Heila Lotz-Sisitka

This multi-authored article draws together the expert analyses of 11 field-leading scholars to produce a concise collective assessment of how intersecting historical, social, economic, political, institutional, technological, and ecological crises interact to shape South African education. The article makes no claim to offering an absolute notion of a coherent collective argument. Its strength, however, lies in the presentation of diverse perspectives, some of which align and complement each other, and others that challenge and complicate. The systemic nature of the crisis in/of South African education (in both the school and post-school sectors) is reflected in perennial personnel shortages, infrastructure decay, austerity measures, governance failures, and the widening inequality between private and public provisioning. This crisis is a multi-layered and complex convergence of political, ecological, ethical, and institutional crises, amongst others-some longstanding and some novel. As such, the crisis cannot be understood through a single theoretical or disciplinary lens. South African education is neither uniformly dysfunctional nor beyond creative reimagination. After three decades of post-apartheid transformation initiatives, however, the burden of apartheid's legacy of dysfunction, especially in previously disadvantaged communities, remains an enduring feature that threatens to hold the system in paralysis. While post-1994 policy initiatives have improved access, poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity persist. Asymmetrical geographical development, layered with historical inequalities in race, class, gender, and language, continues to shape educational participation and outcomes. The article strikes a balance between scholarly critique and responsibility to affected communities and institutions, resisting deficit narratives and pathology in favour of recognising the knowledge and agency of learners, teachers, and communities. These critical insights, while not exhaustive, reveal tensions and directions for future policy, practice, and scholarship.

This study presents perceptions of justice by 10- to 12-year-old children. The material consists of responses to one open question from two different datasets. The first dataset consists of texts from three studies in Sweden. The second set was gathered in 2019 in an interview study involving both South African and Swedish children. The texts are analysed regarding (a) what matters of justice they articulate as read in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of Agenda 2030; (b) who the beneficiary of justice is thought to be; and finally, (c) how the texts by children relate matters of justice to national borders. This analytical model draws on the theory of justice developed by Nancy Fraser. The results show considerable variation over time and in relation to the location in Sweden or South Africa, but a general trend is that children articulate matters that are of concrete concern to them and these can be related to the SDGs. A crucial presupposition for the study is the recognition of children’s voices as mattering, both as citizens and in educational work with matters of sustainability.

This formative article on indigenous heritage and cultural phenology informs environment and sustainability education as reflexive processes of heritage-mediated, deliberative learning to change together. It shows how transformative learning can be informed by engaging with biocultural heritage that has shaped the southern African biomes as living landscapes. Drawing on historical and agroecological evidence, the article illustrates how local practices have shaped environments that support sustainable livelihoods and community well-being. It reviews evidence of how expanding agroecology practices successively ‘tamed’ the land, making village surroundings safe, healthy and productive. The heritage practices examined show how colonial Arcadian ideals, together with the empirical traditions of the natural sciences, shaped Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as primarily a learner-led problem-solving approach. The study suggests that a broader view of learning and biocultural change can help reframe ESD as a more reflexive critical process, informed by biocultural heritage and connected to school disciplinary subjects knowledge.

Learning Networks in the agri-environmental education sector have proven to be a valuable tool for sharing knowledge and building capacity outside formal training processes. During the Covid-19 pandemic, many in-person learning networks transformed into Virtual Learning Networks. Subsequently, it appears that some of these Learning Networks thrive while others die quietly. This paper investigates the elements, functioning and mechanisms of four learning networks in a virtual space to understand what factors contribute to the sustainability of such networks and identify what actions might improve the chances for future success.We drew upon Cultural Historical Activity Theory and developed a contextual profile for each learning network as an activity system. Data was obtained through the use of a Social network mapping tool, WhatsApp Network Group Chat Analysis and interviewed 25 learning network members.The research aimed to understand the functioning, elements and mechanisms of Virtual Learning Networks in order to develop the understandings, approaches and tools necessary to increase the chances of future success for these social knowledge-sharing platforms. The research outcomes reveal that learning networks are affected by factors such as functionality; shared interests; the levels and kinds of activity being shared, the levels of members’ contributions and; their willingness to share. Networks are also subject to challenges including competing interests, distractions, and online fatigue. We conclude that Virtual Learning Networks, at their most dynamic, can be effectively utilised as knowledge-sharing bases. Virtual Learning Networks require continuously engaged and stimulated interactions within an established community of practice to be sustained.

Learning Networks in the agri-environmental education sector have proven to be a valuable tool for sharing knowledge and building capacity outside formal training processes. During the Covid-19 pandemic, many in-person learning networks transformed into Virtual Learning Networks. Subsequently, it appears that some of these Learning Networks thrive while others die quietly. This paper investigates the elements, functioning and mechanisms of four learning networks in a virtual space to understand what factors contribute to the sustainability of such networks and identify what actions might improve the chances for future success.We drew upon Cultural Historical Activity Theory and developed a contextual profile for each learning network as an activity system. Data was obtained through the use of a Social network mapping tool, WhatsApp Network Group Chat Analysis and interviewed 25 learning network members.The research aimed to understand the functioning, elements and mechanisms of Virtual Learning Networks in order to develop the understandings, approaches and tools necessary to increase the chances of future success for these social knowledge-sharing platforms. The research outcomes reveal that learning networks are affected by factors such as functionality; shared interests; the levels and kinds of activity being shared, the levels of members’ contributions and; their willingness to share. Networks are also subject to challenges including competing interests, distractions, and online fatigue. We conclude that Virtual Learning Networks, at their most dynamic, can be effectively utilised as knowledge-sharing bases. Virtual Learning Networks require continuously engaged and stimulated interactions within an established community of practice to be sustained.

This article is located within current debates on engaged science and learning in higher education, with emphasis on types of learning emerging from engaged sustainability science, and associated contributions to debates on decoloniality in higher education. In particular, the article deliberates how a focus on sustainability science practised as place-based transgressive learning can add to debates on decoloniality in higher education. Through analysis of two case studies, we propose that co-engaged place-based research and learning emerges as a form of multi-loop, transgressive learning that offers possibilities for advancing understanding of decolonising learning processes, at least in those parts of the higher education system where the learning and sustainability sciences meet. This is offered as an approach to deepen science engagement in contemporary African contexts.

Human health and well-being are directly and indirectly dependent on the life of river systems. Life in river systems is increasingly dependent on human actions that bring river health into being. Rather than describing river health as thing, problem or management challenge, this paper explores how river health is brought into being, through the citizen science practices of the Amanzi Ethu Nobuntu project in the upper uMngeni catchment in South Africa. The study draws on focal data produced by citizen science practitioners, as interpreted by them in collaboration with partners in the catchment, and their reflections on the meaning(s) of river health and how it came into being. Drawing on the concepts of citizen science as a co-learning process, integrative views of One Health, and commoning as activity, the study offers a rich interpretation on how river health comes into being. The study shows the complex interrelated practices involved, including practices of resolving leaks and pollution challenges, social and community engagement, and the co-learning involved in citizen science practices itself. It offers insight into the social-ecological and ethical-political ontological dynamics of river health commoning activity, thus offering alternatives to reductionist approaches to bringing river health into being, potentially also enriching tools for river health reporting.

The need for more radical forms of learning-centred transformation is increasingly recognised in transformations to sustainability. Yet these approaches to learning remain under-developed and undertheorised especially from a politics and environmental education research perspective. This paper offers a review of an emerging politics of transgression in environmental education research, as developed through an extensive T-learning (transgressive learning in times of climate change) knowledge co-production research programme, spanning eight years, and continuing. The ongoing problem that the research programme seeks to address is how to do transgressive learning in/as environmental education research in times where the fall out of coloniality and fossil capital collide in an increasingly regressive political landscape which Akomolafe and Ladha (2017, pg. 820) describe as “the deadening ideology of late-stage capitalism and its corollaries of patriarchy, rationalism, white supremacy and anthropocentrism.” Through the paper, I seek to highlight a “low theory” (Wark, 2021) of transgressive politics in environmental education research, embodied in practices of transgressive politics as movement in co-engaged T-learning research, which I illuminate through a meta-reflective curational process from the ‘archive’ or T-learning knowledge commons collection.

This chapter offers a model of ‘internationalisation at home’ for PhD studies. This model considers regional, epistemic, educative and political-ecological forms of international exchange, as well as the practical modalities through which these are realised. The chapter elaborates the concept of ‘internationalisation at home’ as found in the literature and indicates that the concept of ‘at home’ ought to take on a different meaning in PhD studies within the wider context of the Anthropocene. While the model has been developed in and is situated in a global South environment and context, it has wider reference and applicability. It responds to the International Commission on the Futures of Education Report (2021) which highlights the need for educational institutions and programmes to give more attention to our interdependency as a human species, arguing that we need to get much better at working together across traditional boundaries, including nation-state boundaries, as well as epistemic and institutional boundaries. It also argues for a new social contract for education that reframes the historically dominant narratives guiding education, including internationalisation. The model is not for replication but rather seeks to stimulate deliberation on what ‘internationalisation at home’ may mean in contemporary times.