In **Business Studies**, the definition of the subject included a mention of an environmental focus, in that the subject encompasses business principles, theory and practice that underpins the development of entrepreneurial initiatives, sustainable enterprises and economic growth. Environmental content appeared in the overview of topics to be taught per term and in the annual teaching plan. This environmental focus highlighted issues such as protection and sustainability of the environment, and impacts on human health and the environment by businesses.

The **Economics** subject definition and specific purpose mentioned issues of sustainable development but made no mention of the ecological dimensions of environment, such as abiotic and biotic factors. In this subject, the environmental topics of environmental sustainability, basic economic problems in tourism, and economic redress can be found. Approached from an economic perspective, this subject content highlights the importance of critically reviewing the promotion and violation of human rights and environmental rights, the state of the environment, measures to ensure sustainability, and adherence to major international agreements.

In **History**, an environmental focus is mentioned in the purpose of the subject as described in the introductory History chapter. This chapter explains that History encourages civic responsibility and responsible leadership, including addressing current, social and environmental concerns. There is one topic in the curriculum, 'a new world order', in which 'environmental movements' are listed as part of the content; however, this content is minimal and has insufficient time allocation to be counted as significant.

The definition of **Life Sciences** is given as the scientific study of living things from molecular level to their interactions with one another and their environments. By studying Life Sciences, learners are expected to develop an understanding of the ways in which humans have impacted negatively on the environment and organisms. Further, learners are expected to develop an awareness of what it means to be a responsible citizen in terms of their impacts on the environment and the lifestyle choices that they make. The CAPS elaborated that **environmental studies** should be studied as a discipline or specialisation. The subject is organised into four knowledge strands, and Environmental Studies is one of these. This shows that environmental studies in this subject has significant coverage. The content described in Environmental Studies that covers Human Impacts (Current Crises), is dealt with in Grade 11, but this topic is only examined in the National Senior Certificate examination at the end of Grade 12. This content in Life Sciences helps learners to understand the contribution of Science to social justice and societal development, as well as the need for using scientific knowledge responsibly in the interest of society, the environment and ourselves.

In **Geography**, the main aim is making and justifying informed decisions and judgements about social and environmental issues. The subject is defined as the study of human and physical environments. The curriculum states that Geography can be explored by applying a conceptual framework that embraces one of the four big ideas, which is 'Human and Environment Interaction'. Environmental topics in this subject are environmental impact, human-environment interaction, and environment quality. These topics include content such as climate and weather, drainage systems, rural and urban settlements.

In **Agricultural Sciences**, the environmental content topics are based on sustainable natural resource utilisation, ecology and agro-ecology. Learners are expected to develop an awareness of the management and care of the environment, natural resources and the humane treatment of animals through the application of science and related technology. Learners are also expected to become informed and responsible citizens in the production of agricultural commodities, caring for the environment, and addressing social justice issues such as equal protection from environmental harm. Agricultural Sciences content also covers better cultivation methods to sustain natural resources; impact of organic and inorganic fertilisers on the environment; environmental factors to be considered when selecting the general locality for greenhouses; and water quality and sustainable use of water in agriculture.

In summary: all of the above subjects stipulate the general principle of taking cognisance of human rights, inclusivity where **environment** provides both opportunities for and challenges to **inclusion**, and environmental and social justice. All subjects also aim for learners to be able to use science and technology effectively and critically while showing responsibility towards the environment and the health of others. The content analysis findings showed that subjects such as Physical Sciences, Business Studies, Agricultural Sciences and Economics have a specific aim and purpose that mentions the importance of environmental awareness in the subjects. However, some subjects such as Life Sciences and Geography have no subject-specific aim or purpose that highlights the importance of environmental content in their policies. Despite this lack, these subjects still include some reference to environmental content in their definitions and descriptions. For instance, Life Sciences has environmental studies integrated as a discipline or specialisation, while Physical Sciences, Economics and Geography have specific definitions formulated around environmental themes.

# **Coverage of environmental content in examinations**

There was a further narrowing in the range of the subjects eligible for analysis in this part of the research because only **four** subjects examined environmental content in the Grade 12 final examinations. The environmental content coverage in the curriculum versus the examination content of these four subjects is shown in Appendix B. In **Business Studies** and **History**, there was no coverage of environmental content in the summative assessments. Thus, the minimal environmental coverage in the syllabi for these two subjects (4% of the curriculum in Business Studies and only one topic on 'a new world order' in History) was further undermined by the lack of environmental reference in the examination content of these subjects.

Another subject eliminated for further analysis was **Physical Sciences** which, as stated above, was identified as one of the four subjects with the highest environmental coverage in the curriculum. With 7% of content in the curriculum of this subject dedicated to environmental content, it is particularly puzzling that there was no coverage of this topic at all in the examinations. The other notable inconsistency, for the opposite reason, was in regard to **Agricultural Sciences**. This subject had less time allocated to environmental content in the curriculum than Physical Sciences, yet allocated 2.5% of the marks to testing environmental content knowledge in the examination (see Appendix B).

In **Economics**, none of the environmental content in the examinations required learners to write on recent international environmental agreements as stipulated in the subject policy. In terms of percentage topic coverage between policy (8%) and examination (10.8%), there was greater emphasis on environmental content in the latter, thus indicating that examiners take the environmental content of the policy document seriously. Similarly, in **Geography**, the percentage of topic coverage in policy (7%) and examination (12%) indicated the importance with which examiners view environmental content in the curriculum. The study found that the significant difference between policy and examination in Geography is the result of some Grade 10 and 11 environmental content being included in the Grade 12 exit level examinations. This included Grade 10 content such as water resources and population distribution and identity, and Grade 11 topics of resources and sustainability, development issues and challenges, and drought and desertification. In **Life Sciences**, there was a closer alignment of the policy (9%) and examination (8.8%) content as seen in Appendix B. The alignment in Life Sciences can be attributed to the specific description of environmental content to be taught in the classroom that is stipulated in the CAPS policy, as well as the actual marks to be allocated for environmental content in the examinations. Lastly, in **Agricultural Sciences**, there was close alignment between CAPS policy projections (3%) and content coverage of environmental content in the examinations (2.5%).

# **Conclusion**

Teachers are likely to be influenced by the extent of environmental topic coverage in documents such as the curriculum and examinations. If the policy implementers and examiners do not align what is in the policy with practice, it is likely that teachers will tend to concentrate on teaching and revising topics that have a wider coverage in the final-year exit level examinations; this is due to the agential/operational effects of the documents.

The findings show that English First Additional Language, Mathematics, Mathematical Literacy, and Accounting do not explicitly define environmental content in their syllabi. Environmental content coverage in these subjects would depend on the chosen texts and examples introduced by textbooks and teachers in classrooms. The findings further show that Geography, Life Sciences and Economics have significant environmental content coverage ranging from 7% to 12% with up to 5% difference between curriculum and examination. The chapter suggests that this significant coverage should require teachers to concentrate on teaching and revising environmental content in these subjects. Agricultural Sciences has 3% environmental content coverage and slightly less in the examination. Physical Science, Business Studies and History do have prescribed environmental content but this is not tested in the examination. In addition one can note that environmental focus in some subject definitions and purpose is evident, while in other subjects, while it is not specifically outlined, the general aims of the curriculum and purpose include an emphasis on environment.

The chapter recommends that during the next curriculum review, policymakers for all subjects replicate what Life Sciences has done in terms of stipulating the exact percentage of environmental content to be taught. This must then be written into the policy documents both for curriculum and practice (examinations). The chapter further suggests that all subjects are worth revisiting in the next national curriculum review to assess whether environment and sustainability is given the coherent and sufficient coverage it requires, in view of the important foundational role of this knowledge in guiding the young scholars, citizens and professionals who will be influencing humanenvironment relationships in the present and future.

# **References**

# **Appendix A: Environmental topics and content in CAPS**

### **Chapter 7** *An Analysis of Environment and Sustainability Content Coverage in the Grade 12 Curriculum*

# **Appendix B: Environmental content coverage in the curriculum (policy) in relation to environmental content in examinations**

### **Chapter 7** *An Analysis of Environment and Sustainability Content Coverage in the Grade 12 Curriculum*

Transformative pedagogies for environment and sustainability learning

# CHAPTER 8

# **Theorising Active Learning – A Historical Analysis**

*Ingrid Schudel*

# **Introduction**

There is no definitive or consensual Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) pedagogy but there is a suite of techniques which, if examined, will reveal similar features and principles. For example, in its ESD sourcebook, Unesco (2012) highlights pedagogies featuring question-orientated, analytical, critical and decisive skills, as well as relational pedagogies with features such as learner-centredness and participation. In its later Roadmap for Implementing the Global Action Programme for Education for Sustainable Development, Unesco calls for pedagogies that support the designing of 'teaching and learning in an interactive, learner-centred way that enables exploratory, action-oriented and transformative learning' (Unesco 2014: 12). An international collaborative group – ESD Expert-Net – highlighted the 'active' element of ESD arguing that 'action' or 'doing' elements of learning have traditionally been neglected, and that if ESD practice is to address local and global challenges 'a strong action component' is needed (Hoffmann & Rajeswari n.d.: 9). The notion of 'active learning' has been of central interest in the Fundisa for Change project. This chapter describes its trajectory of development and use in South African ESD by outlining core features and principles for active learning. This is with a view to positioning the further chapters in this section of the book in relation to national and international research that has influenced the approach of Fundisa for Change. The chapter also serves to inform international interests in active learning.

The term 'active learning' is used, but not explicitly elaborated, in formal South African curriculum documentation. In official South African policy discourse, the first post-apartheid reference to active learning in education can be found in the 1995 White Paper on Education and Training which called for 'environmental education involving an interdisciplinary and active approach to learning' (South Africa DoE 1995: 11). The same notion has been incorporated into the three iterations of post-apartheid curricula up to the current South African Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS), which calls for 'encouraging an active and critical approach to learning, rather than rote and uncritical learning of given truths' (South Africa DBE 2011: 3). However, none of these policy documents have elaborated on what active learning means, and what teaching and learning processes might support it. Therefore, at the level of educational practice, much is left up to interpretation by curriculum implementers and teacher training institutions.

At issue in this chapter is a deeper theorising and understanding of active learning. This is achieved through two processes. The first is elaboration of the three emergent core features of active learning, as introduced above, through reference to influential national and international educational and ESD literature in South Africa since 1994. Second, the chapter seeks to elaborate further on active learning by drawing on a critical realist dialectic, which sees 'active and reflexive engagement within the world in which we seek to achieve the unity of theory and practice *in practice*' (Bhaskar 1993) as the culmination of dialectical thinking, and where agency is elaborated as 'embodied intentional causal absenting' (Bhaskar 1993).

A key influence in the implementation of active learning processes in South Africa was an active learning framework developed by O'Donoghue (2001) which played a significant role in supporting teachers through the design of environmentally focused learning units. The artist's rendition of active learning reproduced in Figure 1 below evokes the complexity of how the idea was taken up by ESD practitioners at the time.

**Figure 1.** Artist Richard Kilpert's rendition of active learning (2000)

#### **Chapter 8** *Theorising Active Learning – A Historical Analysis*

O'Donoghue's framework (elaborated in the next section) structures information-based enquiry, action and reporting/reflection activities around a central environmental focus (problem, risk or concern). The use of this framework in teacher professional development programmes dates back to the National Environmental Education Programme for General Education and Training (NEEP-GET). This was piloted in South Africa in 2000 (Schudel et al. 2000) in the Eco-Schools programme, where it was used for guiding lesson planning (Rosenberg 2000) and in teacher education courses developed, for example, by Rhodes University in the Schools and Sustainability Course (Schudel et al. 2008a). Modifications of the same framework have been used in the national Fundisa for Change environmental education programme for teachers and teacher educators (O'Donoghue 2013; O'Donoghue 2019). The 2019 version is also discussed in the section that follows.

The active learning framework is designed as a structure for guiding learning programmes but can be used in many different ways depending on how its users see and understand its purpose, and how they experience its implementation in the field. This chapter first describes the earliest and latest (2019) framework versions in detail, followed by a clarification and critique of implicit and espoused theories, intentions and assumptions associated with the notion of active learning. This is achieved by a document review across numerous research reports which provide insight into how ESD research, both internationally and in South Africa, has influenced the development and interpretation of the notion. This part of the chapter results in the elaboration of three core features of active learning as a situated, action-orientated and reflexively deliberative pedagogy. In the final section of the chapter, a number of principles relevant to each of the core features is lifted from the analysis to suggest ways for strengthening the capacity of active learning processes to enable transformative learning in ESD.

# **An evolving active learning pedagogy**

O'Donoghue indicated that active learning emerged at a time in South Africa when concern for 'local enquiry, problem solving and action learning' were recognised as important pedagogical processes (O'Donoghue 2007: 150). This was a time when environmental educators were recognising that environmental education was more than simply transmitting information about problems, or experiences, to raise awareness of the value of nature. Exploring human-environment relationships and alternative practices in the context of learners' own lives was necessary to help them deal with the everyday reality of environmental risks and concerns (O'Donoghue 2007). The importance of tackling concerns in everyday contexts is also evident in Janse van Rensburg's Guidelines for Learning Area Working Groups produced for the NEEP-GET to guide South African curriculum development. Here she called for 'active learning, critical thinking, involvement in real issues and encounters in the learners' immediate environment' (Janse van Rensburg 2001: 30).

This section provides an overview of the structure of the active learning framework as proposed by O'Donoghue (2001: 8) (see Figure 2). O'Donoghue's open process framework suggests the identification of an environmental focus (which may be a problem, concern or risk) and then draws attention to four different types of activities that can be used to structure environmental learning programmes around this focus. These are listed below and elaborated through my own understanding and experience of their implementation in the Schools and Sustainability Course:

O'Donoghue (2001: 7) saw his proposed framework as supporting 'open-ended processes of active learning' and suggested that educators could take any one of the dimensions as a starting point and superimpose appropriate methods within the different dimensions of the framework to create a 'multi-skilled and multi-perspective approach to environmental risks and concerns'. For example, activities initiated by O'Donoghue (2011) in the Environmental Learning Research Centre, suggest possibilities for starting with an **action** of making sour-dough bread, followed with **information** about how the souring process breaks down gluten (thus addressing the problem of gluten allergies), followed by an **enquiry** regarding the ingredients, costs and taste of homemade versus shop-bought bread, and **reporting** on the differences between the two types of bread.

**Figure 2.** Active learning framework (O'Donoghue 2001)

O'Donoghue (2001) drew on Fien's (1993) concepts of education *about*, *through* and *for*  the environment to inform the active learning framework. Fien described education *about* the environment as 'knowledge about natural systems and processes and the ecological and political factors that influence decisions about how people use the environment' (1993: 15). This concept clearly links with the 'information' dimension of the active learning framework. Education *through* the environment has the purpose of adding 'reality, relevance and practical experience' to learning (1993: 15), and this has links to the experiential nature of the 'enquiry encounters' dimension of active learning, the 'mobilising of prior knowledge' which is important to the 'information' dimension, and the hands-on and minds-on nature of responding to, or action-taking in, a real context. Fien (1993: 16) describes education *for* the environment as a 'counterhegemonic process' and having 'an overt agenda of values education and social change'. Possibilities for this counter-hegemonic stance are opened up by O'Donoghue's (2001: 7) call for 'critical action', for trying out ways of doing things differently (see actiontaking dimension above), and for making explicit the transformational possibilities embedded in the framework.

In 2019 O'Donoghue revised this framework for active learning for the Fundisa for Change programme where it was used as a core text for the training of South African curriculum advisors and teachers. The basic skeleton of the revised framework is presented in Figure 3, and elaborated in O'Donoghue, Misser and Snow-McLeod's chapter later on in this book (Chapter 10). For the purposes of this chapter, I will work with this 'skeleton' in order to highlight its similarities to the 2001 framework, and also to point out key changes made in response to the current South African curriculum needs.

First, one can see that the core interests in information (now in an embodied notion of 'knowledge'), inquiry, action and reporting (synthesis) are still evident. Similar to the 2011 framework's interest in making better environmental management and lifestyle choices, the current framework insists on application and innovation. How this new framework differs significantly as a response to the current South African needs, is in specifically highlighting the importance of subject-discipline knowledge in Quadrant 1. The framework also emphasises assessment more strongly by focusing on what learners ought to achieve through the active learning process. The New Bloom's Taxonomy, as revised by Krathwohl (2002) is evident in the framework, which highlights lower order (knowing and remembering), medium order (understanding and applying), and higher order (analysis, evaluation and innovation) cognitive skills. Innovation is particularly important for environmental learning, which is aimed at transforming the world, and this links to Krathwohl's cognitive level of 'create' which he described as 'putting elements together to form a novel, coherent whole or make an original product' (2002: 215). The historical significance of these moves will be highlighted in the discussion of active learning below.

**Analysis, evaluation and innovation**

**Figure 3.** Mediating and assessing active learning (O'Donoghue 2019)

# **Methodology**

The study represents part of a more extensive doctoral study on active learning (Schudel 2013). This chapter was established through a historical document review of research reports, project guidelines and course materials of the four national South African programmes that have contributed to the conceptualisation, and guided implementation of, active learning in the country since 1994. These programmes are: the Learning for Sustainability Course; the NEEP-GET Programme; the Eco-Schools Programme; and the Schools and Sustainability Course (see Schudel, Lotz-Sisitka, Songqwaru and Tshiningayamwe, Chapter 1 for insight into the role of some of these programmes). These are all programmes in which leading implementers of Fundisa for Change have participated, and which provide experience from which South African environmental educators are able to draw. Appendix A presents a log of the documents included in the review. The final document in the list is the doctoral study mentioned above. While this document has not been referred to directly in this chapter, a number of references to a critical realist dialectic, which were developed in the doctoral thesis, have been brought forward to deepen understandings of active learning in this chapter. Three core features of active learning emerged from the review. This shows that in South Africa, active learning has emerged as a situated, action-orientated, and reflexively deliberative pedagogy. In the next section, key pointers pertinent to this conceptualisation of active learning have been presented and elaborated on, with reference to literature that helps to position the pedagogical choices made iteratively across the four programmes.

# **The pedagogical underpinnings of active learning in South African ESD research**

# **Active learning as situated**

Reflecting on the NEEP-GET programme, Lotz-Sisitka and O'Donoghue argued that in the South Africa of the time, 'current patterns of practice in participatory education favour individualised meaning-making approaches that are disembedded from the realities of everyday life' (2008: 124). Participation as a pedagogical argument has been driven by post-apartheid South Africa's democratic ideals, and constructivist pedagogies and literature suggest that this concept requires situated grounding. Lotz-Sisitka and O'Donoghue (2008) noted that participation can become 'increasingly tenuous and self-referential' (p. 111). This, they argued, was evident in curriculum processes emphasising 'cooperative activity, solidarity, and apparent movement [which] have created an illusion of change' (p. 112). The critique they presented in this paper is followed by illustrative cases of ESD processes which are more grounded in sociocultural and historical contexts. Their argument for such pedagogy emerged from a previous paper where they illustrated how 'situating in southern African socio-cultural context and history involves the interplay of real stories in context and the stories of what participants experience, do and know (situating story activities) in the contexts of intergenerational and everyday interactions' (O'Donoghue & Lotz-Sisitka 2006: 13).

Furthermore, ungrounded participatory processes can result in utopianist or reified applications of environmental learning (Jickling 1992; Lotz-Sisitka 2008). It then becomes necessary to examine the shaping influences and practical adequacy of normative frameworks (Lotz-Sisitka & Schudel 2006). Smyth (1995) raised a concern that the complexity of the issues often results in over-simplification of, and hasty judgements about, environmental issues – thus giving rise to solutions reflecting idealistic responses to negativity. This idealism results in learners having to deal with 'real contradictions in the world' (Norrie 2000: 60), but without the power to change them.

In order to gain insight into this dilemma, dialectical critical realism can offer some insight and ontological grounding by using Bhaskar's notion of concrete utopianism, to enable 'thinking about how a situation of the world could be otherwise, with a change in the use of a given set of resources or with a different way of acting subject to certain constraints' (Bhaskar 1993: 22). Concrete utopianism can be a useful concept that ensures that generalised, idealistic and unrealistic ideas are not imposed inappropriately on specific contexts. Furthermore, linked to the active learning interest in innovation, Bhaskar describes concrete utopianism as playing a 'role of creative fantasy … that yields at once hope **and** possibility' (1993: 209).

The grounding of situated understanding in intergenerational learning, as noted in the first paragraph of this section, has received much attention in South African ESD debates. For example Maqwelane – a participant in the Schools and Sustainability Course – examined how indigenous knowledge of wild vegetables (*imifino*) was integrated into the primary school curriculum by inviting wise grandmothers (*gogo*s) to share their knowledge about the health and ecologically friendly benefits of *imifino* with younger learners (Maqwelane 2011). The close connection between intergenerational knowledge and indigenous knowledge is significant here and is also a response to the concern about individualised meaning-making mentioned above. Knowledgeable and experienced generations are a significant dynamo in mobilising 'unique [African] histories of knowledge practices that have sustained its peoples over many generations of living in, and creating, habitable landscapes' (O'Donoghue et al. 2019).

The focus on 'local experience' and the 'everyday' link closely and often overlap with the vision of including more intergenerational and indigenous knowledge in curricula. For example, the Eastern Cape Province NEEP-GET project modelled environmental learning practices using issues and risks identified in photographs of local context and newspaper articles. These local examples were used in an issues-based approach to environmental learning in which issues and risks in context were the main emphasis (NEEP-GET 2005). This issues-based approach resonated well with the requirement for competency in 'knowledge and understanding of local environmental issues and risks' which became one of the key competencies for teacher education highlighted by the NEEP-GET (Lotz-Sisitka & Raven 2001). The issues-based approach has been expanded in South African ESD discourse to include a 'practice' element, as illustrated by further research in the NEEP-GET which noted an interest in 'practice-based discourse strongly focused on local, real issues' (Ramsarup 2005). This shift in practice as described by Taylor (2009) is not only about highlighting generalised problems in the world but about understanding the 'problem in context' (O'Donoghue 2014: 10).

Despite the above-mentioned interest in local and everyday experiences, learning does not and cannot be limited to knowledge of everyday contexts. We need to understand the fluidity of the notion of 'local': are we talking locally rural, or locally urban, locally indigenous, locally provincial, locally South African, locally African, or locally global south, for example? How local is 'local'? Even within a national programme in a country as diverse as South Africa, 'local plants' can be very different in different places. Also important to acknowledge is that we are all global citizens, so contextualised materials need to present global understandings with activities for developing embedded, not disconnected, local understandings. As stated in the 'Eco-Schools Handbook', 'most environmental issues have both a local and a global dimension' (Eco-Schools Programme South Africa 2009: 18).

For example, in their 'Handprint: Action Towards Sustainability' series, O'Donoghue and Fox (2009) illustrated an iterative relationship between knowledge and practice through the use of case studies of local learning (knowledge construction in communities of practice) and change (the trying out of sustainability practices) in real contexts. This allowed them to develop a series of resource books 'around locally relevant knowledge resources and practical learning activities' (p. 1) which are situated in the context of global environmental change. For example, one of the books on carbon sequestration supported the planting of an indigenous succulent – 'spekboom'. This plant has a high capacity to absorb carbon – thus enabling the regeneration of indigenous biomes at a local level while responding to the global climate change concern.

Finally, because the notion of situatedness plays into the next core feature of active learning – its action-orientated nature – another important insight into situatedness can be added from dialectical critical realism: that is, the notion of absence which brings additional opportunity to the language of possibility described above. Sayer (2000: 12) explained that a critical realist ontology 'makes it possible to understand how we could be or become many things which currently we are not'. Even in cases where potential powers of societal structures and mechanisms are exercised, tendencies exerted by other structures and mechanisms may counteract or reinforce these powers.

Thus, the work of dialectical realism becomes consistent with the transformative intent of ESD as we need a process of 'absenting absence' (Bhaskar 1993: 176). By negating absence (also a part of concrete utopianism as described above) Bhaskar stresses that we need to 'pinpoint the real, but non-actualised possibilities inherent in a situation, thus inspiring grounded hope to inform emancipatory praxis' (1998: 215).

## **Active learning as action-orientated**

An important historical influence on the notion of active learning in South Africa has been the action competence approach – a concept originating among Danish authors working in the health sector and introduced to South African educators through Danish involvement in national environmental education programmes, such as the Learning for Sustainability Project and the NEEP-GET in the late 1990s (Janse van Rensburg 2001; O'Donoghue 2007). Action competence has helped with giving meaning to the notion of active learning in that the 'action-orientation' of active learning in the field of environmental learning can create misunderstandings if the change-orientated element becomes displaced. For example, research in the NEEP-GET reported that 'there appeared to be some confusion between notions of action and activities, reflected for example in collecting leaves or making objects as forms of "action taking"' (Raven et al. 2005: 48). Jensen and Schnack (1997: 165) described competence as 'being able, and willing, to be a qualified participant' while action they saw as distinct from activity in that action is 'conscious, considered and targeted' at an environmental issue. Actiontaking thus differs from activity in that it involves a conscious and informed response to an issue, problem or something that has been learned. An activity is simply a task done for the sake of doing or learning something. Environmental 'action' moves us towards environmental improvement and an improved quality of life.

An action competence approach is consistent with education *for* the environment as described in the section above, and is illustrative of the transformative intent behind the active learning framework. Another way of emphasising the transformational intent of social learning is 'a shift or switch to a new way of being and seeing' (Wals 2009). With this transformative intent, it is possible to conceive of the active learning framework being used in a behaviourist way that, ironically, might be counter to its intention as an alternative to authoritarian and top-down or instrumentalist approaches to environmental learning (O'Donoghue 2007). This possibility is backed by previous research in the Schools and Sustainability Course, where Hoffmann noted that: 'It seems that behaviourist assumptions and intentions can easily be camouflaged within techniques borrowed from popular contemporary theories such as the active learning framework' (2005). This implies that the active learning framework, with an intention for positive and empowering change, could paradoxically be re-interpreted to endorse oppressive and top-down relationships, for example, mandated litter clean-ups or other regimented activities in schools.

As with situated learning, education *for* the environment also needs to take care not to over-individualise the need for change. While individual behaviour changes can make a difference in the world, Jensen and Schnack (1997) insist that environmental problems are not only solved by decisions made by individuals but by addressing systemic structures of society. Similarly, Wals calls for a 'systemic and reflexive way of thinking and acting with the realisation that our world is one of continuous change and ever-present uncertainty' (2007a: 37). Critical realism stretches this notion even further by insisting that an understanding of agency requires an understanding of the relationship between these structures in society and the agents acting in it. Bhaskar uses the notions of 'positions (places, functions, rules, tasks, duties, rights, etc.) … and practices (activities, etc.) as a system of mediating concepts representing a "point of contact" between human agency and social structures' (Bhaskar 1979: 51). This means that instead of focusing either on the individual or on societal structures, the critical point of intervention in environmental change is the relationship between structure and agency.

Education *for* the environment also requires cognisance of power relations among the deliberators. Education *for* the environment has helped to place, and keep, the political dimension of issues on the environmental education agenda, thus illuminating the socially critical agenda of ESD and helping to give life to the field in the face of conservative influences (Jickling & Spork 1998). A pertinent question is whose knowledge dominates in the active learning process of 'sharing', 'reporting' and 'mediation' (O'Donoghue 2001). Reflection on democratic processes can be of use here. In its handbook, the national Eco-Schools Programme explained the intention that 'as a democratic and participatory programme, pupils and staff experience active citizenship in school which encourages them to take ongoing, important roles in improving both their school and home environment' (Eco-Schools Programme South Africa 2009: 2). Wals and Jickling (2009: 80) make a distinction between 'shallow' democracy which is 'superficial, obligatory, detached, cosmetic, and strategic', and 'deep' democracy that is 'real, intrinsic, involved, genuine, and meaningful'. Wals argues for co-creation and co-ownership of 'contextual solutions' with the understanding that 'forcing consensus on how people should live their lives is undesirable from a deep democracy perspective' (2007b: 43).

In South Africa, co-engagement was supported, in particular, through an Eco-Schools process that led to the development of eco-committees in schools, which encouraged 'community involvement' along with 'whole school development and democratic management'. Eco-committee members were involved in whole school audits at the beginning of each year, and in reviews at the end of a co-engaged policy development and implementation process (Rosenberg 2009: 22). Whole school development 'integrates the formal curriculum, social/organisational aspects, institutional practices, evaluation and community links' (Shallcross & Wals 2004: 1).

Jickling and Spork argue that: 'If we are serious about education, we should, in the first place, put aside our most promising visions for the future. Moreover, if we really want to open students' minds to alternative world views, it makes little sense to steer them, however gently, towards a particular vision' (Jickling & Spork 1998: 342). This highlights the importance of transformation not being imposed by an outsider or presented as a pre-determined doctrine, thus 'militating against the evolutionary tendencies of environmental thought' (p. 323). The deep democracy perspective is a reaction against actions being driven by 'outside' concerns, that is, an imposed, decontextualised, 'outsider' view of what we should do.

## **Active learning as reflexively deliberative**

O'Donoghue described the broadening of environmental learning processes in South Africa, from a narrow focus on communicating environmental 'messages' and raising awareness about environmental problems, to a process of 'deliberative co-engagement in the challenges and risks of the day' (O'Donoghue 2007: 148). In the early developments of the active learning framework, deliberation is implied through the series of 'steering questions' in Figure 2:

The first three steering questions clearly have a dependence on foundational knowledge which can be either prior knowledge (what do we already know?) or new knowledge (what do we need to find out and who can we go to for help?). Fien's reference to education *about* environment is clearly an objective here. The new knowledge described can be sourced from many different places, as suggested by Wals's argument that problem solving needs to involve 'the integration of multiple perspectives, the co-designing of viable alternatives, the utilisation of diversity, and the simultaneous development of a whole range of sustainability related competences' (2009: 385).

In South Africa, this multi-perspective vision of ESD was very different to the authoritarian pedagogy associated with apartheid South Africa, in which rote learning dominated and learners were seen as passive receptors of knowledge (Janse van Rensburg 2000). Therefore, a distinction between passive and active learning became significant in South Africa. For an understanding of active learning, it is important to make a distinction between active learning in the Piagetian sense of learners 'actively constructing their own development, through their interactions with the environment' (Capel et al. 1995: 219) and activity-based learning in which the cognitive meaningmaking process can easily be sidelined through an over-emphasis on hands-on practical action. Rosenberg, O'Donoghue and Olvitt (2013) drew attention to this possibility of sidelining meaning-making when noting that those involved in projects and practical actions (methods under the banner of 'learning-by-doing') may be so absorbed in the practical activity that they neglect to reflect on what they are learning. This point is also made by Vinjevold and Taylor in their concern that:

*Learning must involve cognitive and affective activity and not merely movement and speech. Thus … if not carefully structured and guided by the teacher, [educational activity] succeeds only in passing the time without engaging the cognitive faculties of participants, and thus results in little or no learning.* (1999: 65)

In essence, the distinction being made here is between hands-on/minds-on learning as opposed to simply hands-on learning.

Important across all national projects has been the role of disciplinary knowledge in understanding everyday problems without falling into the trap of over-emphasising everyday knowledge at the expense of formal school knowledge. This is consistent with concerns about education quality raised in South Africa, regarding how important it is that 'the two-way relationship between everyday and school knowledge provides important pedagogical tools for inducting learners into the art of formal discourse, and for the practical application of formal knowledge to problems in the real world' (Taylor 1999: 113). Thus, there is an important role to be played by subject-specific knowledge in deepening and grounding the understanding of environmental issues within the situated learning processes described previously.

Examples of discipline exploration developed by the NEEP-GET at the time of an outcomes-based focused curriculum include a description of the role of each subject in contributing to environmental understanding:

The NEEP-GET developed extensive explorations for all curriculum disciplines and the above extracts are illustrative of the role played by the NEEP-GET in highlighting the important explanatory power of the different disciplines. Acknowledgement of this discipline-based explanatory power was not explicit in the active learning framework at the time, but the 2019 framework now highlights the role of CAPS knowledge in Quadrant 1 (O'Donoghue 2019: 7).

In a further example of discipline-based work, in the Schools and Sustainability Course, teachers explored their specific disciplinary areas for opportunities for developing enquiry-based activities in order to gain understandings of environmental challenges they had identified in an earlier contextual profile of their school and community. Teachers were introduced to a variety of qualitative and quantitative ideas for hands-on enquiries, as well as tools for supporting these enquiries, and then encouraged to find or develop their own enquiry tools to suit the focus of their lesson plans. Different methods used in different disciplines included quantitative audits (for example, water use), ecological studies, observations, mapping, descriptive essays, surveys using interviews, and surveys using questionnaires (Schudel et al. 2008b). This emphasis on methods in disciplines highlights how the disciplines provide skills and procedures (procedural knowledge) to gather information about phenomena in addition to the content and concepts that describe and explain these phenomena (propositional knowledge). These two types of knowledge are based on the understanding that a subject 'is composed of two epistemic domains, the "know how" or procedural knowledge' or the 'know that' or propositional domain (Muller 2014: 263).

When reflecting on the deliberative nature of environmental learning it is also important to acknowledge that deliberations may often be value-based. Thus, not only are they 'minds-on' but also have an affective component. Olvitt describes value-based deliberations as ethico-moral and elaborates by explaining that our deliberations are 'moral in terms of our practical and often private deliberations about our conduct in a world characterised by injustice, risk and uncertainty, and ethical in terms of the theories and patterns of thinking in society that influence how we distinguish right from wrong' (2017: 12). Deliberation is a process whereby people 'recognize, evaluate and, when needed, potentially transcend or break with existing social norms, group thinking and personal biases' (Wals 2007b: 39).

Concurrent with the interest in democratic and constructivist educational processes in South Africa has been an interest in South African ESD pedagogy in social learning. Wals describes social learning as 'learning by mirroring one's own ideas, views, values and perspectives with those of others' (2009: 385). A particular challenge with social learning is that the integration of perspectives is often not viable due to oppressive power relationships. Pedagogies embracing strong constructivism can lead to a relativist 'anything goes' outcome in environmental deliberations. From a critical realist perspective, Price explained that this 'leads to the inability to act, since how can we act if we cannot choose between better or worse?' (Price 2007: 107). For example, the concept of sustainability is also open to relativist interpretations leading to an 'ambiguity that, somewhat paradoxically, provides the focus for discourse about a variety of issues within the contemporary problematique, while undeniably also providing fuel for those who would procrastinate in their resolve to seek sustainability' (Bawden 2004: 21). Instead, we can conceive of a weak (non-relativist) constructivism (Brown 2009; Lotz-Sisitka 2008) in which views of reality can be constructed in the minds of learners, but remain open to critique, and still need to stand up to tests of truth and normative judgements. This critique is dependent on philosophically embracing the importance of 'judgemental rationality' which ushers in the question of ethics, thus enabling the possibility for 'explanatory critique of consciousness (and being), entailing judgements of value and action' (Bhaskar 1994: 71).

Of course, normative judgements are themselves constructed so that we are called to examine the shaping influences and practical adequacy of prescribed normative frameworks – as suggested by Lotz-Sisitka and Schudel (2006). The authors drew on Sayer's concern that normative arguments pose the danger of 'empty moralizing [and] of assuming that whatever is agreed to be good, will therefore come into being' (Sayer 2000: 178). Sayer argued that a critical realist argument would need to 'think about the feasibility of desirable alternatives in terms of how the recommended social processes would work, asking counterfactual questions, conducting thought experiments and scrutinising critical standpoints (p. 178). This highlights the importance of deliberation in ESD processes.

A further comment on deliberation is that it is seen in the context of sustainability practices as discussed in a previous section. O'Donoghue called for 'practice-based deliberations that might allow the better mediation of choices that are more reality congruent and socially responsible' (2007: 153). This aspect of deliberation links to Fien's education *through* the environment as described in section two of this chapter and is consistent with Uzzell's (1999: 404) call for 'authentic learning' so that actions developed in school are not 'surrogate or fantasy actions' but authentic and close to the reality learners might find themselves in after school. In this way deliberations are not taking place in a whirl of ideas but are reflecting off tangible practices and dilemmas. Similarly we can note that ethico-moral deliberation does not happen in a whirl of emotions but in relation to the cognitive skills highlighted above. This is important because 'lack of knowledge reduces our capacity for effective moral agency' (Parker 2010).

The descriptions of reflexive deliberation in this section can thus be summed up as deliberations between and amongst the cognitive, affective and practical dimensions of learning. It is these deliberations that enable a reflexive approach to ESD driven by 'dissonance created by introducing new knowledge, alternative values and ways of looking at the world [to] become a stimulating force for learning, creativity and change' (Parker 2010: 39). Reflexivity links to the emphasis on assessment and higher order cognitive thinking levels (analysis, evaluation and innovation), introduced in the reworked active learning framework as discussed in a previous section above. In the reflexively deliberative work of environmental learning (see Chapter 12 for the challenges with reflexive approaches to learning) it is the 'making sense' of different perspectives (analysis), the comparisons across cases and contexts (evaluation), and the identification of new ways of being and seeing (innovation) that engage these higher order thinking skills.

# **Principles for active learning**

This chapter has presented the active learning framework as an open-ended framework for structuring environmental learning, through including activities where learners work with environmental information, conduct enquiries in their local environment, consider appropriate actions towards sustainable living, and reflect critically on the process. The chapter has reviewed guideline documents as well as research and evaluation reports across four historically significant national programmes that have influenced the development and implementation of active learning in South Africa. It has elaborated on these using influential educational and ESD research literature in the country, in particular drawing on a critical realist dialectic to extend conceptions of active learning. The historical research as well as the elaborations with dialectical critical realism helped to set the scene for the emerging conceptions of active learning in the Fundisa for Change programme, which followed the four South African ESD programmes highlighted in this study. The critical realist dialectic has strengthened perceptions of agency (embodied intentional causal absenting – see introduction to this chapter) in active learning by contributing to:

• the groundedness of a situated approach to active learning,

The chapter has identified and described three core features of active learning, following this, this chapter now proposes core principles for strengthening active learning in national and international ESD processes.

Principles for active learning as situated pedagogy. Active learning should:

Principles for active learning as action-orientated pedagogy. Active learning should:

Principles for active learning as reflexively deliberative. Active learning should:

It is hoped that the histories and new insights into active learning offered by dialectical critical realism in this chapter will inform and guide national and international perceptions and practices in ESD.

# **References**

Bawden R (2004) Sustainability as emergence: The need for engaged discourse. In: PB Corcoran & A Wals (eds) *Higher Education and the Challenge of Sustainability: Problematics, Promise, and Practice*. Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers

Brown G (2009) The ontological turn in education: The place of the learning environment. *Journal of Critical Realism* 8(1): 5–34

Fien J (1993) *Education for the Environment: Critical Curriculum Theorising and Environmental Education*. Geelong, Victoria: Deakin University Press

# **Appendix A: Document log for historical review of active learning**

### **Chapter 8** *Theorising Active Learning – A Historical Analysis*

# CHAPTER 9

# **An Examination of the Nexus between Environmental Knowledge and Environmental Learning Processes**

*Christina Chitsiga and Ingrid Schudel*

# **Introducing the study**

Previous chapters in this book have discussed the complexity of environmental content (see Schudel and Lotz-Sisitka, Chapter 2; Isaacs and Olvitt, Chapter 4) and Chapter 8 (Schudel) has highlighted the significance and key elements of active and critical approaches to learning. The primary purpose of this chapter is to draw these two approaches together; that is, to explore the nexus of environmental content and environmental learning processes.

Environmental content faces challenges in many curricula internationally as, according to Grossman (1995, in Cutter-Mackenzie & Smith 2003), teachers tend to teach well that which they know, and are not confident when it comes to teaching content with which they are not familiar. Findings from environmental education research have shown that unfamiliarity is a problem in South Africa as teachers lack environmental and sustainability content knowledge due to the fact that this content is new (Lotz-Sisitka 2011; Fundisa for Change Programme 2013). Lotz-Sisitka (2009) reports cases in which teachers' recourse has been to rely on memories linked to prior curricula or lifeworld experiences to drive the learning processes of environmental content in the curriculum, with minimal reference to the curriculum framework, structure, content or assessment methods and standard. Thus, according to Lotz-Sisitka (2009*)* teaching practices are not providing adequate access to knowledge in the contemporary world as framed by curricula. This appears to be filtering through to learner achievement; for example, findings from a South African National Diagnostic Matric Exam for 2013 report showed a lack of content understanding in most of the subjects that have a focus on environmental content, such as Life Sciences and Geography (Mandikonza & Lotz-Sisitka 2016).

However, even familiarity and confidence with environmental content is not sufficient to improve education for sustainable development (ESD). Concurrent with the need for understanding the complex content, is establishing pedagogies that support the designing of 'teaching and learning in an interactive, learner-centered way that enables exploratory, action-oriented and transformative learning' (Unesco 2014: 12). Spork (1992) and Fien (1993) both note an emphasis in literature on how the teaching approaches of teachers can affect the way in which content (environmental content in the case of this study) is understood by learners, as education is seen as a continuous interpretation of the curriculum by teachers (Stables 2004).

Exploring the nexus between environmental content and environmental learning processes has been informed by the concept of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). In terms of PCK thinking, an educator's knowledge needs to go 'beyond knowledge of subject matter per se to the dimension of subject matter knowledge for teaching and ways of representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others' (McEwan & Bull 1991: 324). An interest in PCK is explicit in the South African context, with the South African Minimum Requirements for Teachers specifying the development of 'specialised pedagogical content knowledge, which includes knowing how to represent the concepts, methods and rules of a discipline in order to create appropriate learning opportunities for diverse learners' (South Africa DHET 2011: 10). Employing PCK in this study meant exploring an interest in how complex environmental content plays out when active and critical approaches to learning are mobilised through typical ways of representing and formulating subject matter in the field of ESD.

The research explored this nexus through an empirical study of teacher mediation strategies in two Life Sciences classrooms in South Africa. For full understanding of these teachers' practices, there was also a need to acknowledge that expected outcomes do not always play out in classroom practice. Thus, the second purpose of the chapter is to develop an understanding of the enabling and constraining factors that influence the emergence of active and critical approaches in classroom practice.

Ultimately, the study sought to explore possible strategies to inform and strengthen classroom practices, particularly in the teaching of the environmental content in the curriculum. The study examined the teacher-mediating strategies through the following research question:

How are active and critical learning pedagogical strategies enabled and constrained at the nexus of environmental content and environmental learning processes in Grade 11 Life Sciences classrooms?

From the research question the following goals were derived:

# **Constructing a framework for reviewing environmental content and pedagogical knowledge**

Given that the nature of environmental content is contested and ideological, sociohistorical, tangible and demonstrable, and transformational, this research sought to explore how typical ESD pedagogies engage such knowledge foundations. To achieve the first research goal, the study used four pedagogical sensitising constructs from the field of environmental education for viewing mediation of environmental knowledge construction in Life Science classrooms. These pedagogical sensitising constructs: deliberation, situating story, proximity experience and practical reasoning, were drawn from Lotz-Sisitka and O'Donoghue's (2006) open process learning framework for environmental learning. This framework described teaching strategies which promoted active and critical approaches to learning. These sensitising constructs, as well as their relational process, are presented in Figure 1.

**Figure 1.** The representation of environmental pedagogies in relation to the nature of environmental content (elaborating on Lotz-Sisitka & O'Donoghue 2006)

The four pedagogical sensitising constructs are outlined in the bottom part of the diagram, while the top part considers the environmental content that feeds into each. This is in an attempt to explore the nexus of teachers' content knowledge and teaching practice (that is the mediation of learning). Thus, the diagram has four nexus points:

# **Reviewing the enablements and constraints of classroom implementation of ESD**

The study is framed by *practice theory* as proposed by Schatzki (2005) and *the theory of practice architectures* (Kemmis & Heikkinen 2011) which elaborated on practice theory. Practices architectures were first articulated by Kemmis and Grootenboer (2008) who argued that practices are shaped not solely by intentional action and practice knowledge of participants but also by circumstances and conditions 'external' to them, due to: pre-existing cultural-discursive (concerned with the language of teaching and learning or language of the environmental field); material-economic (concerned with resources of teaching and learning); and social-political arrangements (concerned with policy guiding teaching and learning as well as organisational rules and regulations in teaching and learning institutions). These architectural arrangements shape the content and conduct of a practice that is comprised of the distinctive sayings, doings and relatings that occur in a particular kind of practice. The theory of practice architectures, developed from practice theory by Schatzki (2005) and Kemmis and Grootenboer (2008) helped to give insight into Goal 2 of the study.

# **Research methodology**

## **Data generation process**

Two Grade 11 Life Science teachers (colleagues of the first author) were respondents for this study. The teachers chose to remain anonymous in the reporting of this study. However, for purposes of contextualising the study, we note here that the teachers, who were teaching in the same district as the first author, were from two coastal schools within the Ndlambe (Port Alfred) area of the Sarah Baartman district in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.

The study's qualitative orientation enabled engagement with teachers in contextenabling first-hand encounters and in-depth analysis and understanding. A case-study approach enabled empirical inquiry, investigating a phenomenon within a real-life context (Baxter & Jack 2008). This approach required continuous engagement between the researcher and the research participants.

Various data generation techniques were used in this study. Semi-structured interviews with each teacher elicited data about their contexts, practices (sayings, doings and relatings about their mediating practices), as well as the architectures influencing these practices. Questions were specifically designed to elicit information in relation to the pedagogical sensitising constructs of interest to the study.

Four lesson observations per teacher were conducted during the four-week duration of the environmental content coverage as set out in the Life Sciences curriculum. Lesson observations enabled generation of first-hand data and accounts of teacher approaches to mediating ESD. They also provided evidence of the practice architectures in each one of the schools in the research study.

Lesson observations were video recorded with Iris Connect technology which enables researcher and teacher participants to log on to a website and retrieve the saved lesson. This made possible the retrieval of data missed during the observations and enabled lesson recall with teachers during stimulated-recall interviews (Patton 2000). Such interviews assist in retrieving of memories, as well as enabling participants to explain their decision-making (Slough 2001; Mackey & Gass 2005; Sime 2006). This strategy, together with the context-sensitive lens of practice architectures, added to the rigour of case-study research thus ensuring that the researchers did not impose naïve or context-blind interpretations onto teacher practice. Discussions with teachers during stimulated interviews were voice recorded for detailed recording of data.

## **Data analysis**

The analytical tool (presented in Table 1) placed sensitising constructs from the Lotz-Sisitka and O'Donoghue (2006) open process framework for environmental learning, in a matrix against the theory of practice (Schatzki 2005) and the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis & Heikkinen 2011).

## **Chapter 9**

# **Research findings and discussion**

## **Case Study 1**

In her first lesson, Teacher 1 encouraged **critical deliberation**. She discussed the curriculum focus of water availability, under the topic of 'human impact', thus: 'The resources of South Africa are actually in short supply. And if the economy grows as they expect and the population grows as they expect, the demand for water will not be sustainable.' In the observation of the first teacher's lesson, her discussions focused on economic and industrial practices; poor practices and management; and ecological disturbances and geographical factors, which are suggested in the CAPS curriculum under human impact. She introduced similar factors when discussing water quality (listed under the same CAPS topic) thus: 'In this case most of the water is actually polluted by humans by industrial influence, domestic and commercial usage, by mine drainage and so that is quite bad and we should look into how to fix that.' This discussion illustrates the explicitly ideological nature of environmental content, with specific human practices being labelled as 'bad' and with a call for change emerging from this. In addition, through encouraging debate on ideological standpoints, she added to the discussion on water availability: 'Is water equally available? Let us discuss this idea.' Significantly, this political concern about unequal access to water is one of the few dimensions regarding water not raised by the CAPS curriculum. Yet equal access to water is a critical concern in South Africa, as illustrated by statistics that report that 'although 45% of the population has water access in their dwelling this ranges from 0.07% to 100% at ward level, with a high level of inequality' (Cole et al. 2018: 37).

Discussions about human impact are inherently critical but abstractions can make it difficult to fully understand the complexities and develop the skills of 'weighing up' and discussing 'trade-offs' – thus limiting the depth of critical engagement. **Situating stories** with specific cases in a specific place and time and with due consideration for socio-historical underpinnings can therefore operate to strengthen critical deliberation. For example, in the stimulated recall interview, the teacher described how,

I tried to include examples of things that the learners and their parents do that directly interfere with the environment, such as cutting down trees, dumping rubbish in undesignated grounds and how they dispose waste. The re-use of water particularly turned out to be quite a hot debated topic.

She showed the learners a **situating story** – a video of polluted water and its effect on a community in another province, which she said helped learners relate to pollution in their own town. To quote the educator: 'This town has had water issues being talked about a lot so it would only be good to bring learners to that reality that this happens in their context and perhaps they can then learn from this.' Situating her lessons in local context, she discussed the town's high salt-content levels in the water. She also discussed climate change and made links to the recent floods experienced in the town. Illustrating how that situating story had resonated with the learners, she reported their own example that they had offered: 'They mentioned that people, especially in the informal settlements, live off the fish that they catch in the river. If you keep water in a reservoir there is not enough water in the stream and it will affect the fish. If there is a flood it will affect them as they may not be able to catch fish, this will force them to move elsewhere, where they can make a living. And you will always find people living next to water supply.'

She illustrated that the inclusion of local issues in her teaching was not a 'once-off' activity, implying a good grasp of local potential that could be included in the topic of 'human impact' in the CAPS:

A lot of examples are … from what happens in our direct environment where learners live, such as garbage and water pollution. Even the issue of abalone poaching and alien plants around their homes.

While a **hands-on proximity experience** was not directly observed in this study, the teacher indicated that she planned on 'doing a water quality expedition on the [local river] and this would also develop their scientific skills.' The Life Sciences curriculum includes a section where water-quality tests and knowledge of the effects of pollution of water are required. To prepare learners for the excursion, the teacher used audio-visual material which enabled learners to make the link between what they had learnt earlier in a section on micro-organisms and the water quality section they were currently engaged with. **Proximity experience** was clearly not an approach that was foreign to this teacher who asked learners in class: 'Remember when we went to a recently cleared area of the school and looked at all the possible effects the cutting down of trees may have had on the process of photosynthesis and the environment?'

**Practical reasoning** is the fourth sensitising construct. In the section above, we argued that a situating story is an important aspect of critical deliberation. Building on this, processes such as reimagining, re-evaluating and the search for alternatives that are reasonable to institute in practice are also critical for teaching strategies trying to develop practical reason. Lotz-Sisitka and O'Donoghue argue that: 'Young learners are quick to work out how one way is better than another but are seldom much good at the critical analysis of prevailing orientation without any experience of alternatives' (2006: 12).

The first teacher showed an interest in seeking alternatives with her comment that: 'Through teaching others about the environmental issues, we can have a cleaner and safer environment. I am actually honoured to be part of teaching learners who preserve and protect our environment.' However, in the observed lessons there was no evidence of a search for alternatives, notwithstanding that these may have been included in further lessons not observed in the course of this research.

## **Case Study 2**

Teacher 2 supported **critical deliberation** processes by pushing for understanding of the science behind environmental issues. For example, during one of the presentations he asked: 'The factories release heat which gets trapped within the ozone layer. What is this referring to exactly and tell the class why is it bad? What is the reason behind this happening? Tell the class more.' This quote highlights two things: first, it is another example of the ideological nature of ESD. Yet an ideological standpoint on ecological impact (the problematic of global warming) is easier to critique than a complex social-ecological development problem (e.g. nuclear power or coal-driven power as a solution for remedying a country's electricity supply shortfall). The CAPS's focus on 'human impact' therefore does not lend itself to more critical engagement through asking learners, for example, to consider the question of whether addressing South Africa's electricity shortfall and access for all necessarily must impact negatively on the environment.

The quote also highlights one of the problems mentioned above of teachers' limited content understanding (Lotz-Sisitka 2011). Misconceptions among school-going and university students and teachers in training about the relationship between the ozone layer and climate change have long been documented and are still ongoing, as shown by the recent research by Gungordu, Yalcın-Celik and Kılıc (2017). While the teacher was not incorrect that the ozone layer traps heat (United Kingdom. Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs n.d.), the relationship between ozone and heat is complex and it would be better to focus simply on how greenhouse gases in the troposphere (a different atmospheric layer to where the ozone is found) impact on climate change.

The teacher issued an invitation to the groups to criticise or add relevant information they deemed necessary to the presentations. In the stimulated recall interview, he mentioned that his choice of approach was informed from his own experiences, saying that if learners were not probed via verbal interaction or in written tasks they became passive. To support this, he said:

Learners just sit and don't think through their answers or what the teacher would have asked. There is no considered thinking on their part, but this time I kept digging deeper into their responses asking why and how. The level at which they answered as well as the sort of questions asked, they showed deep thought and engagement with the content.

Teacher 2 supported **situated learning** in the homework task exploring case studies of climate change on the African continent, for example, a case study on how climate change is fuelling malaria in Kenya, or a worksheet on water-borne diseases affecting our South African context. This teacher also enriched the discussion through everyday examples to which the learners could relate. For example, he argued:

You are what your surrounding is like. Hence what you do in the community around your house reflects on you especially where environmental issues are concerned. If you have an illegal dump outside your house, it is calling for all sorts of diseases and I make such links possible to learners.

While **proximity experience** was not observed in this research, a previous visit to the local beach area and river to study water pollution due to the presence of red tide was one of the references made by Teacher 2 to enhance proximity experience – although, notably, red tide is not a 'human impact' issue, but a seasonal fluctuation of algal blooms influenced by salinity, temperature and wind (see Figure 2). He acknowledged the need for learners to have a hands-on experience of learning. His beach and river visit encounter served this purpose as he noted that:

We went to visit the beach and river and it made sense now when we spoke of water pollution and water quality as some of the effects of that red tide could be linked by the learners to this section. So it is that ability to give learners the closeness to experiences especially within their context that enables them to have a feel and make sense of this environmental content.

Learners were then able to incorporate this previous proximity experience into the discussion on 'human impact'.

As with Teacher 1, there was no evidence in the lessons observed of learners using practical reason to seek alternatives to the environmental issues presented in class.

### **Chapter 9**

*An Examination of the Nexus between Environmental Knowledge and Environmental Learning Processes*

**Figure 2.** Previous outdoor river expedition led by Teacher 2 to test for water quality as affected by a red tide (photograph cropped to protect learner identity)

# **Practice architectures as enabling and constraining teaching practice at the nexus of environmental content and environmental learning pedagogical practices**

## *Critical deliberation of contested and ideological environmental content knowledge*

Teacher 1 indicated her limited exposure to and training for the environmental content of the curriculum (discourse of the environmental field). Teacher 2 noted materialeconomic constraints in the form of lack of photocopying machines for district staff (subject advisors) to copy teaching and learning material and a lack of cars to travel to schools, thus restricting ongoing training seminars and curriculum coverage monitoring to enhance teacher readiness for CAPS.

This lack of preparedness meant a need for preparing and sourcing information from elsewhere in order for Teacher 1 to supplement her lecture-style teaching practice. She stated that despite the fact that she was still a beginner teacher in the field she was familiar with some of the content knowledge and that this, to a certain extent, enabled her to mediate.

As an additional constraining factor, Teacher 1 and her learners use English as their second language. However, most of the available learning and teaching materials were in English, limiting both Teacher 1 and her learners. This meant that she found it difficult to articulate the content in a way that learners could easily understand, and this hampered mediation.

She used internet-based video resources containing relevant material on environmental issues to supplement her teaching. She went on to support her use of audio-visual material through arguing that,

Whenever I use internet-based materials I find it easier for the learners to relate and also to answer their questions. I get a feeling that it's learning together in a way, as we both watch the material and learn.

Teacher 2's lessons were more strongly reliant on learner-led research. He was concerned about his own 'limited knowledge in some content areas'. However, he appeared confident enough in the discourse to be able to 'guide them during their discussions so as to not make them lose track of what's to be discussed'. In fact he appeared so confident with some of the content that he commented: 'Most of my students know how I get carried away when I'm busy teaching any topic therefore I would say that they rather chose to join me on this journey, sharing and discussing ideas. This helped me also not to wander off the topic.' It appears that this teacher's confidence was borne from years of experience in an alternative discourse – Geography and Adult Education – rather than in training or experiences in Life Sciences teaching per se. This enabled him to use questioning strategies to evoke 'deeper reflective thought in the learners'.

Giving more power to learners in classrooms can support learning. However, Teacher 2 highlighted that the multicultural set up in the school meant that working together and learning from one another did not flow easily. This was the reason for his choice of group work as a teaching method – to provide more opportunity for such intercultural dialogue. A socio-political concern for keeping power in the hands of the teacher can have equally convincing argument. For example, Teacher 1 argued: 'Well, I make use of minimum group work as I find it difficult to control the class or judge just how much of the actual learning is happening as I'm not with all the groups at the same time.'

### *Situating story with knowledge construction in socio-historical context*

A resourceful teacher, Teacher 1 supported situating stories by gathering 'information of our environment to include in the lessons. This means the topic is a bit more 'real' to learning such as the water quality issue in the town.' Teacher 2 added that the use of local context was one strategy that could be used more to develop deeper engagement with the environmental content as most issues were prevalent in the communities in which learners found themselves.

Being in a multicultural environment and a dual-medium (English/Afrikaans) school, Teacher 2 used both languages as a medium of instruction. While leading critical deliberation, being fluent in both languages meant that he was easily able to code-switch, thus making the content better understood. However, situating stories can often be presented as written case studies. In this case, lack of familiarity with a language can become a barrier when 'comprehension and ability to read through the case studies are essential'.

## *Proximity experiences exploring demonstrable and tangible knowledge*

The CAPS suggests 'Practical observation of ONE example of human influence on the environment in the local area' (South Africa DoE 2012: 51), thus supporting proximity experience. However, resource constraints means it is not always possible to take learners on excursions, as noted by Teacher 2:

There is also the issue of availability of resources, with not much extra teaching materials, transport to take learners for field trips and teachers or textbooks, that sort of thing, it then becomes difficult to fully and enjoyably make the learners excited about such topics.

# He added:

I also think there are too few or no excursions or fieldtrips which would otherwise bring a real feel to the learners and enable them to carry out observations and experiments in the environment. It is part of their skills development as well which the syllabus requires them to attain but is currently being limited.

Teacher 2 furthermore reported that his planning of lessons and adherence to some of the expectations of the curriculum, such as field trips, were dependent on approval of these trips by schools and the district office.

# *Practical reason drawing on transformative knowledge illustrating alternative sustainability practices*

Teacher 1 noted that the socio-political architecture of the prescriptive curriculum helped her in controlling what she would teach and how she would mediate. According to her, the CAPS document (South Africa DoE 2012) 'directly influences the delivery of certain topics in schools. It gives strict guidelines as to the topics to be discussed.' Openings are made in the CAPS curriculum for seeking sustainability alternatives, with sub-topics such as reducing carbon footprint; water purification and recycling; control of alien plant invasion; inclusion of indigenous knowledge on natural heritage and its sustainable use; searching for alternatives to poaching; prevention in soil and water pollution; and rehabilitation being among the listed sub-topics.

Yet, despite the curriculum imperative, the lessons covered for this research did not provide evidence of this important aspect being taught. Teacher 1 noted a desire for more help with biodiversity, saying: 'I would have loved some help with the section on endemic plants, their role, threats to them and what role citizens can play in their preservation.'

The problem-orientated discourse of the observed lessons, which avoided a search for problem-solving alternatives, may not be surprising. That is because, even though sustainability practices are listed in the CAPS, the main topic of 'human impact' emphasises problems above alternatives, and this is exacerbated by 'cause and consequence' as the opening interest line in the description of the topic, which thereafter hierarchically governs all further sub-topics.

More insight into the lack of a search for solutions comes from Teacher 2's critical observation that, 'one has to have a full understanding or at least familiarisation with the environmental content, otherwise you will not fully be able to implement it or develop ways to help intervene.' By this he is signifying that the different dimensions of active and critical pedagogies are linked, and he presents a perception that the critical and contested nature of environmental issues needs to be mastered before one can adequately address transformative pedagogical practices.

However, Lotz-Sisitka and O'Donoghue argue an alternative perspective, that one does not necessarily have to begin with a problem, suggesting a 'shift in focus from problem-centred approaches that depict the environment awash with complex problems to a more practical engagement with and practising of better ways of doing things' (2006: 12).

# **Summary and conclusions**

The first aspect of this study dealt with teachers' PCK. A substantive pedagogical framing from an environmental learning perspective enabled a detailed exploration of the opportunities afforded at the nexus of teachers' environmental content knowledge and teaching strategies (in response to Research Question 1). The findings from Question 1 are summarised below in conjunction with the second aspect of this study, which was Question 2's interest in practice architectures and what enabled and constrained the emergence of the pedagogical practices described in response to Question 1. From these summaries, suggestions for curriculum changes, support materials and training are made.

The cases reveal that **contested and ideological** environmental content can be misleading if environmental knowledge of topics such as climate change is not accurate. This highlights the importance of ongoing interventions in strengthening teacher environmental content knowledge. Ideologically, environmental knowledge is complex and while it is easy to label practices that negatively impact on the environment as 'bad', teacher training should include critical deliberations of social-ecological complexities around questions of social justice and sustainable development. Notably, teachers drew on their Geographical knowledge to strengthen their effectiveness in the human impact topic of the Life Sciences curriculum and it is suggested that Life Sciences may be able to draw on inquiry strategies in the Geography curriculum to deepen this particular topic within the Life Sciences. Strategies such as 'why', 'how' and 'when' questions were highlighted as important for critical deliberation.

In order to support **critical deliberation**, training and support materials could strengthen environmental content knowledge by:

from learners (e.g. through explicitly supporting critical thinking, inquiry and research strategies among learners);

d) and supporting their visions of themselves as critical thinkers who can guide learning in insecure knowledge contexts.

Teachers indicated an awareness of case studies relevant for supporting **situating stories**, particularly in the local context, as well as capacity for resourcing these case studies. Local case studies identified included abalone poaching, alien invasives around homes, and high salt water levels in local water supplies. Teachers should be encouraged to do more of this work, drawing on local news reports and local experts to gain insight into these topics. Teaching strategies to support situating stories rich with **socio-historical** context included 'comparative studies' and learner-led research and it is suggested that these strategies could be included in teacher training to support the human-impact topic. However, one difficulty identified with these contextualised situating stories is that by drawing on local newspapers and articles, you are not drawing on resources developed for the specific grade and group of learners with which you work, and the material is often exclusively in English, which, for second language learners, can make these cases difficult to follow. Thus teachers need to be supported in how to adapt and select case-study material that is accessible to second language learners.

**Proximity experience** was not demonstrated during this study but discussions of past activities and possible future activities provided insight for the study. This is a curriculum-driven need and deemed valuable and necessary by the teachers in this study. However, teaching resources as well as material-economic needs and logistical complexities were cited as reasons for limitations on this curriculum requirement. One teacher described field work where learners recorded local deforestation effects, illustrating a potential for developing **tangible and demonstrable knowledge** of human impact. However, not all field work was relevant to the specific topic at hand (red tide might be considered pollution, but is not an example of pollution caused by human impact). This suggests that teachers need field-work support material and suggestions of relevant studies to conduct which can be sufficiently generic to succeed in diverse South African contexts.

Evidence of **practical reason** and exploration of **alternative sustainability** practices was not well supported in the cases studies, despite teacher resourcefulness and creativity as described above. This could be because the curriculum makes suggestions for where alternative sustainability practices should be sought, but this is over-shadowed by a more dominant problem-orientated cause/effect representation of 'human impact' – as suggested even by the limitations in the title of this topic. Another suggestion made by one of the teachers was that limited knowledge of environmental complexity can limit understanding of appropriate responses. However, what emerges from this study is that a less linear and problem-orientated starting point for understanding humanenvironment relationships in the CAPS curriculum might enable a more transformative approach to support active and critical pedagogies in the Life Sciences.

# **References**

### **Chapter 9**

# CHAPTER 10

# **Review of a Course-supported Design Research Intervention Process for the Inclusion of Education for Sustainable Development in School Subject Disciplines**

*Rob O'Donoghue, Shanu Misser and Janet Snow-Macleod*

# **Introduction and approach: A co-engaged design research process of professional development**

The study was informed by an expansion of the 'design research' reported by McKenny and Reeves (2012) and it developed as a collaborative design process similar to that described by Voogt, Laferriere, Breuleux, Itow, Hickey and McKenny (2015). Voogt et al. approached design research as a successive and developing process of formative work by participants working together to design and assess a learning programme. In our case the design work was undertaken within a course-supported process of ESD design innovation among participating teachers and subject advisors.

The collaborative Fundisa for Change professional development system had two intermeshed design dimensions: first, the design of the mediating Hand-Print CARE tools (a set of learning materials focusing on sustainability actions and ethics) for the course-supported Fundisa for Change process of professional development (see Schudel, Lotz-Sisitka, Songqwaru and Tshiningayamwe, Chapter 1); and alongside this, the co-engaged design research support materials for interventions undertaken by participants working in their subject disciplines. This chapter developed as a preliminary review of two course-supported design research intervention programmes on the inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge Heritage and ESD pedagogy in school subject disciplines. Subject advisors and teachers participating in a course-mediated professional development process were invited to design school-subject-based ESD programmes for knowledge acquisition and participatory learning in CAPS curriculum work with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Propositions (evidence/data) informing this chapter were derived from Hand-Print CARE project records and significant moments of insight in participatory design and intervention processes during the two Fundisa for Change short courses on deliberative professional development. The iterative insights and models of process reported here developed around cumulative case evidence and innovative moments that emerged through an open-ended retroductive1 process where abductive inferences (Danermark et al. 2002) informed the refinement of schematic models of process as mediating tools to inform the inclusion of ESD.

The chapter presents these formative models in schematic diagrams alongside illustrative case evidence that informed the design of Hand-Print CARE materials as start-up exemplars for use with mediating ESD design tools in school curriculum settings.

The two Fundisa for Change programmes from which insights were drawn developed around Indigenous Knowledge as intergenerational heritage for situating curriculum topics related to sustainability matters of concern in the southern African region. The work of the Science Subject Advisors in Gauteng became centred on climate change, and the Intermediate teachers in the KZN Midlands explored a variety of Life Skills topics related to biodiversity, waste and nutrition. An outcome of the Natural Sciences course-supported work was a Hand-Print CARE module on African Heritage and Climate Change, and the Intermediate Phase deliberative work touched on waste practices, nutrition and how to look after local animals and habitats in times of change.

# **An overview of Fundisa for Change as a co-engaged Education for Sustainable Development design process**

The study informing this chapter might best be characterised as an iterative process of design research and deliberative course-based intervention that emerged from:

<sup>1</sup> Retroductive inferences are insights derived through data that builds a picture over the passage of time and through reflection on past events.

The Fundisa for Change course invited participants to work together with formative tools for mediating new environmental **knowledge** in a school subject, while exploring interventions to improve their **teaching practices** and enhance the **assessment** of learning (Fundisa for Change 2013). A key attribute of Fundisa for Change as coengaged design and intervention processes is a tacit recognition that educators working together can bring about transformation through ESD. This perspective carries through to participating teachers working in collaborative learning with their learners to produce knowledge-mediated change for human flourishing. In the Fundisa for Change courses, this is assumed to develop from a deepening grasp of the subject through the inclusion of new environmental knowledge, taking into account several sources of propositional and local knowledge, alongside enhanced ways of teaching with improved assessment of learning.

The co-engaged dimension of the Fundisa for Change collaborative process of professional development was consistent with a generative design research process of deliberative intervention as emergent and cumulative processes framing the course and this review. A design research process of mediated participant intervention was thus aligned with, and activated within, the Fundisa for Change professional development process.

# **The framing of the Fundisa for Change course progression for ESD**

This chapter reports on emergent conceptual tools informing mediating models of process for the inclusion of ESD in school subject disciplines. The deliberative iterations of design-based intervention research as collaborative work with participating subject advisors and teachers enabled us to clarify and refine conceptual schema (tools). These were used for supporting teachers to undertake learning design work by planning ESD lesson sequences with their learners, using a course-mediated process (Figure 1) that involved the following:

### **Teaching and Learning for Change** *Education and Sustainability in South Africa*

**Figure 1.** Course-supported design research tools and mediating schema for expanded lesson sequences and assessment planning

The mediating progression reflected in Figure 1 was developed by Lotz-Sisitka and Chikunda (2019) for a Unesco Sustainability Starts with Teachers (SST) programme that both drew on and informed the Hand-Print CARE collaboration. This coursebased networked social learning progression framed the collaborative design-based action research processes of mediated participant-intervention undertaken with the subject advisors and teachers involved in the two Fundisa for Change programmes reviewed here.

# **The development and framing of Hand-Print CARE materials**

Ten start-up Hand-Print CARE modules (available at https://sustainabilityteachers. org/resources) were made available to the participating teachers and subject advisors as exemplars around which to develop their own ideas based on key curriculum subject area topics with an environment and sustainability focus. All the learning support materials were available as open access digital files to be used as start-up materials for the inclusion of indigenous heritage and new environmental knowledge in Life Skills, Natural Sciences and other subject disciplines.

Open-ended and formative Hand-Print CARE tools for framing and mediating ESD learning progressions as locally relevant themes (LORET) (WWF 2012) (see Figure 2 below) were compiled using a four-quadrant planning template that included:

**Figure 2.** Including locally relevant themes in Hand-Print CARE teaching materials *Source:* Adapted from WWF (2013)

The Hand-Print CARE materials were used as exemplars for situating and expanding teaching and assessment practices in a supportive course-mediated programme to include ESD in school subject disciplines.

# **The inclusion of indigenous knowledge**

The participating teachers deliberated examples of intergenerational indigenous knowledge associated with the subject content they were currently teaching.

Teachers in the KZN Midlands, for example, deliberated how teaching about waste and school clean-ups was a continuous labour of teaching that 'bore little fruit'. The schools appeared to be locked into cycles of litter clean-ups without a transfer of knowledge to effect change in 'the littering behaviour of learners'. This problem was approached as a design process of formative intervention to enhance relevance in ESD with, for example, the inclusion of the Zulu Indigenous Knowledge practices of *Izalene –* composting.

*Note: The numbering of the above section corresponds with course activity progression in the above diagram. We did not initially take the process into the development of continuous assessment strategies as the litter question emerged early in the course. The deliberations prompted some teachers to work on improving their teaching of litter and waste through the addition of Nguni heritage so as to better understand the present problems of waste. Their teachbacks as the course progressed drew on the mediating tools for lesson planning but some found it difficult to expand their normal categories of lesson planning, using a four-quadrant approach. All of the work did, however, strongly affirm the relevance of heritage knowledge as a past for understanding the present conditions and for contemplating creative innovation for future sustainability.*

The Gauteng subject advisor deliberations were centred on the inclusion of climate change in Science teaching. In a similar course-supported collaborative design research and intervention process, they also worked from the subject curriculum and developed course deliberations around the inclusion of heritage to enhance relevance and balance the interplay between intergenerational epistemic processes and the scientific knowledge on climate change in the curriculum.

#### **Chapter 10** *Review of a Course-supported Design Research Intervention Process*

*5. The participants had depth knowledge on the assessment conventions for continuous assessment both of and for learning, as well as the requirements for testing knowledge, understanding and higher order skills of synthesis, analysis and innovation. We thus spent more time on the question of significant learning. This produced a rich discussion on how the inclusion of heritage had enriched our own learning and how case-study work was essential for relevance.*

*Note: The 5-day format of the Gauteng course did not allow the time for the codevelopment of a Hand-Print CARE module on Climate as a work-together/ work-away process. The materials development work was thus done after the conclusion of the course and will be fed back to participants as an exemplar to be modified for their use in teacher training. A workshop kit has also been developed.*

The above vignettes from each course process highlight the situating and additive role of heritage in ESD. They also illuminate ESD as individual and collective processes of becoming engaged in the matters of concern in the present that have been produced by material practices of the past. In uncovering these insights for effective subject teaching as ESD, each of the mediating tools developed in the Hand-Print CARE collaboration were explored, reviewed and refined as the participatory course unfolded. Key contours of the implicit design research process in the course are explored in the review of the course process and mediating tools that follow.

# **ESE/ESD methodological texts as a starting point**

Participants worked with a Fundisa for Change methodology text (Rosenberg et al. 2013) that exemplified diverse methods commonly used in Environment and Sustainability Education (ESE), for example, 'problem-solving', 'role-play', 'projects and practical actions' and 'demonstrations and experiments'. The course narrative here was one of introducing ESE methods to be explored and applied to improve teaching practices.

A course task to explore a few of the discrete ESE methods provoked discussion, with some innovative suggestions. We then worked on the curriculum imperative for active learning as a way of characterising the learning transactions across the diverse methods explored by participants. Work with the 5Ts of Action Learning (Figure 3, O'Donoghue et al. 2018) opened up the range of learning interactions in differing subjects. We also explored how children today are more visual, using media and the internet as well as being exposed to more graphic animations.

The Fundisa for Change methods text on methodology was thus used as an introduction to discuss the methodological scope of current subject teaching practice and how this could be expanded beyond existing Teach-Task-Assess approaches for including ESD in subject disciplines.

### **Chapter 10** *Review of a Course-supported Design Research Intervention Process*

**Figure 3.** Relating the 5 Ts of action-learning with the 4-quadrant schema for expanded task sequences

*Source:* Adapted from 'How are ESD learning and training changing environments', Unesco (2018)

# **Teach-Task-Assess conventions as foundations for expansive learning pathways**

The course structures were situated within a prevailing pedagogical conventional wisdom that classroom education involves *teaching subject knowledge through learning tasks, the outcomes of which are assessed*. Here assessment commonly serves to determine if the learning of knowledge, values, attitudes and skills has produced desired competencies that reflect in the learner having acquired and developed valued knowings, beings and doings for success in schooling and daily living.

The formative rationale for a Fundisa for Change collaborative course of mediated participant intervention resonated with a Teach-Task-Assess start-up (Figure 4).

In opening with this mediating schema, we noted three processes supporting collective learning on the course:

3. The blank quadrant created a sense of there being something to add, as well as of this being possible without a rejection of what is currently seen as good teaching for the acquisition of subject knowledge and competencies.

In the opening interactions, participants explored the inclusion of knowledge acquisition for learner participation in knowledge construction and the development of personal and collective agency in change challenges.

# **Expanding 'Teach-Task-Assess' conventions**

Conventional subject teaching is centred on concepts and competencies through '**Teach -Task-Assess**' progressions

We can deepen and extend these through:

**Figure 4.** An initial mapping of Teach-Task-Assess conventions underpinning subjectdiscipline teaching

Figure 4 reflects the starting point for identifying the expansion needed for a balanced interplay of **knowledge acquisition** and how this opens up opportunities for deliberative processes of **participatory meaning-making and action** in learning transactions that are more learner-led and centred on local matters of concern.

This opening insight and start-up perspective on methodology shaped a collaborative learning and co-engaged research landscape for working together on ESD **as an expansion of a sound conventional wisdom** with a simple four-quadrant schema for lesson planning for **knowledge acquisition** and **participatory learning** in subject disciplines, as given in Figure 5.

# **Clarifying ESD as a process of methodological expansion**

**Figure 5.** ESD as a methodological expansion *Source:* Adapted from Edwards (2014)

Start-up Hand-Print CARE materials had been constituted to open up mediated and learner-led learning progressions informed by the Vygotskian task sequencing schema developed for teacher education by Anne Edwards (2014). The Edwards paper was introduced as a professional reading on the course and the four-quadrant model was applied in conjunction with the Sustainable Development Goals (Figure 6).

The implicit assumption underlying this notion of mediated knowledge acquisition and participatory meaning-making transactions associated with this, is that all learning is a process of expansion and that this develops from and in relation to what is known (knowledge heritage) and what is already being done (life experience).

This premise shaped the introduction of a Hand-Print CARE approach to ESD as deliberative expansions of conventional **Teach-Task-Assess** progressions commonly found in most school subject disciplines. We worked with this underlying conventional wisdom to deliberate how Edwards (2014) reports that this teaching progression found in conventional lesson planning can foster rote learning of facts in ways that mute agency in relation to the application of concepts (recontextualisation) and an associated higher order mastery. Participating teachers identified with the Teach-Task-Assess subject-teaching progression and used it as a referential benchmark around which they might improve their teaching and assessment practices through the Fundisa for Change participatory course.

In this way, each of the two Fundisa for Change programmes (Subject Advisors and Subject Teachers) were introduced to ESD with a focus on materials exemplifying intergenerational practices as indigenous heritage. Both were conducted with primary teachers.

# **Ethical purpose in subject teaching using the SDGs**

Through engaging with and deliberating local matters of concern activated in case story materials, the issues presented as locally authentic, taking the learners into inquiry tasks where they gathered evidence in the home and community contexts of daily life.

With the teachers, we deliberated problem solving as a methodology and worked with the SDGs to locate environment and sustainability problems as open-ended challenges in complex systems. We explored how the Fundisa for Change methods booklet presented ESD problem-solving as an open-ended process of 'action research and community problem solving' (Rosenberg et al. 2008: 28). Mini-SASS was used as an example and we deliberated how learners need to base their problem-solving inquiry work on true stories that can serve to mediate how to undertake a problem-solving inquiry. This resonated with the heritage work of Chikamori et al. (2019) where 'the past is a necessary mirror for understanding the present'.

We concluded that students cannot simply be presented with problems to solve but that we have to learn to work with 'start-up case materials' to frame problem-solving inquiry, and that this work can be deepened and activated using the 'SDG Wheel' (Figure 6). This deliberative work opened up climate change and the sciences as a focus for the Gauteng subject advisors. The KZN Midlands participants developed a wide range of focus areas based on their analysis of the curriculum.

Working with Edwards' (2014) expansion of conventional Teach-Task-Assess curriculum processes, the knowledge was modelled in an authentic story (Q1), shaping leading questions for an inquiry task (Q2). Here the inquiry and case narrative often shaped emerging empathy and concern, along with a need to resolve contradictions through a remodelling of better options (Q2–3) and a re-imagining of possibilities that could, in turn, be taken up into change challenges that were either enacted or narrated by the students (Q3-4). Start-up topic materials were provided for teachers to adapt for engaging their students in learning tasks to develop competences.

# **The inclusion of ESD competences and systems thinking**

The introduction of ESD competencies was not an easy matter as these present as abstract propositions to be inscribed and developed in learning transactions. We thus used the four-quadrant model to deliberate how and where to include activities and tasks to develop and refine the competencies necessary for transitioning to future sustainability. This developed as a translation task that simplified and located the use of the Unesco ESD curriculum competencies within a teaching and learning progression, from subject knowledge acquisition to more learner-led activities to foster participative initiative and agency (see Figure 7).

# **ESD competences and subject disciplines**

Meaningful learning expands around intergenerational knowledge and life experience where we learn:

### **ESD Competences:**

**Figure 7.** A schema for relating competencies to learning progressions and tasks *Source:* Adapted from Unesco (2017: p. 10)

In the opening Hand-Print CARE materials an animated model of a simplified ecosystem was used as a starting point for the introduction of systems thinking at the level of knowledge acquisition for scientific subjects. The knowledge-led models of process worked with became grouped as competencies related to 'critical systems modelling' within which one might constitute the more agentive competences shaping reflexive modes of action. In this way, participants were able to begin to work with ESD competencies in lesson-planning sequences that transitioned from subject knowledge of social-ecological, economic and political systems to the generative competencies (reflexive modes of action) shaping the agency necessary to bring about individual and collaborative change.

# **A blended approach to ESD and continuous assessment for and of learning**

As each course progressed it became apparent to us that the emerging schema for scaffolding ESD processes of Hand-Print CARE in subject disciplines needed to correspond with the prevailing curriculum specifications for the assessment of learning. We thus used a similar strategy of expansive innovation to that reflected in Figure 8, where the four-quadrant learning progressions schema is juxtaposed with the prevailing continuous assessment schema of the curriculum.

# **Figure 8.** A template for contemplating continuous and summative assessment in CAPS subject disciplines

Using this approach, we aligned school subject ESD progressions with an existing model of continuous assessment using an updated but simplified model for conventional classroom assessment predicated on Bloom's Taxonomy.

In our deliberative work we noted that ESD is an evaluative process in itself, thus it requires an integrated process of continuous **assessment for and of learning**. 2 This meant there needed to be a balance between the students developing the competencies to assess matters of concern, if they were to develop the competence necessary for bringing about much-needed change in human material practices. Working from school exam performance records, we noted that most South African learners are not doing well at answering higher order examination questions. We thus approached ESD as a means of enhancing higher order competencies and related this to movement through quadrants of knowledge acquisition (Learning and Finding Out), into working things out with new understanding and going as far as to try out new ideas and assessing these. Within this blended process of continuous assessment for and of learning as a referent, we drew on the work of Shumba, Mandikonza and Lotz-Sisitka (Chapter 12), postulating that we would all want ESD to produce significant, higher order learning and the agency to bring about both personal and collaborative change.

An important expansion in conventional assessment was thus two-fold:

The latter addition was included as an exploratory model of process for teachers to try out and assess in their subject-based ESD programmes.

# **Conclusion: Tentative insights on the inclusion of heritage and ESD competencies in school subjects**

The course-supported design work with the Hand-Print CARE mediating tools accentuated the following outcomes:

<sup>2</sup> This is a subtle expansion of existing conventions for the continuous assessment of learning in South African schools.

Many of these insights were synthesised into an open process model for ESD in school subject teaching settings (Figure 8). This is reflected as a mapping of the key dimensions in a learning pathway for the inclusion of ESD in the teaching of new environmental knowledge with an integrating inclusion of other knowledge systems.

An integrated approach starts with the latter (plural epistemologies) by highlighting history and plural cultural perspectives and experiences as necessary foundations for learning-led change, as participants bring their knowledge into meaning-making deliberations.

Drawing on the simplified 'prediction loop' model differentiated in recent work in the cognitive sciences (Barrett 2017), it is possible to model how learning about abstract and complex concerns like climate change can develop in cyclical deliberative work with new knowledge that enables participants to predictively simulate propositions that are compared and resolved through both individual thought and collective deliberations that shape and inform this.

Here, the inclusion of the SDG wheel as a mediating tool was effective for opening the scope and depth of knowledge related to ESD matters of concern, such as climate change and biodiversity loss.

We also found that work with critical systems modelling and competencies emerged in collective modes of action as participants learned together to recognise concerns, assess value and act for future sustainability (Schreiber & Siege 2017). Learning in a deliberative environment and sustainability education is clearly an iterative and collaborative process of expansive learning and transformative action with enhanced capability to know, feel and do things differently, and these processes inform changed dispositions and material practices.

Finally, taking the integrated elements explored in this chapter into a model of process for ESD as an open learning pathway, a key conceptual underpinning of an emerging picture of ESD in school subject disciplines is a critical realist grasp of how the concerns of the present derive from a retroductive grasp of how the past has produced sustainability issues in the present, after Chikamori et al. (2019). The Transformative Model of ESD that these authors propose notes how generative processes of meaningmaking can activate retroductive learning to open up future possibilities that can be clarified and worked towards within generative re-imaginings and 'back-casting' deliberations.

Overall, the Hand-Print CARE collaboration and the two Fundisa for Change courses accentuated a need for course-supported processes of co-engaged design work to clarify and initiate ESD in school subject disciplines. The design research served to refine the mediating tools, and the emerging exemplars provided starting points for ESD as a process of curriculum innovation in diverse subject disciplines.

**Figure 9.** An open process model for a learning pathway integrating plural heritage knowledge, the SDGs and ESD competencies in locally relevant themes for teaching school subject disciplines

*Source:* Adapted from ESD Expert-Net (2018)

# **Acknowledgement**

The collaborative design work as a co-engaged process of course-supported action research would not have generated the insights reported here without the open and honest reflections and on-course reporting of all the participants. Acknowledging thanks must thus go out to all involved in this exploratory work in which it is not possible to ascribe particular insights to individuals. We have tried to be true to an understanding that the inclusion of ESD is a collaborative endeavour with common mediating tools but wide contextual variation.

# **References**

Barrett LF (2017) *How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain.* Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

Chikamori K, Tanimura C & Ueno M (2019) Transformational model of education for sustainable development (TMESD) as a learning process of socialization. *Journal of Critical Realism*. doi: 10.1080/14767430.2019.1667090.

# CHAPTER 11

# **Assisting Learners to Take Up Agency in Problem-Solving Activities**

*Therese Lambrechts, Rob O'Donoghue and Ingrid Schudel*

# **Introduction**

The Centre for Renewable and Sustainable Energy Studies established the Schools Programme to provide professional development and learning materials to support school educators in the teaching of renewable energy topics (Van Niekerk 2008). Research undertaken in 2016 on the renewable energy learning material showed that while the learning material supported the development of factual and conceptual knowledge; opportunities for learner-led inquiry work, where learners are required to engage with open-ended problem-solving activities, needed to be included for higher order cognitive development (Lambrechts 2017). This study builds on the research done on the above-mentioned renewable energy learning material.

The study's argument is that in order to achieve sustainability, there is a need to facilitate learning processes where learners acquire sound knowledge and have opportunities to engage with this newly acquired knowledge that can lay a foundation for future changed patterns of energy use. It is therefore necessary that learners engage deeply with content knowledge in order to understand why it is important to make the changes.

One way for learners to develop their own curiosity, thus leading them to want to understand their own environmental impact, is to develop an awareness of how much energy they use on a daily basis, for example, through an energy audit in their homes or school. The aim of this study was to determine in what way the learning materials developed for the Grade 11 Physical Science audit encouraged learner-led inquiry work, where learners were required to engage with open-ended problem-solving activities.

This study used a learning task sequence framework (Edwards 2014) as an analytical tool to determine how gained knowledge motivated learners to take up agency, in this case through assessing and acknowledging their own energy use by performing an energy audit. As the name suggests, the framework is made up of sequences, where learning tasks are scaffolded and build on one another, enabling learners to become familiar with new content, ideas and concepts in such a way that they internalise the content and reach specific knowledge goals (Edwards 2014). The required outcome of the learning material developed for this study of ESD was that the learners would engage with the learning material to such an extent that they would understand the consequences of electricity use on various levels, take responsibility and get involved in managing their own energy use.

The research question underlying the way in which the study was developed and implemented was the following:

Did the energy audit encourage learners to implement the acquired knowledge and show agency through skills necessary for a more openended problem-solving activity?

# **Renewable energy learning material in an ESD context**

To date, the world economy has relied on fossil fuels as its main energy source. This has created a negative impact on the environment with regard to mining damage, resource depletion and climate change. The burning of fossil fuels has added certain gases to the atmosphere which are causing an increase in the greenhouse effect and resulting in changes in the climate (Boyle 2012). With climate change comes uncertainty and risk (Beck 1992) because of its complexity and its reliance on extensive time scales and predictive modelling. To add complexity to the uncertainty of climate change, the Planetary Boundaries 2.0 report notes that the boundaries of the earth's systems are interlinked, and there is uncertainty as to what will happen to one system if another system exceeds its boundary (Steffen 2015). Not only can renewable energy counteract climate change but it can also address the challenge of resource depletion (Boyle 2012).

South Africa's current energy supply is mainly derived from the burning of fossil fuels. South Africa is a relatively energy intensive country in Africa and relies on coal for its primary energy use. It is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in Africa and one of the most carbon-emission-intensive countries in the world (South Africa DME 2003). South Africa's total energy demand is 51 GW of which 80% is generated from non-renewable energy sources. The dependence on coal alone is 72% (South Africa DOE 2018). It is therefore important that the focus within the country should be on increasing renewable energy, especially given that the solar power potential in South Africa is very high (South Africa DOE 2012). With more than 2 500 sunshine hours per year, South Africa has the perfect climate for generating solar energy – in fact, one of the best in the world (Gauche, Von Backstrom & Brent 2013). It is important that the South African public is educated on how renewable energy can help combat climate change. This is in line with some of the key objectives of the government's enabling framework, namely to raise public awareness on renewable energy and to educate the public on the benefits and opportunities of renewable energy and how it can counteract climate change (South African NDP 2012).

It is to this end that the renewable energy learning material was developed to support teaching of the topics of climate change and renewable energy which have recently become included in the CAPS curriculum (South Africa DBE 2011). One negative offshoot of this is that teachers at secondary school level have to teach topics with which they are not necessarily familiar (Lambrechts 2017). To mitigate this, a research-based set of learner and teacher support material for high school teachers on renewable energy was developed. This aimed to empower teachers to effectively facilitate learning about non-renewable and renewable energy; broaden the knowledge base of teachers around climate change and renewable energy; and provide them with appropriate subject materials to ensure effective implementation in classrooms.

# **Education for Sustainable Development**

This study also responds to a challenge in ESD of how one should design learning material so that learners can understand and engage with the educational topic at hand (Russo & Lotz-Sisitka 2006). In the study, the topic of the learning material was the use of electricity through developing an energy audit as the tool of inquiry. For the energy audit to be designed in line with ESD goals, it was important that teachers communicated to learners an understanding of not only the impact that the use of fossil fuels currently has on our environment, but also the fact that we need to do something about it (Boyle 2012). As such, the renewable energy learning material was developed to teach learners to switch from non-renewable to renewable energy use and to provide in-depth, solid content in order that they could develop sound knowledge to understand why this switch is important (South Africa DBE 2011).

It is a challenge to design learning material in such a way that it is both specific to ESD processes and can meet the teacher and curriculum goals (Russo & Lotz-Sisitka 2006). O'Donoghue (2015) argued that learning topics on the environment, sustainability and usable energy need to be presented in such a way that learners will internalise concepts and deduce meaning that is relevant to the context of the curriculum, as well as in their daily and future skills and actions.

In the development of learning content for ESD, different learning opportunities are influenced by the design, adaptation and use of the material (Russo & Lotz-Sisitka 2006). Effective and successful use of learning materials also depends on the curriculum requirements; relevant subject content; teacher support in the use of the learning material; and appropriate language use (Russo & Lotz-Sisitka 2006; Glover 2006; Riet 2012; Van der Merwe 2011). Sound learning materials for ESD should not only benefit the learners' knowledge but also promote agency (NAAEE 2004).

This study focused on how teachers used the Physical Science energy audit within the Anne Edwards learning task sequence framework, and whether the audit could promote agency (Edwards 2014).

# **Vygotsky's influence in the development of the learning task sequence**

Anne Edwards based her work on Vygotsky's view that learning is centered on externalisation and internalisation in order for a learner to develop his or her own learning processes. In other words, an internal reconstruction takes place where learners accept new information brought to them through external stimuli such as language or signs. This led Edwards to recognising the importance of the development of a learner's ability to take responsibility in the acquisition and use of knowledge (Edwards 2014; O'Donoghue 2015).

Vygotsky's theories of scaffolding, semiotic mediation and Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) emphasise different processes that take place in learning acquisition (Daniels 2008). Edwards used these concepts in the framing of the four quadrants in her task sequencing framework for classroom learning. Here, scaffolding is a process through which learners are initially guided to develop concepts and skills that will enable them to complete the task required (Daniels 2008). O'Donoghue (2015) pointed out that the learning expands from acquisition, through participation in work with the teacher and texts, into learning activities that are more learnerled and reflexive. Smidt (2009) described the term 'scaffolding' as moving from the performance level to the potential level.

Daniels (2008) stated that the concept of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) was hypothesised by Vygotsky as a device for explaining the way in which social and participatory learning takes place as an expansive learning process. John-Steiner and Mahn (1996) described the ZPD in a learning process as the distance between the level of development where the learner performs alone and independently; and the potential level of development with assistance from an adult or a more capable peer. It could therefore be argued that the ZPD is a proposition which suggests the level of possibilities or potential for development of a learner in a mediated process of learning (John-Steiner & Mahn 1996). Two aspects of Vygotsky's notion of a ZPD are significant in the Edwards task sequence model: first, the development of a learner through the guidance of an adult teacher or in collaboration with more capable peers who understand the concepts being taught; and, second, the notion that in learning, instruction moves ahead of development (Daniels 2008).