1. The National Environmental Skills Summit
3-5 March | DBSA | Midrand

2. FUNDISA FOR CHANGE RESEARCH Day 3 | 5 March 2015

3. EXPLORING A KNOWLEDGE-FOCUSED TRAJECTORY FOR RESEARCHING ENVIRONMENTAL LEARNING IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN CURRICULUM
• Ingrid Schudel Environmental Learning Research Centre Rhodes University

4. Context, concepts and theoretical framing
20 years of post-apartheid curriculum history (From extra-curricular with ecological foundations to intra-curricular with transformative intent)
Focus on the knowledge crisis in curriculum (esp Chisholm and Dada)
Social realist view of knowledge (Maton, 2014)
Epistemic relations (Maton, 2014)

5. 5 perspectives on knowledge explored
Perspective # 1: new environmental knowledge in the curriculum
(bringing knowledge back in);
Perspective # 2: environmental knowledge in local and global contexts
(especially focusing on the role discursive relations between local, indigenous and everyday, and abstract knowledges in understanding these);
Perspective # 3: dynamic knowledge for open-ended and futuristic thinking;
(focusing on ontic relations and environment as dynamic, changing and open-ended ‘object’ of knowledge)
Perspective # 4: depth and complexity of environmental knowledge;
(extending ontic perspectives ito complexity and depth of environment as ‘object’; and acknowledging social relations – moral/political relations central to this complexity)
Perspective # 5: combining discipline-specific core knowledge and skills with a systems perspective
(focusing on questions of systems of meaning and discipline-specificity as explored in SR literature)

6. New knowledge Local & global Dynamic knowledge
* textbooks/contextualising materials
* phase organisers/themes/ topics/facts
Local & global
* relationship between tacit, contextual and applied AND disciplinary knowledge
* Context bound/context rich
Dynamic knowledge
* Think unthinkable and not-yet-thought
* emergence/ontological grounding/historicity
* Nature of ‘good’?
Depth and complexity
* Higher order cognitive skills
* What could be … what should be (rights-based principle)?
Systems perspectives
* Fluidity / integrity
* Negating/negotiating boundaries
* Interdisciplinarity for tackling world problems and systems perspectives
* Knowledge as causally important

7. Thank You