assessment Tool developed as part of the study, interviews, content analyses and observations. Data analyses were performed through employing morphogenetic analysis, and inductive, abductive and retroductive modes of inference. The morphogenetic analysis of social transformation/reproduction was employed to trace the historical emergence of sustainability initiatives at Rhodes University. Induction facilitated reorganisation of the data into themes which particularly represent the main sustainability activities at Rhodes University. Abduction, through recontextualising data in a systems thinking framework, enabled further insights into the phenomena. In the study, it enabled use of systems lenses as a framework and led to identification of systemic issues affecting mainstreaming and later, the development of systems thinking approaches in mainstreaming sustainability. Retroduction enabled identification of causal mechanisms which influenced the emergence of sustainability initiatives at the university. The study established that the emergence of sustainability initiatives at Rhodes University followed the 1990 Talloires Declaration and paralleled international institutional developments in relation to environmental and sustainability challenges. Since then, sustainability initiatives have continuously been emerging in various operational dimensions of the university in line with emerging sustainability challenges which resulted in a morphogenetic cycle. The study revealed that Rhodes University has mainstreamed sustainability across the functions and operations of most of the departments/divisions/units forming part of the study, especially in functions like teaching, research, community engagement and operations. There were a few exceptions like the Human Resources Division and to an extent the Research Office/Management Division which are not yet considering sustainability in their operations. While most of the teaching departments had sustainability initiatives in teaching, research and community engagement, there was diversity in the dimension(s) of sustainable development that the departments addressed and this seemed to relate to the disciplinary content of their subjects. In the Estates Division sustainability initiatives included sustainable landscaping, campus environmental management, water and energy conservation initiatives, waste recycling, use of biodiesel, to mention a few. Students were also involved in various sustainability activities especially through voluntary community engagement initiatives. Sustainability initiatives at the university were also discovered to be embedded within and responding to sustainability challenges of the immediate university environment of Makana District. The study unearthed the causal mechanisms enabling and constraining mainstreaming activities at the university. These were found to be embedded in the history and context within which the university is operating, and other factors related to university structures and agency of lecturers, other employees and students. Examples of these factors are unsustainable patterns in society, policies and the need to redress past inequalities. The study noted the existence of systemic issues at the university which need to be addressed to enable and enhance the promotion of a systems approach to mainstreaming: notably, complexity owing to diversity of approaches employed in mainstreaming, the absence of clearly defined university sustainability goals, problems of institutional support and in some cases, disciplinary governing rules which do not leave room for mainstreaming sustainability. The study established the possibility of improving mainstreaming of sustainability through the adoption of more explicit systems approaches. It suggests use of systems models including the systems-environment model, the functions/structure model and the motion picture model in the process. It recommends making the goal of mainstreaming more upfront, developing a shared understanding of sustainability and mapping out/defining contextual sustainable development issues to grapple with. The study also recommends adopting a holistic approach in mainstreaming, making it a campus-wide initiative, involving all students and developing interdisciplinary curricula. It suggests setting up of supporting mechanisms to strengthen, extend and spearhead mainstreaming and enhancement of collaborative work in sustainable development issues.
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- Authors: Togo, Muchaiteyi
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: Rhodes University Education, Higher -- South Africa Universities and colleges -- South Africa Universities and colleges -- Environmental aspects -- South Africa -- Case studies Environmental education -- South Africa -- Case studies Sustainable development -- South Africa -- Case studies
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:4768 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007175
- Description: This study is influenced by the objectives of the Mainstreaming Environment and Sustainability in African Universities Partnership which aims to enhance the quality and relevance of university education through implementation of Environmental Education and sustainability across university functions and operations. It contributes to Education for Sustainable Development through the development of tools to assess sustainability in higher education, investigating sustainability practices in universities and proposing strategies for improving mainstreaming of sustainability. It also contributes to systems approaches in mainstreaming contextual sustainability challenges in university functions and operations. The aim of the study was to investigate how universities can mainstream sustainability in their functions and operations in response to contextual sustainability challenges in a changing environment using a systems approach. The research was a case study of Rhodes University in South Africa, which is situated in the impoverished Eastern Cape Province. The study involved 12 teaching departments (representing all faculties at the university), four research units and institutes, five managements units, the Estates Division and the Student Representative Council. The theoretical framework of the study draws from a critical realist ontology and systems thinking epistemology. Systems thinking emphasises the interdependencies of phenomena, thus providing the methodology and tools for a systems view of relationships between education and the environmental context in which it is embedded. Critical realism was employed as an underlabourer to systems thinking as it provides for some of the dimensions absent in systems thinking including its depth ontology which facilitates isolating causal factors influencing empirical reality. It recognises that explanation of phenomena can be embedded in history and acknowledges the fallibility of knowledge. The data collection methods employed in the study include a sustainability assessment using a Unit-based Sustainability Assessment Tool developed as part of the study, interviews, content analyses and observations. Data analyses were performed through employing morphogenetic analysis, and inductive, abductive and retroductive modes of inference. The morphogenetic analysis of social transformation/reproduction was employed to trace the historical emergence of sustainability initiatives at Rhodes University. Induction facilitated reorganisation of the data into themes which particularly represent the main sustainability activities at Rhodes University. Abduction, through recontextualising data in a systems thinking framework, enabled further insights into the phenomena. In the study, it enabled use of systems lenses as a framework and led to identification of systemic issues affecting mainstreaming and later, the development of systems thinking approaches in mainstreaming sustainability. Retroduction enabled identification of causal mechanisms which influenced the emergence of sustainability initiatives at the university. The study established that the emergence of sustainability initiatives at Rhodes University followed the 1990 Talloires Declaration and paralleled international institutional developments in relation to environmental and sustainability challenges. Since then, sustainability initiatives have continuously been emerging in various operational dimensions of the university in line with emerging sustainability challenges which resulted in a morphogenetic cycle. The study revealed that Rhodes University has mainstreamed sustainability across the functions and operations of most of the departments/divisions/units forming part of the study, especially in functions like teaching, research, community engagement and operations. There were a few exceptions like the Human Resources Division and to an extent the Research Office/Management Division which are not yet considering sustainability in their operations. While most of the teaching departments had sustainability initiatives in teaching, research and community engagement, there was diversity in the dimension(s) of sustainable development that the departments addressed and this seemed to relate to the disciplinary content of their subjects. In the Estates Division sustainability initiatives included sustainable landscaping, campus environmental management, water and energy conservation initiatives, waste recycling, use of biodiesel, to mention a few. Students were also involved in various sustainability activities especially through voluntary community engagement initiatives. Sustainability initiatives at the university were also discovered to be embedded within and responding to sustainability challenges of the immediate university environment of Makana District. The study unearthed the causal mechanisms enabling and constraining mainstreaming activities at the university. These were found to be embedded in the history and context within which the university is operating, and other factors related to university structures and agency of lecturers, other employees and students. Examples of these factors are unsustainable patterns in society, policies and the need to redress past inequalities. The study noted the existence of systemic issues at the university which need to be addressed to enable and enhance the promotion of a systems approach to mainstreaming: notably, complexity owing to diversity of approaches employed in mainstreaming, the absence of clearly defined university sustainability goals, problems of institutional support and in some cases, disciplinary governing rules which do not leave room for mainstreaming sustainability. The study established the possibility of improving mainstreaming of sustainability through the adoption of more explicit systems approaches. It suggests use of systems models including the systems-environment model, the functions/structure model and the motion picture model in the process. It recommends making the goal of mainstreaming more upfront, developing a shared understanding of sustainability and mapping out/defining contextual sustainable development issues to grapple with. The study also recommends adopting a holistic approach in mainstreaming, making it a campus-wide initiative, involving all students and developing interdisciplinary curricula. It suggests setting up of supporting mechanisms to strengthen, extend and spearhead mainstreaming and enhancement of collaborative work in sustainable development issues.
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Indigenous knowledges: a genealogy of representations and applications in developing contexts of environmental education and development in southern Africa
- Authors: Shava, Soul
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984 Education -- Africa, Southern Environmental education -- Africa, Southern Indigenous peoples -- Africa, Southern Ethnoscience -- Africa, Southern Knowledge, Theory of Genealogy (Philosophy) Medicinal plants -- Africa, Southern
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1885 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1005920
- Description: This study was developed around concerns about how indigenous knowledges have been represented and applied in environment and development education. The first phase of the study is a genealogical analysis after Michel Foucault. This probes representations and applications of plant-based indigenous knowledge in selected anthropological, botanical and environmental education texts in southern Africa. The emerging insights were deepened using a Social (Critical) Realism vantage point after Margaret Archer to shed light on agential issues in environmental education and development contexts. Here her morphogenetic/morphostatic analysis of social transformation or reproduction is used to trace changes in indigenous knowledge representations and applications over time (from the pre-colonial into the post-colonial era). The second phase uses the same perspectives and tools to extend the analysis of power/knowledge relationships into the interface of indigenous communities and modern institutions in two case study settings in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. This study reveals colonially-derived hegemonic processes of modern/Western scientific institutional representations/interpretations of the knowledges of indigenous communities. It also tracks a continuing trajectory of their dominating and prescriptive mediating control over local knowledges from the pre-colonial context through into the post-colonial period in southern Africa. The analysis reveals how this hegemony is sustained through the deployment of institutional strategies of representation that transform local knowledges into the disciplinary knowledge discourses of modern scientific institutions. These representational strategies therefore generate/reproduce and validate disciplinary discourses about the other, constructing disciplinary 'regimes of truth'. In this way modern institutions appropriate and displace indigenous/local knowledges, silence the voices of local communities and regulate individual and community agency within a continuing subjugation of indigenous knowledges. This study reveals how working within modern institutions and disciplinary knowledges in participative education and development interactions can serve to implicate indigenous researchers in these institutional hegemonic processes. The study also notes evidence of a continued resistance to hegemonic Western knowledge discourses as indigenous communities have sustained many knowledge practices alongside Western knowledge discourses. There is also evidence of a recent emergence of counter-hegemonic indigenous knowledge discourses in environmental education and development practices in southern Africa. It is noted that these have been contingent upon the changing political terrain in southern Africa as this has opened the way for alternative discourses to the dominant conventional Western knowledges in formal education and development contexts. The counterhegemonic discourses invert power/knowledge relations, decentre hegemonic discourses and reposition indigenous knowledges in formal education and development contexts. This study suggests the need to foreground indigenous knowledges as a process of knowledge decolonisation that gives contextual and epistemic relevance to environmental education and development processes. This calls for a need for new strategies to transform existing institutions by creating enabling spaces for the representational inclusion of indigenous knowledges in formal/conventional knowledge discourses and their application in social contexts. This opens up possibilities for plural knowledge representations and for their integrative and reciprocal co-engagement in situated contexts of environmental education and development in southern Africa.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Shava, Soul
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984 Education -- Africa, Southern Environmental education -- Africa, Southern Indigenous peoples -- Africa, Southern Ethnoscience -- Africa, Southern Knowledge, Theory of Genealogy (Philosophy) Medicinal plants -- Africa, Southern
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1885 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1005920
- Description: This study was developed around concerns about how indigenous knowledges have been represented and applied in environment and development education. The first phase of the study is a genealogical analysis after Michel Foucault. This probes representations and applications of plant-based indigenous knowledge in selected anthropological, botanical and environmental education texts in southern Africa. The emerging insights were deepened using a Social (Critical) Realism vantage point after Margaret Archer to shed light on agential issues in environmental education and development contexts. Here her morphogenetic/morphostatic analysis of social transformation or reproduction is used to trace changes in indigenous knowledge representations and applications over time (from the pre-colonial into the post-colonial era). The second phase uses the same perspectives and tools to extend the analysis of power/knowledge relationships into the interface of indigenous communities and modern institutions in two case study settings in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. This study reveals colonially-derived hegemonic processes of modern/Western scientific institutional representations/interpretations of the knowledges of indigenous communities. It also tracks a continuing trajectory of their dominating and prescriptive mediating control over local knowledges from the pre-colonial context through into the post-colonial period in southern Africa. The analysis reveals how this hegemony is sustained through the deployment of institutional strategies of representation that transform local knowledges into the disciplinary knowledge discourses of modern scientific institutions. These representational strategies therefore generate/reproduce and validate disciplinary discourses about the other, constructing disciplinary 'regimes of truth'. In this way modern institutions appropriate and displace indigenous/local knowledges, silence the voices of local communities and regulate individual and community agency within a continuing subjugation of indigenous knowledges. This study reveals how working within modern institutions and disciplinary knowledges in participative education and development interactions can serve to implicate indigenous researchers in these institutional hegemonic processes. The study also notes evidence of a continued resistance to hegemonic Western knowledge discourses as indigenous communities have sustained many knowledge practices alongside Western knowledge discourses. There is also evidence of a recent emergence of counter-hegemonic indigenous knowledge discourses in environmental education and development practices in southern Africa. It is noted that these have been contingent upon the changing political terrain in southern Africa as this has opened the way for alternative discourses to the dominant conventional Western knowledges in formal education and development contexts. The counterhegemonic discourses invert power/knowledge relations, decentre hegemonic discourses and reposition indigenous knowledges in formal education and development contexts. This study suggests the need to foreground indigenous knowledges as a process of knowledge decolonisation that gives contextual and epistemic relevance to environmental education and development processes. This calls for a need for new strategies to transform existing institutions by creating enabling spaces for the representational inclusion of indigenous knowledges in formal/conventional knowledge discourses and their application in social contexts. This opens up possibilities for plural knowledge representations and for their integrative and reciprocal co-engagement in situated contexts of environmental education and development in southern Africa.
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Investigating learning interactions influencing farmers' choices of cultivated food plants
- Authors: Pesanayi, Victor Tichaona
- Date: 2008
- Subjects: Sustainable development -- Africa Poverty -- Africa Environmental education -- Zimbabwe Food supply -- Environmental aspects -- Zimbabwe Farmers -- Education -- Zimbabwe Agriculture -- Study and teaching -- Zimbabwe Plants, cultivated -- Zimbabwe
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1587 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003469
- Description: The most critical hurdle on the path to sustainable development in Africa and the rest of the so-called Third World is poverty, commonly manifested as food security. A number of factors threaten food security in Zimbabwe, and these include climate change, an unstable socio-political environment and economic depression. The major debates and initiatives on sustainable development often fail to focus on the eradication of poverty in southern Africa. As a result, the trade liberalisation programmes signed by African countries in economic partnership agreements leave smallholder farmers vulnerable to the influx of hybrid seed and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which threaten local agro-biodiversity. This case study has shown that farmers select seed to plant for food as a result of various learning interactions they engage in, which include inter-generational knowledge transfer, farmer to farmer extension and external training by extension organisations and NGOs. A communities of practice (COPs) (Wenger, 2007) framework was used to gain an understanding of the learning interactions among farmers and their stakeholders in Nyanga and Marange COPs of small grain farmers in Manicaland Province, Zimbabwe, who have been working with Environment Africa (A regional NGO). A critical realist causal analysis was conducted to unravel the various causal factors influencing choice. A number of underlying structures and causal mechanisms were found to influence learning interactions and choices in these communities of practice, and they include ambivalence, which influences the changing domain and practice. Climate change, drought and risk were found to affect farmer practice, while power relations affect the community, its practice, domain, sponsorship and the learning interactions in the COPs. The political economy was also found to have a profound effect on the domain and practice. A space was found for the influence of capacity and knowledge sharing in participatory frameworks of the communities, implying that extension quality can be enhanced to promote locally adapted and diverse seed varieties for food security improvement. The study shows that a deeper understanding of the mechanisms influencing the context of teaching and learning provides a more refined insight into the learning interactions and choices of farmers. This, coupled with the social processes descriptors provided by Wildemeersch (2007) has given me a more detailed understanding of the nature of learning interactions influencing farmer choices.
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- Authors: Pesanayi, Victor Tichaona
- Date: 2008
- Subjects: Sustainable development -- Africa Poverty -- Africa Environmental education -- Zimbabwe Food supply -- Environmental aspects -- Zimbabwe Farmers -- Education -- Zimbabwe Agriculture -- Study and teaching -- Zimbabwe Plants, cultivated -- Zimbabwe
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:1587 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003469
- Description: The most critical hurdle on the path to sustainable development in Africa and the rest of the so-called Third World is poverty, commonly manifested as food security. A number of factors threaten food security in Zimbabwe, and these include climate change, an unstable socio-political environment and economic depression. The major debates and initiatives on sustainable development often fail to focus on the eradication of poverty in southern Africa. As a result, the trade liberalisation programmes signed by African countries in economic partnership agreements leave smallholder farmers vulnerable to the influx of hybrid seed and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which threaten local agro-biodiversity. This case study has shown that farmers select seed to plant for food as a result of various learning interactions they engage in, which include inter-generational knowledge transfer, farmer to farmer extension and external training by extension organisations and NGOs. A communities of practice (COPs) (Wenger, 2007) framework was used to gain an understanding of the learning interactions among farmers and their stakeholders in Nyanga and Marange COPs of small grain farmers in Manicaland Province, Zimbabwe, who have been working with Environment Africa (A regional NGO). A critical realist causal analysis was conducted to unravel the various causal factors influencing choice. A number of underlying structures and causal mechanisms were found to influence learning interactions and choices in these communities of practice, and they include ambivalence, which influences the changing domain and practice. Climate change, drought and risk were found to affect farmer practice, while power relations affect the community, its practice, domain, sponsorship and the learning interactions in the COPs. The political economy was also found to have a profound effect on the domain and practice. A space was found for the influence of capacity and knowledge sharing in participatory frameworks of the communities, implying that extension quality can be enhanced to promote locally adapted and diverse seed varieties for food security improvement. The study shows that a deeper understanding of the mechanisms influencing the context of teaching and learning provides a more refined insight into the learning interactions and choices of farmers. This, coupled with the social processes descriptors provided by Wildemeersch (2007) has given me a more detailed understanding of the nature of learning interactions influencing farmer choices.
- Full Text: