Transdisciplinary curriculum design for sustainability transitions: A reflective dialogue
- Authors: Olvitt, Lausanne L , Davies, Megan , Ebrahim, A’ishah I , Cockburn, Jessica J
- Date: 2024
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480673 , vital:78465 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-sajsci-v120-n9-a23
- Description: Inter- and transdisciplinary curricula can potentially develop an integrated understanding of an increasingly interconnected, complex world and develop students' agency, empathy, creativity and critical thinking skills. Within the South African qualification landscape, the Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip) is identified as a multior interdisciplinary qualification that allows working professionals 'to undertake advanced reflection and development by means of a systematic survey of current thinking, practice and research methods in an area of specialisation'. In this paper, four academics reflexively share their experiences of (re)developing and piloting transdisciplinary curricula for the PGDip in Sustainable Development (at Stellenbosch University) and the PGDip in Sustainability Learning (at Rhodes University). Reflections centre around the rationale, context and emergence of the two programmes, their structure and intended learning outcomes, and principles guiding the overall curriculum design. We highlight the appropriateness of transdisciplinary approaches to curricula focused on the sustainability field, and it distils three broad features of the two PGDip programmes that seem important - even necessary - for developing students' competencies as sustainability practitioners. These are ontological groundedness, epistemological openness and ethical attentiveness.
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- Date Issued: 2024
What have we been thinking about? Higher education as a knowledge field in the SAJS
- Authors: Boughey, Chrissie
- Date: 2024
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480795 , vital:78477 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-sajsci-v120-nsi1-a16
- Description: This article reviews work published in the South African Journal of Science (SAJS) over the past 10 years. The aim is to explore the interests of contributors who mostly are not experts in higher education but whose disciplinary backgrounds and experiences of universities lead them to research, think and write about higher education. The article begins with an outline of changes in higher education globally and in South Africa before moving on to a review of work published by the SAJS, identified as the result of a content analysis.
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- Date Issued: 2024
The rise and fall of dissolved phosphate in South African rivers
- Authors: Griffin, Neil J
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480651 , vital:78463 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC-b46cc7319
- Description: Eutrophication of water resources following nutrient loading is a global threat to water quality, and has been found to be one of the major threats to water quality in South Africa. Eutrophication is largescale autotroph growth following nutrient enrichment and has several consequences, including loss of biodiversity, oxygen depletion, taste/odour generation and algal toxin production. Phosphate enrichment is often (but not always) the cause of freshwater eutrophication, and limitation of phosphate is commonly used as a means of controlling eutrophication. This study reports on a survey of trends in nutrient levels in South African freshwater resources. The research reported on here shows a significant decrease in dissolved phosphate levels in recent years, following a long period during which phosphate levels had been increasing with time. While changes in inorganic nitrogen were found, these changes did not match those in phosphate levels. Several potential causes of these changes were assessed, and it is concluded that no one cause can explain the changes observed. While the decrease in freshwater phosphate levels bodes well for water quality management, internal phosphorus cycling and other mechanisms are likely to mask the short-term impact of phosphate decreases.
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- Date Issued: 2017