Rhodes University EE and Sustainability Unit
- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Schudel, Ingrid J
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Schudel, Ingrid J
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/294423 , vital:57220 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1177/097340820700100127"
- Description: In the early 1990s, in response to the emphasis laid on environment and development issues by the new South African Constitution, Rhodes University undertook several initiatives such as establishing the first Chair of Environmental Education (EE) in Africa. Another important initiative was the introduction of an open-entry participatory course for environmental educators. Owing to its flexible format and practice-based methodology, the course gained rapid popularity, necessitating the setting up of a Service Centre to help meet the increased demand. The Chair and the Service Centre have been providing a range of short courses in environment and sustainability education to professionals, and are today widely known as the Rhodes University Environmental Education and Sustainability Unit (RUEESU). The Unit offers PhD and Masters level programmes in EE, encourages meaningful research in key thematic areas, and is actively involved in publishing, and policy transformation. It also endeavours to define the role of Universities in enabling sustainability education.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Schudel, Ingrid J
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/294423 , vital:57220 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1177/097340820700100127"
- Description: In the early 1990s, in response to the emphasis laid on environment and development issues by the new South African Constitution, Rhodes University undertook several initiatives such as establishing the first Chair of Environmental Education (EE) in Africa. Another important initiative was the introduction of an open-entry participatory course for environmental educators. Owing to its flexible format and practice-based methodology, the course gained rapid popularity, necessitating the setting up of a Service Centre to help meet the increased demand. The Chair and the Service Centre have been providing a range of short courses in environment and sustainability education to professionals, and are today widely known as the Rhodes University Environmental Education and Sustainability Unit (RUEESU). The Unit offers PhD and Masters level programmes in EE, encourages meaningful research in key thematic areas, and is actively involved in publishing, and policy transformation. It also endeavours to define the role of Universities in enabling sustainability education.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
Think Piece : an opening dialogue with Think Pieces and feature articles on learning in a changing world in this journal
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: article , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59602 , vital:27630 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122734
- Description: From Conclusion:This opening Think Piece invites you into such a dialogue, with this journal, its words and flows of meaning, and with the World Environmental Education Congress, its words and flows of meaning. Dialogue, as explained by Bohm, and as illustrated in the thought experiments in this paper, is a process of creatively and experimentally seeking out meaning and coherence through listening, and through deeper explorations of the tacit, implicate order. It is also a free process, where you as individual are invited to seek out the relations between your thoughts and the collective. Welcome to the process.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: article , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59602 , vital:27630 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122734
- Description: From Conclusion:This opening Think Piece invites you into such a dialogue, with this journal, its words and flows of meaning, and with the World Environmental Education Congress, its words and flows of meaning. Dialogue, as explained by Bohm, and as illustrated in the thought experiments in this paper, is a process of creatively and experimentally seeking out meaning and coherence through listening, and through deeper explorations of the tacit, implicate order. It is also a free process, where you as individual are invited to seek out the relations between your thoughts and the collective. Welcome to the process.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
Translation processes in the design of an education for sustainable development innovations course for universities in Africa
- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Lupele, Justin, Ogbuigwe, Akpezi
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Lupele, Justin , Ogbuigwe, Akpezi
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/127213 , vital:35978 , https://10.1080/02607470701259440
- Description: This paper traces the translation processes associated with the mobilization of resources and human agency in the development of a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Innovations Course for universities in Africa. University teachers are often neglected in teacher education initiatives. There are few formal professional development opportunities available for university teachers given the traditionally established hierarchy in the higher education sector as university teachers are normally the ones offering professional development to others. The paper explores how a participatory, deliberative translation process has served to provide professional development and professional exchange opportunities for university teachers which are non‐traditional and responsive to diversity, history, context and risk. The emergence of the modern African university is essentially a post‐independence (post‐1960s) phenomenon, with a few earlier African universities being colonially structured, controlled and inspired. Through a short historical overview, we introduce the African university landscape and some of its contemporary contextual and educational challenges. We then describe the process of deliberation that took place amongst university teachers from 23 African countries to initiate and establish the ESD Innovations Course. The paper concludes by arguing for open and participatory approaches in ESD teacher education course design, if we are to support university teachers (including teacher educators) to engage in mainstreaming environment and sustainability questions in higher education. The paper draws on the translation model provided by Latour in his actor network theory to describe and explain the deliberative translation process in the UNEP ESD Innovations Course. In doing this, it illuminates the possibilities of such a deliberative translation process for university teacher education. It also points to limitations encountered in applying this framework to this analysis, opening new vantage points for research of this nature in teacher education.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Lupele, Justin , Ogbuigwe, Akpezi
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/127213 , vital:35978 , https://10.1080/02607470701259440
- Description: This paper traces the translation processes associated with the mobilization of resources and human agency in the development of a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Innovations Course for universities in Africa. University teachers are often neglected in teacher education initiatives. There are few formal professional development opportunities available for university teachers given the traditionally established hierarchy in the higher education sector as university teachers are normally the ones offering professional development to others. The paper explores how a participatory, deliberative translation process has served to provide professional development and professional exchange opportunities for university teachers which are non‐traditional and responsive to diversity, history, context and risk. The emergence of the modern African university is essentially a post‐independence (post‐1960s) phenomenon, with a few earlier African universities being colonially structured, controlled and inspired. Through a short historical overview, we introduce the African university landscape and some of its contemporary contextual and educational challenges. We then describe the process of deliberation that took place amongst university teachers from 23 African countries to initiate and establish the ESD Innovations Course. The paper concludes by arguing for open and participatory approaches in ESD teacher education course design, if we are to support university teachers (including teacher educators) to engage in mainstreaming environment and sustainability questions in higher education. The paper draws on the translation model provided by Latour in his actor network theory to describe and explain the deliberative translation process in the UNEP ESD Innovations Course. In doing this, it illuminates the possibilities of such a deliberative translation process for university teacher education. It also points to limitations encountered in applying this framework to this analysis, opening new vantage points for research of this nature in teacher education.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
A critical review of participatory practice in integrated water resource management
- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Burt, Jane C
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Burt, Jane C
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , report
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437450 , vital:73380 , ISBN 1-77005-388-3 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/Project_1434_01_06.pdf
- Description: As indicated in Chapter 1, the expected outputs of this research are guidelines for best practice, and a set of indicators for monitoring and evaluation of participatory practice in CMA establishment. Chapter 1 indicated that participatory practice in CMA establishment in South Afri-ca is located in a particular social context: that of institution building in a democratising society (where the models of democracy may not be clearly articulated or well understood amongst South African citizens), in response to new national legislation that is based on principles of equi-ty, efficiency and sustainability. This context is further shaped by a his-tory of inequality and lack of broad participation in IWRM. Chapter 1 al-so indicated that IWRM in South Africa crosses political boundaries, is framed within geo-physical boundaries, and is complicated by different governance frameworks for water service delivery and water resources management (where water services delivery is a key priority for people on the ground who have traditionally not had access to water). Water resources management is therefore likely to be a ‘secondary’priority, and the possibility exists that the two needs could be confused amongst those who are to participate in IWRM in South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Burt, Jane C
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , report
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437450 , vital:73380 , ISBN 1-77005-388-3 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/Project_1434_01_06.pdf
- Description: As indicated in Chapter 1, the expected outputs of this research are guidelines for best practice, and a set of indicators for monitoring and evaluation of participatory practice in CMA establishment. Chapter 1 indicated that participatory practice in CMA establishment in South Afri-ca is located in a particular social context: that of institution building in a democratising society (where the models of democracy may not be clearly articulated or well understood amongst South African citizens), in response to new national legislation that is based on principles of equi-ty, efficiency and sustainability. This context is further shaped by a his-tory of inequality and lack of broad participation in IWRM. Chapter 1 al-so indicated that IWRM in South Africa crosses political boundaries, is framed within geo-physical boundaries, and is complicated by different governance frameworks for water service delivery and water resources management (where water services delivery is a key priority for people on the ground who have traditionally not had access to water). Water resources management is therefore likely to be a ‘secondary’priority, and the possibility exists that the two needs could be confused amongst those who are to participate in IWRM in South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
Editorial: tracing actors, actants and relational dynamics in environmental education research
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67400 , vital:29084 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122719
- Description: publisher version , Introduction: This edition of the EEASA Journal provides insight into a range of relationships in the field of environmental education, and the complexities that exist around them, as reflected in the combination of papers. This Editorial picks up on the methodological ‘note’ (or is it a challenge?) provided by Godwell Nhamo in his paper in this edition of the journal. He provides a description of the possibilities that actor network theory provides for describing and explaining environmental policy processes, and recommends that environmental educators consider this methodology in their analyses. In particular, he refers environmental educators to applications of actor network theory for tracing relational dynamics between actors (i.e., environmental education practitioners) and actants which are non-human referents (e.g., the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development and UNESCO’s (2005) International Implementation Scheme). In response to his paper, I have chosen to ‘pick up’ on this methodological discussion in this Editorial, by considering aspects of this theoretical perspective in describing the ‘happenings’ that occur across the pages of this edition of the EEASA Journal. In doing so, I highlight (in part) the diversity of actors and actants that are influencing the field of environmental education, their subject matter and contexts, and I highlight the relational dynamics that become evident when one accepts a methodology that aims to trace such dynamics. In particular, this Editorial considers how ‘The language of actors, actants and actor/actant-networks brings to the fore the relationships and complexities that exist around them’ (Nhamo, this edition).
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67400 , vital:29084 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122719
- Description: publisher version , Introduction: This edition of the EEASA Journal provides insight into a range of relationships in the field of environmental education, and the complexities that exist around them, as reflected in the combination of papers. This Editorial picks up on the methodological ‘note’ (or is it a challenge?) provided by Godwell Nhamo in his paper in this edition of the journal. He provides a description of the possibilities that actor network theory provides for describing and explaining environmental policy processes, and recommends that environmental educators consider this methodology in their analyses. In particular, he refers environmental educators to applications of actor network theory for tracing relational dynamics between actors (i.e., environmental education practitioners) and actants which are non-human referents (e.g., the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development and UNESCO’s (2005) International Implementation Scheme). In response to his paper, I have chosen to ‘pick up’ on this methodological discussion in this Editorial, by considering aspects of this theoretical perspective in describing the ‘happenings’ that occur across the pages of this edition of the EEASA Journal. In doing so, I highlight (in part) the diversity of actors and actants that are influencing the field of environmental education, their subject matter and contexts, and I highlight the relational dynamics that become evident when one accepts a methodology that aims to trace such dynamics. In particular, this Editorial considers how ‘The language of actors, actants and actor/actant-networks brings to the fore the relationships and complexities that exist around them’ (Nhamo, this edition).
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
Enabling environmental and sustainability education in South Africa’s national curriculum: Context, culture and learner aspirations for agency
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437486 , vital:73388 , ISBN 978-1594549458
- Description: This chapter describes the broad agenda for cultural and social change in South Africa, as introduced by post-apartheid policy development. It briefly describes how environment and sustainability questions have been incorporated into the National Curriculum Statements, alongside a concern for culture, context and indigenous knowledges. The chapter considers some of the contemporary concerns with the disjuncture be-tween policy and practice, and highlights learner aspirations for agency, and associated expectations for education. The chapter draws its orien-tation from the Rhodes University Environmental Education and Sus-tainability's' Environmental Learning and Curriculum' research pro-gramme. This programme is funded by the National Research Founda-tion and aims to inform curriculum change in South Africa. It programme incorporates a strand on indigenous knowledge and curriculum.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437486 , vital:73388 , ISBN 978-1594549458
- Description: This chapter describes the broad agenda for cultural and social change in South Africa, as introduced by post-apartheid policy development. It briefly describes how environment and sustainability questions have been incorporated into the National Curriculum Statements, alongside a concern for culture, context and indigenous knowledges. The chapter considers some of the contemporary concerns with the disjuncture be-tween policy and practice, and highlights learner aspirations for agency, and associated expectations for education. The chapter draws its orien-tation from the Rhodes University Environmental Education and Sus-tainability's' Environmental Learning and Curriculum' research pro-gramme. This programme is funded by the National Research Founda-tion and aims to inform curriculum change in South Africa. It programme incorporates a strand on indigenous knowledge and curriculum.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
Participating in the UN Decade of Education for Sustainability: voices in a southern African consultation process
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67367 , vital:29081 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122720
- Description: publisher version , This paper documents the outcomes of the consultation process on participating in the UNDESD which was led by the SADC Regional Environmental Education Programme in 2005/2006, assisted by the Rhodes University Environmental Education and Sustainability Unit and Environment Africa. The goals of the consultation process were to explore interpretations and meaning-making around the global discourse of ESD in a southern African context. Findings from the consultation process provide useful baseline information on the status of debate on sustainable development in educational circles; participation and partnerships; insights into environmental and sustainability education (ESD) practice and mechanisms needed for supporting this practice. The paper ends by outlining a research agenda for ESD in southern Africa, as discussed during the consultation process.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67367 , vital:29081 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122720
- Description: publisher version , This paper documents the outcomes of the consultation process on participating in the UNDESD which was led by the SADC Regional Environmental Education Programme in 2005/2006, assisted by the Rhodes University Environmental Education and Sustainability Unit and Environment Africa. The goals of the consultation process were to explore interpretations and meaning-making around the global discourse of ESD in a southern African context. Findings from the consultation process provide useful baseline information on the status of debate on sustainable development in educational circles; participation and partnerships; insights into environmental and sustainability education (ESD) practice and mechanisms needed for supporting this practice. The paper ends by outlining a research agenda for ESD in southern Africa, as discussed during the consultation process.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
Situated environmental learning in Southern Africa at the start of the UN decade of education for sustainable development
- O'Donoghue, Rob B, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob B , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/183059 , vital:43908 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0814062600001737"
- Description: Within the globalising trajectory of modernism, conservation, then environmental (EE) and now sustainability education (ESD) have each emerged as developing responses to risk produced by and in the modern state. Through adopting a long term process perspective, this paper narrates the emergence of situated learning perspectives and a developing re-orientation of EE at the start of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD). We identified the need to examine ESD practice in responses to recent ESD consultations in 14 southern African countries, where a rhetorical marking was noted in discussions on ESD practices, particularly with regard to changing teaching and learning processes. The paper narrates how an interplay of review, research and practical engagement activities have all contributed to an extended critical review of learning interactions in environmental education in an attempt to provide useful perspective for educational activities within the UNDESD. We found that EE and ESD initiatives only acquired more substantive meaning and coherent orientation when examined within ongoing inquiries into situated learning, agency and risk reduction in contexts of poverty, vulnerability and risk, the key concern to us in this paper and the primary focus of the WEHAB (Water, Energy, Health, Agriculture and Biodiversity) sustainable development agenda in the region.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob B , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/183059 , vital:43908 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0814062600001737"
- Description: Within the globalising trajectory of modernism, conservation, then environmental (EE) and now sustainability education (ESD) have each emerged as developing responses to risk produced by and in the modern state. Through adopting a long term process perspective, this paper narrates the emergence of situated learning perspectives and a developing re-orientation of EE at the start of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD). We identified the need to examine ESD practice in responses to recent ESD consultations in 14 southern African countries, where a rhetorical marking was noted in discussions on ESD practices, particularly with regard to changing teaching and learning processes. The paper narrates how an interplay of review, research and practical engagement activities have all contributed to an extended critical review of learning interactions in environmental education in an attempt to provide useful perspective for educational activities within the UNDESD. We found that EE and ESD initiatives only acquired more substantive meaning and coherent orientation when examined within ongoing inquiries into situated learning, agency and risk reduction in contexts of poverty, vulnerability and risk, the key concern to us in this paper and the primary focus of the WEHAB (Water, Energy, Health, Agriculture and Biodiversity) sustainable development agenda in the region.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
‘Exploring the practical adequacy of the human rights, social justice, inclusivity and healthy environment policy discourse in South Africa’s National Curriculum Statement’
- Schudel, Ingrid J, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Authors: Schudel, Ingrid J , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/391180 , vital:68629 , xlink:href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504620701284860"
- Description: This article examines the practical adequacy of the recent defining of a normative framework for the South African National Curriculum Statement that focuses on the relationship between human rights, social justice and a healthy environment. This politically framed and socially critical normative framework has developed in response to socio-political and socio-ecological histories in postapartheid curriculum transformation processes. The article critically considers the process of working with a normative framework in the defining of environmental education teaching and learning interactions, and seeks not only to explore the policy discourse critically, but also to explore what it is about the world that makes it work in different ways. Drawing on Sayer’s perspectives on the possibilities of enabling ‘situated universalism’ as a form of normative theory, and case-based data from a teacher professional development programme in the Makana District (where the authors live and work), the article probes the relationship between the establishment of a ‘universalising’ normative framework to guide national curriculum, and situated engagements with this framework in/as democratic process. In this process it questions whether educators should adopt the ‘norms’ as presented by society and simply universalize and implement them as prescribed by curriculum statements, or whether educators should adopt the strategies of postmodernists and reduce normative frameworks to relations of power situated in particular contexts.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Schudel, Ingrid J , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/391180 , vital:68629 , xlink:href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504620701284860"
- Description: This article examines the practical adequacy of the recent defining of a normative framework for the South African National Curriculum Statement that focuses on the relationship between human rights, social justice and a healthy environment. This politically framed and socially critical normative framework has developed in response to socio-political and socio-ecological histories in postapartheid curriculum transformation processes. The article critically considers the process of working with a normative framework in the defining of environmental education teaching and learning interactions, and seeks not only to explore the policy discourse critically, but also to explore what it is about the world that makes it work in different ways. Drawing on Sayer’s perspectives on the possibilities of enabling ‘situated universalism’ as a form of normative theory, and case-based data from a teacher professional development programme in the Makana District (where the authors live and work), the article probes the relationship between the establishment of a ‘universalising’ normative framework to guide national curriculum, and situated engagements with this framework in/as democratic process. In this process it questions whether educators should adopt the ‘norms’ as presented by society and simply universalize and implement them as prescribed by curriculum statements, or whether educators should adopt the strategies of postmodernists and reduce normative frameworks to relations of power situated in particular contexts.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
Reflections on the ‘3rd World Environmental Education Congress: Educational pathways towards sustainability’, Italy, 2005
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6096 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008619
- Description: Conference Theme: The congress theme ‘Educational pathways towards sustainability’ foregrounded the current ‘state of play’ in environmental education / education for sustainability, at the start of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD), and drew attention to the role of education in creating pathways towards sustainability. Mario Solomone, convenor of the congress, in his orientation to the congress describes the congress as being about ‘cultural changes and cultural forces for change’, highlighting the role of education, training and communication in redirecting values, knowledge and behaviour to construct a human society ‘that is fairer and more aware of the equilibrium of a beautiful and fragile planet’ (Salomone, 2005: 6). To facilitate deliberations during the conference a set of interrelated themes were established which included: communication and the environment; paths to sustainability; research and assessment in environmental education; sustainable education; training the trainers; community awareness; promoting participation and governance and creating a network; economics and ecology; environment and health; farming and related issues; ethics; and emotional involvements. These congress themes, together with an impressive array of keynote papers kept congress participants actively engaged with the question of the DESD.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6096 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008619
- Description: Conference Theme: The congress theme ‘Educational pathways towards sustainability’ foregrounded the current ‘state of play’ in environmental education / education for sustainability, at the start of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD), and drew attention to the role of education in creating pathways towards sustainability. Mario Solomone, convenor of the congress, in his orientation to the congress describes the congress as being about ‘cultural changes and cultural forces for change’, highlighting the role of education, training and communication in redirecting values, knowledge and behaviour to construct a human society ‘that is fairer and more aware of the equilibrium of a beautiful and fragile planet’ (Salomone, 2005: 6). To facilitate deliberations during the conference a set of interrelated themes were established which included: communication and the environment; paths to sustainability; research and assessment in environmental education; sustainable education; training the trainers; community awareness; promoting participation and governance and creating a network; economics and ecology; environment and health; farming and related issues; ethics; and emotional involvements. These congress themes, together with an impressive array of keynote papers kept congress participants actively engaged with the question of the DESD.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
Situated culture, ethics and new learning theory: emerging perspectives in environmental education research
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6095 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008617
- Description: Celebrating the 8th International Invitational Research and Development Seminar. This edition of the EEASA Journal celebrates the hosting of the 8th International Invitational Research and Development Seminar on Environmental and Health Education in South Africa in March 2005. The International Invitational Research and Development Seminars are ‘special events’ in the field of environmental and health education research. They are characterised by their democratic, deliberative nature, and by their intent to scope innovation and methodological issues. First established some years ago in Copenhagen, Denmark, these seminars have provided an evolving international forum for researchers interested in research methodology to meet and frame new themes, trends and issues arising in the field of environmental education and health education research.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6095 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008617
- Description: Celebrating the 8th International Invitational Research and Development Seminar. This edition of the EEASA Journal celebrates the hosting of the 8th International Invitational Research and Development Seminar on Environmental and Health Education in South Africa in March 2005. The International Invitational Research and Development Seminars are ‘special events’ in the field of environmental and health education research. They are characterised by their democratic, deliberative nature, and by their intent to scope innovation and methodological issues. First established some years ago in Copenhagen, Denmark, these seminars have provided an evolving international forum for researchers interested in research methodology to meet and frame new themes, trends and issues arising in the field of environmental education and health education research.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
Towards a better grasp of what matters in view of ‘the posts’
- O'Donoghue, Rob B, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob B , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2005
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182693 , vital:43854 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620500169593"
- Description: This response to McKenzie suggests that the issues of representivity, legitimacy and politics, inscribed within an institutional continuism characteristic of modernity within the McKenzie discourse, could well be recast within a reflexive view informed by insights derived with developing social theory. It briefly overviews the struggle for human agency that played out within the deconstructive engagements of the posts and probes how perspectives in social theory are opening the way for a break with features of environmental education as an institutional field. The review points to a reconstituting of the idea of environmental education research from scholastic field of/for environmental awareness and sustainable development, to a reflexive engagement within processes of social reproduction and reorientation in a changing world. A shift such as this would constitute a subtle change in a developing field of research, to situated design decisions of reflexive engagement (research) in social fields constituted within developing cultural contexts of risk.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
- Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob B , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2005
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182693 , vital:43854 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620500169593"
- Description: This response to McKenzie suggests that the issues of representivity, legitimacy and politics, inscribed within an institutional continuism characteristic of modernity within the McKenzie discourse, could well be recast within a reflexive view informed by insights derived with developing social theory. It briefly overviews the struggle for human agency that played out within the deconstructive engagements of the posts and probes how perspectives in social theory are opening the way for a break with features of environmental education as an institutional field. The review points to a reconstituting of the idea of environmental education research from scholastic field of/for environmental awareness and sustainable development, to a reflexive engagement within processes of social reproduction and reorientation in a changing world. A shift such as this would constitute a subtle change in a developing field of research, to situated design decisions of reflexive engagement (research) in social fields constituted within developing cultural contexts of risk.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
Environmental education research and social change: Southern African perspectives
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2004
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182709 , vital:43855 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1350462042000258143"
- Description: Environmental issues and risks in southern Africa have, like elsewhere in the world, their roots in the structures and orientations of modern societies. In modernist fashion, we draw on education and research to address socio-ecological concerns. In 1995 Eureta Janse van Rensburg, then Murray and Roberts Chair of Environmental Education at Rhodes University,1 undertook a study to identify environmental education research priorities, and through her study she provided a description of research in environmental education as a ‘landscape of shifting priorites’ (Janse van Rensburg, 1995). The papers in this journal offer a contemporary ‘snapshot’ of the landscape of environmental education research in southern Africa, illustrating a fresh range of ‘shifting priorities’.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2004
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182709 , vital:43855 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1350462042000258143"
- Description: Environmental issues and risks in southern Africa have, like elsewhere in the world, their roots in the structures and orientations of modern societies. In modernist fashion, we draw on education and research to address socio-ecological concerns. In 1995 Eureta Janse van Rensburg, then Murray and Roberts Chair of Environmental Education at Rhodes University,1 undertook a study to identify environmental education research priorities, and through her study she provided a description of research in environmental education as a ‘landscape of shifting priorites’ (Janse van Rensburg, 1995). The papers in this journal offer a contemporary ‘snapshot’ of the landscape of environmental education research in southern Africa, illustrating a fresh range of ‘shifting priorities’.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
Rhizome connections...
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6097 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008620
- Description: There are a number of papers in the journal that reflect a trend in environmental education towards deliberating recuperative, relational epistemologies. In their paper addressing the near-schism between those that appear to be antagonistic to post-structuralism and deconstruction, and those that find them generative in their inquiries, Noel Gough and Leigh Price go right to the heart of human inquiry by questioning the most commonly held assumption in the research enterprise – that the social sciences require a different methodology from the natural sciences.Through giving attention to relativist (constructionist) epistemology and a stratified, realist ontology – which assumes a relational account of ontology – they suggest the same basic methodology for both the social and natural sciences, arguing that ‘... society and humans mutually transform/reproduce each other, just as nature and humans mutually transform/reproduce each other’. In doing this, they address over-simplified dialectics between ‘constructionism’ and realism which has shaped much human inquiry (including environmental education research).
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6097 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008620
- Description: There are a number of papers in the journal that reflect a trend in environmental education towards deliberating recuperative, relational epistemologies. In their paper addressing the near-schism between those that appear to be antagonistic to post-structuralism and deconstruction, and those that find them generative in their inquiries, Noel Gough and Leigh Price go right to the heart of human inquiry by questioning the most commonly held assumption in the research enterprise – that the social sciences require a different methodology from the natural sciences.Through giving attention to relativist (constructionist) epistemology and a stratified, realist ontology – which assumes a relational account of ontology – they suggest the same basic methodology for both the social and natural sciences, arguing that ‘... society and humans mutually transform/reproduce each other, just as nature and humans mutually transform/reproduce each other’. In doing this, they address over-simplified dialectics between ‘constructionism’ and realism which has shaped much human inquiry (including environmental education research).
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
Editorial: the policy-in-practice nexus
- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Obol, Charles, Nhamo, Godwell
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Obol, Charles , Nhamo, Godwell
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67389 , vital:29083 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122661/112205
- Description: publisher version , Environmental policy development and implementation has become a ‘hot topic’ in southern Africa, following global imperatives for countries around the world to articulate their intentions to become more sustainable through public policy. Many policies in the region have been developed with the support of large scale donor funding. Much of the funding is often allocated to policy development processes rather than policy implementation processes, and many countries have experienced ‘gaps’ between policy intention and policy playing out in the field. Recently the Southern African Development Community’s Regional Environmental Education Programme (SADC REEP) appointed an environmental education policy advisor to influence regional policy (our Guest Editor, Charles Obol).This edition of the journal, funded by SADC REEP, aims to provide perspective on the policy-in-practice nexus in southern Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Obol, Charles , Nhamo, Godwell
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67389 , vital:29083 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122661/112205
- Description: publisher version , Environmental policy development and implementation has become a ‘hot topic’ in southern Africa, following global imperatives for countries around the world to articulate their intentions to become more sustainable through public policy. Many policies in the region have been developed with the support of large scale donor funding. Much of the funding is often allocated to policy development processes rather than policy implementation processes, and many countries have experienced ‘gaps’ between policy intention and policy playing out in the field. Recently the Southern African Development Community’s Regional Environmental Education Programme (SADC REEP) appointed an environmental education policy advisor to influence regional policy (our Guest Editor, Charles Obol).This edition of the journal, funded by SADC REEP, aims to provide perspective on the policy-in-practice nexus in southern Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003
Being Brave: Writing Environmental Education Research
- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Burt, Jane C
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Burt, Jane C
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/184734 , vital:44267 , xlink:href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ654591"
- Description: The heroine came back from her very important quest and sat down to write a thesis . . . While mythical journeys do not always end this way, the stories have to be told. The work of telling the story in the hero’s journey is often left untold. This paper explores some of the headwork that goes into textwork (Van Manen, 1995) in environmental education research. We argue that writing is an integral part of the research process, and should not be viewed as an “add on” or a silent, untold part of the adventure. We reflect on some of the institutional and epistemological issues associated with writing social science (in our case environmental education) research texts. Writing research is never an easy enterprise, it is bound by history and tradition, convention, institutional habit, and regulation. It is also constrained by the uncertainty of the process of writing itself, by problems of power relations in research, and the difficulty of writing to represent experience rigorously and authentically while recognizing that all writing is a constructed symbolic representation of experience. The paper reflexively reviews our attempts at “being brave” in the construction of our research texts.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Burt, Jane C
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/184734 , vital:44267 , xlink:href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ654591"
- Description: The heroine came back from her very important quest and sat down to write a thesis . . . While mythical journeys do not always end this way, the stories have to be told. The work of telling the story in the hero’s journey is often left untold. This paper explores some of the headwork that goes into textwork (Van Manen, 1995) in environmental education research. We argue that writing is an integral part of the research process, and should not be viewed as an “add on” or a silent, untold part of the adventure. We reflect on some of the institutional and epistemological issues associated with writing social science (in our case environmental education) research texts. Writing research is never an easy enterprise, it is bound by history and tradition, convention, institutional habit, and regulation. It is also constrained by the uncertainty of the process of writing itself, by problems of power relations in research, and the difficulty of writing to represent experience rigorously and authentically while recognizing that all writing is a constructed symbolic representation of experience. The paper reflexively reviews our attempts at “being brave” in the construction of our research texts.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
Curriculum patterning in environmental education: A review of developments in formal education in South Africa
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437280 , vital:73365 , ISBN 978-07969-2001-0 , https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/environmental-education-ethics-action-in-southern-africa
- Description: Written by environmental practitioners from across the region, the Monograph is a window onto envi-ronmental challenges in a diversity of African con-texts. These contexts include Malawian officials and community leaders, new to multi-level governance, taking up the challenge of environmental manage-ment in villages and districts; Ugandan small-scale farmers in partnership with NGOs trying to produce sustainably for the household and the international market; and government-civil society partnerships in South Africa, where the political transformation of the education system introduced a focus on envi-ronment and human rights in the national school curriculum.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437280 , vital:73365 , ISBN 978-07969-2001-0 , https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/environmental-education-ethics-action-in-southern-africa
- Description: Written by environmental practitioners from across the region, the Monograph is a window onto envi-ronmental challenges in a diversity of African con-texts. These contexts include Malawian officials and community leaders, new to multi-level governance, taking up the challenge of environmental manage-ment in villages and districts; Ugandan small-scale farmers in partnership with NGOs trying to produce sustainably for the household and the international market; and government-civil society partnerships in South Africa, where the political transformation of the education system introduced a focus on envi-ronment and human rights in the national school curriculum.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
Some insights on the gap
- O'Donoghue, Rob B, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob B , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182720 , vital:43856 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620220145410"
- Description: In our response to 'Mind the gap' by Kollmuss and Agyeman (2002) we review contemporary pro-environmental behaviour research and perspectives. We apply a social processes vantage point to reveal a blindness to the historical origins of these perspectives. Through drawing on a case in an African context, we illuminate the way in which experts in institutional contexts come to etch instrumental perspectives, and thus we probe the limitations of instrumentalist assumptions associated with pro-environmental behaviour research and perspectives. We also point to ideological blind spots and blockages that persist in disallowing social politics and history to illuminate the complexities of human social habitus, and we reveal some of the complexities that have been set aside in the Kollmuss and Agyeman article.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
- Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob B , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182720 , vital:43856 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620220145410"
- Description: In our response to 'Mind the gap' by Kollmuss and Agyeman (2002) we review contemporary pro-environmental behaviour research and perspectives. We apply a social processes vantage point to reveal a blindness to the historical origins of these perspectives. Through drawing on a case in an African context, we illuminate the way in which experts in institutional contexts come to etch instrumental perspectives, and thus we probe the limitations of instrumentalist assumptions associated with pro-environmental behaviour research and perspectives. We also point to ideological blind spots and blockages that persist in disallowing social politics and history to illuminate the complexities of human social habitus, and we reveal some of the complexities that have been set aside in the Kollmuss and Agyeman article.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
Weaving cloths: Research design in contexts of transformation
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/184745 , vital:44268 , xlink:href="https://cjee.lakeheadu.ca/article/viewFile/259/136"
- Description: Through storytelling, I apply methodological and epistemological reflexivity to ask questions about the way in which environmental education research is framed in transformational settings. I ask questions about the role of research teachers/supervisors in the “weaving enterprise” or the research process. Do we have the dual task of developing contextually relevant frameworks, and of making sure that these frameworks are not adopted on an “industrial scale”—in other words, as new paradigms which have the potential to narrow research possibilities? The paper concerns itself with a broader question, notably the potentially debilitating effects of mass production of research, or the globalizing of knowledge production. The story I use to raise these, and other questions for consideration by teachers/supervisors of research is a research workers story (my own), constructed between 1992 and 1996, in a context of rapid socio-political and educational transformation in South Africa (Lotz, 1996). In addition to the above, the paper opens a debate about reflexivity as research methodological rigour.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/184745 , vital:44268 , xlink:href="https://cjee.lakeheadu.ca/article/viewFile/259/136"
- Description: Through storytelling, I apply methodological and epistemological reflexivity to ask questions about the way in which environmental education research is framed in transformational settings. I ask questions about the role of research teachers/supervisors in the “weaving enterprise” or the research process. Do we have the dual task of developing contextually relevant frameworks, and of making sure that these frameworks are not adopted on an “industrial scale”—in other words, as new paradigms which have the potential to narrow research possibilities? The paper concerns itself with a broader question, notably the potentially debilitating effects of mass production of research, or the globalizing of knowledge production. The story I use to raise these, and other questions for consideration by teachers/supervisors of research is a research workers story (my own), constructed between 1992 and 1996, in a context of rapid socio-political and educational transformation in South Africa (Lotz, 1996). In addition to the above, the paper opens a debate about reflexivity as research methodological rigour.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
Active learning in schools
- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Timmermans, Ingrid
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Timmermans, Ingrid
- Date: 2001
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/389696 , vital:68475 , xlink:href="https://eeasa.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Bulletin_vol21-_Sep-2001.pdf"
- Description: The Rhodes University Environmental Education Unit has initiated a project to support school-based environmental education work in Grahamstown. In line with national environmental education policy, the project supports a focus on environmental learning in the context of the OBE curriculum, and provides professional development support to teachers implementing the project (NEEP, 2000). An action research evaluation is taking place to monitor key aspects of the project and a number of interim evaluation reports have been produced (Mbanjwa, 2001).
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Timmermans, Ingrid
- Date: 2001
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/389696 , vital:68475 , xlink:href="https://eeasa.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Bulletin_vol21-_Sep-2001.pdf"
- Description: The Rhodes University Environmental Education Unit has initiated a project to support school-based environmental education work in Grahamstown. In line with national environmental education policy, the project supports a focus on environmental learning in the context of the OBE curriculum, and provides professional development support to teachers implementing the project (NEEP, 2000). An action research evaluation is taking place to monitor key aspects of the project and a number of interim evaluation reports have been produced (Mbanjwa, 2001).
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001