Think Piece. Situating Education for Sustainable Development in southern African philosophy and contexts of social-ecological change to enhance curriculum relevance and the common good
- Pesanayi, Tichaona V, O'Donoghue, Rob B, Shava, Soul
- Authors: Pesanayi, Tichaona V , O'Donoghue, Rob B , Shava, Soul
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/388105 , vital:68307 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/187217"
- Description: The study opens with a brief review of how education in colonial southern Africa was steered by a succession of externally framed abstractions that have been implemented within the prevailing hegemony of western modernisation that dominated and marginalised indigenous cultures. It probes how, within an expanding functionalist framework, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been similarly constituted as a proposition for implementation. Here the supposition is that implementing ESD as an intervention will transform education into an inclusive and collaborative pedagogy that will shape competences for participants to transform society towards a sustainable future. In an effort to explore the possibility of making a break from a succession of education imperatives functioning as ‘salvation narratives’ to put things right in Africa, the study explores ESD from a more situated and emergent vantage point within African landscapes, philosophy and cultural practices. This requires a shift from a view of ESD as a perspective to be brought in and enacted to foster change, to ESD as a situated engagement in education as a process where relevance is deliberated and brought out in quality education with high order skills. This perspective exemplifies working with a more fully situated framing of deliberative social learning for the common good. It is explored here to contemplate how socio-cultural processes of deliberative ethics and co-engaged reflexive processes of learning-led change might emerge. Here, also, using a capabilities approach might provide useful starting points for ESD as an expansive process of transformative social learning.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Pesanayi, Tichaona V , O'Donoghue, Rob B , Shava, Soul
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/388105 , vital:68307 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/187217"
- Description: The study opens with a brief review of how education in colonial southern Africa was steered by a succession of externally framed abstractions that have been implemented within the prevailing hegemony of western modernisation that dominated and marginalised indigenous cultures. It probes how, within an expanding functionalist framework, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been similarly constituted as a proposition for implementation. Here the supposition is that implementing ESD as an intervention will transform education into an inclusive and collaborative pedagogy that will shape competences for participants to transform society towards a sustainable future. In an effort to explore the possibility of making a break from a succession of education imperatives functioning as ‘salvation narratives’ to put things right in Africa, the study explores ESD from a more situated and emergent vantage point within African landscapes, philosophy and cultural practices. This requires a shift from a view of ESD as a perspective to be brought in and enacted to foster change, to ESD as a situated engagement in education as a process where relevance is deliberated and brought out in quality education with high order skills. This perspective exemplifies working with a more fully situated framing of deliberative social learning for the common good. It is explored here to contemplate how socio-cultural processes of deliberative ethics and co-engaged reflexive processes of learning-led change might emerge. Here, also, using a capabilities approach might provide useful starting points for ESD as an expansive process of transformative social learning.
- Full Text:
Teaching and Learning of ‘Water for Agriculture’in Primary Schools in Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe
- Pesanayi, Tichaona V, Mashozhera, Farasten, Khitsane, Lintle
- Authors: Pesanayi, Tichaona V , Mashozhera, Farasten , Khitsane, Lintle
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/387289 , vital:68222 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/152741"
- Description: Teaching youths about the subject of water for agriculture is vital in southern Africa where climate adaptation is imperative. Fresh water is a critical natural resource experiencing dangerous scarcity globally, with climate change and variability being key drivers. Agriculture consumes most of the allocated water in most of the southern African countries, so this sector needs particular water harvesting and conservation education. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported that 93% of cultivated land in southern Africa was rain-fed at the beginning of the 21st century. Drought hinders effective agricultural practices in poor-rainfall areas and is a common feature in most southern African countries. Increasingly frequent drought events affect Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe chronically due to climate variability and change. These three countries have school curricula that carry agricultural and sustainability learning to varying extents. Agriculture is taught as a science subject, and tends to be inclined towards normative technicist approaches at the expense of traditional and innovative sustainability practices. This omission in curriculum development and teaching may miss the opportunity to learn from lessons offered by these traditional and innovative systems that have demonstrated resilience to climate variability and change. This paper explores the opportunities and enablers of sustainability learning and relevance in the primary school agriculture curricula of these three countries. The paper argues for inclusion of sustainable agricultural water learning as an act of educational quality and relevance that reflects 21st century socio-ecological, agro-climate and socioeconomic challenges in southern Africa.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Pesanayi, Tichaona V , Mashozhera, Farasten , Khitsane, Lintle
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/387289 , vital:68222 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/152741"
- Description: Teaching youths about the subject of water for agriculture is vital in southern Africa where climate adaptation is imperative. Fresh water is a critical natural resource experiencing dangerous scarcity globally, with climate change and variability being key drivers. Agriculture consumes most of the allocated water in most of the southern African countries, so this sector needs particular water harvesting and conservation education. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported that 93% of cultivated land in southern Africa was rain-fed at the beginning of the 21st century. Drought hinders effective agricultural practices in poor-rainfall areas and is a common feature in most southern African countries. Increasingly frequent drought events affect Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe chronically due to climate variability and change. These three countries have school curricula that carry agricultural and sustainability learning to varying extents. Agriculture is taught as a science subject, and tends to be inclined towards normative technicist approaches at the expense of traditional and innovative sustainability practices. This omission in curriculum development and teaching may miss the opportunity to learn from lessons offered by these traditional and innovative systems that have demonstrated resilience to climate variability and change. This paper explores the opportunities and enablers of sustainability learning and relevance in the primary school agriculture curricula of these three countries. The paper argues for inclusion of sustainable agricultural water learning as an act of educational quality and relevance that reflects 21st century socio-ecological, agro-climate and socioeconomic challenges in southern Africa.
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Contextualising Curriculum Design and Recontextualising Its Implementation: The Case of Climate Change Education for Southern African Transfrontier Conservation Area Practitioners
- Mukute, Mutizwa, Pesanayi, Tichaona V
- Authors: Mukute, Mutizwa , Pesanayi, Tichaona V
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/387173 , vital:68212 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/121965"
- Description: This paper discusses how the climate change education needs of park managers, ecologists, and community development officers in Southern African Development Community (SADC) Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) were established through contextual profiling. It subsequently analyses how a curriculum that was designed in response to a contextual profiling process was recontextualised during implementation by the SADC Regional Environmental Education Programme (REEP), with support from German Federal Enterprise for International Cooperation (GIZ). The paper’s purpose is to trace the trajectory of contextualised curriculum development and implementation with a view to identifying how the twin concepts of contextual profiling and recontextualisation were utilised and lessons were learnt. The paper has potential value for educators/trainers interested in increasing the relevance of protected area workplace learning and its congruence to learners’ realities.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Mukute, Mutizwa , Pesanayi, Tichaona V
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/387173 , vital:68212 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/121965"
- Description: This paper discusses how the climate change education needs of park managers, ecologists, and community development officers in Southern African Development Community (SADC) Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) were established through contextual profiling. It subsequently analyses how a curriculum that was designed in response to a contextual profiling process was recontextualised during implementation by the SADC Regional Environmental Education Programme (REEP), with support from German Federal Enterprise for International Cooperation (GIZ). The paper’s purpose is to trace the trajectory of contextualised curriculum development and implementation with a view to identifying how the twin concepts of contextual profiling and recontextualisation were utilised and lessons were learnt. The paper has potential value for educators/trainers interested in increasing the relevance of protected area workplace learning and its congruence to learners’ realities.
- Full Text:
Sigtuna think piece 6: A case of exploring learning interactions in rural farming communities of practice in Manicaland, Zimbabwe
- Authors: Pesanayi, Tichaona V
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/386427 , vital:68140 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122802"
- Description: Food insecurity is one of the major threats to sustainable development in Africa, and particularly southern Africa. Climate change is increasingly having negative impacts on food production, further increasing the vulnerability of resource-poor communities. This paper outlines a research study conducted in two Zimbabwean smallholder communities of practice, with the aim of understanding learning interactions taking place within the community of practice that influence its choice of cultivated food plants. This would hopefully inform capability-centred teaching and learning. The study was conducted in the context of vulnerability to environment risk, socio-political pressures and a market-oriented agro-based economy in recession. Various causal mechanisms influencing plant-food choice were identified using critical realist ontological analysis. These included mixed messages from external influences in conflict with local knowledge due to power knowledge relationships. A number of learning interactions were found to be important in promoting the adaptive capacity of the farmers to chronic drought, which included inter-generational knowledge sharing; farmer to farmer exchange and reflective dialogue; experiential learning; farmers ‘passing on’ part of their harvests to other farmers; farming communities learning from risk and responding to risk; and learning from trying things out. The implications for capability-centred social learning processes were that it is important to understand the causal mechanisms that influence choices; and to confront tensions, while reducing ambivalence. A focus on more sustainable alternatives, feasible and practical for farmers, was recommended. These findings, in the context of one case study, create research questions to be examined in other case contexts in environmental education research focusing on climate change learning and adaptation.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Pesanayi, Tichaona V
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/386427 , vital:68140 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122802"
- Description: Food insecurity is one of the major threats to sustainable development in Africa, and particularly southern Africa. Climate change is increasingly having negative impacts on food production, further increasing the vulnerability of resource-poor communities. This paper outlines a research study conducted in two Zimbabwean smallholder communities of practice, with the aim of understanding learning interactions taking place within the community of practice that influence its choice of cultivated food plants. This would hopefully inform capability-centred teaching and learning. The study was conducted in the context of vulnerability to environment risk, socio-political pressures and a market-oriented agro-based economy in recession. Various causal mechanisms influencing plant-food choice were identified using critical realist ontological analysis. These included mixed messages from external influences in conflict with local knowledge due to power knowledge relationships. A number of learning interactions were found to be important in promoting the adaptive capacity of the farmers to chronic drought, which included inter-generational knowledge sharing; farmer to farmer exchange and reflective dialogue; experiential learning; farmers ‘passing on’ part of their harvests to other farmers; farming communities learning from risk and responding to risk; and learning from trying things out. The implications for capability-centred social learning processes were that it is important to understand the causal mechanisms that influence choices; and to confront tensions, while reducing ambivalence. A focus on more sustainable alternatives, feasible and practical for farmers, was recommended. These findings, in the context of one case study, create research questions to be examined in other case contexts in environmental education research focusing on climate change learning and adaptation.
- Full Text:
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