Luiza Olim de Sousa

This book, Collaborative community partnerships: Educating for sustainable development across educational settings, features chapters by scholars from various education fields specialising in sustainability. As the first volume in North-West University’s Community-based Educational Research Series, it focuses on transforming education through a participatory approach. The authors explore quality education across early childhood and primary, secondary and higher education by examining collaborative efforts among practitioners, parents and teachers. These partnerships aim to foster active participation in sustainable development. This scholarly book provides empirical evidence on how collaborative initiatives can promote sustainable development. These initiatives encourage partnerships among community leaders, educators, learners, nongovernmental organisations, government and the private sector for lifelong learning and professional development. It highlights southern African experiences in collaborative education, aligned with the United Nations’ sustainable development goal of achieving quality education. The book demonstrates various research designs and methods applied to educational practice, from early childhood to tertiary levels, through empirical research and community projects. The book, targeted at scholars, practitioners, and professionals in education and sustainable development, comprises ten rigorously peer-reviewed chapters, contributing significantly to the field.

This book, Collaborative community partnerships: Educating for sustainable development across educational settings, features chapters by scholars from various education fields specialising in sustainability. As the first volume in North-West University’s Community-based Educational Research Series, it focuses on transforming education through a participatory approach. The authors explore quality education across early childhood and primary, secondary and higher education by examining collaborative efforts among practitioners, parents and teachers. These partnerships aim to foster active participation in sustainable development. This scholarly book provides empirical evidence on how collaborative initiatives can promote sustainable development. These initiatives encourage partnerships among community leaders, educators, learners, nongovernmental organisations, government and the private sector for lifelong learning and professional development. It highlights southern African experiences in collaborative education, aligned with the United Nations’ sustainable development goal of achieving quality education. The book demonstrates various research designs and methods applied to educational practice, from early childhood to tertiary levels, through empirical research and community projects. The book, targeted at scholars, practitioners, and professionals in education and sustainable development, comprises ten rigorously peer-reviewed chapters, contributing significantly to the field.

Entomophagy and entomophagy tourism have been gaining traction as a growing trend in various parts of the world. Although the concept may be relatively new in some regions, entomophagy has existed for many years and offers various benefits for farmers, local communities, and tourists alike. Entomophagy tourism involves a tourist visiting an area to learn about and experience insect-based foods in various forms such as tasting dishes or participating in insect harvesting and preparation. When implemented sustainably, entomophagy tourism can generate additional farmer income, create job opportunities, utilise more farm resources, and preserve natural and cultural heritage. This study aimed to explore and assess the potential of entomophagy tourism in the Mopani District, Limpopo Province, South Africa. This involved investigating the cultural, ecological, and economic dimensions of insect consumption in the region, specifically focusing on how entomophagy can be leveraged to promote tourism. Ultimately, the goal was to provide insights and recommendations that can contribute to the sustainable development of entomophagy tourism in the Mopani District, fostering cultural preservation and economic growth in the region.

Jàmbá: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies aims to engage, inform, and catalyse scholarly discourse within research and real-world practices that work towards the minimisation of vulnerabilities and disaster risks throughout developing communities with special emphasis on Africa.

This article reflects the learning of five researchers in higher education in South Africa who took part in a participatory action research project to educate teachers how to integrate climate change issues into their teaching and learning. It was the first time any of the researchers had used participatory action research. We are all from natural science backgrounds and now involved in education for sustainable development. We had been trained in more traditional, objective, and researcher-driven methodologies grounded in a positivist paradigm. The purpose of this article is to share our learning about the changes we had to make in our thinking and practices to align with a participatory paradigm. We used reflective diaries to record our journey through the action research cycles. A thematic analysis of our diaries was supplemented by recorded discussions between the researchers. The analysis revealed that, while it was challenging to begin thinking in a different paradigm, we came to appreciate the value of the action research process that enabled teachers to integrate climate change issues into their teaching in a participatory way. We also concluded that we require more development to be able to conduct participatory research in a manner true to its values and principles. The conclusions we came to through our collaborative reflections may be of value to other researchers from similar scientific backgrounds who wish to learn what shifts in paradigm, methods, and processes are needed to be able to conduct community-based research in a participatory way.

A principle of sustainable development is that environmental matters are best handled with the participation of all concerned citizens. The UN has identified a gap between innovative teaching and learning methods and a participatory approach at institutions of higher education (IHE) to support interdisciplinary action. This paper shares the learning experiences of pre-service teacher students who took part in a participatory approach to educating for sustainable development in a South African IHE. A survey research design was used to collect the data from a large group (n = 376) of students over one semester. A qualitative research approach used the compulsory module’s teaching and learning tasks as intervention. Narratives were completed in groups upon completion of the module. This research established that when including a participatory approach in teaching and learning in an education for sustainable development (ESD) module at a South African IHE social learning indicators (learning, critical thinking, problem solving and dealing with conflict) emerged and students used their different perspectives when reasoning to participate collaboratively to work toward resolving environmental issues. The significance of this paper is that social learning indicators have been identified in multidisciplinary pre-service teaching and learning in a developing country when using a participatory approach in a higher education ESD module.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global crisis, one which also influences the ways sustainability is being taught at universities. This paper undertakes an analysis of the extent to which COVID-19 as a whole and the lockdown it triggered in particular, which has led to the suspension of presence-based teaching in universities worldwide and influenced teaching on matters related to sustainable development. By means of a worldwide survey involving higher education institutions across all continents, the study has identified a number of patterns, trends and problems. The results from the study show that the epidemic has significantly affected teaching practices. The lockdowns have led to a surge in the use of on-line communication tools as a partial replacement to normal lessons. In addition, many faculty teaching sustainability in higher education have strong competencies in digital literacy. The sampled higher education educations have—as a whole—adequate infrastructure to continue to teach during the lockdowns. Finally, the majority of the sample revealed that they miss the interactions via direct face-to-face student engagement, which is deemed as necessary for the effective teaching of sustainability content. The implications of this paper are two-fold. Firstly, it describes how sustainability teaching on sustainable development has been affected by the lockdown. Secondly, it describes some of the solutions deployed to overcome the problem. Finally, the paper outlines the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic may serve the purpose of showing how university teaching on sustainability may be improved in the future, taking more advantage of modern information technologies.