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A landscape view of emerging sustainability responses within VET

  • Authors: Ramsarup, Presha , McGrath, Simon , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2024
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/482604 , vital:78670 , https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2024.2320911
  • Description: With evidence of global climate change and ongoing ecological degradation, there is an urgent need to give more attention to sustainability within VET to ensure that VET does not remain complicit in reproducing the unjust and unsustainable trajectories of current economic and development pathways. At present, the VET literature does not adequately address these issues, hence the need for this special issue. In response, this paper offers a meta-reflective ‘landscape view’ of the sustainability within the VET ‘field of knowledge’ as it is emerging. Here, we use landscape review as a multi-dimensional, ‘outside-in’ view that provides a basis for understanding the broad context and helps to inform actionable next steps. This analysis we believe helps to highlight the key emerging priorities as well as what paths VET is taking on the journey to sustainability. The analysis shows that while some progress has been made in policy and practice related to the ‘greening’ of VET, much of the current response within VET to the environmental challenge reflects a minimalist reformist approach, characterised by ‘bolt-ons’ to existing institutional structures and curricula whilst leaving the fundamental beliefs in productivism, industrialisation and growth in place. Yet, as argued by researchers working on green economy, these beliefs are often complicit in co-creation of the environmental crisis.
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  • Date Issued: 2024

Bringing river health into being with citizen science: River commons co-learning and practice

  • Authors: Mickelsson, Martin , Thifhulufhelwi, Reuben , Mvulane, Paulose , Brownell, Faye , Russell, Charlene , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2024
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480383 , vital:78437 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-sajsci-v120-n9-a16
  • Description: Human health and well-being are directly and indirectly dependent on the life of river systems. Life in river systems is increasingly dependent on human actions that bring river health into being. Rather than describing river health as thing, problem or management challenge, this paper explores how river health is brought into being, through the citizen science practices of the Amanzi Ethu Nobuntu project in the upper uMngeni catchment in South Africa. The study draws on focal data produced by citizen science practitioners, as interpreted by them in collaboration with par tners in the catchment, and their reflections on the meaning(s) of river health and how it came into being. Drawing on the concepts of citizen science as a co-learning process, integrative views of One Health, and commoning as activity, the study offers a rich interpretation on how river health comes into being. The study shows the complex interrelated practices involved, including practices of resolving leaks and pollution challenges, social and community engagement, and the co-learning involved in citizen science practices itself. It offers insight into the socialecological and ethical-political ontological dynamics of river health commoning activity, thus offering alternatives to reductionist approaches to bringing river health into being, potentially also enriching tools for river health reporting.
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  • Date Issued: 2024

Engaged sustainability science and place-based transgressive learning in higher education

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Le Grange, Lesley , Mphepo, Gibson Y
  • Date: 2024
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480429 , vital:78441 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-sajsci-v120-n9-a22
  • Description: This article is located within current debates on engaged science and learning in higher education, with emphasis on types of learning emerging from engaged sustainability science, and associated contributions to debates on decoloniality in higher education. In par ticular, the ar ticle deliberates how a focus on sustainability science practised as place-based transgressive learning can add to debates on decoloniality in higher education. Through analysis of two case studies, we propose that co-engaged place-based research and learning emerges as a form of multi-loop, transgressive learning that offers possibilities for advancing understanding of decolonising learning processes, at least in those par ts of the higher education system where the learning and sustainability sciences meet. This is offered as an approach to deepen science engagement in contemporary African contexts.
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  • Date Issued: 2024

Interrelated transformative process dynamics in the face of resource nexus challenges an invitation towards cross case analysis

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Pahl-Wostl, Claudia , Meissner, Richard , Scholz, Geeske , Cockburn, Jessica J , Jalasi, Experencia M , Stuart-Hill, Sabine , Palmer, Carolyn G
  • Date: 2024
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/482626 , vital:78672 , https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2023.2297707
  • Description: The need for more attention to the social and human dimensions in global change sciences and natural resources management requires in-depth understandings of transformative approaches and processes. More inclusive and systemic approaches are needed that embrace complexity and support transformative learning, shifts in power relations, collective and relational agency and structural transformations for adaptive and innovative governance. Scientific understanding of how such change can be brought about is still limited. In this paper, which sets the scene for this Special Issue, we develop a conceptual framework for analyzing transformative processes across a range of diverse cases. Aspects of the conceptual framework are applied, tested and elaborated in three following papers in the Special Issue, deepening understanding of how transformative change in complex social-ecological systems may originate at nexus boundary zones such as that portrayed by the water-food-energy nexus. Specifically, the paper conceptually elaborates four iteratively related dynamics of transformative learning, transforming power relations, transformative agency and transforming structures which intersect in transformation processes. The perspectives offer tools for cross case analysis in the longer term, but also tools for supporting co-engaged, generative research processes.
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  • Date Issued: 2024

Oil, transport, water and food: a political-economy-ecology lens on VET in a climate changing world

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , McGrath, Simon , Ramsarup, Presha
  • Date: 2024
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/482648 , vital:78674 , https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820.2024.2320910
  • Description: In this paper, drawing on an extensive research project across three countries (VET Africa 4.0 Collective 2023), we produce an emerging argument that it is necessary to rethink and reframe VET logics and approaches in a warming future dominated by informality and mass unemployment. Currently, neither the formal VET college or workplace are adequately set up to provide the type(s) of VET that are in demand or needed for just transitioning and sustainable futures. We acknowledge the importance of political economy accounts in developing a richer understanding of VET, but suggest these are not sufficient for dealing with the existential and practical crisis of the climate emergency. We note that many scholars have sought to address this tension in the academic literature by adopting a political ecology account that reframes the theoretical and political challenge. This leads us to call for a political-economy-ecology account of VET. Although we acknowledge the limited nature of our approach here, we offer some thoughts for VET analysis with reflection on these theoretical issues applied to four cases studies from Uganda and South Africa of VET provisioning in oil, transport, water and food (which materially shape our cases).
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  • Date Issued: 2024

Sustainability science engagement and engaged sustainability science

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Limson, Janice L , Le Grange, Lesley
  • Date: 2024
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480629 , vital:78461 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-sajsci-v120-n9-a1
  • Description: The South African Science, Technology and Innovation Decadal Plan (2022-2032) shows a strong commitment to science engagement, with most references referring to the communication of science. This plan builds on the 2015 Department of Science and Innovation (DSI)'s Engaged Science Strategy, which notes that engaged science approaches are as yet underdeveloped in South Africa. The Decadal Plan explicitly relates science engagement to the need for more inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to science, with mention of greater inclusion of stakeholders in defining the needs and objectives for research, but without clear insight into how this is to be done or supported. More in-depth approaches and understanding may be needed to adequately bridge the sciencesociety gap, including in and through the educational sphere.
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  • Date Issued: 2024

E-learning as a mediating tool to support interactive professional learning of teacher educators

  • Authors: Van Staden, Wilma , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2023
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/482615 , vital:78671 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2023.2170423
  • Description: This paper examines the development of e-learning mediating tool(s) for an online professional development programme, focusing on sustainability and teacher education, implemented across 11 countries in the southern African region. The paper focuses on how we approached the design and development of an online mediating tool(s) for interactive, situated learning that seeks to support sustainability practices and engagement of teacher educators at a local level while learning together with others across national borders. Using cultural historical activity theory, we elaborate on our understanding of mediation and then focus on the design and the development of the e-learning mediating tool, which we describe as an expansive learning process in our research and practice community. Our main finding is that to establish an interactive learning environment for situated, transformative learning in teacher education settings requires a comprehensive complex process of collaborative learning supported by a range of e-learning mediation tools, that are complemented by on-site engagement and support in communities of practice. We conclude that the successful deployment and use of an e-learning mediating tool depends on interconnected learning systems that is supported by the development of digital literacy skills, continuous online support, and similar communication tools.
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  • Date Issued: 2023

Introducing VET Africa 4.0

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , McGrath, Simon
  • Date: 2023
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/434930 , vital:73117 , ISBN 978-1529224634 , https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/transitioning-vocational-education-and-training-in-africa
  • Description: This book is about vocational education and training (VET). It is concerned with how the current policy and practice orthodoxy is not working despite the efforts of educators and learners. It is driven by a realization that the futures for which VET is intended to prepare people are ever more precarious at the individual, societal and planetary levels. And it is motivated by a sense that while better futures are possible, VET is poorly positioned to respond to the new skilling needs these will require.
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  • Date Issued: 2023

Supporting social learning and knowledge management withing the ecological infrastructure for water security project

The Emancipatory Nature of Transformative Agency

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Thifhulufhelwi, Reuben , Chikunda, Charles , Mponwana, Maletje
  • Date: 2023
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436175 , vital:73232 , ISBN 9781009153799 , https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009153799
  • Description: Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) research has established an impressive body of scholarship that advances social understanding of human agency in the transformation of society, much of which is captured in contributions to this volume (cf. Hopwood (Chapter 15); Sannino (Chapter 2); Stetsenko (Chapter 3); Bal and Bird Bear (Chapter 8)). The main tenets of this work, building on the historical legacy of Vygotsky and Marx, affirm that humans are not passive recipients of external stimuli or influences but are active co-creators of the world (s) they inhabit. They are capable of using and producing cultural tools to take power over their own volitional action (s)(cf. Sannino, 2015, Chap-ter 2 of this volume; Hopwood and Gottshalk, 2017). Vygotsky’s major legacy in coming to understand transformative agency is that the cultural tools produced and used as mediational means are critical in the emergence of transformative agency (Sannino, 2015, 2020, Chapter 2 of this volume; Stetsenko, 2019; Hopwood, Chapter 15 of this volume) and thus in the transformation of human activity. As shown by Sannino (2015, 2020), such tools offer stimulus for volitional action that can break paralysis, especially when conflicts of motives are experienced.
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  • Date Issued: 2023

The Role of the University as Mediator in a Skills Ecosystem Approach to VET

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Openjuru, George , Zeelen, Jacques
  • Date: 2023
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/434907 , vital:73115 , ISBN 978-1529224634 , https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/transitioning-vocational-education-and-training-in-africa
  • Description: In this chapter, we focus particularly on the mediating role of the university, in close connection with vocational institutions and informal community actors, in developing an inclusive approach to vocational education and training (VET) through an expanded social ecosystem for skills model. Here we draw upon lessons learnt from the Alice and Gulu cases on communitybased approaches to establishing an expanded skills ecosystem approach to VET in Africa. The main ques-tion guiding this chapter relates to the possible mediating role of the university to enhance a regional expanded ecosystem for supporting quality vocational education that is also rele-vant to its context, including emergent possibilities to build skills and livelihoods linked to just transitions. Universities are not VET centres as conventionally understood, but they can contribute to VET in various ways. Most often, universities are identified as contributing to the qualifications and training of VET educators. In this chapter, we take a different angle and consider the role of engaged research and community engagement as two approaches that can contribute to the advancement of an expanded social ecosystem model with positive benefits for VET institutions. Drawing on insights gained in the earlier chapters of this book requires us to take into account several important realities as previously dis-cussed, as well as key ingredients for the development of a regional skills ecosystem of vocational education, as demon-strated by the two cases considered in this chapter.
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  • Date Issued: 2023

TVET SI: Evaluating Boundary Crossing Social Learning in Vocational Education and Training: A value creation approach

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Sisitka, Lawrence , Chakona, Gamuchirai , Matiwane, Mandilive L , Matambo, Chamu
  • Date: 2023
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/389925 , vital:68495 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/238540"
  • Description: This article focuses on the development and application of an evaluation model and approach for evaluating boundary crossing social learning in a Vocational Education and Training (VET) learning network in South Africa, with an emphasis on a Training of Trainers (ToT) course that helped to catalyse and strengthen this learning network via two iterations of the course over an eight-year period. The article shares how we adapted the value creation framework (VCF) of Wenger, Traynor and De Laat (2011; Wenger and Wenger-Traynor, 2020) in the evaluation of a VET Training of Trainers (ToT) programme and learning network that focussed on the uptake and circulation of rainwater harvesting and conservation (RWHandC) knowledge in a particular formal and informal VET context in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, where smallholder farmers were struggling to find water for producing food. The evaluated ToT course was catalytic in establishing a boundary crossing social learning network approach in a VET context that linked formal and informal VET (Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2016; Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2022; Pesanayi, 2019); hence we found it important to develop adequate tools for its evaluation. The focus of this article is to share how we developed an evaluation approach to this work. We share insights on the indicators developed for diff erent types of value created, and also insights gained into the use of this evaluation approach in a boundary crossing VET social learning project that took a ToT course as focus. In short, evaluation findings show that the boundary crossing ToT course off ers strong immediate, potential and applied value that can lead to realised and reframed value, especially if supported by ongoing learning network activities that follow the initial engagement in the boundary crossing ToT course. Th is leads, over time, to transformative value which is important in achieving the overall objective of such social learning, namely making knowledge more co-engaging, accessible and useful in the context where improved food security via better use of rainwater harvesting and conservation amongst smallholder farmers and household food producers is a necessary form of sustainable development. Orientation value, and enabling value were found to be vital for the emergence of other kinds of value. The evaluation model also allows for the lifting out of strategic value which points to wider uptake potential. All this creates the possibility for indicator development that can help inform iterative development of boundary crossing VET courses used to stimulate the co-construction of learning networks and ongoing social learning for sustainable development.
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  • Date Issued: 2023

Water, Transport, Oil and Food: A Political–Economy–Ecology Lens on Changing Conceptions of Work, Learning and Skills Development in Africa

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2023
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/434894 , vital:73114 , ISBN 978-1529224634 , https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/transitioning-vocational-education-and-training-in-africa
  • Description: Not enough has been said about the kinds of skills develop-ment that are needed if we are to stem the rising tides and impacts of political economies that have been driving what some call ‘fossil capital’(Malm, 2016). In this book, we are producing an emerging argument that it is necessary to also rethink and reframe vocational education and training (VET) logics and approaches if we are to fully consider the implica-tions of a warming future. This chapter provides the context of why this is such an urgent challenge and some thinking tools for understanding where we have come from and where we need to go. The prognosis is that it is now almost impossible to stop global warming below 2oC. The 2021 In-tergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is-sued a ‘red alert’for humanity, noting climate change to be one of the most severe challenges facing human societies for decades and potentially centuries to come. Scientists are warning that we have entered a new ‘geological epoch’, named the ‘Anthropocene’, in which human activity, especial-ly the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through fossil-based pollution, is transforming the stability of the earth system and creating knock on effects such as ice melt and methane release, which exacerbate the impacts of pollutants on the stability of the earth system.
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  • Date Issued: 2023

A laminated, emergentist view of skills ecosystems

  • Authors: Ramsarup, Presha , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , McGrath, Simon
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/370074 , vital:66295 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14767430.2022.2145768"
  • Description: In this paper we present a model of vocational education and training (VET) that can be used to guide decisions relating to VET in Africa today. This model takes the critique of the neoclassical, neoliberal model of VET as its starting point. Guided by Bhaskar's Critical Naturalism, we use immanent critique to consider the adequacy of proposed alternatives to the neoclassical approach, such as: the heterodox approach, which foregrounds explanations based on human capital and political economy; and Hodgson and Spours' social ecosystem model, which addresses some of the limitations of the heterodox account by including, social and ecosystem elements. Finally, we offer a version of the social ecosystem model that, according to our analysis, explains more of the empirical evidence than previous models. Our version of the social ecosystem model differs from earlier versions in terms of its explicit reference to the critical realist ideas of position- practices and emergence.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Alignment, scaling and resourcing of citizen-based water quality monitoring Initiatives

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Ward, Mike , Taylor, Jim , Vallabh, Priya , Madiba, Morakane , Graham, P Mark , Louw, Adrienne J , Brownell, Faye
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , report
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435729 , vital:73195 , ISBN 978-0-6392-0344-7 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/2854%20final.pdf
  • Description: This action-oriented research project seeks to address the policy-practice contradiction that exists between commit-ments and requirements for citizen engagement and in-volvement in Integrated Water Quality Management (IWQM) and a lack of sustainable support for scaling high quality Citi-zen-based Water Quality Monitoring (CBWQM) practices that exist in South Africa.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

AMANZI For Food

Digitalisation and Transformative Learning for Sustainable Futures in Rural Africa Leaving No One Behind

  • Authors: Shetye, Nyanta , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Albrecht, Eike , Durr, Sarah , Marx, Dirk , Chirambo, Dumisani , Metelerkamp, Luke , van Zyl-Bulitta, Verena
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435263 , vital:73143 , ISBN 9781928502241 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003274322-14/digitalisation-transformative-learning-sustainable-futures-rural-africa-niyanta-shetye-heila-lotz-sisitka-eike-albrecht-sarah-durr-dirk-marx-dumisani-chirambo-luke-metelerkamp-verena-van-zyl-bulitta
  • Description: This chapter assesses the use of Information and Telecommunication Technologies (ICTs) for social and community learning to achieve sustainable development in rural communities in Africa. It focuses on new and emerging trends in the cooperation between the African Union and European Union (AU–EU) and links two thematic areas; namely green transitions and digital transformations. The chapter highlights low-cost and effective digital learning solutions. It is based on a literature review and cases that provide insight into potential AU–EU cooperation and the “leave no one behind” agenda. The chapter argues that in addition to digital technology transfer, innovation and investments are needed in building a learning-centred support for green transitioning and digital cooperation. Hence, we focus on transformative learning opportunities and informal Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). In response to ICTs becoming a catalyst for such a transformation, we seek insights into how constructive AU–EU cooperation and co-learning can pave ways for societal transformations, particularly in rural communities.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Expansive Learning and Transformative Agency for Equity and Sustainability: Formative Interventions in Six Continents

  • Authors: Engeström, Yrjö , Bal, Aydin , Sannino, Annalisa , Morgado, Luciana P , de Gouveia Vilela, R A , Querol, Marco P , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Wei, Ge , Chikunda, Charles , Hopwood, Nick , Virkkunen, Jaakko , Mukute, Mutizwa
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , symposium
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436688 , vital:73293 , ISBN 978-3-030-99347-4 , https://repository.isls.org//handle/1/8974
  • Description: This double symposium brings together activity-theoretical formative intervention research conducted in six continents. The aim is to illuminate and examine the common threads, important differences, and new challenges of formative inter-vention studies to address “wicked problems” in different cul-tural, political, and economic contexts. Formative interven-tions facilitate expansive learning and systemic transfor-mation led by local stakeholders in organizations and social movements. The formative intervention methodology is based on the principles of double stimulation and ascending from the abstract to the concrete. Its most well-known appli-cation is the Change Laboratory method. Formative interven-tions generate and support expansive learning and trans-formative agency. The current global crises of climate change, poverty and deepening inequalities are giving rise to what is called fourth generation activity theory for tackling fateful challenges by building heterogenous multiactivity coa-litions. The symposium will present the theoretical and peda-gogical challenges and possibilities in Change Laboratories and other formative interventions to develop just and sus-tainable solutions to global crises.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Riverhood: political ecologies of socionature commoning and translocal struggles for water justice

Taking the moral authorship of children and youth seriously in times of the Anthropocene

  • Authors: Sporre, Karin , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Osbeck, Christina
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/482659 , vital:78675 , https://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2021.2024991
  • Description: In this article we argue for the need to take the moral voices of children and youth seriously particularly in times of the Anthropocene. Drawing on theories in ethics by John Wall, moral development according to Mark B. Tappan, and education in line with the works by Vygotsky, we construct a conceptual framework where the notions ‘narrative,’ ‘moral authorship’ and ‘free will’ can open new creative understandings of human ethical competence; a competence based in a relational, contextual and societal-cultural understanding of human existence. The use of our framework is illustrated in interpretations of empirical research with children demonstrating concerns of theirs in relation to climate change. The article concludes with reflections on the kind of education that can be inspired by this framework and the taking of children’s voices seriously, as well as pointing to challenges also to the grown-up world.
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  • Date Issued: 2022
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