Publication Type: Presentation Proposal
Abstract: In South Africa and the US, environmental education programs are integrating the local, indigenous knowledge of elders with scientific knowledge. Learn about curricula and evaluation results of the Cornell University Garden Mosaics program (www.gardenmosaics.org) and similar efforts in South Africa.

Publication Type: Paper Presentation
Abstract: This cross-cultural research study was conducted in an indigenous community in Taiwan at an indigenous K-6 elementary school, exploring the confluence of local ecological knowledge and Western science and how this tension affects the students’ learning in school.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines the extent to which school context plays a role in the implementation of South Africa’s Language in Education Policy (LiEP). Analysing the policy discourse alongside investigations of curriculum reform in South Africa from the past fifteen years, it finds that both school-based and external factors have caused school actors to interpret and refract the policy in ways that are complex and uncertain. The linguistic capital of the English language comes up against the policy’s framing of multilingualism in South Africa. While the LiEP signals a shift towards a more inclusive and equitable education system, it masks the links between race, class, and power which it is ostensibly designed to undo.

Within this landscape, implementation of the LiEP has resulted in unexpected outcomes found in school and classroom practices. These can be classified as: fulfilment, accommodation, compliance, and resistance. School responses either support or detract from the policy and its possibilities for education reform, creating conditions that risk reinforcing inequity. This analysis illustrates the importance of grounding policy in local contexts in order to be sensitive to the unique challenging circumstances faced by schools, and to acknowledge and address the inherent social inequities in these schools as they work toward education reform for social justice.

Publication Type: Traditional Presentation
Abstract: A recent NAAEE student scholarship recipient shares her experiences from an internship in South Africa as an environmental educator, reflecting on the value of international experience in EE, the role of EE in the developing world, and experiential education.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Legislation reforming tenure is often based upon particular interpretations of the tenure situation to be reformed by people on the outside, rather than by reference to the shared realities of those who will be the subjects of the reforms. This paper considers such shared understandings of tenure of people living in the former ‘homeland’ areas in South Africa but then goes on to consider how particular forms of knowledge of such tenure has shaped approaches to its reform. The discussion draws upon a year’s multi-sited fieldwork involving archival research as well as ethnographic studies in policy-making, NGO and academic circles in South Africa as well as in communities themselves. The paper considers how the knowledge of tenure, ownership and rights of a key grouping participating in policy debates in South Africa has been shaped by their particular shared history in the struggle against apartheid. It looks at the assumptions that such knowledge has led to and on which particular models of reform embodied in proposed tenure legislation have been constructed. Understanding the extent to which different versions of reality have been embodied in law and policy is rarely explored, but this paper considers how particular models of reform, shaped by layers of discourses, construct spaces for engagement and so limit the questions that can be asked and the actors that can be involved.