Addendum to the paper Landcare: New directions in professional development for environmental education
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 1995
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/438672 , vital:73488 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/137475"
- Description: During 1994-1995, we received correspondence from Tania Sadler of the University of Tasmania and from Debbie Heck, about the latter's paper published in volume 14. In response we publish the following addendum, which includes a list of references inadvertently left out of her paper. Ms Heck did supply these references to the SAJEE originally, and we apologise for any inconvenience to readers as a result of the mistake. (Ed.)
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- Date Issued: 1995
Resource materials development in environmental education : Exploring some of the myths and tensions in participatory resource development in the We Care Primary Project
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 1995
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/438792 , vital:73500 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/137472"
- Description: This paper on environmental education resource materials development represents some of my 'lived experience' (Malone, 1994:20) as a researcher involved in clarifying the processes of materials development for junior primary classrooms. The sites of inquiry, action and reflection have been focussed around the development of the We Care Primary materials, shifts in orientations to environmental education and current educational change.
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- Date Issued: 1995
Reflecting on socially transformative environmental literacy for Lesotho
- Authors: Mokuku, Tsepo , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 1997
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/438769 , vital:73498 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/137444"
- Description: This paper is an attempt to clarify the concept of environmental literacy from a socially transformative orientation. It resulted from our ongoing reflection on a conceptual framework in and for a three-year research project on education for environmental literacy within the integrated science curriculum in Lesotho.
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- Date Issued: 1997
‘Environment as Text’: Initial Insights into some Implications for Professional Development in Environmental Education
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Robottom, Ian
- Date: 1998
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/438744 , vital:73496 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/137410"
- Description: This paper describes part of a current international research capacity-building project in South Africa. In the project a research-based approach to professional development is adopted, one in which participants develop detailed case studies relating to their own changing practices in environmental education. It is argued that such an approach is consistent with the highly contextual nature of the field of environmental education. The article describes a central three-day 'moment' in the project, drawing on this experience to consider a number of issues concerning participatory research and the role of case study in professional development.
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- Date Issued: 1998
Active learning in schools
- 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).
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- Date Issued: 2001
Being Brave: Writing Environmental Education Research
- 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.
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- 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.
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- Date Issued: 2002
Some insights on the gap
- 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.
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- 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.
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- Date Issued: 2002
Editorial: the policy-in-practice nexus
- 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.
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- Date Issued: 2003
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’.
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- Date Issued: 2004
Learning through cases adopting a nested approach to case‐study work in the Gold Fields participatory course initiative
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Raven, Glenda C
- Date: 2004
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/482637 , vital:78673 , https://doi.org/10.1080/1350462032000173715
- Description: This paper argues that there is a need, in southern Africa, to develop in-depth understanding in educational reform initiatives. Through ongoing reflexive development of a professional development programme in environmental education, we have found that case-study methodology, which emphasizes context-dependent knowledge, is significant for learning about environmental and sustainability education in higher ed-ucation. We draw on the case of the Gold Fields participatory certificate course programme, developed over a 10-year period in southern Africa and describe how use of a nested approach to case-study methodolo-gy in the context of this initiative has assisted us to learn from these cases, and grapple with key issues of relevance to our practice. We de-scribe how a nested approach to case-study research has informed theory and practice in environmental education professional develop-ment, attesting to the value of context-dependent knowledge. Paradoxi-cally, this approach to research has also resulted in increased tensions associated with the transfer of case learning within the broader institu-tional frameworks of higher education.
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- 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).
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- Date Issued: 2004
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.
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- 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.
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- Date Issued: 2005
Towards a better grasp of what matters in view of ‘the posts’
- 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.
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- Date Issued: 2005
A critical review of participatory practice in integrated water resource management
- 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.
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- 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).
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Date Issued: 2006